Patrick Gilligan-O'Loughlin

The Guardian reports “at least $30bn” to build the Osborne submarine yard, with Albanese announcing a $3.9bn “down payment.” For a working family paying $650 a week in rent and watching grocery bills climb, that scale of spending feels distant from daily pressure #auspol

Anthony Albanese says Aukus is in everyone’s interests. But Congress is openly canvassing not delivering boats. So we are pouring $30bn into a yard that could end up building what exactly. Optimism is not a procurement strategy #auspol

$30bn for a submarine shipyard. $3.9bn “down payment.” No confirmed completion date. No guarantee the US will even deliver subs. Labor calls it nation building. Voters might call it blind faith with a blank cheque attached #auspol

The Coalition reuniting was inevitable. The Nationals poll ~3% and exist to lock in a few rusted-on rural seats. But the Coalition has lost cities to Teals and ground to One Nation. Even a multi-party bloc can’t fix that. The path back is structural, not tactical #auspol

Sydney is now the second most unaffordable housing market in the world. Labor should be ashamed. A country that sells the myth of a fair go while pricing people out of shelter is broken. Chris Minns has done nothing on housing and overreaches on political communication instead #auspol

Labor’s IR reforms are a fabrication. Same job, same pay does not apply to award workers, some of the lowest paid. Awards legally lock in wage suppression through classifications. The policy mainly benefits FIFO, mining, and energy workers #auspol

Purchasing power and real wages are back at 2011 levels. Rent is up 43% in five years. Labor has one of the largest lower-house majorities it has ever had, and instead of reform it is burning time and political capital on fights that deliver no material improvement for the working class #auspol

Mortgage holders own appreciating assets; renters have eaten a 42% rent hike for nothing but the right to exist. Calling borrowers the real victims is naked class propaganda. This isn’t a cost-of-living crisis, it’s a wealth transfer upward #auspol

Abolishing the TGA isn’t policy it’s domestic sabotage. Pauline Hanson is pushing pharmacological terrorism. No developed state survives without drug regulation. This is how narco-states form. She’s not anti-establishment. She’s anti-civilisation #auspol

Bob Katter described impulsively purchasing an AK-47 “instead of socks,” misidentified state boundaries, and concluded with religious delusion. These are not political traits they’re indicators of executive dysfunction, spatial disorientation, and disinhibition #auspol

The Greens are blocking this because it bakes inequality into the law, race gets criminal protection, but religion, LGBTQ Australians, women, and disabled people are told to wait for a future bill, that is not equal protection, that is a hierarchy of rights #auspol

Labor sits in the middle trying to appease the Greens on inclusion and the Coalition on dog whistles, and the result is a bill that is friendless. When your response to hate is a drafting exercise in triangulation, you are not fighting hate, you are managing headlines #auspol

The Greens point is simple. If you are criminalising hate, you do not pick one community and leave others to fend for themselves. If Jews get federal protection, so should LGBTQ Australians and other targeted groups, otherwise it is politics dressed up as principle #auspol

Labor tried to write one hate laws package to satisfy everyone, and ended up satisfying no one. Big, symbolic, messy, and now they are chopping it up because it cannot pass as written. That is not leadership, that is panic management #auspol

AUKUS: $368b over 30 years =
~$12.2b a year.
HAFF: capped at $500m a year.
That's 24x more for subs than housing.
And peak AUKUS years hit ~$20b
- 40x more.
Albanese put Costello's fund ahead of building homes
#auspol

The Intercept showed the food contracts feeding the Caribbean Strike Force, a huge share of US power near Venezuela, running to 2028. Published before the incursion. With Trump now threatening Mexico and Colombia this looks like sustained Latin American occupation through 2028 #auspol

Even Bush-era regime change had a formula: kill the head, co-opt the body, install a puppet, call it democracy. Trump skipped steps. No puppet. No plan. Just an oil-thirsty empire blurting out its intent like a drunk at closing time #auspol

This isn’t a coup. It’s a decapitation with no transition. The US has taken out Maduro but left the Venezuelan state intact then announced they will “run” the country. That’s not liberation. That’s occupation without strategy #auspol

Albanese meekly mumbling about “democratic principles” while a deranged oil-soaked war criminal publicly announces a coup is peak gutless diplomacy. The US is saying they’ll run Venezuela and we’re issuing concern tweets? Grow a spine or admit you’re just another lackey #auspol

A grotesque, brain-rotted sexual predator with a face like uncooked meat just confessed the US would run Venezuela after bombing it. This isn’t foreign policy, it’s the ugliest, dumbest oil coup in history. Even Bush knew to shut up. Trump slobbers it out like a senile war pig on camera #auspol

If Maduro has been captured and a US backed replacement is installed, Venezuela does not stabilise. It fractures. Legitimacy imposed externally is not legitimacy at all #auspol

AFR and Washington Post both reporting explosions and low flying aircraft over Caracas. This is what global instability looks like when the adjudicated sexual abuser orange mango menace is back in charge. Will Albanese follow the US into another forever war, or say no this time #auspol

AFR reporting explosions and low flying aircraft over Caracas and we are meant to pretend this chaos is accidental? The adjudicated sexual abuser orange mango menace drags the world toward war again and Albanese stays silent so will Australia be marched into another Vietnam #auspol

Even Jewish advocacy groups warn that using antisemitism rules to shut down criticism of Israel wrongly conflates Jews with a foreign state. So why does Labor have an Israel Action Committee at all. Do we have one for NZ, the US, or Denmark #auspol

No one should cop hate for who they are, ever. But it’s telling how fast Labor polices speech while letting housing rot, rents explode, wages stall, and services collapse. Zero tolerance for words, endless tolerance for crushing workers #auspol

Australia now functions to protect a minority. No nation building, no housing reform, no action on 1.5 percent vacancy rates. Governments respond to tragedy but ignore the daily harm inflicted on millions through rent, tax rorts, and inaction #auspol

Calling citizenship a privilege in a country with brutal rents, one of the weakest safety nets in the OECD, useless privatised TAFE, and monopolies ripping everyone off is a joke. You broke the social contract then demand service to fix it. That’s not cohesion, it’s blame shifting #auspol

Labor ran on housing reform in 2019 lost and now governs with power while SQM forecasts more price growth and vacancies hit records doing nothing while inequality compounds is a choice not an accident #auspol

The Coalition helped break housing but Labor has governed through record unaffordability rising rents and collapsing access with a clear mandate to act choosing to do nothing in a second term is more invidious than open hostility #auspol

Selling for a 335k paper gain means nothing if you rebuy into the same market and pay higher stamp duty the housing boom created trillions in equity but zero extra shelter this is illusionary wealth created by inaction #auspol