The final day of my 2026 Byron Writers Festival went from John Howard's pernicious effect on Australia to poetry in the dark; from being funny about serious things to first time writers made good, and finally to the story of a wrongful conviction for murder.

Last Monday week, for the second time, a court held that Pauline Hanson’s tweet broke the law. Plenty will argue about what Hanson said. The harder question sits underneath...

With Tweed councillor Kimberly Hone accusing her fellow councillors of negotiating preference deals with an unnamed Northern Regional Planning Panel (NRPP) member – and her subsequent expulsion from the chamber around her refusal to retract her remarks, The Echo was provided comment from the man The Echo believes Cr Hone was referring to – planning academic at Bond Uni, Ned Wales.

After going through six prime ministers in the last ten years, the not-so United Kingdom is likely to soon notch up its seventh.

Pauline wants monoculture. No one really knows what she means. And we know that Pauline definitely doesn’t know what it means, she just knows it will create disturbance. So I’ve done a bit of a deep dive on what the mono might look like.

What is it with billionaires and islands? Donald Trump wants to resurrect the notorious prison island of Alcatraz to house ‘America’s most ruthless and violent offenders’. Perhaps subconsciously he is preparing his future island residence.  The sordid Epstein network is divided into those who did and did not travel to Epstein Island where, undoubtedly, heinous crimes occurred.

Last week Australia had a glimpse of what life might be like under Prime Minister Pauline Hanson, via two speeches, one in Canberra and one in Townsville.

Seven years since losing his seat in ignominious circumstances, Tony Abbott has returned from his long penance in the wilderness of Sky News and CPAC to become the latest president of what remains of the federal Liberal Party. He was elected unopposed after Alexander Downer withdrew.

In the kind of move that Labor once derided in their opponents, the government used the cover of the federal budget – while most journalists were literally locked up – to deliver its response to the late Peta Murphy's report into online gambling, 'You Win Some, You Lose More'.

A few weeks ago a trans woman told me she was a big Pauline Hanson supporter. WTF. How can a trans woman feel she is anyway represented, or safe, with One Nation? The same woman who teamed up with Holly Valance to release a parody version of Valances’ previous ‘hit’ (can we even call it that?) that mocks poor people, LGBTQ+ youth, women and the trans community.