However, Piastri Yes, I think I got a fair shot last year, Piastri said this week from the UK.

I'm expecting that to stay exactly the same. That’s definitely not to say that certain things could have been done better last year. I think that was probably clear for everyone watching.

But I think for me at no point were there ever any bad intentions or any times I questioned the intentions of things.

Again, things could have been done better, situations could have been handled differently but that is part of elite sport and part of Formula 1.

Yes, I think I got a fair shot last year, Piastri said this week from the UK.

I'm expecting that to stay exactly the same. That’s definitely not to say that certain things could have been done better last year. I think that was probably clear for everyone watching.

But I think for me at no point were there ever any bad intentions or any times I questioned the intentions of things.

Again, things could have been done better, situations could have been handled differently, but that is part of elite sport and part of Formula 1.

You are never going to get every decision right, you are never going to make every single person happy and that’s part of the unique nature of Formula 1 given it’s a team sport with an individual prize at the end as well.

I think I got a fair shot last year and we are working on how we can improve things and make sure that we try and become stronger.

McLaren has drawn plenty of headlines over its rules of engagement, dubbed the papaya rules, between its drivers on track 8212; race hard, race clean and don't make contact.

Piastri said the team’s philosophy towards its championship combatants going racing would remain the same, but he said the execution of the papaya rules would be streamlined this season as F1 prepares to enter a fresh era with new regulations.

It will look different, Piastri told international media from a press conference at McLaren headquarters in Woking.

“I think for me as (team principal) Andrea (Stella) said, streamlining it is a wise decision to make and we probably caused some headaches for ourselves that we didn't need to at points last year.

“I think as a general principle and a general way of going racing it does bring a lot of positives with it and it’s just how do we refine that to try and keep it to just positives.

“Again, I think there is always a lot more made out about it than what actually happens, there are a lot of hypothetical situations and a lot of people that kind of think without knowing the complete inner workings, a lot of things appear different to how they actually are.

So, some tweaks for sure this year. But I think it is pretty clear that we still want to go racing as much as a team as we can.

Amazon slid 4% ahead of its quarterly results after the bell. Investors will focus on the cloud computing heavyweight's plans for additional spending to build its AI data centers.

Shares of Nvidia, which stands to benefit from increased industry spending on AI, were nearly flat.

Investors in recent months have become increasingly wary of heavy spending on AI as they wait for stronger signs that those investments are paying off in the form of increased revenue and profits.

This is the first time we've seen the large-cap tech companies ∼ the Microsofts and the Alphabets and the Amazons ∼ go through a really large capex cycle … and we're seeing this volatility about whether this investment will translate, ultimately, into results, said Tom Hainlin, an investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis.

Investors this week have also worried that rapidly improving AI tools could eat into demand for traditional software, squeezing profit margins across the sector.

Software and data services stocks added to recent losses, with ServiceNow down 5.5% and Salesforce losing 4.8%.

The S&P 500 software and services index slid 3.2%, set for a seventh straight session in the red.

The AI trade which was the accelerant last year is perhaps the extinguisher this year with people realizing that AI is going to help certain kinds of companies but it is also going to hurt, particularly software, for example, said Melissa Brown, SimCorp's managing director of investment decision research.

Qualcomm slid 7.2% after forecasting second-quarter revenue and profit below estimates.

The CBOE volatility index, Wall Street's fear gauge, briefly hit the highest in over two months.

As traders dialed back exposure to pricey AI stocks, the market's rotation into relatively cheaper stocks gained steam in recent days.

The S&P 500 value index was down 1%, but still in positive territory for the week. The S&P 500 growth index was down more than 4% for the week.

The S&P 500 was down 0.96% at 6,816.32 points.

The Nasdaq declined 1.12% to 22,648.66 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.95% at 49,029.78 points.

Ten of the 11 S&P 500 sector indexes declined, led lower by materials, down 2.69%, followed by a 2.25% loss in consumer discretionary. Snap topped fourth-quarter revenue estimates, but its shares fell almost 10%. Estee Lauder shares fell 20% as the Clinique owner forecast annual results below estimates.

Fashion company Tapestry rose 10% after raising its annual profit forecast, while Hershey added 8.8% on a better-than-expected annual profit forecast.

The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment increased more than expected for the week ended January 31, while job openings dropped to the lowest level in more than five years in December.

Declining stocks outnumbered rising ones within the S&P 500 by a 2.1-to-one ratio.

The S&P 500 posted 44 new highs and 9 new lows; the Nasdaq recorded 103 new highs and 365 new lows.

As Senator Farrell prepared to head to Brussels amid a high-pressure campaign by European officials to get Australia across the line, he revealed the EU was yet to budge on the government’s key demands.

The Australian can reveal that reports European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is poised to visit Australia to sign a deal with Anthony Albanese are premature, with one senior Australian official describing the flagged trip as an attempt to box in Australia.

Ms von der Leyen would only travel to Australia if a deal was reached, officials said.

Senator Farrell hopes to fly to EU headquarters in the Belgian capital late next week for talks with EU counterpart Maros Sefcovic, but that trip is also yet to be locked in.

The Trade Minister told The Australian he was ready to finalise negotiations, but EU access for Australian meat exports remained a major sticking point.

We still haven't resolved the big one, which is volumes and conditions associated with beef and lamb. We have to resolve that, he said.

Senator Farrell said Australian farmers' use of European geographical indications such as prosecco and feta also remained a hurdle, but one he believed could be overcome.

I think we can resolve those (issues) if we can resolve the big one, he said. Until everything is resolved, nothing is resolved.

The National Farmers Federation underscored the need to -secure good terms in any agreement, saying no deal is better than a bad deal.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, in Australia for bilateral talks, said he believed the deal would be successful but the negotiations remained challenging. He likened the parties' attempts to finalise the deal to difficulties in the final stages of the EU’s recent trade deal with five South American countries, including beef powerhouse Brazil. That deal, known as the Mercosur agreement, followed 25 years of negotiations.

They are challenging, which is not surprising and if you see what kind of difficulties we had when ratifying the Mercosur agreement, where the agricultural sector of some countries responded very critically, Mr Wadephul said. “But we are committed to free trade. We believe that trade barriers must be dismantled, and we also believe that the European Union and Australia would benefit from such an agreement.

It is important to have another go, and I think we'll be -successful.

The Albanese government is offering to exempt EU countries from Australia’s $5bln luxury car tax if a deal is signed, in what would be a major win for Germany, Europe’s biggest car exporter. But Europe’s big agricultural exporters such as France have been more wary of a deal, seeing Australia’s efficient agriculture sector as a threat to their own farmers.

The Rural Fire Service (RFS) previously reported a deployable volunteer firefighter workforce of at least 70,000, but new data published this week from the Productivity Commission showed just over 50,000 volunteer firefighters.

The same data showed the RFS is battling an ageing workforce, with just 20,600 volunteer firefighters below the age of 50 and almost 20,000 over 60.

In 2024 the NSW Fire Brigade Employees' Union (FBEU), which represents professional firefighters, warned that the public were unaware that their fire district could make the difference between a guaranteed response from Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) and potentially no response from the RFS.

The distinction could leave communities in Rural Fire Districts, including several southwest Sydney suburbs, at risk.

A NSW government inquiry in 2024 found several RFS volunteers were deeply concerned about falsehoods surrounding % firefighter numbers.

Speaking at the hearing on RFS funding, Jindabyne Bush Fire Brigade Captain Colin Wooden said: We have significant concerns that the number of active volunteers is well below an adequate number and certainly a fraction of the often-quoted 70,000.

We know from experience that the RFS struggles to fill shifts and we don't believe having to rely on volunteers in their 60s, 70s and 80s to work 15-hour shifts to cover for the lack of resources is appropriate and safe, he warned.

The 20,000 shortfall in volunteer firefighters raises broader concerns about fire service coverage, given the growing risks linked to bushfires becoming more frequent and severe.

Scrutiny over the number of trained RFS firefighters has persisted for several years, with recent NSW Budget Estimates showing about 45,000 trained fire service volunteers, 25,000 less than the RFS figure.

Documents seen by The Daily Telegraph from as far back as March 2023 show the number of RFS members with bush firefighter training was 50,716, while the number with village firefighter competency was just 16,240.

The relatively low numbers of RFS volunteers trained in core skills comes despite the service having coverage over more urban areas due to development.

During the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires, the highest number of volunteers mobilised on a single day was just 3739, out of the 70,000 on the RFS books.

Ed: We have to add our bushfire volunteers at downtown Blandford are also struggling (age and internet) and had it not been for Captain Barney Field' devotion, many situations would not have been attended.
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If the government does not slash the capital gains tax (CGT) discount for property investors it will cost the budget $247 billion in forgone revenue over the next 10 years, according to new analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Office.

The PBO analysis, commissioned by the Greens and released yesterday, found that deductions claimed on real estate are double those claimed on shares.

Instead of supporting productive investment, the CGT discount is now overwhelmingly used to subsidise speculation on existing properties, driving prices and making home ownership even more difficult for renters, said Greens senator Nick McKim.

Economists argue that winding back the discount would ease some pressure on house prices but not enough to materially shift housing affordability in the market. Independent economist Chris Richardson said reducing the CGT discount to 33% would likely lead to a 1.5 to 2% fall in house prices.

It would unwind two months of 2025’s growth in housing prices, he told the Australian Financial Review. That’s far from nothing. Yet, it is neither apocalyptic nor revolutionary.

news.com.au reported on Wednesday the federal government was considering slashing the capital gains tax discount for property investors, which sits at 50%, in the May budget.

Australians who sell an investment property held for 12 months or more are only taxed on half of the profit made on the purchase price.

Critics argue that encourages investors to park their money in housing — putting upward pressure on prices and taking homes off the market for owner-occupiers.

Latest figures come from Treasuries Tax Expenditure and Insight Statement indicate it will cost $21.8 billion to the budget in 2025-26.

One economist who spoke to news.com.au described the potential move as absurd, while another said it was the single best policy that will help make housing more affordable.

Reforms to half the CGT discount for housing were taken to the 2015 and 2019 elections by former Labor leader Bill Shorten but were shelved after being blamed for contributing to the party’s defeat.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers downplayed the report, stating the government understood the intergenerational issues in housing but had other priorities when it came to tax reform.

Cutting income taxes, standard deduction, a fairer superannuation system from top to bottom, making sure we're getting the multinational tax regime right. Those are our priorities, he said on Wednesday.

But other senior government figures stopped short of ruling it out when asked in media interviews this week, with cabinet secretary Andrew Charlton saying May’s budget will be a budget of reform.

News of changes to the discount was probably not all that surprising, but disappointing, Robert Carling, a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, said.

The capital gains tax discount has been a target for years, he told news.com.au.

It keeps being revisited because people have this misconceived notion that the 50% discount is too much. I think that’s wrong.

Malaysia plans to implement a proposed ban by July and, in France, president Emmanuel Macron has declared the brains of the country’s children are not for sale, calling for legislation to be fast-tracked to ensure a ban for under-15s is in effect by the start of the school year this September.

Spain, Italy, Greece and Germany are also considering restrictions on social media use. Australia’s bold initiative is being closely observed.

As the first report from the e-Safety Commissioner was released last month, stating that 4.7 million accounts have been flagged and deactivated across the affected platforms, commissioner Julie Inman Grant was quick to remind sceptics the policy is about resetting cultural norms and the benefits may take years to fully manifest.

Meanwhile, what has really changed for teens?

As the restrictions loomed in December, the Guardian spoke with five teenagers about the ban. Nearly two months later, some were still yet to have their accounts disabled, while others had taken pre-emptive steps to ensure they were never flagged.

Re-emerging on platforms as adults, some were shocked with the content they were greeted with.

Others have simply chosen to pivot to alternative apps for messaging and accessing content that’s available without an account, but say their screen time hasn't been reduced.

I turn 16 in a few weeks and most of my friends are older than me so it hasn't interrupted my life much. I haven't tried to get around the ban because it’s such a short time. In the meantime, some of my friends save up reels to share with me in person, which is quite fun, one respondent said.

“We can have a good laugh together then and I prefer that over getting it sent to me and laughing alone. It’s more fun.

“The only thing I've noticed is that I'm a bit out of the loop sometimes, mostly just with references friends might make to viral content that I've missed.

I have missed out on some holiday snaps friends posted and spent more time watching Netflix on my phone instead of scrolling. Overall though it’s pretty much business as usual.

Another responded: the restrictions didn't interfere with me and my friends' interactions via social media at all. We all just deleted some of our old accounts a couple of days before the restrictions kicked in and created new ones with fake birthdays about a week after. I've got new accounts on TikTok and Snapchat and Instagram hasn't flagged my old account as underage yet. It was so much easier than we thought it would be.

No one I know was even subjected to facial recognition when they started a new account. I'd noted down everyone who I wanted to stay in touch with, made a username people could recognise me by and just started fresh.

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 Manouïlsky (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.