Arthur 🇦🇺

The Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist and author Chris Hedges was so very right. @PressClubAust is not a press club. It's just a club. #auspol #npc

So, let's recap, shall we? This week the @PressClubAust managed to: * cancel at the last minute, the questions and subsequent presence of renowned journalist Margo Kingston, who’d travelled over 2 days to Canberra to ask her question of Pauline Hanson – and yes, they were questions initially requested and organised by the Press Club itself 9 days ago. * cancel the press gallery membership of long-term journalist, Greg Jericho, allegedly because he works for the @TheAusInstitute. Although Greg has been employed by the Aust Institute for 4 years, his membership cancellation only came yesterday after he publicly called out the Canberra press gallery - which is of course a highly fortuitous coincidence and not at all connected to his criticism. * somehow allowed a person or persons unknown to enter the Press Club premises and put up a 3 metre wide electronic banner, without anybody in the Press Club noticing them doing it. How several people enter a private club carrying something that large, then proceed to wire it up on an open stage and nobody at the premises noticed in any way, is yet another display of the NPC’s staggering incompetence. * release an unnecessarily detailed, high-school level statement about said banner incident, a statement that reeks of defensiveness and hysteria, while also prejudicially naming an alleged culprit and arguably sinking to the bottom of the barrel in terms of the journalistic standards it supposedly represents. Read it below and remind yourself that people who work with words for a living wrote that. * allowed the speaker, Pauline Hanson, to defame one of their own - a journalist from the Guardian who dared to ask a hard-hitting question - by calling her "trash". This was only weeks after calling the same journalist a "nasty bitch". Mirroring, Trump’s “Quiet piggy” incident, the journalist's alleged colleagues all sat mute, as did the moderator, Tom Connell from Sky News during the abuse. No rebuke, no blow-back, no support for their fellow journalist, standing alone under Hanson's hissing vitriol. Just pusillanimous silence. The National Press Club outdid their already dubious reputation this week, spraying themselves in a spectacular shower of self-inflicted shit – wall to wall, dripping effluent. Australians currently suffer some of the most timid, captured political journalism in the western world, and if the actions of the #NPC this week are the metric, then we can all see why. What a national and international embarrassment of an organisation meant to serve as a vital democratic institution and a cultural conscience – and one that has offered us neither. .

IN THE NEWS: Public servant keeps job despite missing 88% of her shifts. When asked why she had missed so much work, the PUBLIC SERVANT replied, "I don't like it" #OneNation

People bag Albo for his growing up in housing commission story. But seriously, Hanson is still going on about her fish & chip shop, which was 30 yrs ago and being a small business owner. She's been in parli 30 fucking yrs! What a joke.

Anyone still whinging about the new CGT laws is either: Rich and losing a rort, or Ignorant, or A Murdoch journalist, or A demented One Nation supporter, or All of the above.

Workers should get off their lazy arses, put their phones down and do some fkng work. "Like ME", says the cooker [Pauline Hanson] who misses work most of the time. Hanson at the #NPC: Dana Daniel - Canberra Times: How do you rate our nation's capital? Pauline The Truant: I try to keep out of it as much as I possibly can. →Indeed, she does - 88% of the time.

This is one of the reasons I don’t shop at bakers delight

Record business closures, they yell, like morons from moron land. It's hard to believe how dumb #OneNation cookers can be. One of them recently started harping on about the "high rate" of business closures, demonstrating in one reply how little they understood facts and business. It's actually scary how dumb these people are. They hear something on Sky News or read a fucking headline and off they go believing it. Not that we expect the Cookers to understand, but: To balance the higher rate of closures (see below), we have a RECORD number of business openings, demonstrating the opposite of a lack of economic confidence. THE NET result is MORE businesses starting. A major driver of the current corporate insolvency spike (particularly in construction and hospitality). This hangover manifests in two distinct ways: The Artificial Lifeline Ends: During the pandemic, the federal government introduced emergency insolvency protections, and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) effectively paused proactive debt collection to keep businesses afloat. This created a backlog of unviable "zombie businesses" that normally would have closed between 2020 and 2022. The Bill Comes Due: The ATO has aggressively resumed debt recovery to collect billions in outstanding pandemic-era tax and superannuation liabilities. Many of the record liquidations and administrations are the delayed collapse of companies that simply cannot repay those legacy debts while facing high inflation and interest rates. The Fixed-Price Contract Trap: In sectors like construction, businesses signed fixed-price contracts during the 2021–2022 boom. Supply chain shocks and inflation subsequently pushed material and labor costs up by 40%. Building companies have been burning through cash just to complete projects negotiated years ago, leading to delayed failures. However, the people often making the "business closures" headlines could never run a business, or if they did, it would be a coffee shop with "fail" as the name. Cookers, we can't educate them, so let them waste their vote on the clown party. STATS: Business Entries vs Exits (2021-25): →2021-22: 442,555 opened, 305,085 closed → Net +137,470 →2022-23: 406,365 opened, 356,216 closed → Net +50,149 →2023-24: 436,018 opened, 362,893 closed → Net +73,125 →2024-25: 437,150 opened, 370,500 closed → Net +66,650 Key insights: Record openings: Over 400,000 new businesses launched annually for 4 straight years Net growth: More businesses opened than closed every year, proving strong confidence COVID hangover: The 2022-23 spike in closures (356,216) came as pandemic-era businesses failed in a normalised economy with rising interest rates and ended stimulus The narrative focusing only on closures ignores that entries have outpaced exits consistently, with net business formation remaining positive throughout.

24 000 people soak up half the capital gains tax benefits. They are also rich & powerful. Right now they are having an almighty meltdown because they have to pay the same tax rate as the rest of us.

YOU ARE LAZY! Pauline Hanson #NPC National Press Club #2 When asked about 5 SPECIFIC matters related to #workers → • You opposed same job, same pay. • You voted against casual workers' rights • wage theft • [Against] criminalisation and workplace protections for the gig economy • argued recently AGAIN FOR more powers for bosses to sack workers Mark Riley from The Seven Network: "How is any of that helping working Australians?" Hanson replied "I was speaking to one business person..." She then rambled with a jumble sale of thought farts, including some insane maths. And she had the audacity to say in her speech "that One Nation will look after working Australians" This woman is insane and going unchecked by the majority of the #MSM The workers, many of whom are supporters of this insanity, are the very ones who will be worse off under this clown. #OneNation off their trolleys.

@dazjvv @cox_david81596 @TruthFairy131 True .. optics are important

@oscadelta @cox_david81596 @TruthFairy131 Standing up for Israel isn't the same as being paid for by Israel.

This is the part of Pauline Hanson’s speech that ABC NEWS deliberately CUT OUT. Defund the ABC 😡

@FarCueCunce No

Shot from the GetUp table in the audience. Do you reckon this guy is nervous about their little stunt?

@SimonKennedyMP Explain how that is? Capital GAINS… they’re buying not selling

A teacher and a nurse are trying to buy a home. Labor’s CGT changes make it harder, then Labor tells them they’ll “love” it. That is how out of touch this government

@ellymelly @GetUp A banner .. how did the banner hurt you? Perhaps the facts written on it?

If anyone else put up a protest banner at the National Press Club - they'd be BANNED. Immediately. @GetUp should be banned from the NPC. They have demonstrated a total inability to behave in a civilised and respectable manner.

@ElaineM11584892 I guess some may consider the World Cup some form of porn

When Hanson mentioned SBS, she said “that’s gone”. In a previous interview she said if you come home after work and put SBS on it’s nothing but porn. Someone tell Dateline.

@Rob_Ruadh2 @AlboMP Never changed your mind then champ

"I didn't lie, I changed my position" -@AlboMP (compulsive liar)

@sheesssshhhh @KatyKray73 So every time the sitting (elected) government wants to make an informed change, you want a vote on it?

@KatyKray73 Yeah labour and Murray Watts don’t care what the public think, that’s quite visible. They will just “change their position” without any right for Australians to vote on issues.

‘Let them sling mud’ – Murray Watts shrugs off the Origin attack ad after being asked if Australians have a trust issue with this government. This isn’t ‘slinging mud’, Murray. Your government has repeatedly disrespected the Australian people, and we’ve had enough!

@Ryandally08 Destroyed you say 🤔

Pauline Hanson just DESTROYED multiculturalism at the National Press Club and the left lost their minds. GetUp clowns tried a pathetic banner stunt? Removed in seconds and now cops are involved. Weak. Hanson nailed it: Multiculturalism is UTTERLY FLAWED. Australia is multiracial but it MUST be monocultural. No more letting foreign cultures claim “equivalence” to ours while ignoring our language, values, traditions and Judaeo Christian roots. High migration post pandemic = housing crisis and cultural tensions. Radical Islam? Eradicate it. We’ve seen what happened to Britain, Canada and France turning into hellholes too scared to fight back. Axe the SBS. Make ABC subscription only in the cities. Put working Aussies and businesses FIRST. This is COMMON SENSE, not racism. Australia is losing its identity time to get it back.

@KobieThatcher Ooor deluded Kobi .. it was a very pertinent question which Ms Hanson basically refused to answer .. nothing at all the show of strength you think it is

Watch Pauline Hanson DESTROY this Guardian reporter 🔥 "I've never seen a person that's such a trashy journalist." "You don't research properly, you don't know your information, and you will put out lies about me. Well, I've had enough of that."