Albanese NPC speech, Dr Phil joins ICE, ATO wants your feet pics

Press gallery spins for Albo: Another prime ministerial address at the National Press Club, another opportunity for Australia’s media to demonstrate its ability to meet the powerful more than halfway. “Our government’s vision and ambition for Australia’s future was never dependent on the size of our majority,” Albanese will say according to speech notes dropped to all the major publications. “But you can only build for that future vision if you build confidence that you can deliver on urgent necessities. How you do that is important too — ensuring that the actions of today anticipate and create conditions for further reform tomorrow.”

Further:

We are living in a time of significant global uncertainty, and that reaches beyond just economic instability. It is the more corrosive proposition that politics and government and democratic institutions, including a free media, are incapable of meeting the demands of this moment. Some simply dismiss such sentiment, others cynically seek to harvest it. Our responsibility is to disprove it.

An impressively flavourless set of statements, particularly in the current global context. But — with the notable exception of The Australian Financial Reviewwhich called the speech an act of “hosing down expectations his government is about to embark on a bold new agenda just because it has a commanding majority” — the papers were intent on wringing out a great deal more meaning than appears on the page.

The Nine papers reckoned the prime minister’s speech presents, extremely bravely, “an implicit contrast” with US President Donald Trump, in lieu of Albanese mentioning that the leader of the country we’ve attached ourselves to for decades to come is making good on a long-promised policy of turning the army on its own people.

Guardian Australia picked up on Albanese’s planned use of the phrase “free media”, with the paper connecting it to an Australian journalist being shot with a rubber bullet in the LA riots this past weekend — a link Albanese has apparently not made himself.

Even Albanese’s old buddies at The Australian have gotten in on the act, with a headline praising “Anthony Albanese’s grand second-term vision“.

This does at least mean we have to revise our view of a few years ago. Whatever impulse led the press gallery to give former PM Scott Morrison credit for things he hadn’t said and commitments he hadn’t made on climate change, it clearly wasn’t partisanship.

ATO no: The Australian Tax Office (ATO) is coming over all “cool parents” with its new ad campaign, spotted on Reddit. The ATO understands you have that “grindset”, you gotta stack that paper — and if that means selling feet pics on OnlyFans, hey, that’s cool. Just make sure you’re telling the government about it:

SEO grab of the day: There is a certain amount of credit that must be given to a publication that knows its audience. If you looked at the riot in Los Angeles — riots that are being met by a force of US marines hundreds strong — and your first thought was “but what might this do to my super balance?”, the AFR has got you covered:

Not what the doctor ordered: Of course because it is being undertaken by Donald Trump, America’s ever more explicit slide into fascism is as often breathtakingly stupid as it is breathtakingly ominous. So of course, embedded with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers during their raids in LA on Friday, which preceded the riots we are currently seeing, was Dr Phil.

Imagine being told, at the turn of the century, that this sanctimonious vulture, who made his name treating mental ill-health as entertainment and exploiting unwell celebrities, would be getting this kind of front row seat at historical events. Since his namesake network show ended in 2023, Dr Phil hosted Trump on his new online show, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, New York City Mayor and confusion of scandals Eric Adams, and thinking man’s dumb guy Jordan Peterson. Now he’s received “a first-hand look at the targeted operations,” according to his conservative TV channel, which is called, urgh, MeritTV.

Along similar lines, “is that Twitter menswear guy going to be deported for mocking JD Vance’s fit?” is a question that we never expected reality to force upon us, but here we are. Derek Guy, editor of online menswear outlet Put This Onshared on X his experience as an undocumented migrant in the US, and the US vice president responded positively (with gifs, obviously) to MAGA types suggesting the fashion critic be deported. And, it being 2025, the Department of Homeland goddamn Security account also thought to get involved with a cheeky little gif: