The article discusses the interconnected challenges facing contemporary politics, focusing on issues like inflation, interest rates, AI ethics, and immigration policies in Australia. It argues that these problems are complex and often worsen each other, leading to public anxiety and a sense of political desperation as solutions come with significant trade-offs. The author highlights specific examples such as government spending cuts for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and potential economic risks associated with proposed changes to immigration policies.
Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-10-08,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
This week it’s immigration.
asserted
it → ’ → ?
These issues are never neatly confined to a single political week, of course.
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issues → confine → course
They don’t come and go away.
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They → come → ?
They’re more like the clamour of an unruly classroom: always rumbling away, driving the background noise from which there is no respite, occasionally piercing the din to demand attention like fingernails down the blackboard.
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They → ’re → blackboard
But look at them all at once, and you see why we have the political mood we do: fevered, anxious, tumultuous.
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we → look → mood
That’s because none of these is a discrete issue.
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none → ’ → these
They are instead wickedly integrated, such that they crash into one another, each demanding a solution that has a real risk of making things worse.
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things → integrate → risk
I don’t mean to say politics was ever neat, or issues hermetically sealed.
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issues → mean → ?
I mean only to say we’ve approached a critical point where the trade-offs seem intolerable.
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offs → mean → point
And that shows up politically in voters’ desire for constant change.
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that → show → change
Let’s start with inflation.
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’s → start → inflation
It’s about the worst economic problem a government can have because the responses we demand either make the problem worse and more enduring, or plunge us into acute misery.
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problem → ’ → misery
We demand cost-of-living relief from government, which is inflationary.
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which → demand → government
Or we demand reduced government spending – though very rarely by specifying the cuts – which will almost certainly deny people cherished services.
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which → demand → services
If the government slashed these, it would receive no thanks.
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it → slash → thanks
Even its huge NDIS cuts don’t reduce today’s spending: they mean NDIS spending still grows, just slower than originally forecast.
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spending → reduce → spending
Still, they bring political pain.
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they → bring → pain
But cut too much, or at the wrong time, and you end up in recession.
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you → cut → recession
Normally when you have an inflation problem, you have high economic growth and low unemployment, so removing government money from the economy should do the trick.
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removing → have → trick
House prices are falling.
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prices → fall → ?
One clear possibility, which the Reserve Bank acknowledges, is that the economy is about to dip, and that the recent interest-rate hikes haven’t yet done their work.
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hikes → acknowledge → work
Maybe that’s wrong.
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that → ’ → ?
But if it’s right, and you slash government spending to fight inflation, the whole thing might crash.
uncertain
thing → ’ → inflation
Especially if you’re about to slash immigration
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you → ’re → immigration
We’ve already seen One Nation wave away economists who say its policy of depopulation would cause a recession.
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policy → see → recession
Now the Coalition is waving away similar warnings its newly announced policy – the greatest cut in Australian history, it boasts – would damage economic growth and leave us with a skills shortage.
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it → wave → shortage
Labor’s version diminishes the workforce on which rural businesses especially rely.
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businesses → diminish → which
Economists broadly agree this reverse auction carries serious economic risk.
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auction → agree → risk
The central problem is this: anything more than slight economic growth in our economy causes inflation.
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anything → cause → inflation
As things stand, we have a choice between a stagnant economy and an inflationary one.
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we → stand → economy
The solution is to boost productivity, which the Reserve Bank lamented last week “is doing nothing”.
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Bank → boost → nothing
But throughout human history, advances in productivity have come overwhelmingly from new technology, like the plough or the steam engine.
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advances → come → plough
Today’s version is AI, which is why governments are so keen to extract its benefits.
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governments → extract → benefits
The Albanese government’s rosy productivity forecasts rely on it.
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forecasts → rely → it
The problem, as the Reserve Bank has warned, is it might turn out to be a bubble.
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it → warn → ?
Oh, and that it might kill us all.
uncertain
it → kill → us
To summarise then, we have a diabolical economic problem that is inflicting all sorts of pain, and our response is either to reach for tools that will probably make it worse, or to seek refuge in what might destroy us.
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what → summarise → us
An Australian problem suggests an Australian cause.
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problem → suggest → cause
One like this suggests something far deeper: a system that has reached critical instability, offering only bad choices.
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that → suggest → choices
Whoever can untie it will rule.
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untie → untie → it
…and 26 more, not listed.
The Aporia
