Dick Smith has gone from beloved entrepreneur to just another lobbyist
![Say what you like about his policies: the man has a strong hat game.](/web/20161209055042im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/5/4/4/1/image.related.landscape.120x80.gt6jqx.png/1481217203411.jpg)
This sudden support of One Nation is less about immigration and more about rent-seeking for the aviation industry
This sudden support of One Nation is less about immigration and more about rent-seeking for the aviation industry
Here's a tip, charities: maybe wait a few weeks after the high profile suicide of a bullied gay child before you start talking about how school anti-bullying programmes are oh-so-discriminatory.
Why are all these unpatriotic vandals determined to hold Australia Day in January? Have they no respect for history?
A lot of last minute saves are looking like seeds of bigger problems waiting to happen for the Turnbull government in 2017.
Does Peter Dutton genuinely believe the US is going to take the refugees on Nauru and Manus Island? Let's find out!
Turns out you lose people's trust if you keep transparently lying to them for long enough. Who knew?
You can't say that all speech should be free and then hide behind lawsuits and tantrums when someone says something you don't like, guys.
A government minister singling out a specific Australian ethnic group for condemnation is either unacceptably racist, or totally OK. I'm going with the former.
It's going to be a colourful final two weeks of parliament - but how many senators will make it to the end of the year?
Does it strike you as odd that we keep having anti-immigrant Immigration Ministers? Maybe we should look at changing that.
The problem for Turnbull is that he's uniquely ill-placed to frame himself as a working-class hero since he's the least working-class leader the nation has ever had.
If this is indeed the rise of the deplorables, we're gonna need a bigger basket.
We moderate types really, really, really need to do a better job of bringing people with us.
Why watch the end of American democracy alone when you can do so with your old friend Sweet Lady Booze?
Maybe take a second to ask yourself: are you OK?
As Family First's Bob Day and One Nation's Rob Culleton have made clear this week, our minor parties don't appear to be attracting Australia's best and brightest.
Governing is a difficult job - but that's the job the government signed up for. If they can't manage it we might need to readvertise the position.
The Coalition finally show they can agree on something: the need to unnecessarily torment people for no sane reason.
Unless you're moaning in a cartoonishly ghostlike sort of a way, of course, in which case you're entirely on message.
The legal precedent for public f-bomb deployment has been set.
Of all of the political weasel words beloved by our current crop of government representatives, "reform" is possibly the most insidious.
It's OK, Liberal Party. You finally don't need to keep pretending that everything's cool.
Reality bites as we're caught between our parents' generation angrily shaking their fists at the natural passage of time and the digital natives in our offices who know how Snapchat works.
Who speaks for the unfairly fragged? One Nation, apparently.
Paying tax is an act of pure patriotism and dammit, we should celebrate that.
Sorry to ruin your angry pub conversations about "if only we had proper leaders!", but running the country is a second-string prime ministerial priority at best.
It's very easy to look at the current position of Malcolm Turnbull - whose talent for legislative inaction, internal disunity, and massive public relations own goals rivals that of his predecessor - and assume his days are numbered, but there have been two things that have largely ensured his safety as leader.
If you're deliberately trying to provoke people, perhaps it's a tad undignified to then complain about how people subsequently got all provoked.
This royal commission-avoiding banking inquiry might be just the beginning of letting expensive colour and movement replace actual accountability.
Because nothing says "courage" or "responsible adulthood" like being a tourist in an active warzone just for kicks.
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