General News

Deep within Canberra’s soiled halls, where sellouts*, drunks, psychopaths and megalomaniacs roam, strategically weaponised bullshit is conjured up for our consumption. Soundbites, slogans, dog whistles and distractions – “announceables” that fall well short of being actual policies. Or even things that might plausibly happen one day.  This is what Peter (“He’s not a monster” –…

At first glance the images seem fairly innocuous.  Bunches of people holding placards at this month’s Dunkley by-election, suggesting significant ground-level support for US-style aggressive political disinformation outfit “Advance”. Kind of a Where’s Wally, but an edition for special students.  Advance, which ran the anti-Indigenous Voice “No” campaign, claims to be a “grassroots” movement of…

As you definitely would know, unless you’ve been in a coma for the past month, musical superstar Taylor Swift toured this fair nation, and instead of going ‘that’s great for her fans’, Australian media went into a meltdown that brought loyal swifties and Swift haters together in feeling completely embarrassed by the joke that is…

Supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths post consistent annual profits of more than a billion dollars, hold 60 percent of the market, and enjoy a stranglehold over a vital supply chain of essential items. And with this power they squeeze ordinary Australians dry, from farmers to latte-sippers to marginal families. The supermarkets, under the cover of…

As a young boy I once had to flee a toy store, hurriedly dragged along by my panicked but in hindsight admirably still functioning dad, through London’s eerily empty streets. The IRA had phoned in a bomb threat. From a sea of endless forgotten memories, I can tell you unequivocally that one will stay with…

We’re back. We’re back in federal parliament for another year and only a week in, the Liberal National Coalition are already fresh out of ideas and morals. The Coalition’s only major achievement last year seems to have been reminding Australians why they voted the Coalition out of office and why the Libs desperately need to…

A few weeks back, in an attempt to locate a source of stress and exhaustion rising in me like a metaphor I can’t be fucked conjuring up, my therapist asked me a handful of on-point questions.  “What have you been focussing on at work this year?” Well, recently it’s mostly been: genocide, terrorism, kidnapping, ethnic…

Did the Morrison Government try and cover up the rape of a 24-year-old staffer? Or did key players in Reynolds and Morrison’s offices simply hope like hell the whole thing would go away, offering minimal support to a vulnerable victim while being too quick to move on to the political priority of a looming Federal…

Once upon a time, proud, multicultural Australia heard Pauline Hanson’s talking points and found them intolerable. Outside of that one uncle everyone avoids at the Christmas party, we’d collectively laugh at them. “Fuck off, we’re full,” wasn’t ever a sincere phrase. It was a mocking term, fake thick bogan accent and all, that was used…

Trigger warning: this article contains descriptions of an alleged sexual assault that people, especially victims of sexual assault, might find traumatic. Please exercise caution and care. As the weekend approached, Brittany Higgins might have hoped her 3-day ordeal in the Witness Box was nearing an end. It was not to be. Despite Brittany having spent…