WTF just happened?

Well, the first obvious thing is that Labor just won a massive record-breaking landslide election. The majority might get trimmed back a bit as further counting occurs but it suggests that a third term is possible.

Second, they had the advantage of running against a Leader, Peter Dutton, who was rated Australia’s most distrusted politician by Roy Morgan Research and against a political party women have been deserting since Morrison days. read more

On April 25 a group of Neo-Nazi protestors booed Uncle Mark Brown’s Welcome to Country at the Melbourne Anzac Day Shrine service. To their credit the RSL promptly said they would continue with Welcomes to Country.

The protestors seemed to come from the same cohort of Australians who opposed the Howard era gun buy backs complaining that the government shouldn’t take their guns away because they might need them to defend Australia. As Keith Payne VC said at the time: “If they want to defend the country they ought to join the Army – if they can pass the psych test.” read more

Peter Dutton has a very big problem this coming Saturday, election day, he is the most distrusted political leader in Australia as of an April 2025 survey by Roy Morgan.

Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine said that “distrust was at dangerously high levels for Dutton.”

“Roy Morgan’s special survey on trust and distrust in the lead up to the Federal election shows that Coalition Leader, Peter Dutton, has the unwanted and extremely unhelpful, distinction of being Australia’s most distrusted politician – by a significant margin”, she said. read more

One of the great – and most significant current scientific puzzles – is what’s happening with the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and the decline of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.

For some time there have been indications that AMOC may reverse itself with wide ranging impacts – for instance bringing a new Ice Age to the Northern hemisphere or at least other less dramatic impacts more widely. read more

I was approached recently by a TV program with a view to talking about Anzac Day.

I felt that I ought to outline what sort of views the program might expect about Anzackery, Frontier Wars and the Australian War Memorial.

Those views were indications  I would pursue for the show. But sadly, the next day the program had reconsidered and decided to take a different approach. read more

The last time round with Donald Trump there was much talk about the Dunning-Kroger effect – a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability.

It is named after David Dunning and Justin Kroger, the two psychologists who first identified it in their 1999 paper Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. read more

Peter Dutton was edging towards possibly winning the forthcoming election. But lately he has been moving further and further away from that. It’s possible he might still win but it looks increasingly unlikely.

The problems are manifold.  In between a Trumpian brainfart about holding a referendum which would allow governments to deport some citizens he also claimed that interest rates are always lower under the Coalition because it manages the economy better than Labor. The first claim was hastily walked back by some colleagues but who knows what its status is now? read more

There is nothing more boring than long retired former soldiers holding forth on issues military. But there is one rule which does apply – the further they were away from the sharp end the more vociferous they are.

Some years ago, on a barge going up the Mekong (holiday not during the war), a rather obnoxious passenger was holding forth on Anzac Day as it was actually that date on the day. He was full of stories about rum at dawn and this and that. read more