The Writing

The Manufactured GOAT

Floyd and LeBron are great. Nobody disputes that. But greatness is meant to be recognised, not campaigned for. When you start managing your own legacy while you are still playing, you are no longer an athlete. You are a politician. And the public has figured out the move.

Part of the build-up to The Feedback Trap

The Accusation Came Before the Blood

Henry Nowak said "I can't breathe" while bleeding out in handcuffs. The killer had a story. The institution processed the story first. This is not a British crime case. This is a warning about what happens when the West confuses voice with truth.

Part of the build-up to The Feedback Trap

The Credential Eats Itself

Australian universities spent $1.8 billion on consultants in 2024. They have professors of accounting, governance, and economics in the building. They fired the expertise and hired the people who don't have it. Then gave them legal immunity. This is the machine eating itself from the inside.

Part of the build-up to The Feedback Trap

Safe Distance

He ran through the gate alone in the dark to hunt the man who killed his countrymen. Australia spent a decade and $350 million hunting him back. We built a machine that rewards the men who were never there. This is what that machine costs.

Part of the build-up to The Feedback Trap

2AM Courage

Four men. Six minutes. Voicemails left when no one was going to answer. The anatomy of coordinated cowardice, and the woman running a parallel track through the court system. I was asleep. I was not alone.

Part of the build-up to The Permission Slip

The Ghost That Keeps Ringing

Eight months of silence. Then a constable calls about an intimidation complaint. This is what happens when someone decides the legal system is a weapon and starts filing. The relationship ended. The administration did not get the memo.

Part of the build-up to The Permission Slip

Time to Cut the Cord

King Charles just read a digital ID and climate agenda from a throne. Australia pays top four Commonwealth fees and gets forums in return. Our resource sector earns $385 billion a year and we keep signing frameworks designed to kill it. The numbers do not lie.

Part of the build-up to The Feedback Trap

Everyone Has a Plan

Abbie Chatfield posted a joke about political assassination and called it dark humour. Her boyfriend just got stopped at the US border. Australia is full of this type. The mechanism has a name.

Part of the build-up to The Agreement Game

Friends and Freeloaders

Trump calls Xi and Putin friends. He calls the Canadian Prime Minister the governor of a state that does not exist. Someone has read the room. It is not who the establishment expected.

Part of the build-up to The Feedback Trap

The Paper Tiger Blinks

China sanctioned Rubio. Gave him a new name. Let him walk through the door. Trump notified Beijing when Rubio was already on the plane. Australia needs to understand what just happened.

Part of the build-up to The Feedback Trap

They Protected the Wrong People

Fifteen people died at Bondi on December 14. The government resisted naming what it was. ISIS brides landed in Sydney. Ben Roberts-Smith got prosecuted. Australia noticed.

Part of the build-up to The Feedback Trap

The Punching Bag That Punches Back

Merz called America humiliated. Trump pulled 5,000 troops. Albanese sent a man to Washington who called the President a traitor. Australia is running the same play.

Part of the build-up to The Feedback Trap

The Training

The system did not need to destroy the relationship. It just needed to keep taxing it until the man learned to flinch before the blow landed.

Part of the build-up to The Agreement Game

Boris the Bullet Dodger

On April 13, Tulsi Gabbard released the documents. Twelve days later, someone showed up at the media's own dinner with a gun. Two attempts in the same month. Same target. Both missed.

Part of the build-up to The Feedback Trap

Aunty Knows Best, Until the House Is On Fire

The ABC will audit Washington all day. Auditing Canberra is another matter entirely. On Matt Bevan, the podcast princes, and the bloke who sneers at the hose until the house burns down.

Part of the build-up to The Feedback Trap

The Man Who Ran Toward the Fire

Ben Roberts-Smith was never charged with a crime. What happened instead is that two newspapers took the most decorated living Australian soldier to a civil court and called it justice.

ANZAC Day 2026  ·  Political Commentary

Not Our War

Two groups of people are screaming at each other in Australian streets about a piece of land twelve thousand kilometres away. Nobody is asking who drew the lines in the first place.

Political Commentary

Victor's Cuckoldry

It is not really about sex. It is about surrender dressed up as tolerance. The silent version. The involuntary one. The kind where a man knows something in him is dying but keeps smiling for optics and calls it maturity.

From the ideas behind The Permission Slip

The Mask That Hit Quota

For over twenty years I lived one of the great modern corporate jokes. An introvert in business development. I hit quota while disappearing. This is what identity fragmentation actually looks like from the inside.

Part of the build-up to The Feedback Trap

Pauline Needs a Kemi, But First She Needs a Machine

Australia does not just need better policy. It needs a function. The Kemi function. Every country reaches a point where people stop asking for nicer speeches and start asking who is willing to pin the ruling class to the wall. Australia has been marinating in that point for decades.

Part of the build-up to The Feedback Trap

The Debo Doctrine: How Australia Became a Franchise

Global institutions wrote the rules, America played Debo, and countries like Australia got stuck paying for a game we did not design. From a Surry Hills cafe it looks like this.

The Loyalty Test

The system that requires you to perform loyalty to something that has never performed loyalty to you. It has rules. It has players. And it runs in every office in the country.

Housing as a Casino: How Shelter Became Someone Else's Investment

They turned the place you live into a chip in a game run by people who do not live in your suburb. And then they acted surprised that younger Australians feel like permanent renters in their own homeland.

The Agreement Game: How Institutions Get You to Sign Without Reading

Nobody agrees to most of what they agree to. The game is designed so the signing happens before you notice you are playing. This is how it works in workplaces, in policy, and in everyday life.

The Blue-Collar Disappearing Act

They told every kid that university was the only path. So the tradies aged out, the apprentices dried up, and now we cannot build anything fast enough. That was a choice. Here is who made it.