Hemingway knew bankruptcy intimately; both financial and moral. “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asks in The Sun Also Rises. “Two ways,” Mike replies. “Gradually and then suddenly.” He was talking about his own ruin, but he might as well have been describing Australia’s relationship with truth itself.
We’ve been haemorrhaging credibility for years; a leak here, a dodge there, a promise broken, a statistic fudged. But now? Now we’ve drained our account of honesty, and it happened exactly as Hemingway predicted: slowly at first, then all at once. In a rush.
Welcome to Post-Truth Australia, where the lies have become so brazen they’ve stopped pretending to be anything else. Where spin is no longer camouflage but the main event. Where gaslighting is packaged as “common sense” and lies about Net Zero bankrupting the country are broadcast nightly on Sky After Dark.
The Net Zero Anti-Heroes
But if you want the purest distillation of our post-truth condition, look no further than the Coalition’s latest climate pantomime. Net Zero anti-heroes: For those who think climate targets are a conspiracy, a scam or a bureaucratic boondoggle.
Here’s the scam: two clapped-out parties that nobody wants to vote for have decided their path back to power runs straight through the coalfields. Not around them, not away from them, but through them, like there was no tomorrow. They’re putting the Coal back into the Coalition with such enthusiasm you’d think black rock was the new Bitcoin.
The absurdity is operatic. We must, they tell us with straight faces, bend every effort towards frying the planet by continuing to use fossil fuels as if they’re going out of fashion. Except they’re not going out of fashion in Coalition policy; they’re coming back into fashion, repackaged as “transition fuels” and “energy security” and whatever other euphemisms the focus groups are testing this week.
Pity poor Sussan Ley, desperately trying to kid us that she’s the Liberal Leader and not natty Dave Littleproud. She’s pilloried for the Turnbullian absurdity of letting the Nationals’ tail wag the Liberal dog. Ley’s forced to go hard right on climate denial while simultaneously lying that she still believes in the Paris Agreement.
It’s like watching someone try to tap dance while drowning; technically impressive in its desperation, but ultimately tragic.
Her attempt to kid us she’s in charge:
“… is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs,” as Dr Johnson observed. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
The Nats have snatched the wheel and aimed the Coalition bus straight at the climate cliff. Ley’s stuck in the dicky seat pretending this is exactly where she wanted to be all along.
Paris? Oh yes, absolutely committed to Paris. Also committed to opening every coal seam in Queensland and building nuclear reactors that won’t exist until 2045. These positions are totally compatible if you just close your eyes and believe hard enough.
It’s mythomania meets climate catastrophe, and the result is a policy position that wouldn’t pass muster in a high school debate, let alone a national parliament.
The Tasmanian Absurdity
Of course, post-truth politics needs post-truth economics to really sing, which brings us to Tasmania’s new AFL stadium; a modern potlatch ceremony where the island state ceremonially bankrupts itself through lavish gifts to the sporting gods.
The $1.3 billion cost, bandied about on your ABC, is the kind of number that only works if you believe in fairy godmothers and the tooth fairy. It’s political fiction masquerading as a budget estimate; the sort of lowball con that gets announced with a straight face while everyone who can count knows it’s bollocks.
The real story? Perth’s Optus Stadium was budgeted at $1.1 billion and came in at $1.6 billion. Parramatta’s relatively modest rebuild blew past $360 million. And those weren’t built on contaminated former industrial waterfront land that needs massive remediation before you can even think about pouring concrete.
Infrastructure experts not on the government’s Christmas card list are quietly suggesting $1.5-2 billion as realistic. Some brave souls whisper that $2.5 billion isn’t impossible once you factor in the inevitable cost blowouts, the complex maritime site, the infrastructure upgrades, and all those “unforeseen circumstances” that are about as unforeseen as rain in a Tassie winter.
Meanwhile, the AFL, bless their corporate hearts, has graciously chipped in $15 million. Fifteen million. For a project that’ll cost billions. They’re not funding a stadium; they’re charging Tasmania an extortion fee for the privilege of joining the big boys’ club.
Here’s the economic vandalism in context: Tasmania’s entire state budget runs around $8 billion annually. They plan to blow somewhere between 15-30% of their annual budget, or more, on a venue that’ll host maybe a dozen AFL games a year plus the odd concert.
Like the great potlatch ceremonies of the Pacific Northwest, where chiefs would give away or destroy vast wealth to demonstrate their status, Tasmania is preparing to immolate its economic future on the altar of sporting prestige.
The state’s debt is climbing, the credit rating agencies are sharpening their pencils, hospitals are understaffed, roads are crumbling, and essential services are run on fumes.
But sure, let’s build a waterfront palace for football while the state’s infrastructure collapses like a deck of cards in a stiff breeze.
The truly criminal part? Every politician, bureaucrat, and AFL executive involved knows these numbers are fiction. They know it’ll blow out. They know Tasmania can’t afford it. They know it’s economic self-immolation. But they’re all committed to the lie because backing out now would mean admitting the whole thing was a con from the start; and that would require something our political class stopped doing years ago: telling the truth.
So they stand there, reciting their lines about “opportunity” and “legacy” while Tasmania prepares to mortgage its future for a stadium it can barely afford to talk about, let alone build. This ceremonial giving, this potlatch for the AFL, will leave Tasmania in debt-ridden penury, a cautionary tale about the difference between prestige and prosperity.
They can barely afford to talk about it; and you know how cheap talk is these days. Cheaper than chips, really. Though even chips cost more than they used to, which is another conversation we’re not having honestly. Maybe they should build the stadium out of coal. At least then the Coalition would chip in more than the AFL.
Stand By Your Ban
Which brings us to the latest instalment in our post-truth festival: the social media ban for teenagers. Anika Wells, our Communications Minister, stands firm on the bridge of the Tik-Tok-Titanic, assuring us her craft is unsinkable even as the icy water laps at her ankles.
“Stand By Your Ban,” is her anthem; channelling Tammy Wynette for the digital age. Because if there’s one thing we’ve learnt, it’s that when technology policy meets political theatre, facts become optional accessories.
The bill wouldn’t work in an iron lung; an apt metaphor for legislation that’s supposed to help children breathe free from digital harm but would more likely suffocate them in bureaucratic futility. Age verification that can’t be verified. Enforcement that can’t be enforced. Privacy protections that protect nothing. VPNs that render the whole exercise moot before breakfast.
But we’re not meant to notice these inconvenient truths. We’re meant to applaud the gesture, the intention, the theatrical performance of Doing Something About The Children. Never mind that the something being done is somewhere between useless and actively counterproductive. And in some cases may lead to harm.
The Mythomania Machine
This is mythomania at industrial scale; the compulsive, pathological fabrication of narratives that bear no relationship to reality but serve some immediate political need.
We’ve cranked up the machinery, and the porkie-pies are rolling out like Don sausages from the Castlemaine factory, each one just that bit more porkier than the last.
The Coalition’s “Net Zero Heroes” who want to dig up every tonne of coal in the country. The potlatch stadium that will “transform” Tasmania through ceremonial bankruptcy. The social media ban that will “protect” our children. The assurances that everything’s under control, that experts have been consulted, that due diligence has been done.
It’s all theatre. Expensive, destructive theatre that we’re forced to attend, ticket-holders in a performance where the script was written by people who stopped caring about truth years ago. Sussan Ley knows it’s theatre. Anika Wells knows it’s theatre. The Tasmanian politicians nervously watching their credit rating know it’s theatre.
But the performance must go on, because the alternative; admitting that climate policy is captured by fossil fuel interests, that the stadium is economic madness, that the social media ban is technological fantasy, would require something our political class has forgotten how to do: tell the truth.
The Post-Truth Condition
Heidegger wrote about authentic existence – Eigentlichkeit – the courage to face reality as it is, rather than fleeing into comfortable illusions. We’ve chosen the opposite path. We’ve constructed an entire political culture around the avoidance of uncomfortable truths, around the substitution of narrative for reality, around the belief that if we just tell the story convincingly enough, it might somehow become true.
It won’t. Physics remains undefeated. Economics keeps score. And the climate? The climate doesn’t care about your rebrand, your spin, or your focus groups.
Eventually, gradually and then suddenly, the bill comes due.
Tasmania will build its stadium, or more likely, half-build it before running out of money, leaving a concrete monument to hubris rusting in the rain, the failed potlatch of a broke state that gave everything to sport and got dudded in return.
The social media ban will pass, fail, and be quietly forgotten while politicians move on to the next performative gesture.
And the Coalition’s Net Zero Heroes will keep digging coal while the planet keeps warming, each lie compounding the last until the whole edifice of denial collapses under its own weight.
And Australia will continue its slow-then-sudden journey deeper into post-truth territory, where feelings trump facts, where gesture substitutes for substance, where we’ve learnt to love the lie because it’s more comfortable than the truth.
Stand by your BAN, indeed. Stand by your coal. Stand by your crumbling stadium and your impossible promises.
Just don’t expect any of them to stand by you when the reckoning comes.
Gradually, then suddenly-just as Hemingway said.
This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES
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Interesting article. Entertaining in its verbosity and one that should make the pollies think twice about some of their decisions. But it wont.
“Here’s the economic vandalism in context: Tasmania’s entire state budget runs around $8 billion annually. They plan to blow somewhere between 15-30% of their annual budget, or more, on a venue that’ll host maybe a dozen AFL games a year plus the odd concert.”
Not only that but the Tasmanian government budget already tells us that outgoings are going to exceed incomings by at least a billion dollars for this financial year. So not only do they not have the funds to build this monstrosity, and those funds that have been budgeted are borrowed funds anyway, but they are going to have to find some savings in the next budget to cover the overruns or borrow more to add to the net debt of the $7.3 billion for the end of the current FY. No doubt the savings will be found in further underfunding government services like, health, education, infrastructure, transportation and social housing.
But let’s not talk about the ferries.
And, and if this was not enough the Tasmanian government is throwing in $500K to the Launceston’s $150K to get the Foo Fighters to hold 1 concert in Launceston, an amount that may or may not be in the 25/26 state budget.
There is something hysterically wrong with a government that can’t afford to fund its education, health, transportation, infrastructure and public housing, but can afford to spend a cool half million on a flipping concert.
Have the Tasmanian people completely lost their minds in electing the current government.
Crazy times indeed, David. Thanks for this bracing peek behind the curtain… one is tempted sometimes to wish for the ability to unzip the skulls of these people whose careers rely on the performance of fantasy, fabrication, obfuscation and downright lying, just to get a sense of what the underlying pathology is. Kudos for the Heidegger mention. I’d be willing to bet there’s hardly a single person in politics who’s well acquainted with any of the great philosophers, whether French, German, English, or for that matter, the Ancients of Greece & Rome, given the pedestrian nature of the modern politician and his concerns.
Roll on the apocalypse… a reckoning that beckons, and one that will engender bitter tears of regret for stupidities performed, along with much gnashing of teeth for failures to act appropriately.
Patricia, What’s striking in your comment isn’t the maths — though the maths is deranged enough to qualify as performance art — it’s the priorities. Tasmania is running a billion-dollar deficit, services are skeletal, the ferries are ghost ships, and public housing has a waiting list longer than the queue for Taylor Swift tickets. Yet the state can still find half a million dollars down the back of the couch to lure the Foo Fighters and another multi-billion debt sinkhole to build a boutique stadium no one asked for.
It’s not that Tasmania lacks money. It lacks shame.
Health? Too expensive. Education? Maybe next decade. Social housing? Good idea, but tragically unprofitable. A vanity stadium that will sit empty for most of the year? Now there’s a legacy a Premier can cut a ribbon over and pretend will transform the economy through the mystical power of turf.
And yes — voters backed it. That’s the real twist. We’re not watching a government commit economic vandalism; we’re watching a population applauding the demolition, cheering as the bulldozer hits the hospital, shrugging as the school roofs leak, then proudly declaring that footy is “worth every cent.”
Tasmania isn’t building a stadium. It’s building a monument; to the state’s willingness to underfund what matters in order to subsidise what flatters. If that isn’t the definition of modern politics, I don’t know what is.
Thank you, Canguro — and yes, we live in an era where political life is performed almost entirely as theatre by people who rarely read beyond a briefing note, let alone a philosopher. If Heidegger isn’t on their shelves, it’s only because IKEA hasn’t released a flat-pack version yet, with a jaunty Allen key and instructions: Insert truth into void, tighten until meaningless.
You’re right: the pathology is the performance. The modern political class isn’t built on intellect or curiosity; it’s trained to treat language as smoke, reality as negotiable, and public life as a rehearsal in which nothing must ever be understood, only sold.
The madness of our times isn’t that they lie; it’s that they don’t even bother to pretend they believe themselves.
If there is an approaching reckoning, it won’t look like apocalypse so much as accounting — a public finally adding up what’s been taken from it, and discovering that the cost of mendacity has always been charged to democracy’s credit card. With interest.
Until then, we’ll keep taking peeks behind the curtain. Someone has to remind the audience that the stage props aren’t governance, and the people reciting slogans aren’t statesmen; just actors who never learned their lines.
Crazy times indeed.
And thank you, Canguro for being sane enough to notice. 🙏🏼
There is no life without dreams and those who have never heard of Darrel Baldock, Peter Hudson, Royce Hart, or Ian Stewart have no idea about Tassie.
There is no progress without effort those who think the ban is wrong may disturb its progress momentarily but not for long.
AI is scary and must be controlled before it takes us to ’85’.
ps
French, German, English, or for that matter, the Ancients of Greece & Rome or Confucius, Laozi, Mencius, Mozi, Shang Yang, Han Feizi, Sun Tzu, Kwasi Wiredu, Paulin Hountondji, Sophie Oluwol, Augustine of Hippo, Frantz Fanon, Achille Mbembe, Chanakya, Madhvacharya, Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, S. Radhakrishnan.
I have just heard that the proposed stadium in Hobart will be an ‘economic bonanza’ for Hobart and the rest of Tasmania, which begs the question as to why there is no private (corporate) money going into the venture.
The total cost is estimated at $1.13 Billion made up of :
Federal Govt………..$240million
AFL………………..$ 15million
Tas Govt……………$875million
Total………………$1.130Billion
If as we are told, the is an economic bonanza for the state and for Hobart why would private entrepreneurs be avoiding the opportunity to invest?
Anybody?
I understand that they stared at the map of Tassie for so long they lost the will to think about anything but the map of Tassie and of course football.
It’s been that way since Port Arthur closed down. Seems they’re ready to re-build closer to the action.
The stadium boondoggle is particularly enraging. Even the ancient Romans recognised that you needed bread with the circuses to keep the populace happy; we’re being told to pay through the nose for a flashy circus tent and ignore the fact that the cost of building it is starving us.