Adapted fiction from the New Yorker (this is a bad Gus spoof -- though a frightening possibility)

RESISTANCE, AGENCY, AND CULTURAL PRODUCTION

It is increasingly evident how pernicious the privatisation myth is. Two recent examples have underlined it: the failings in Australia’s privatised energy grid and the usurious pricing in airport car parks. Both examples demonstrated that it is folly to expect a public benefit to inevitably emerge from private profit seeking.  

Just consider the accusations that have been levelled at the President:

• He has betrayed the Constitution, which he swore to uphold.

If Australian UFO enthusiasts hope to retain government money, they may need more proof of terrestrial activity.

Despite overly optimistic, but what should be called laughable forecasts in the budget, wage growth in Australia is now the lowest it has been since the mid-1990s. And it’s not hard to see why.

Not since the release of the Access Hollywood tape, in which Donald Trump bragged about groping women by the genitals, have some conservatives thought so seriously, if a bit wistfully, about two words: President Pence.

A burning question arises from Budget 2017. What drugs are Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his team on? There can be no other rational explanation for the inclusion of a total clanger in an otherwise mediocre and generally anticipated bunch of policies. On Tuesday, 9 May, Treasurer Scott Morrison announced money for health, education, and farmers, more taxes, a hit to the banks and a kick for anti-vaxxers. And right at the end, a surreptitiously adopted populist measure to piss-test the poor.