Volume 1 · Seven essays · Out now

How Australia Undid Itself

Seven essays on how a country with every advantage talked itself out of them, one sensible decision at a time.

How Australia Undid Itself: Seven Essays

The new oil, and the old habit■Freedom On Someone Else's Desk■You Peanut: How a One-Liner Becomes a Pile-On■The one percent line■Seven yen off■Deep or Just Rested■The Label on the Tin■The new oil, and the old habit■Freedom On Someone Else's Desk■You Peanut: How a One-Liner Becomes a Pile-On■The one percent line■Seven yen off■Deep or Just Rested■The Label on the Tin■

Four Sections

Pick a desk. Newest first inside each.

What this is

Rico Holt writes about how Australia undid itself, and who let it happen.

The Essays

Newest first. Start at the top.

A jerry can beside a pile of pale ore on a steel bench

01 · 6 min read · Lead essay

The new oil, and the old habit

The world now treats minerals and fuel as security. Australia mostly ships them raw and stores little at home. This opening essay of Under Our Feet puts the official numbers side by side and asks who decided, and who gained.

Australia mostly ships them raw and stores little at home.

A closed grey laptop, a power board and an ochre mug on a worn desk

024 min read

Freedom On Someone Else's Desk

Meta says its new open-weight model brings advanced AI to your desktop, including at home. It does. Two M5 Ultra Mac Studios' worth of home. Mine is a laptop with a sticker on it.

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A single peanut surrounded by empty glasses

036 min read

You Peanut: How a One-Liner Becomes a Pile-On

A pile-on is mostly a reaction to the messenger, not the message. Clown gifs, gun stats and chatbot jibes aren't arguments. They're identity moves.

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A brass balance weighing books against an iron weight

044 min read

The one percent line

Germany's 2027 draft federal budget borrows €118.7 billion in the core budget. €85.4 billion of that sits outside the debt brake, under a constitutional exemption written in March 2025.

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An old analogue electricity meter on a pale plaster wall above a stack of cream certificates tied with cloth tape on a timber shelf

054 min read

Seven yen off

Since January 2023, Japan's government has paid power and gas retailers, round after round, to take money off each kilowatt-hour and cubic metre they sell. The latest round covers July to September 2026.

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