● THE INFLATION RORT: Four rises in 2026   ♦ GAS REVENUE FOREGONE: A$537 A SECOND SINCE 1 JULY 2022   ♦ THE INFLATION RORT: Above the 0.25   ♦ THE REPORTING RORT: The fifth system   ♦ THE AIRLINE RORT: ONGOING · UNRESOLVED · 8 INVESTIGATIONS   ♦ THE CARTEL SWITCH: ONGOING · UNRESOLVED · 1 INVESTIGATIONS   ♦ THE COMPLIANCE MACHINE: ONGOING · UNRESOLVED · 1 INVESTIGATIONS   ♦ 105 ENTITIES TRACKED · 101 INVESTIGATIONS · 0 STRUCTURAL BREAK-UPS   ♦ THE SURCHARGE RORT: The cost the Tax Office won’t wear   ♦ THE SURCHARGE RORT: A line off the receipt

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Where policy meets money. Who funds whom, who blocks what, and how the machinery of government serves interests that are not yours.

71 investigations18 cases

Fig. 01 / On this desk · the cases running on this beat

The ACCCFEDERAL REGULATOR · 25 HEREThe RBAFEDERAL REGULATOR · 22 HEREAnthony AlbanesePERSON · POLITICIAN · 19 HEREThe PRRTMECHANISM · TAX · 13 HEREJim ChalmersPERSON · TREASURER · 12 HEREWoodsideCOMPANY · GAS · 11 HEREThe Revolving DoorMECHANISM · 11 HERESantosCOMPANY · GAS · 10 HERE
Fig. 01Source: beat desk · cases assembled from the archiveAs of 2026‑10‑04Auto-assembled

Fig. 02 / The evidence · every file on this beat

The Inflation Rort · 20
01The two inflationsIn 2022, Australian inflation peaked at 7.8 per cent. The primary causes were supply-side: COVID supply chains, the Ukraine war, global energy price spikes. The Reserv…02GreedflationGrocery prices rose 24 per cent in five years. The ACCC’s Supermarkets Inquiry found Coles and Woolworths expanded their profit margins during the worst inflation in a…03Why the RBA did all the workThirteen rate rises. The biggest tightening since 1990. Budget in surplus (2022-23 and 2023-24). Some of the largest firms widened their margins, though Reserve Bank r…04Who rate rises hurtRoy Morgan’s survey model put 32.5 per cent of owner-occupier mortgage holders (1,786,000 people, not households) at risk of mortgage stress in July 2026, the highest …05Who rate rises helpedIn 2026, advertised variable mortgage rates rose by the full 0.25 points in the month of each of the first three rises, 0.75 points in all, while advertised transactio…06The fiscal tools they didn’t useThe UK introduced a windfall tax on oil and gas companies the same month the RBA began raising rates. The EU deployed a solidarity contribution levy on fossil fuel sec…07The political connectionsThe four major banks donated to both major parties. The fossil fuel companies whose export prices were driving energy inflation donated to both major parties. Woolwort…08The reckoningThe inflation came down. The RBA’s rate rises worked, in the sense that inflation returned to target. This is not contested. What is contested is how the reduction was…09Four rises in 2026On 29 September 2026 the Reserve Bank raised the cash rate to 4.60 per cent, unanimously: its fourth rise this year and the highest rate since 2011. Its reasons put a …10A global war, a national rateThe Reserve Bank does not deny the war: every statement since March names it, and today's puts it first. But its Governor says the rises 'will have no impact' on the o…11What a rate rise buysThe Reserve Bank’s own models say a one-point rise lowers inflation by an eighth to half a point, one to two years later in most of its models, and, in one of its two …12Who pays for the risesOn the same hypothetical $600,000 loan, four 2026 rises add about $364 a month, Canstar projects: about 8.4 per cent of a $1,000-a-week gross wage, and 0.44 per cent o…13Are corporations untouched?Not all of them. From June 2022 to June 2026, financial corporations’ surplus rose 36.6 per cent (a whole sector, not banks alone) and private non-financial corporatio…14The savers’ shareDid the banks keep the 2026 rises from savers? Not most of them, on average, on the Reserve Bank’s own tables: what households were paid on deposits rose about as much…15What the Reserve Bank pays the banksThe Reserve Bank paid about $36.9 billion in interest on bank reserves over the three years to June 2025 (THE RORT’s sum of audited figures), and its pandemic bank loa…16Is it the only way?The Governor calls the cash rate ‘all we have’. The government’s own Budget says fiscal policy is ‘better suited than monetary policy to respond to supply shocks, such…17Nine people, one rateNine people set the cash rate. The Treasurer appoints six of them. The Treasury Secretary sits and votes, which the RBA Review called "unusual" but kept, saying a Trea…18Seven votes for a gas export tax, all lostSenator David Pocock asked on Tuesday afternoon why it is “always” households who are stung while “massive multinationals bank wartime profits”. The Parliament’s own r…19The grillForty questions to the Reserve Bank Governor and Board, the Treasurer, the Prime Minister and the Opposition, each built on their own words and records, most answerabl…24Above the 0.25NAB’s variable home loan rise is the Reserve Bank’s 0.25, no more. Its owner-occupier principal-and-interest fixed rates for new loans rose 0.35 to 0.47 points in two …
Australia's Gas Heist · 8
01We gave away the gasAustralia is one of the largest LNG exporters on earth. Australians pay more for their own gas than buyers in Tokyo. The companies that take it pay almost no royalties…02Beer, HECS, and the broken taxAustralia has a special tax designed to make sure citizens benefit from gas super-profits. It collects less than the beer excise. Australians repay their university de…03What Norway builtNorway and Australia both discovered oil and gas. Both had booms. Both watched multinationals extract billions of dollars from their continental shelves. Norway taxed …05The political connectionsFossil fuel and mining companies donated at least A$3.98 million to Australia’s major political parties in 2024–25, the year of the 2025 election, according to Climate…06How they killed the mining taxIn 2010, a Prime Minister tried to make the mining industry pay a fair price for public resources. The industry spent A$22 million in six weeks. The Prime Minister was…07Why nothing changesThe gas rort has been documented for more than a decade. The PRRT has been reviewed, reformed, and reformed again. The case for change is not in dispute. Yet the syste…13The inquiry that couldn't agreeA Senate committee documented a gas tax that lets multi-billion-dollar exporters pay near-zero, then formally recorded it could not agree to change anything.15The buyer and the backstopFirst gas from the Beetaloo was commissioned on 1 September 2026 under a binding take-or-pay contract announced in April 2024, in which the Northern Territory Governme…
The Roads Rort · 8
01The tollThe WestConnex M4 cost $4.56 in 2017. It costs $10.38 today. Australian consumer prices rose about 28 per cent over the same period. The toll rose 128 per cent. Drivin…02The modelThe toll road concession model works like this: a government needs a road built. It does not want to borrow to build it. It offers a private company the right to build…03Transurban: the monopolyTransurban was founded in 1996 with one road. It now holds full or partial ownership of every major toll road in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Its FY25 EBITDA was A$…04The fuel price cycleEvery week, petrol prices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide follow the same pattern: they fall during the week, then spike on Thursday or Friday, then fall a…05The political connectionsTransurban is a documented political donor to both major parties. The NSW Premier who sold WestConnex was described by academic analysis as selling to ‘one of his part…06Who owns the roadsTransurban’s largest shareholders include AustralianSuper and IFM Investors, the investment arm of the industry superannuation movement. AustralianSuper’s head of infr…07What the media coveredThe WestConnex 2021 sale was announced at a COVID media conference. The government led with a new Western Sydney investment fund. Reporters covered the fund. The finan…08What would fix itThe toll road concession model, as implemented in Australia, produces 75 per cent EBITDA margins, tolls rising faster than wages, and 40-year guarantees on rising retu…
Media Ownership · 5
01Who owns the news you think you’re readingAustralia has some of the most concentrated media ownership in the world. Three billionaires and a US conglomerate control almost everything you read, watch, and hear.…04Sky News and the regional captureIn Australian cities, you pay to watch Sky News Australia. In much of regional and rural Australia, it is your only available news channel, broadcasting free, all day,…05The revolving door between politics and mediaIn Australia, there is a well-worn path from parliament to the boardrooms and broadcasting studios of the companies that are supposed to be held to account by parliame…06501,876 signatures and nothing happenedIn October 2020, more Australians signed a petition calling for a royal commission into News Corp than have ever signed any petition in Australian parliamentary histor…07The levy that was designed to raise nothingThe scheme's own stated intent was that government would collect no net revenue at all, with any proceeds returned in full to newsrooms. By early August, reporting on …
The War Trade · 5
01Sixteen minutesThe United States went to war with Iran on 28 February 2026 from a ballroom at Mar-a-Lago. The record since then is not a finding of insider trading. It is a sequence …02Ninety-seven per centPolymarket ran contracts on the things the 2026 Iran war turned on, and some accounts bet on them as though they already knew the answer. At least fifty brand-new acco…03The Australian positionHancock Prospecting’s quarterly US filings show Gina Rinehart moving US$133 million into American defence contractors and gold in the war’s first quarter, then US$1.37…04The round tripThe war moved through the Australian share market twice, up and then down. On the first trading day after the strike, Santos and Woodside jumped almost 8 per cent as t…05Five dollarsAustralia's Parliament can find a five-dollar golf club membership and put it to the Prime Minister within a day. It has not put a single question to the forecast A$38…
The Airline Rort · 4
02The duopolyAustralia's aviation market has been a duopoly for most of the past 35 years. The same structure that existed before deregulation returned within a decade of deregulat…03The Qatar blockOn 10 July 2023, Transport Minister Catherine King rejected Qatar Airways' application to almost double its flights to Australia. Qatar found out via media. The letter…04Alan Joyce and the politiciansThe Chairman's Lounge has approximately 5,000 members. Around 90 per cent of federal parliamentarians are among them. Membership is free, by invitation of the Qantas C…08What would fix itThe reforms that would lower Australian airfares are known. The ACCC has identified them. Independent economists have modelled them. The Senate has recommended them. T…
The Reporting Rort · 4
01The inbox checked once a dayFor 84 days, by the government’s account, the only party that knew an AI agent had been inside a Services Australia portal was the company that built it. The state fou…02Nobody has to tellWe checked every reporting duty in Australian law that might have obliged OpenAI to tell the state its agent had been inside a Medicare portal. Each binds someone else…03Fourteen daysA Centrelink recipient given a notice has 14 days to tell the state about a change, and failing to comply is a crime. An AI company whose agent got inside a government…04The fifth systemOn Thursday 1 October, by the NSW Government's account, OpenAI told it that one of its models had entered a National Parks and Wildlife Service web application in June…
The Smear · 4
01Own it or delete itA One Nation cartoon brands a decorated soldier a traitor eight times. He gave his evidence under subpoena.02The writThe most decorated living soldier used the biggest defamation case in the country’s history to call reporters liars. A court found four murders.03Who paysIt looks like a fight between politicians. The bill lands on the people who never chose it: the witness, the reporter, the juror, the voter.04The patternAn old machine turns again in Australian politics: reputation is currency, and the writ and the smear are its transactions. Four recent cases, one currency, and it cut…
The Nature Rort · 2
01The pay-to-clear switch: national approvals wired to an offset market with two projects and zero certificatesThe Commonwealth is wiring national environmental approvals to a biodiversity offset market that today holds two projects and has issued nothing. The gap between the p…02Two paddocks and a deadlineThe government's own website now states, in its own words, that the four new National Environmental Standards bind no approval decision until on or before 1 December 2…
The Surcharge Rort · 2
01A line off the receiptMinisters said Australians would no longer pay $1.6 billion a year in card surcharges. That is the RBA’s estimate of surcharges already paid, and the RBA expects shopp…02The cost the Tax Office won’t wearThe ATO did not stop taking credit cards on 30 September. It stops after 30 November, saying it would not be appropriate for card fees to be transferred to the communi…
The Surveillance Rort · 2
01The sunset that won't setThe five year sunset on Australia's police hacking powers was built to force a reckoning: the reckoning arrived, the government's own watchdog found the system wanting…02The order that replaces the warrantNSW is detaching compelled phone-unlocking from the search warrant, selling the change as a gangland measure while the offence list runs far wider, and wiring toll cam…
The Cartel Switch · 1
01Thirteen days, pointed backwardsAct No. 48 of 2026 lets the Treasurer declare exceptional circumstances, a term the Act does not define, and that declaration unlocks a new ACCC power to authorise coo…
The Compliance Machine · 1
01Two machines, two clocksTwo welfare compliance powers are due to restart on 26 October 2026, if DEWR's assurance work is complete, and neither of the two Commonwealth Ombudsman investigations…
The Consultancy Rort · 1
01The crackdown that cost moreCanberra promised to rein in the Big Four consultants. The federal consultancy bill climbed to A$968.6 million. The money never left the building. Only the letterhead …
The Gambling Rort · 1
01The default is exposureThe Murphy committee said end every online gambling ad within three years. The law that passed makes exposure the default and builds a register of people who ask not t…
The Pork Barrel · 1
01The only golf clubMarrickville Golf Club was the only golf club invited for funding under a A$560 million program that sent nearly three-quarters of its money to seats the government al…
The Prison Contract Rort · 1
01Every failure listed, none pricedA statutory monitor reports on the privately run prison every year, and the report reaches the public as a bulleted list of notice types and months with no amount agai…
The Triple Zero Rort · 1
03One thousand and fiveTwenty-two months after the first outage, Optus says a firewall upgrade went wrong and Triple Zero calls failed for more than 14 hours in South Australia, Western Aust…
Fig. 02Source: article scan · grouped by the case each file belongs toAs of 2026‑10‑04Auto-assembled

Nobody curates this desk. It is assembled from every investigation that touches politics: the moment The Rort publishes another, it appears here, and the names that keep surfacing rise on their own.

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