Wooley: Try to keep up, because it’s been a busy news week

A new leader, a new minister, a new pope, a new plane and maybe even a new war … it’s all happening, writes Charles Wooley

Robbins Island, far North-West Tasmania, where there are plans for a 100-turbine wind farm. Credit: Bob Brown Foundation.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin once famously pronounced: “There are decades where nothing happens; then there are weeks when decades happen.”

In such a time and in such weeks we are now living, but where to begin? At home or abroad. With Albo’s ruthless factional cabinet reshuffle or with Trump’s backdown to China and the gift from Qatar of a “palace in the sky”, or a nuclear armed India and Pakistan on the edge of war and more drama in Gaza and Ukraine and not forgetting a new Pope.

Too much has happened, too much to worry, cry or laugh about, we might envy those people who say, “I never read newspapers, and I never watch the news”.

But as a journalist I am even more alarmed by that sentiment, and not only out of self interest but out of a lifelong belief that democracy is best served when the electorate is well-informed. When so much is happening should we pretend nothing is happening?

To start at home where Labor’s historic victory was already old news, Sussan Ley was the ‘new’ news, narrowly winning leadership of the Liberal Party and becoming Australia’s first female Opposition Leader.

Leader of the Opposition Sussan Ley addresses the media at a press conference at Parliament House on May 13, 2025 in Canberra. Ley became the first woman to lead the party after winning a party room vote 29-25 against Angus Taylor. Picture: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images

Given the field, she was the best choice as a necessary corrective for a conservative party out of step with the female half of our population. This will undoubtedly win back alienated votes at the next election, but given Albo’s crushing 95-seat victory, in the predictable course of electoral correction Labor will be in power for at least two more terms.

I’m not suggesting they have much in common other than a sharp sense of realpolitik, but having already cited Vladimir Ilyich Lenin let me balance that by quoting John Winston Howard: “Politics is governed by the iron laws of arithmetic.” Short of a coup d’etat that means Sussan Ley will be 70 by the time she gets to redecorate the Lodge. Perhaps it is in her stars. I read that in her youth an astrologer or numerologist suggested she would have better fortune in life if she added an extra ‘s’ to her name.

A former shearer’s cook and a stock mustering pilot with finance degrees, Sussan might still need to dust off her crystal ball. Will the conservative, traditionally male-dominated parliamentary liberals back her through the two terms it might take to develop and sell some attractive middle-of-the-road policies? Such as were so lacking last time around.

Senator Murray Watt, who was this week appointed as Australia’s new Minister for the Environment. Picture Lachie Millard / NewsWire

Meanwhile the new Labor Minister for the Environment, Queensland senator Murray Watt, will have to settle all the unfinished Tasmanian business left over after the ousting of Tanya Plibersek.

She has been relieved of what is clearly an impossible portfolio and sometimes a graveyard (remember Peter Garrett?). Tanya is moving to the relative simplicity of Social Services. It’s the same pay. But financially supporting a mere five million Australians will be so much easier than arbitrating the irreconcilable conflict between environmental science and resource-based profits.

Albo’s good factional mate Murray must now shoulder the burden and take on all the impossible contradictions of opening new gas fields and coal mines while paying lip service to carbon zero and settling a multitude of battles over water use and abuse on the overloaded river that bears his name.

That’s a promotion?

Robbins Island, in far North-West Tasmania, which is the site of a proposed 100-turbine wind farm, is likely to cause a few headaches for newly minted federal Environment Minister Murray Watt, according to Charles Wooley. Picture: The Bob Brown Foundation

And in troublesome Tasmania, the bane of environment ministers, there’s the six-times delayed decision on the Robbins Island wind farm, in Bass Strait. The critically endangered very cute orange-bellied parrot versus the environmental costs of installing otherwise virtuous renewable energy.

All over the nation as swathes of national parks and forests are cleared for “new-energy transmission pathways” (wind and solar powerlines) it’s the same argument; how much of the world do we destroy in order to save it?

Robbins Island, in Tasmania's far North-West, is a haven for thousands of migratory and resident bird species, but also the proposed site for a 100-turbine wind farm. Picture: Bob Brown Foundation

That’s the tough question that comes with a job no career politician really wants. And Tasmania doesn’t make it easier with delayed federal decisions over fish and fowl.

In politics, impossible decisions can always be deferred until a huge electoral victory brings with it the curse of actually having to do something.

“I THOUGHT it was a great gesture. When you park our plane against the planes from those countries, theirs look like they are from another world. It was a great gesture.”

Donald Trump never has trouble making decisions like annexing Canada and Greenland while levying tariffs on friend and foe alike. And just as remarkable, this week accepting a luxury $400m Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a gift from the Royal family of Qatar, to replace his 40-year-old presidential plane.

AMAC Aerospace photos show the interior of Qatari Airways Amiri Flight Boeing 747-8i BBJ A7-HBJ. President Donald Trump said this week that he wants to accept the $400m plane, and that it would later be donated to a presidential library. Picture: AMAC Aerospace

Trump didn’t hesitate to accept the gift and scoffed at those who questioned the propriety of the deal. “A very public and transparent transaction so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay TOP DOLLAR for the plane,” he posted on social media. “Anyone can do that.”

But it might never happen. The American Constitution bans any government official from accepting gifts in any form from a “king, prince, or foreign state” without the approval of Congress.

A leading New York Democrat described the deal as, “not just bribery, it’s premium foreign influence with extra legroom”.

Where the Don’s problem so often lies is in being unable to stick to his spur-of-the-moment decisions.

When policy is generated off the top of the head with no research or intellectual substance it is easy to change your mind.

As we saw this week, Trump has now backed down to China on trade tariffs, but only for 90 days.

Albo was in Jakarta this week but eventually he will have to go to Washington, and obviously he better take an expensive gift.

How about a nice unused presidential ferry or perhaps even the deeds to the entire island of Tasmania?

That would certainly make life much easier for the new federal minister for the environment.

AND FINALLY in this tumultuous week, whatever happened to our nation’s atheists? The medieval obscurantist process of selecting a new Pope was broadcast live and exhaustively by all television networks and was inescapable.

But where were our rationalists, our sceptics and our evidence-based science supporters? Maybe like me those atheists had already watched the movie and just wanted to see if the real thing was half as interesting.

I liked the movie but found the ending somewhat disappointing.

But that’s life.

Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist