Comment

If you wanted a symbol of Australia’s climate policy, you could do worse than look at the story of Grant King. King is the chair of the Climate Change Authority, the independent government agency legislated to advise the government on climate policy.

On Wednesday morning, as Britain’s House of Lords considered a second reading of the country’s Illegal Migration Bill, a man named Abolfath Gheitasi walked into an office in Port Moresby and doused himself in petrol.

Assuming Treasurer Jim Chalmers actually delivers the budget he announced on May 9, it should put to rest the myth proclaimed endlessly – without evidence – by the opposition that the Coalition is a better economic manager.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers was so excited about the rabbit he was going to pull out of the hat that he couldn’t wait for budget night to tell the world he was about to deliver the first surplus in 15 years.

The children who live at the Parkville Youth Justice Precinct in Melbourne are in state care. In a way, we are all their parents – we have a duty of care to them. It is our voting power, our voices, our interest and our considerations that determine what happens to them. As it stands, we are failing them.

It is almost too perfect. Scott Morrison will leave parliament to become a lobbyist, an oily little stain trailing him out of the office. The irony is that this will be the first time he has represented somebody other than himself. He will finally go to Canberra with a purpose.

If the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change, a complete transition away from fossil fuels is inevitable. So it stands to reason that shareholders and investors in fossil fuel companies should pressure boards and management to address this inevitability.

With the prime minister in Britain to attend the coronation of our unelected head of state and the treasurer back home doing last-minute bean-counting ahead of Tuesday’s budget, the Greens’ Adam Bandt seized the moment to pose the key question confronting Australia: What kind of country do we want to be?

Today, May 6, 2023, King Charles III will be crowned king of Australia and 14 other realms. It will be the first such ceremony in seven decades and the first in living memory for most Australians. It is clear the passing of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in September last year has opened space for important conversations long avoided in Australia.

The headline crawled across the front of The Australian like a Warren Zevon song: “ ‘Lawyers backing Yes for money’, may it please the court”. This is the latest argument in what is now a concerted campaign in the paper against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.