Last week the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, made his tenth appearance at the National Press Club as Labor leader. Peter Dutton hasn't spoken there since 2021, when he was the minister for defence.

Does the resounding defeat of the Voice referendum on the weekend show that Australia hasn't changed much since the bad old days, or have things just become much worse?

Last week, the National Press Club in Canberra hosted two major press conferences, one day apart. The first was a desperate plea for attention from Nick Kaldas, the Chair of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicides. The second was an all-out attack on the Voice to Parliament, via Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians.

The Australian Senate was the site of most of the action last week as parliament resumed. On Friday, the red chamber sat alone, going until after 4am on Saturday morning as Liberals and Nationals spun out the debate on whether there should be a Voice referendum, led by the pen-pointing cyborg-impersonator Michaelia Cash.