Paul Furst

Forensic psychiatrist, mental health advocate and systems thinker. Opinions my own. RT not endorsement.

[Josh Bornstein @JoshBBornstein]

When media outlets like the AFR publish editorials like this, they undermine the democratic rationale of journalism. Instead of holding power to account, they become propagandists for the richest and most powerful.

[Michael Pascoe @MichaelPascoe01]

All too rare. @FinancialReview should ask permission to reprint it

[Dirtyleftie @CraigSarg73]

Australia now has the world’s strongest economy and some of its weakest economic reporting.

Coverage of the latest Federal Budget exposed just how far standards in Australia’s media have declined.

The Budget data showed Australia remains one of the strongest-performing advanced economies on Earth. It is currently the only country with unemployment and inflation both below 4.7%, median adult wealth above US$250,000, triple-A credit ratings from all major agencies, moderate interest rates, and government debt below 25% of GDP.

On top of that, the Budget introduced reforms aimed at tackling long-standing structural inequities changes that many economists argue were overdue.

In most countries, results like these would dominate headlines and strengthen public confidence. Instead, much of Australia’s media responded with outrage, fear campaigns and ideological attacks.

Headlines warned of “budget debacles”, “dire consequences”, “war on wealth”, and “further pain”, while largely ignoring Australia’s globally leading economic performance.

Much of the commentary relied on the same recycled narratives that have dominated economic reporting for years narratives that often collapse under scrutiny.

Claim: Living standards are falling.
Reality: Living standards dipped globally after COVID, including in Australia, but key indicators have rebounded strongly since 2023. Australians are travelling overseas in record numbers, spending more on dining, retail and discretionary goods, and consumer activity has surged.

Claim: Wages are going backwards.
Reality: Real wages were hit during the inflation spike that followed the pandemic, but wage growth has now outpaced inflation. Since late 2023, wages, pensions and welfare payments have all risen faster than consumer prices.

Claim: Australia is a high-tax country.
Reality: Australia remains one of the lower-taxed advanced economies. The GST is just 10%, far below consumption taxes across much of Europe, while Australia’s total tax-to-GDP ratio sits near the bottom of the OECD.

Claim: Labor keeps increasing taxes.
Reality: IMF data places Australia among the lowest-taxing developed economies in both 2025 and 2026.

Claim: Labor is anti-business.
Reality: Business profits outside mining have reached record highs, while employment and expansion across many sectors continue to grow.

Claim: Labor spends recklessly.
Reality: Spending as a share of GDP under Anthony Albanese remains below levels seen under several previous governments, including the Morrison Government.

Claim: Business investment is collapsing.
Reality: Investment stagnated during the Coalition years but has resumed growth under the current government.

The bigger issue is what this says about Australia’s media culture.

Economic reporting increasingly resembles political campaigning rather than factual analysis. Too often, selective statistics, misleading framing and emotionally loaded commentary replace balanced reporting.

When positive economic outcomes are ignored while fear and outrage dominate coverage, it damages public trust, distorts national debate and weakens social cohesion.

Australia’s economy is not perfect. Productivity, housing affordability and inequality remain serious challenges. But pretending the country is in economic collapse despite internationally strong results does not inform the public. It misleads them.

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

Hot Fuzz (2007) is one of the most tightly constructed comedies ever made. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg pack the script so densely that almost every line ends up as a setup, payoff, callback, or sly reference to classic action movies.

[Protect Kamala Harris ✊ @DisavowTrump20]

🚨NEW: Kerry Kennedy has announced Late Show Host Stephen Colbert is the recipient of the 2025 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for his advocacy for free speech and speaking truth to power.

RETWEET to congratulate Colbert on this honor!

[Allen Frances @AllenFrancesMD]

Finding: Healthy people who use chatbots a lot were not harmed by them.

Not that reassuring because of folie-a-chatbot: (suicidal/psychotic/anorexic symptoms triggered de novo or in patients with pre-existing psych disorder.

Include chatbot use in all differential diagnoses.

[Crikey @crikey_news]

Opinion | News Corp’s controlling share of real estate company REA Group is worth about $13.75 billion — about 65% of News Corp's entire market value. No wonder The Australian is tut-tutting so hard. https://t.co/et8SzJsR2Z

[Tyler Black, MD @tylerblack32]

Nothing says "I have no idea what I'm talking about" more than stating that "antipsychotics don't have meaningful benefit in psychosis."

[Stephen Koukoulas @TheKouk]

Some frenzied feedback on the below: The cookers hate facts - but here are a few:
1990:
60% of the population finished year 12 - now 80%+;
8% of the population had a uni degree - now 34%
Female participation rate 52% - now 63%
Inflation was 6.5% - now 4.1%
Cash rate was 17% - now 4.35%
Life expectancy was 76 years - now 85 years
To name a few ...
Is 2026 better than 1990?
Of course it is.

[Peter FitzSimons @Peter_Fitz]

Thoughts?
To me this is MADNESS.
Can anyone think that, presented with two paths at an election - the Trumpian and non-Trumpian - Australia would EVER say, "Yup, let's emulate the worst US President in the history of the world"?
#Seriously. #Auspol

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Many of them didn't. Your great-great-grandmother was probably drinking opium for her nerves, sold at the corner shop as cheap as a pint of beer. It was called laudanum, a mix of opium and alcohol that doctors handed out for anxiety, sleeplessness, and "women's troubles." Mothers fed it to crying babies. The babies often stopped crying because they stopped breathing.

The men drank. By 1830 the average American was putting away almost two bottles of liquor a week. Whiskey cost less than coffee or milk. People started their day with a shot and ended it with another. Toddlers drank from their parents' rum mugs.

ADHD has a long paper trail. A Scottish doctor described kids who couldn't focus in 1798. By 1846 there was a popular German children's book about a boy called Fidgety Philipp who couldn't sit still. In 1902, a London children's doctor named George Still wrote a famous paper on the same kids and called it a "defect of moral control." Same kid, three different centuries.

Depression and anxiety had old names too. Melancholia, hysteria, the vapors. Treatments included bloodletting, ice baths, and chaining people to a wall. By 1937, American mental hospitals held 451,672 patients and took up more than half of every hospital bed in the country. Inside the walls, about 1 in 10 patients died each year.

Then came the lobotomy. Between 1949 and 1952, around 50,000 Americans were strapped to a chair while a doctor hammered an ice pick through the thin bone above their eye and wiggled it around inside their brain. It took about ten minutes. Sixty percent of the patients were women. About 1 in 20 died from the procedure. Many of the ones who lived came out with no personality left. The man who invented the procedure won a Nobel Prize.

Britain's male suicide rate hit 30.3 per 100,000 in 1905. The lowest rates ever recorded in British history are happening right now.

Plenty of our ancestors didn't make it. They drank themselves dead. They overdosed on shop-bought opium. They got locked in asylums and never came out. They had picks driven through their eye sockets. They killed themselves in numbers we don't see today. The conditions were always there. The treatments just used to be worse than the disease.

[Allen Frances @AllenFrancesMD]

I've had numerous debates with antipshchiatry movement. We agree about overtreatment/but totally disagree re undertreatment.

Antipsychiatry types dont care about the needs of patients who desperately do need meds & shameful neglect of 700,000 psych patients in jail or homeless.

[Simon Banks @SimonBanksHB]

Just your friendly reminder that the Howard and Costello Government still comfortably retain the record for the highest taxing Budgets in Australian history

With 24.2% of GDP in the 2004-05 and 2005-06 Budgets

[Peter FitzSimons @Peter_Fitz]

Sickening.

[Dan Fangirl 🤓 @ChristyDanFan]

Bless the Murdoch tabloids and their biased shite. How did they react when Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party broke major election promises? They praised it. Here is a reminder. Enjoy! Also, cry me a river!

[The Shovel @TheShovel]

“People have had enough of the hand-out culture that’s taken over this country."

https://t.co/fxPhd8eW02

[stranger @strangerous10]

Peta Credlin says she’s found the problem with the Libs, they haven’t lurched far enough to the Right.🙄 Blames those horrible moderates with “big moderate voices” forcing Labor-lite policies.🤔
You know, like the One Flag policy, exiting Net Zero🤣
You cant fix stupid. #auspol

[kristina. @cosmepolitics]

oh this isn’t an exaggeration.

this is exactly how tucker carlson is.

[Anthony Klan @Anthony_Klan]

Renewables surpass coal power globally. This is why bad actor politicians, One Nation, etc, are going into hyperdrive. Their puppet masters, fossil fuels, are increasingly desperate. It’s why the lies are even more extreme — and even more obvious…