Editorial

This is a remaking of Australian politics. It has happened so slowly, and from materials so scant, that it has been possible not to notice. The people involved are all insubstantial. They are linked not by their courage but by its absence.

The very first line of the very first recommendation basically summarises everything wrong with the Liberal Party’s last campaign: “The Party must never again allow the Parliamentary Leader and Office to effectively run the campaign.”

It’s fitting that it took a lawsuit led by a children’s educational toy company to derail Donald Trump’s petty and destructive trade war. 

Tim Wilson sleeps under a life-sized portrait of Ronald and Nancy Reagan. In the picture they are permed and rictus-faced, dancing with room enough for a Bible to fit between them.

The last picture Jon Kudelka drew for The Saturday Paper was of a man sitting on the edge of a small cliff. Possibly it was the edge of a hole. The man was Jon, waiting for an idea. He was as scruffy and as charming as one of his drawings.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s not much money. This is part of what makes it so sad. The country’s politicians have sold out the climate for little more than a rounding error on projects that will continue for decades.

According to police, the bomb was packed with screws and ball bearings. Weapons such as this are called fragmentation devices. They are designed to cause as much damage as possible, the shrapnel ricocheting out from the blast.

The big lie the Liberal Party told itself was that moderates lost their seats at the past two elections because they were moderates. For the hard right, it was the perfect lie. Like much of what they imagine, it is the inverse of what is true.

It is difficult to know which numbers are the more appalling, the very large ones or the ones that are tragically small. Is it the scale of the destruction of threatened species habitat approved by the Albanese government, or is it the fact that the surviving population of night parrots could be counted by most children under 10?

Australia’s most significant military ally is now a rogue state. This fact should be more startling than it is. It should be cause for serious reconsideration of the country’s position.