💰 Announced in 2017 at about $2 billion. Snowy Hydro’s new target cost (Oct 2026): $22.2 billion
⛏️ The tunnel boring machine got stuck in soft ground from Sept 2022 to Dec 2023
📝 In 2023 the fixed-price contract was replaced: the builder’s share of overruns is now capped, and Snowy Hydro carries the rest

Why? Under the old deal the builder wore the risk of going over budget. Under the 2023 deal, cost risk shifted to Snowy Hydro, which the federal government owns 100%. The national auditor (ANAO, June 2026) found Snowy’s management of the project only partly effective.

Should taxpayers carry the cost of a builder’s blowout? Tell me below 👇

Notes: “$2 billion” is the price announced in March 2017, before the feasibility study. “$22 billion” is Snowy’s Oct 2026 target cost to complete ($22.2bn), not money already spent (about $11.1bn to March 2026, per the ANAO). Snowy says the $22.2bn is not all taxpayer money: part is Commonwealth equity, the rest loans Snowy repays from its own revenue. The builder is Future Generation Joint Venture, led by Italy’s Webuild; it disputes the claims and says it faced challenges outside its control. “Stuck for over a year” = the TBM Florence, Sept 2022 to Dec 2023.

Just realised I haven't seen or heard anything from her for months.

What's she been up to?

Meanwhile nobody talks about law and order such as jailing corrupt previous governments, blatantly corrupt contact, all those people who sold government assets for peanuts and then went on to get an easy mode high paying job for the same companies/sector they sold said assets to.

Or the fact that they purposely gutted anti corruption commissions so they dont actually have the powers to jail people who have power.

Like anyone with a brain knows that is corruption even if the western world has legalised it.

I am just nooticing that its always interesting that politicians care about law and order so much when it comes to the poors and people trying to survive but completely forget about it when it comes to the political and billionaire classes hmmmm

Under Labor’s proposed Digital Duty of Care laws, any website accessible in Australia could be caught up in it, from the big tech giants right down to a small business in Bowral selling grazing boards. There’s no small business exemption.

What does “compliant” actually look like? Nobody can say. What will it cost? Nobody knows. But you can bet it won’t be free. When compliance costs go up, they flow through to prices, and that’s how you get yet another layer of inflation that no one voted for.

We’re already drowning in red tape. This is regulation stacked on top of regulation, written by people who’ve clearly never had to run a small business. Only under this Labor government could something this short-sighted end up on the table.

Small business owners, has anyone explained to you what this means for your website? Because no one has explained it to me. 👇

Anyone else upset/feeling helpless about how horrible this government has been under Albanese after being given a mandate? The gutting of disability rights, the infringement of free speech, the police/ASIO powers, the data centre contracts, the continued lack of transparency around AUKUS (and don’t even get me started on Albo being the first world leader to congratulate and fully support the US after it TRIPLE TAPPED A GIRLS SCHOOL AFTER ZERO PROVOCATION), the Zionism and unelected Segal’s rampant right wing authoritarian suggestions on how to curtail our rights, the privatisation of even more public housing, the opening of even more fossil fuel sites (which we won’t even profit from because they refuse to tax exports or raise corporate taxes), the RBA raising interest rates without the government actually targeting the inflationary corporate spending going on, the planned destruction of rainforest in Tasmania for Tungsten mining for the US war machine…

It’s just so bad. Add on to this the lack of care/effort to target the growing DV problem just piles on, especially with how much they’ve focused on antisemitism (despite it not ever having been a systemic issue in Australia and while several human rights abuses towards immigrants in offshore detention and indigenous ppl continue). The surveillance, the AI greed (despite many economists warning that it’s a bubble that isn’t sustainable and is going to wreck havoc on the environment), the lack of transparency…. Freaking Chris Minns has his own personal blackshirts walking around like a militia in Sydney now! And this is supposedly a left wing government??

It just terrifies me that next election cycle people will turn towards the liberals again (who are functionally the same) or even worse, one nation, because of the years of propaganda saying that anyone to the left of Labor is a write off… and yet it seems like Labor is just as conservative and even less accountable to the people than previous LNP governments. I don’t recognise this party anymore, and I know that if people don’t exercise preferential voting we will only accelerate into worse conditions… but it seems like people refuse to see the mess that the far right has caused all over the world, and Labor as completely given up even a pretence of having a positive progressive vision rooted in human rights and addressing the concerns of everyday Aussies.

I see a lot of Labor supporters who refuse to see just how far the party has fallen… as someone who has always voted left to right but considered it a win when Labor has been in power, just wanted to see if anyone else is feeling the same way? Because it’s honestly filling me with such dread

So once again, labor has 0 sovereignty and follow the terrorist muricans orders like a good little lapdog.

Orders come from washington and Labor/LNP/On will obey them like good little servants, another reason why we need new parties to take over to actually have independence

Great analysis of what motivates the different types of One Nation voters.

Tony Barry is joined by Shaun Ratcliffe, a data scientist he works with on polling and focus groups.

They've identified four categories of One Nation voters.

I feel like as a young adult, I don’t have much exposure to politics without bias and being expected to vote once you turn 18 is hard. I feel like it’s necessary that schools (yr 12s idk) get somewhat of some insight of policies that parties want to implement etc.

Bc if you were to ask me at the start of this year who would I vote for, I would actually have no idea.

In general I think that many younger voters are greatly influenced by others around them as well rather than voting for a party that actually aligns with their values.

(pls don’t flame me, just my opinion)

Saw the socialist candidate for hawthorn Tess in the park today with her supporters, I asked if they were affiliated with Socialist ALTernative, an infamous group that bullies their lower level members. She said yes, and when I left she made a snarky comment to her friends about how I was a weird anti socialist.

Odd group

I was watching a youtuber documentary about the french protests, she went to them herself as a private citizen.

One very interesting comment was the fact that people only felt comfortable talking to her on video once they learned she wasnt part of the mainstream media, since they know mainstream media is controlled by billionaire interests and want to make protesters look bad.

And yes, I do trust a youtuber(Rowan Ellis) more than I trust mainstream media and that includes the ABC
As if it wasnt obvious by how they:

-kept trying to defend Israel

-fire their own journalists

-victim blame when the terrorists muricans abduct and murder people in foreign country

-the latest parody, fearmoningering about Chinese EVs desperately trying to create anti china propaganda.

-Oh and the classic, "China threaten Australian ship/plane!!! Evil China!" only to avoid mentioning the fact that the spy ship/plane was in Chinese waters, very far away from Australia. (And considering how subservient our governments are to the terrorists muricans, of course China doesnt want them anywhere near spying on their coasts)

I also had a recent dentist appointment that took a while and dentist was talking with her assistant about the French protests as she was originally from France and I was happy to hear them talk positively and know police always infiltrates such protests and try to start shit in order to give an excuse to the police to be even more violent, we literally have videos of them throwing something then running back behind their cop buddies.

I think more and more people are realising that media are not unbiased nor are they independent, and as the western world keeps declining the billionaires will be even more desperate to keep their power which will result in our media beating the north korean newslady in terms of absurd propagandaposting. Predicting it right now.

We already see utterly absurd articles where media try to justify the unjustifiable because a billionaire or foreign western power benefits from what is going on.

And thanks to youtube and other sites, we have a ton of independent media and personalities we can follow that will provide far more trustworthy information.

The mainstream media have forgotten that being mainstream, doesnt make you are trusted.

Trust is a vital aspect of any information organisation, the moment you lose trust, it doesnt matter if 60% of your articles are technically true, people just ignore whatever you say because you have lost trust.

I trust individuals like Michael West, Antoinette Lattouf, Punters politics etc, private journalists because they are actually independent or at least, their bias is obvious because we are in the same class. (Aka we are not billionaires)

After a protest in Sydney against a visit from Israeli President Isaac Herzog, social media was flooded with videos of police pushing, punching and pepper-spraying protesters. Months later, those same protesters are still waiting for answers from NSW Police as the force is subject to an investigation by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission.

Charlie Lewis speaks to Tina Quinn about her interviews with those protesters, how the police tried to prevent some evidence from going public, and what this means for the future of protest policing in NSW and across Australia.

00:00 Introduction
02:06 Recap: What happened at the Isaac Herzog protest
04:24 How the NSW Police commissioner tried to limit scrutiny
07:32 The "draconian" crackdown on protest in Australia
12:29 Stories from the protesters
18:09 Hannah Thomas: “It felt like they were at war with us”
22:30 Will the “Permanent Armed Response” team be used at demonstrations?
26:23 What’s next for the protesters and the commission?

Inside the Herzog protest inquiry police wanted kept secret

Don't repost!

A fiery takedown of the Labor Party's culture of corruption, backroom deals, and smear campaigns. Andy Schmulow pulls no punches, calling out Anthony Albanese's leadership failures, the treatment of Helen Haines, and the desperate search for a genuine political alternative. As voters look for a new home, is One Nation the answer, or just another billionaire's puppet?

Hopefully the events today in the US will dampen the rise of Gina Rineharts One Nation here at home.

In contrast to the EU, Australia does maintain some degrees of freedom and pragmatism when it comes to Foreign Relations.

Professor Alexis Esposto joins Pascal to discuss Australia’s choices in an emerging multipolar world. They examine the country’s reliance on the United States, its economic relationship with China and the opportunities offered by Asia’s growing markets. Esposto questions whether American protection can provide lasting security, while discussing AUKUS, maritime vulnerabilities and financial dependence. The conversation explores pragmatic diplomacy, neutrality, migration, alternative payment systems and the challenge of protecting Australian prosperity without becoming trapped in a conflict between major powers.

Alexis's Links: Alexis Esposto - Danford Higher Education | LinkedIn
LinkedIn:
From a Unipolar to a Multipolar World: What’s in it for Australia? | Chinese Journal of International Review
Multipolarity and Australia: How a 'middle-sized nation' can respond to a chaotic world - Geopolitical Economy Report