*writing up paper on health and inequality 4yo: what’s that you’re writing? it’s about health, trying to stop people being sick. 4yo: is it about spiders? because you get bitten and then you be dead? too easy - you already know that.

Suspect we’re about to see record growth in SMSFs. After clamping down on tax concessions, retaining even larger super tax concessions is goofy.

Once, the Australian would consider such a critical factual error to be deeply embarrassing. Now no one cares. The column does its job as partisan slop.

Excellent demolition of “affordable housing”. It’s a muddled no man’s land between market and social housing, achieving the goals of neither. It functions as a modest benefit to a tiny fraction of middle class families. It’s costly, inefficient and impedes geographic and occupational mobility.

Claire Lehmann writing on tax for the Oz appears unaware of the beneficiary tax offset or the low income tax offset.

I was thinking earlier that because everything is in super or my home loan, I probably have a lower asset test number than when I was 25 and broke

it is amusing the capital gains changes leave super totally untouched... ie substantiality increases the concessionality of investments in the family home and in super. basically have no investments outside these avenues, not the Aussie way.

using Services Australia to means test capital gains tax concessions lmao

Neg gearing and capital gains tax are good policies on soak the rich grounds, but it’s amusing the angle is fixing the housing market. Line is reversing “a decade of declines” in home ownership. But… home ownership hasn’t really fallen in the last decade on record. Ie impact roughly 0.

I'm interested in the $15bn of hidden revenue.

"this changes everything" is the blue green algae of Youtube

every time I or other professionals post about how we find carefully managed AI tools useful - whether journalists, historians, coders, whatever - , a bunch of people show up to insist that we must be wrong about our own workflow.

poptimist flattery of young millennial cringe has gone too far

Great piece. Much discourse about small, hypothetical tax-transfer "distortions" while this truly life-changing one is totally ignored "But, at 30 years old, Brothers says they are stuck in a state of forced limbo, unable to take the next step of a long-term relationship: moving in together."

First the Strait of Hormuz, now Canvas. What next??

Scientific research is a textbook public good, at the top government responsibilities. Disgraceful that the CSIRO has been wrecked by bean counter vandals.

As a liberal socialist I care deeply about substantive freedom. Like @chrisdillow.bsky.social I’m shaken by how quickly our governments are backsliding on freedom. open.substack.com/pub/chrisdil...

perfect snapshot of the property-owner welfare state: nurse 1 has $30k urgent dental expenses 2 asks personal finance guru how to pay 3 is “cash strapped” but has investment properties 4 hates capital gains tax, doesn't want to sell 5 barefoot investor advises never to touch precious super

Exciting news! Next week I join the amazing team at the Centre for Future Work! futurework.org.au/news/new-ceo...

MOAR

have to chuckle at the widely held view that, if we actually obtain fully automated communism, the masses demand that the state assign them objectively pointless jobs. little tasks to keep occupied, like we give to toddlers. 1) it wouldn't actually happen 2) if it did it would be very bad.

Regulator takes charge because ANU is no longer up to the task of self-governance. Unprecedented humiliation for an Australian university www.teqsa.gov.au/national-reg...

This is the conventional wisdom, but I think the anti-exam campaign of recent decades over-corrected. Some people perform relatively well in exams, others perform relatively well with untimed assessments. Both are influenced by factors unrelated to mastery. Neither are perfect.

Huge win - no council should withhold people’s human right to a delicious quarter pounder

True

Israel had threatened previously to murder the Lebanese journalist that they assassinated today

(And reinstate some State govt programs). However, good to see means testing ruled out. (from SMH live updates)

The government is booting people off the NDIS and supposedly onto other support. For this to be credible, rather than a fig leaf, they will have to significantly expand funding for alternatives including invent programs that don’t exist.

⚠️ During the Iran War, the US military has used: • At least 45% of its Precision Strike Missiles • At least half of its THAAD missiles • Almost 50% of its Patriot air defense interceptor missiles This has created “near-term risk” of running out of ammunition in future conflict.

walked with 9yo past the queen square law courts. a bit disappointed, she expected courts to have "more flags and trumpets"

70yo man charged with hate speech for sign calling for Brisbane to be free of Boeing from the river to the sea. Tells the court he wants to plead insanity, because "the charge is insane". www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04...

The terms were that Israel gets to keep committing genocide.

Welfare is good, actually. We should aspire to having the best welfare system in the world

"It's not a welfare scheme... It's an invaluable piece of social insurance." What do those words mean exactly? What information is communicated by saying it's not a welfare scheme?

Buttigieg: "For the leader of this country to make a nakedly genocidal threat against another civilization as if the US was a death star that was going around blowing up civilizations, of course that is a new low ... the whole country is being judged just for tolerating that kind of thing at the WH"

4yo: “there are Five Types of Vehicles - cars, helicopters, submarines, trains and motorbikes”

overheard in martin place: thank goodness the ceasefire was announced, i just listed my house

Trump literally made the largest scale credible threat of genocide in human history. I feel this should be far more shocking to public discourse than it has been.

It’s funny at the start of this war I had people who should have known better tell me this time it’s different. Yeah it’s dumber, but they meant the opposite.

Love the principled West nations all initially praise the illegalTrump/Netanyahu attacks, then U turn when Iran showed it could put up a (costly) fight.

that the president is making unhinged threats of war crimes on easter sunday should be an immediate presidency-ending scandal and that the media is rewriting this as just a normal negotiating tactic should be a career-ending scandal for everyone involved

Australian tax discourse needs to move beyond the fixation with budget neutrality and "compensation". The most important tax reform priority now is to get more of it. More revenue is necessary to meet existing social policy obligations in the coming years, let alone expand them.

1. One of my biggest frustrations is the #auspol discourse about tax & spending ignores that regardless of what we do costs are going to increase because of structural factors (geopolitics, climate change & demography). The choice is how we distribute the cost, not whether we can avoid paying for it

the "peace president"

UAE leaders are hawks in this conflict, calling for Trump to escalate until there’s transformative change in Iran, including advocating for ground invasion. apnews.com/article/trum...

The real big winners of 2026 are the commentators who have spent several decades warning about the Real Risk of Stagflation in the imminent future. Your time has come dudes! I'm sure in those decades you came up with a coherent response!

So Israel has now killed very nearly as many Lebanese as Israelis were killed on October 7, including 100 children and there’s hardly a word of condemnation other than from Carney and Macron. Why no international outcry at the ethnic cleansing that’s taking place.