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NSW Government’s new brumby estimates don’t pass the pub test
Colleen Krestensen. New estimates of brumby numbers in Kosciuszko National Park imply a dramatic and biologically impossible increase of up to 315 per cent over a 12 month period ... The concern for the community is the government is accepting this alleged increase without question as a basis to resume aerial culling of brumbies, commencing in the coming days.
How much water and power will AI data centres use in Australia? Ironically, we don’t have the data to know
Michael Vardon. Australia’s data centre rush now rivals the mining boom. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman last week said Australia could become a “data centre capital of the world”. This would come at an environmental cost ... Before committing fully, we need granular detail on how much water and energy these centres use.
Comrades, the roadmap is nearly complete
Nearly two years after the live export ban became law, farmers have been making decisions while the transition industry is still planning the transition. That simple fact tells you almost everything you need to know about the live sheep transition.
Where to for regional migration? Peter van Vliet, Migration Institute of Australia
A week after the May Federal Budget, the Government published changes to the visa category allocations ... Most surprising in the subsequent announcement was the decision to more than halve a skilled migration program reserved exclusively for regional areas from 33,000 to 14,110.
When journalism picks a side
One of the more interesting developments in modern journalism is that reporters increasingly seem to know the answer before they begin asking the questions ... The problem with Ros Thomas's recent Weekend Australian feature on paraquat and Parkinson's disease is that by the time you reach the end, you are left with the feeling that the destination was already known before the journey began.
The few funding the fight
I’ve just returned from a two-day National Farmers’ Federation members meeting in Canberra and the mood is dark. It is increasingly clear this Government has little affection for the productive capitalist class and is hunting for revenue, regulation and control from wherever it can extract it.
Chalmers and Keating: A tradition of ambushing the entrepreneur
Amused by the now familiar angry interventions of the former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, on behalf of his acolyte and sycophantic follower Jim Chalmers, attempting to save him from the quicksand of the 2026 Federal Budget, Kookaburra has been taken back in time to December 1983.
The three principles behind Australia’s Fool’s Paradise
If you ever wondered why so few of our political class appear genuinely effective, the answer can largely be explained by three principles that govern human organisations everywhere: the Pareto Principle (1890s), Price’s Law (1960) and the Peter Principle (1969).
AI rewriting history – don’t get me started
Harry Gumboot. It was ANZAC Day when the algorithm suggested I watch an AI generated documentary on Australian troops in Vietnam. It concerned the way Diggers had a far better success rate in the jungle than the Yanks*, due to factors that included moving slowly, using hand signals rather than speech, and failing to use aftershave (sic). Pretty basic stuff if you want to avoid alerting the enemy. The thing that irked me was the diggers appeared to be wearing WWI vintage French helmets.
The party of the worker has become the party of the renters
This federal Budget reveals something far more significant than another round of tax fights over capital gains, family trusts and negative gearing. It reveals who modern Labor now governs for.
The Pirate Queen and the sinking department
Last week I wrote that Budget Number Ten would tell us everything we needed to know ... it’s worse than expected. For all the Government’s talk about farm resilience, diversification and food security, when it came time to fund the department that actually underpins those things, the treasure chest was empty.
A new rail reality for New England
The reported decision by the Australian Government to scale back Inland Rail to Parkes has quietly reshaped the transport future of inland eastern Australia. For communities across the New England region, it raises an important question: what now fills the missing rail link to Queensland?
A Voice by another name: Bev McArthur
"Governments are defined by their priorities, and at a time when Victorians are under real financial pressure, building an expensive new layer of governance and embedding identity-based processes into Parliament reflects, to my mind, a serious misjudgement."
When ideology meets the fuel tank
In the 1930s, Winston Churchill warned that Europe was sleepwalking into danger. Across the chamber, Neville Chamberlain insisted all would be well. “Peace in our time,” he said—a comforting line, right up until Hitler crossed into Poland. We are seeing a modern version of that same delusion play out today.
Groundswell against the mine: Mine Free Glenaladale
At the recent East Gippsland Field Days the many hundreds of people spoken to and attending the Mine Free Glenaladale stand expressed their frustration that the Government had given the former Kalbar Resources, now rebranded as Gippsland Critical Minerals, the opportunity to rescope the failed Kalbar project ... Mine Free Glenaladale also questions the authenticity of GCM claims relating to the test pit.
Fertiliser shortage at home, subsidies for exports abroad
At a time when Australian farmers are facing a major fertiliser squeeze, Canberra has decided the priority is not supply, not affordability, and not domestic resilience—but underwriting a green ammonia export dream ... while farmers are being told to accept decile 10 nitrogen prices, or even decile zero availability, taxpayers—including those same farmers in the years they make money—are being lined up to help fast track a plant that will help foreign farmers access fertiliser.
Radical Right v Radical Left and the threat of the Age of Unreason
Neither of these parties should have the capacity to determine government, let alone form it. Both represent an existential threat to the continuance of our hard fought for liberal democracy, itself a fragile experiment in the history of the world.
SA standing up for the River Murray – does One Nation?: Bourke
This year’s projected opening allocation for South Australian River Murray water users has reinforced the importance of a healthy and flowing Basin – and ensuring parties representing River communities put local interests ahead of upstream states.
The case of the missing urea
Some of you may have read my previous articles on Summit’s Force Majeure Gamble: A Pattern Emerges and CSBP’s Force Majeure Gamble ... The response on social media has been staggering, with the algorithms going off the charts — which tells me I have hit a nerve. Even more interesting are the stories of urea...
The virtue premium: How Australia locked itself out of fuel and fertiliser
Australia has just signed up to a free trade agreement with the European Union, which is being sold—predictably—as a great leap forward for the inner city consumer ... Out in the paddock, however, the mood is less celebratory. Because the small print tells a more familiar story. Australian once again, signed a deal where farmers pay the costs.
CSBP’s force majeure gamble: Contracts, conflict and consequence
As the Iran–USA–Israel conflict ripples through global fertiliser markets, Western Australian farmers are discovering just how fragile their supply chains really are. At the centre of it is CSBP, which has reached for the force majeure clause in its contracts to step away from its contractual obligations.
Urea $1400 : Going… going… gone
Urea hit the equivalent of $2,800 a tonne in today’s dollars back in 1974. That’s not a typo—and it’s not ancient history either. To understand how that happens, you need to start with geography. Roughly a third of global fertiliser trade by sea—not production, trade—passes through the Strait of Hormuz.
