Transmission: A Window of Opportunity

A person is a note in the mouth of probability hungry for song, reverberating with echoes of the impossible. To exist at all is as close as this universe of austere laws and inert matter gets to a miracle. At its most miraculous, life has a musical quality, harmonious and symphonic with meaning. Maria Popova.

All it had taken was a few sticks of dynamite to block the roads leading into and out of Kangaroo Valley, and to return the hamlet to its original, isolated nature, cut off both from the coast and the highlands. The local militia still guarded the choke points, just in case, and those enemy forces who had made it through were all imprisoned in the small, long out of use jail. There was no way in and no way out, and that's the way they liked it. 

The militia were made up of local boys and farmers with their rifles, not sophisticated, they didn't have to be. The landscape and the narrow divides did their work for them. 

Even then, knowing what they knew, they were not keen on killing, and the enemy forces from the coast who had made it through were fed the basics, and it was assumed, eventually, that they would be assimilated into the village. 

When the rest of the world, the rest of the country, collapsed entirely, and those roving forces, the evil from outside, was extinguished.

Here we were, experiencing "late stage democracy", as the professors would later call the era. The time when the West collapsed in upon itself, victim to the insanities of their political and academic classes, once referred to as the laptop class, destroyed not just the middle class but the functioning of the entire country.

Tucker Carlson came by: and his views were bracingly different to anything you heard inside Australia. How beautiful your cities. No pockets of poor. My God, how does anyone afford to live here. I thought it must be in pesos or something, the prices. No culture is more under siege than yours. You should be proud of what you have achieved, your beautiful cities. But at every turn you are being asked to apologise. And told that the land is not yours. Believe me, that is a prelude to your land being stolen, because you are constantly told you have stolen it. A democracy means you are an owner of the country, not a renter. 

And that was that: no country, no culture, is more under attack than yours. 

And so it was. 

Time is short came the constant refrain; but they measured time in such a different way, thought so differently to humans, that even though time was short for humans, a blink, a mist and then we are gone, he did not take it as a threat. Just a different way of thinking. And so it was, and so it would be. A crisis averted. An opportunity opened. And they, the common people, returned to the land after a period of great distress. 

And the look of Albo as he faced what was increasingly coming to seem like an inevitable defeat, a physically and mentally lazy man, you could tell just by looking at him, would face his own political Waterloo. A defeat which would bring joy to his political opponents. That trite dispute, battle, war, whatever it was, characteristic of a failing system. 

Democracy. Bullshit. This was a tyranny imposed from above. And now they all felt it, as the economy collapsed, national pride collapsed, and their attempts to socialise home ownership met the greatest resistance of all. For there were almost no other natural markets. 

HEADLINES

NEWS

A major developer which built apartments for John Singleton and supermarkets for Woolworths has been placed into liquidation less than two months after it collapsed.

NSW Central Coast-based builder Stevens Construction was established in 2006 but went into voluntary administration in May, leaving 10 projects in limbo.

In a press release published on its website at the time, Stevens Construction described itself as a “longstanding pillar in the NSW commercial construction industry”.

It said, however, skyrocketing costs had made “continued operations unsustainable”.

MACRO BUSINESS

The Australian Financial Review’s latest quarterly property survey has found that property experts believe that the supply of new homes is being ‘choked’ by high interest rates and construction costs, making the national target of 1.2 million new homes over five years unachievable.

High construction costs are among a range of factors that have pushed up the cost of building in most capital cities at a faster rate than house price growth, making it less economical to build new dwellings relative to purchasing an established home.

CoreLogic research director Tim Lawless noted that “the price of construction is not falling and building or renovating remains almost 30% more expensive now than pre-COVID after an extended period of escalating costs”.

GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA

Antarctic blast brings damaging winds and alpine blizzards to Victoria and NSW and possible snow in Queensland

A low-pressure system carrying fast-moving polar air will bring damaging winds and possible blizzard conditions to south-eastern Australia, with possible snow as high as the Queensland border – but locals in that state have not yet dusted off their toboggans.

The low-pressure system brought cold and blustery weather to Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales on Sunday and Monday, with severe weather warnings for all three states.

SKY AUSTRALIA

Coalition receives primary vote boost in latest Resolve Strategic poll as majority of Australians say national outlook worsening

Voters are turning their backs on Labor and moving toward Peter Dutton and the Coalition as the latest poll shows the majority of Australians think the country is heading in the wrong direction.

Support for the federal Coalition has increased as the majority of Australians say the country is heading in the wrong direction.

Peter Dutton’s opposition increased its primary vote support from 36 to 38 per cent in the latest Resolve Strategic poll, while primary vote support for the Albanese government remained flat at 28 per cent – the lowest level it’s been since the Prime Minister took office

The poll results, published in the Nine newspapers, are a major improvement for the Coalition compared to this time last year, when Labor led the Liberals and Nationals by 39 per cent to 30 per cent.

ABC

In short:

A polar outbreak across eastern Australia is predicted to bring the most widespread snowfall across NSW in at least two years.

On Monday evening, snow continues to fall over the southern ranges and Alps, including possibly around Jindabyne, Cooma and Nimmitabel.

What's next?

By Tuesday night, the heaviest snow should shift to the upper Hunter and Northern Tablelands.

THE NEW DAILY

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