Julian Linden and Jacquelin Magnay contend in the Oz this morning it will be an enormous achievement if she pulls it off but it’s far from a foregone conclusion because she is up against some stiff competition and the quirky rules of moguls means she can't afford any slip ups and has to be perfect when it matters most.

But it’s so far so good for the 27-year-old after she posted the highest score in the first round of qualifiers, earn herself an automatic place into Wednesday’s first of three finals, without having to take part in the second round of qualifying.

The seven judges awarded Anthony a combined score of 81.54, which takes into account her speed, turns and air jumps. It was the highest score by any woman moguls skier in the world this year but she wasn't miles ahead of the field.

Two Americans, Elizabeth Lemley and Olivia Giaccio, both broke the magical 80-point barrier, though none of the scores carry because they all start fresh for each of the three rounds of finals to decide the medals.

While Anthony is the raging favourite and appears very relaxed, some things are very different from when she won in Beijing during the Covid pandemic.

For starters, there are thousands of spectators at the bottom of the course, including a loud and colourful contingent of Aussies supporting Anthony.

I couldn't tell you how many there are, it’s quite a lot though and they're definitely cheering the loudest which is very cool, Anthony said.

I can hear them up the top, they're pretty special. We don't get many Aussies at our events because it’s so far to travel, so it’s really special that they've all made the journey out here.

Australia’s other two entrants, Charlotte Wilson and Emma Bosco, both missed out on the top 10 to get automatic qualification but will get another chance in Wednesday’s second round.
↑

The Commerce Department said retail sales were unchanged in December, below a forecast by economists polled by Reuters for a rise of 0.4%, and below the unrevised 0.6% increase in November. Some investors say weaker data could allow the Federal Reserve more cushion to cut interest rates.

Earlier, the Nikkei 225 hit a fresh peak again in the wake of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s decisive weekend election victory in Japan. The yen also strengthened further following the election.

The dollar traded mostly lower against major currencies following the U.S. data and as U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said he views the weaker dollar to be at a more natural level to promote U.S. exports and expand economic growth.

On Wall Street, investors digested the economic news and the latest quarterly results from companies. Shares of Marriott International rose more than 8% after fourth-quarter results.

Yields are moving lower. That and the combination of earnings … is what is causing this enthusiasm and some momentum buying in stocks, said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities in New York.

Key this week will be the January U.S. employment report on Wednesday, he said.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 301.92 points, or 0.60%, to 50,437.56, the S&P 500 rose 12.10 points, or 0.18%, to 6,977.10 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 26.58 points, or 0.11%, to 23,265.04.

MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe rose 4.02 points, or 0.38%, to 1,057.99, and hit a record earlier. The pan-European STOXX 600 index fell 0.07%.

While tech stocks around the world, especially software names, sold off last week on fears they could be upended by artificial intelligence tools, they have since found something of a footing.

The Nikkei jumped 2.3%, rising for a third consecutive day. Japanese stocks had been expected to benefit from a Takaichi victory given her plans for fiscal stimulus. But more surprisingly, Japanese government bonds and the yen, which had been expected to suffer, have rallied this week, seemingly on hopes that political stability and the stimulus will boost growth and drive investor optimism.

Against the Japanese yen, the dollar weakened 1.09% to 154.17.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro, fell 0.18% to 96.78, with the euro down 0.1% at $1.1901.

The yield on the benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury note fell 5.3 basis points to 4.145%, on track for its fourth straight day of declines. The yield has dropped more than 13 basis points over that timeframe, its biggest four-day drop since mid-October.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Monday job gains could be lower in the coming months as the Trump administration’s immigration policies slow labour growth and new AI tools boost productivity.

Other areas of recent market stress were calmer on Tuesday. British government bonds slightly outperformed peers, having lost ground on Monday as Prime Minister Keir Starmer came under increasing pressure.

In commodities markets, spot gold fell 0.66% to $5,031.18 an ounce. U.S. crude fell 0.68% to $63.92 a barrel and Brent fell to $68.74 per barrel, down 0.43% on the day.

Mr Herzog on Tuesday night offered an olive branch to the Prime Minister after repeated flare-ups in bilateral ties since the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, thanking him for his response to the Bondi massacre while lauding him as an important world leader.

Earlier, Mr Albanese used the floor of parliament to slap down the nation’s hard-left over its ugly reception for Mr Herzog, saying the Israeli President deserved to be treated with respect as he gave comfort to the nation’s Jews following December’s Bondi massacre. I will not, as a number of the crossbenchers have suggested, walk away from my support for his presence here, he said.

Not so Albo’s leftsection. They have been left off the leash for too long and now will prove impossible to curtain.

Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame also hit back at critics after leading controversial chants at a pro-Palestine rally, declaring politicians were using her as a deflection from Israel’s alleged war crimes.

Ms Tame’s appearance at Monday’s rally in Sydney to protest the state visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog ∼ in which the 31-year-old led a chant of from Gadigal to Gaza, globalise the intifada ∼ was heavily criticised by both state and federal politicians.

It was all distressing for NSW Premier Chris Mins, while One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce called for Tame to be stripped of her prestigious award. Commenting on the globalise the intifada chant, Jewish MP Julian Leeser said what starts with hateful words ends with hateful deeds.

And then there was the Labor’s far left boss and the rent-a-crowd chief, the figurehead for Australia’s pro-Palestine protest movement who applauded demonstrators who tried to break the law by marching at a violent anti-Israel rally, as police charged nine people, including one for allegedly biting an officer.

Palestinian Action Group organiser Josh Lees, speaking at a follow-up rally against police conduct on Tuesday night, said Monday’s protest at Sydney Town Hall ∼ where dozens of people were tackled and capsicum sprayed by police ∼ was completely legal and commended those who tried to march. Some people did try to march last night ∼ some did, absolutely ∼ and good on them, he said.

Police on Tuesday said about 6000 attendees chanted incendiary slogans such as globalise the intifada and demanding Israeli President Isaac Herzog be arrested.
↑

Almost one-third of people are less likely to buy a round and more than half have changed their drinking habits as cost-of-living pressures mount, according to new data.

The research, conducted by EFTPOS provider Tyro, draws on hundreds of millions of food and drink transactions and a national survey of more than 2000 customers and 500 small business owners.

It shows the average round of drinks sets the buyer back more than $50, with one in five survey respondents saying they had dropped $100 on a single shout.

Punters had hit their spending limits and were paying their own way to cut back on discretionary extras, Tyro chief executive Nigel Lee said.

People are increasingly conscious about what they buy, who they buy for, and the value they get. he said.

Digital tools are helping accelerate the shift away from shouts, with 37% of customers surveyed saying they use QR codes to buy their own drinks and avoid awkward conversations with friends about money.

Mr Lee said the research showed while people were still socialising, they were doing it in different ways. People aren't going out to a bar or pub to drink anymore, he said. “Instead, they link food with drink and additional activities at venues.

Merchants are adapting with better food and dining options that keep customers there in venues.

The shift away from drinking and towards dining was evident, Hotel Ravesis Bondi general manager Tayla Ramirez said.

Rounds are drying up and the long sessions are fading, she said.

People come with a plan: a cocktail, then wine with dinner. They're here for the meal or the music, not to stay late and sink beers.

About 80% of the venue’s orders are for just one drink.

If there were two, Ms Ramirez said, they were usually for a couple.

Even our older gents who have been coming in and sharing rounds every day for years buy their own now, she said.

Stellantis has admitted it over-estimated demand for electric cars, at significant cost to the company.

It turns out electric cars are expensive — for car makers and for customers.

Several of the world’s largest car companies have taken significant hits to their bottom line in recent months with speed bumps on the road to electrification.

Ford has ended production of its electric F-150 Lightning and pivoted toward EVs, Mercedes invested in a new V8 engine when its battery models failed to electrify customer interest and Porsche has reportedly slammed the brakes on an electric successor to the petrol-powered Boxster.

Tesla also recorded a downturn at the end of 2025, and growth has slowed for Chinese giants such as BYD.

The latest to hit troubles is Stellantis, parent company to brands including Jeep, Chrysler, Fiat, Peugeot and Maserati.

The company reports that a shift in EV strategy will cost it €17bln ($US28.5bln) as it cancels some electric models and finds way to put petrol power back into core products.

Those include a reprisal of the Hemi V8-powered RAM 1500 which had been cancelled in favour of an efficient (but unloved) six-cylinder hybrid ute and an electric next-generation Fiat 500 now available with petrol power.

Adam Sandler hangdog in the Levi’s Stadium stands, Jon Bon Jovi mooching on the sideline like a retired dentist on a cruise, Billie Joe Armstrong belting out American Idiot during the pre-game show under his motionless meringue of fogey-blond hair: were they a sign?

A New England Patriots team who were neither favored to win nor widely reviled, then promptly repaid a grateful public by losing: was this the Super Bowl which proved that history really can move on, that America is not fated to remain hostage to the tremors and hatreds of the past?

Well, yes and no.

A year after Donald Trump made American football’s showpiece all about him, Sunday’s game in Santa Clara always promised a sort of correction - a cooling of the mood, perhaps even an end to the manipulation of sport for political ends.

As always the best way to gauge the success of this mission was as the gods intended: through a TV screen.

Trump - saddled with historically low approval ratings, facing a massacre in this year’s midterms, and no doubt wary of risking a public appearance in the deep blue sea of the Bay Area - was absent on this occasion, and he kept the F-22 fighter jets that were scheduled to be part of the pre-game flyover away from Levi’s Stadium too.

Unspecified operational assignments were the reason offered for the jets' withdrawal, which means there’s probably a low-ranking member of the Trump administration putting big money on a US military strike somewhere in Latin America as we speak.

And yet, the absent autocrat still weighed on proceedings, his curdling influence turning every moment and gesture on Sunday into a referendum on the prospects for a post-Trumpian sporting future. Could football be normal again?

The Seahawks and the Patriots did their part by offering up a game of punishing defense and attritional offense that had all the carefree charm of a medieval torture procedure. Can football be normal again?

That remains unclear, but on this evidence it can certainly be boring, which is maybe a form of progress. Despite the best efforts of professional jaw surgery patient Jake Paul, the pre-game chatter was mostly about de-escalation: even the ESPN host Pat McAfee felt moved to point out, on his first visit to San Francisco, that the city was nothing like the urban hell described by the catastrophisers of Fox News and other rightwing media outlets.

Perhaps, for once, the Super Bowl would not be dragged into America’s tedious and interminable culture wars.

Between Paul’s racist critique of the half-time show and the alternative spectacle offered by Turning Point USA, maybe all the right can do now is squawk impotently into the void.

The Seattle Seahawks beat the New England Patriots 29-13.

But the deeper question is what sort of a Liberal Party, and what sort of a Coalition, will it be, because for the first time in over a hundred years there’s the makings of a viable alternative to what’s always been the mainstream centre-right party. The Liberal Party isn't just down. This time, if it’s not careful, it could be down and out.

For at least a generation, Australian politics has been becoming less tribal. As John Howard used to say, when he was young, 45% of the population always voted for the Coalition, 45% for the Labor Party and it was the 10% in the middle that determined the result.

More recently, the public has normally divided a third for the Coalition, a third for the ALP and a third for others. Initially that disruption didn't matter so much for either big party, because the others tended to split pretty evenly between the Greens on the left and minor parties on the right, although the Greens' more disciplined preferences gave Labor a slight advantage.

But that simplified split has become more complicated for the LNP over the past two federal elections, with the rise in its former heartland of the teals.

This vote displacement reflects a tendency, across the Anglosphere, for richer people to vote more left, while poorer people vote more right; yet because voters with bread and butter concerns will nearly always outnumber those with luxury beliefs, this could ultimately be to the Coalition’s advantage, provided it can avoid mixed messaging and policy indecision; and can meet this new constituency with credible candidates that reflect their community rather than parachuted-in apparatchiks, as is the current failing model.

At the 2025 election, under Peter Dutton’s leadership, the Coalition’s primary vote crashed to just 32%. Labor’s primary vote only increased from 33 to 35% but with Greens preferences, and with the teals consolidating their hold on once safe Liberal seats, Labor surged to its biggest majority in the parliament since the disintegration of the United Australia Party in 1943.

If the polls are right, since then there’s been a further seismic shift. Due to a roughly 10% slump in the Coalition primary vote since May last year, between them, the main parties now have barely 50% support.

Only this time, the votes that have been haemorrhaging away from the Coalition haven't migrated more or less evenly to other parties across the political spectrum; instead, they've largely coalesced behind One Nation.

Last May, One Nation received just 6% of the vote, a similar result to previous elections since 2016. Since then, One Nation has risen sharply from 15% in the December Newspoll, to 22% a fortnight ago, when it was in front of the Coalition for the first time in Newspoll history.

Unsurprisingly, in the wake of the Coalition split, One Nation’s rise has continued, with this week’s Redbridge poll putting One Nation on 26%, with the former Coalition parties on a paltry 19% combined primary vote.

So, here’s the Liberals' dilemma, and here’s the challenge for the commentators who until recently were so certain that the Liberals had to swing left in response to the teals: what should happen now, when it’s no longer the teals who are cannibalising Liberal votes but the hardline conservative outfit One Nation?

Perhaps the real problem for the Liberals all along has been less that they have been insufficiently left wing, or insufficiently right wing but that they've been nothing much at all.

The last time the Coalition won big, in 2013 with a 46% primary vote under Tony Abbott, the LNP was a clear contrast to a Labor government that had lost control of our borders, lost control of the budget, and was climate obsessed. Not only did Abbott, an unapologetic conservative, have a laser focus on the problems that even Labor partisans had to admit were being mishandled but he had a clear way forward: scrapping the mining and carbon taxes to revitalise the economy; Operation Sovereign Borders to stop the boats; and budget rules such as no new spending without cuts to existing spending to restore fiscal discipline.

The Liberals' subsequent malaise, under Malcolm Turnbull, was that a centre-right party was being led from the centre-left; and then, under Scott Morrison, that the party of smaller government and greater freedom presided over health authoritarianism and pandemic spending on an unprecedented scale. And Morrison’s embrace of net zero removed another key point of difference.

At last year’s election, despite being well placed six months out, Peter Dutton (and his team) failed to fight for his energy policy, or to campaign against Labor’s unrealised capital gains wealth tax, or even to drive home the collapse in living standards that Labor’s policies had made worse.

For a decade now, the Coalition has consistently let down its voters, who are typically economically liberal and socially conservative, so it’s no wonder they're angry. And as for this idea that the Liberals have to return to the centre therr&squo;s nothing that the Liberals have done over the past decade that’s remotely right wing: the AUKUS nuclear submarines decision was promptly me-too-ed by Labor; and even the belated repudiation of net zero reflects a general move against energy self-harm even in Europe.

Given that 34% of voters currently think that the party best placed to handle immigration is actually One Nation, on this issue, at least, perhaps a tougher Liberal Party is exactly what voters want.

The commentators are right to point out that a high One Nation vote ultimately helps Labor because its preferences don't reliably return to the Coalition. Where they're very wrong is to suggest that the Coalition’s political task is to differentiate itself from One Nation, rather than to reinvigorate its fight with Labor. One Nation is surging to fill the vacuum left by the LNP; and those former Coalition voters now parked with the insurgency are less interested in political theology and an argument over the nature of conservatism, than they are in having a politically clear, consistent and effective opposition to a Labor government that’s taking our country backwards.

What they see in Hanson is less about a viable alternative PM than someone who has at least been consistent in her opposition to net zero, mass migration and the nonsense of three flags and welcoming people to their own country.

In the 1998 Queensland state election, One Nation won 23% of the primary vote, and 11 seats in parliament, mostly from the Coalition, thus installing a Labor government. In the run-up to the subsequent federal election three months later, Howard’s focus was not on fighting One Nation but on emphasising the Coalition’s economic credentials against Labor.

Howard didn't see off the One Nation challenge by moving to the centre or by vitriolic attacks on the hard right but by being a strong and consistent leader in the orthodox centre-right tradition.

And heading a party of government, he could address One -Nation voters' grievances more effectively than any protest party leader.

Right now in this country, people are crying out for leadership and they are sick of the insider games of politics as usual. They want policies to stop Australia’s slide and that’s what the Liberals must address.

Put simply, the best response to a fractured voter base is not to chase voters in two directions at once but to offer Australians the changes (and the hope) that our country so desperately needs.

There are, after all, few more potent images in the left’s imaginary than that of Joseph McCarthy ∼ the Republican senator from Wisconsin ∼ sweating profusely as he and his henchmen torment their idealistic victims, who erred only by dreaming of a better world. To tolerate, much less endorse, anything likened to that assault on democratic values is no more acceptable than professing admiration for fascism, inviting immediate moral excommunication.

Yet historical reality is not so easily dismissed. Whenever its complexity is reduced to a slur, it grabs us, like some monumental bore and insists on a reckoning. And when that reality is properly understood, it becomes clear that Adler has resorted to a compound of falsity and deliberate obfuscation that grotesquely distorts the lessons of a long-gone era.

The key facts are not in dispute. The democracies' wartime alliance with the USSR, together with the Red Army’s decisive role in defeating Nazism, greatly enhanced communism’s standing in the West. That enabled communists to acquire influential positions across a wide range of institutions, including some vital to national security. What followed was to lay the foundations for devastatingly effective Soviet espionage and to expose major industries to the risk of severe disruption.

But with the Soviet war effort still vivid in Western minds, the democracies were slow to address the dangers. The complacency started to unravel only after a series of defections by Soviet intelligence officials, beginning with that of Igor Gouzenko in Canada, supplied documentary proof of far-reaching Soviet espionage networks.

Additionally, by 1947, the American Venona Project had succeeded in decrypting Soviet cables, confirming the defectors' accounts and revealing the central role communists played in those networks. Although the Truman administration kept Venona cloaked in secrecy, its key findings were disclosed to the most senior decision-makers in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

The rapidly deteriorating international situation then brought matters to a head. Not only was the Soviet noose tightening in the territories under Stalin’s control; the formation of the Cominform in September 1947 marked a decisive hardening of the Soviet position.

In particular, Andrei Zhdanov ∼ responsible for Soviet relations with foreign Communist parties ∼ articulated the doctrine that the post-war world had divided into two irreconcilable camps: the warmongering imperialist and anti-democratic camp led by the United States, and the peace-loving anti-imperialist and democratic camp led by the Soviet Union.

From that premise followed an operational directive. Communist parties were charged not only with advancing the Soviet cause directly but with impeding the alleged preparations for an imperialist war. The result was a wave of bitterly contested strikes that paralysed critical industries in virtually every Western democracy, including Australia, where Ben Chifley denounced a Communist-inspired attempt to destroy the democratic way of life.

Taken together, those events forced a Western response. The most notorious was, for sure, that in the US, where president Harry Truman, although initiating the measures later derided as a witch-hunt, sought to manage the New Deal coalition’s liberal base by keeping the crackdown low-key.

With public anxiety mounting into panic, Truman’s hesitation created the space that was soon filled by the demagogy of McCarthy’s Permanent Senate Subcommittee on Investigations. It is beyond doubt that those hearings involved abuses of process. But it is equally beyond doubt that, as McCarthy’s stern critic, Sidney Hook, observed: What contributed to McCarthy’s influence was the spectacle of scores of Communist witnesses remaining silent, or invoking the Fifth Amendment, as the picture of Communist penetration in American life unfolded.

However, it is less the excesses than the correction that matters. The American courts intervened, with increasing vigour, to restrain abuses; and for all the widespread fear provoked by the intensification of the Cold War, McCarthy was speedily brought to heel, his career abruptly terminated.

That outcome was not accidental. It reflected the presence of institutional counterweights capable of reasserting legal limits even under acute pressure — something wholly absent in the Soviet empire, where inquiry slid seamlessly into terror and correction was structurally impossible.

The system, in other words, worked. And it worked even more clearly in Australia. Thus, the Victorian Royal Commission on Communism (1949-50) was scrupulous in its procedures and findings, notwithstanding the fact that communist witnesses were, as Stuart Macintyre acknowledged in his largely sympathetic history of Australian communism, all economical with the truth.

The Commonwealth Royal Commission on Espionage (1954-55), established following the defection of Vladimir Petrov, was scrupulous too - despite the havoc wreaked by the growing mental instability of HV Evatt, acting as counsel for two of those named in the Petrov documents and by the communist witnesses' strenuous efforts to discredit both the evidence and the commission itself. No less importantly, the release decades later of the decrypted Venona cables, together with the opening of Soviet bloc archives, ultimately validated each and every one of the commission’s findings.

Of course, none of that had any impact whatsoever on the left’s portrayal of the period; symbolic allegiances are impervious to refutation and the belief that the left can never be wrong is as strong a pledge of allegiance as any can be.

McCarthyism therefore became the slur the left hurls when it has nothing intelligent to say. The tactic was an old one and well-established in the communist movement. If you are struggling, Dmitry Manouďlsky (1883-1959), a leader of the Cominform’s predecessor, the Comintern, had advised agitators, accuse your adversaries of being fascists. By the time they respond, you will have regained the initiative.

Soon enough, fascist was complemented by McCarthyite and McCarthyism as the Communists' insult of choice. In fact, it took barely a week after Robert Menzies announced that Petrov had defected for the Communist Party to declare the American millionaires from whom Menzies takes his orders want him to launch a McCarthyite terror against Communists and all progressive people.

Claiming that the royal commission was intended to turn loose pimps, liars and perjurers, the party ∼ which repeatedly affirmed that complete freedom of expression exists in the Soviet Union-∼ warned that if spy scares begin with attacks on Communists, they end in McCarthyite attacks on all who dare to think for themselves.

It is that contention Adler slavishly parrots. But the lesson to be drawn from our experience runs exactly counter to that which her slur is intended to convey.

Australia’s democratic record is not one of paranoia unchecked. It is one of institutions capable of firmness without unfairness and scrutiny without injustice. Our processes of public inquiry have managed to expose and restrain conduct that seeks to intimidate, harass, silence or coerce, while remaining fully answerable to law and evidence.

To label such processes McCarthyism is not merely inaccurate but an attempt to disarm democratic accountability itself. It arms fantasy against scrutiny — and, if allowed to prevail, it would make Adler’s personal hallucinations the nation’s living nightmare.