Issue 84: 31 March to 6 April

## BUDGET

The amazing thing about the 2022 budget? How clearly it reveals the government’s death throes
Greg Jericho | The Guardian
What was perhaps most surprising, but also to an extent quite pleasing, was just how little anyone cared about the budget balance.

Rent assistance: The ticking time bomb threatening future prime ministers
Jessica Irvine | SMHAge
More and more Australians are staring down the barrel of renting in retirement and the pressure to assist them will only grow.

Don’t worry about national debt – but there’s another issue to be concerned about
Ross Gittins | SMHAge
There’s an easy way to tell how much someone understands economics: those at panic stations about the huge level of our government debt just don’t get it. But that’s not to say we don’t have a problem with the budget deficit.

Soaring house prices have changed society for the worse
Alan Kohler | The New Daily
The disaster of Australian house prices over the past 40 years has not just reshaped the economy but fundamentally transformed society.

There’s a wages crisis, and Labor and the unions are missing in action
Tom Bramble | Red Flag

## IPCC 3.0

Tracking the Coalition’s attacks on green energy infrastructure
Mike Seccombe | The Saturday Paper
For nearly a decade the Coalition has been attempting to dismantle the country’s green energy infrastructure – first trying to defund it, then hollowing it out, then using it to fund fossil fuel projects. 

Coalition accused of sitting on environment report to avoid delivering ‘more bad news’
Lisa Cox | The Guardian

‘Now or never’: Australia’s responses to decades of damning IPCC climate reports
Josefine Ganko | Crikey

“Dangerous radicals:” UN takes aim at Australia over fossil fuels and climate lies
Michael Mazengarb | RenewEconomy
“One factor limiting the ambition of climate policy has been the ability of incumbent industries to shape government action on climate change.”

Wind and solar make deep cuts in emissions possible, but fossil fuels must go: IPCC
Michael Mazengarb | RenewEconomy

We urgently need to cut emissions – the good news is we can do it quickly and relatively cheaply
Frank Jotzo | The Guardian

## UKRAINE

Meet Russia’s feminist resistance to Putin’s war on Ukraine
Viktorya Kokoreva | Green Left

Australia surfs the wave of war with spike in fossil fuel prices
Bernard Keane, Glen Dyer | Crikey
The dirty little secret of the government’s election bribes? They’ve been funded with the help of the suffering of Ukraine and the global spike in energy prices that has delivered big windfalls for energy exporters like Australia

A victory narrative will be hard to maintain for Europe and America
Mike Scrafton | Pearls and Irritations

Democratic socialists challenge Zelensky’s attack on workers, political parties
Federico Fuentes | Green Left
Using the pretext of Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has banned several political parties and undermined labour and trade union rights.

## MISC

Today’s ‘woman’ is supposed to people-please yet also be an empowered ‘girlboss’ – why? 
Van Badham | The Guardian
There are two myths societies tell themselves to pretend they are fairer than they are. The first is that a gender pay gap only exists because women leave the workforce to have kids, which is untrue because it kicks in as soon as working life begins, when they are childless.

The Australian way of life is collectivist. Lachlan’s ‘freedom’ cry is a US import
Guy Rundle | Crikey
If a former ABC journalist defeats ‘Freedom Boy’ in Goldstein in the coming election, is it all over for the IPA?

NSW policeman touched Aboriginal boy’s nipple while laughing with officers, watchdog finds
Nino Bucci | The Guardian

Nurses fight for a pay rise, politicians help themselves, in spades
Callum Foote | Michael West Media

New South Wales nurses again defy government-court ban in statewide strike
Martin Scott | World Socialist Web Site

A nine year obscenity: The Australia-NZ resettlement deal 
Binoy Kampmark | Green Left
Instead of being treated as a scandal, populists the world over have expressed admiration, even envy: If they can get away with that, what might we do?

Walking towards freedom
Mehdi Ali | The Saturday Paper
The author spent nine years of his life in detention, most recently at Park Hotel. Now he is in America, experiencing freedom he had only imagined, and wishes his friends were also free.

Even if Albanese wins the election, oligarchs will still run Australia
Andrew Gardiner | The Shot

Rally says stop privatisation of public housing land in Redfern
Peter Boyle | Green Left

The Left’s Right Turn: Behind the media myth of neoliberal Blairite social ‘achievements’
Gavin Lewis | Arena Quarterly
The corporate media now objecting to the public petition against Blair’s knighthood invoke imaginary domestic achievements on Blair’s part. But the reality is that this era was characterised by a massive redistribution of resources away from the general public and the public commons.

A canary sings with Probuild, CIMIC, Deloitte and Chevron
Louisa L | Vanguard
The day after the ABC reported a humanitarian crisis facing former employees and subcontractors of Australian-based construction company CIMIC in the Middle East, Spirit of Eureka commented, “Probuild collapses and now CIMIC is exposed for leaving hundreds of ex-workers unpaid in Dubai labour camps for a year. They can’t leave and can’t afford to eat.”