Comment

Neither Anthony Albanese nor any of his ministers joined last Sunday’s ‘March for Humanity’ across Sydney Harbour Bridge, which garnered international attention. Instead, the prime minister and a group of his senior cabinet colleagues attended Australia’s largest Indigenous cultural gathering in north-east Arnhem Land.

Barnaby Joyce was on a street in New York when he realised his trousers had split, an experience he described as “a new fresh breezy free feeling”. He was on a street in Canberra when he lay on his back like a recently poisoned cockroach and rambled drunkenly into his phone.

Getting lost is one of those antique pleasures denied us in the age of satellite navigation. Occasionally, though, technology fails us and we are set adrift in a world still capable of delight and novelty.

As the Albanese government prepares to announce Australia’s 2035 climate target, pressure is mounting to show greater ambition. A cut in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 75 per cent below 2005 levels would broadly align with the science – and strengthen Australia’s bid to host the 2026 United Nations climate conference.

In calmer times Anthony Albanese could be well satisfied with the way the first sitting fortnight of the 48th parliament played out. Key election promises such as student debt relief and cheaper medicines are now realities and there was indisputable evidence that inflation has been tamed. Overshadowing it all, however, was the crisis in Gaza.

Trump has bluffed his way into two presidencies, and may be trying to orchestrate the possibility of a third. His strange alt world seems finally to be losing its magical glow for millions of captivated Americans, however.

Students are being crushed by rising costs, shrinking support and a welfare system that barely acknowledges their existence ... While the 20 per cent HECS-HELP cut might provide temporary relief, it does nothing to address the chronic underfunding and neglect that’s led us here.

Albanese’s victory is wide and shallow, based as it is on preferences and not primary votes. In effect, this puts the onus on the Albanese government to perform more strongly than in its first term … It will be judged on what it does to convince Australians it is prepared to take on reforms that will improve their lot.

Probably it is worth remembering a little about Scott Morrison, the man who conceived AUKUS. He is the single worst leader the country has ever had, unique in his venality and unseriousness. He is a man without ambition for anything but himself, a man as useful as a briefing paper is to a chimp.

I am out of words. In this I am certainly not alone. Our world is surely too loud, and our words are not enough. At times such as these, I turn to another language that Plato says ‘penetrates to the centre of the soul’.