Sydney’s Gaza protests, a CFMEU corruption bombshell and Malcolm Turnbull’s “everyone is centrist” fantasy collide in this episode of The Mark Pirotta Show, as I dig into why the political class is losing control while working Australians are getting smashed.
I start with the latest protest fallout: fresh Sydney footage, activists rallying at Surry Hills Police Station, Greens senators attacking police conduct and the now‑infamous 15‑year‑old who allegedly bit an officer’s finger while the media still runs “peaceful prayer” headlines. In the age of email, DMs and social media, most modern protests look less like serious democratic pressure and more like brain‑rot theatre built around foreign conflicts Australia barely touches.
From there I walk through how fake and manipulated this space has become: the “1,000 Jews against Herzog” letter riddled with bogus entries and even slurs, and a supposedly devout imam seen praying in the street exposed as the same man who celebrated October 7 as a day of joy. When that’s who stands at the front of a march, “peaceful protest” stops meaning anything. I make the case that Australia needs a much stronger defamation culture, because people who throw around words like “genocide”, “war criminal” and “racist state” with no evidence face zero consequence.
Then we pivot to hard corruption: a newly un‑redacted report showing how the CFMEU allegedly turned Victorian infrastructure projects into a $15‑billion playground for bikies, gang‑linked firms and phantom companies while taxpayers were sold “nation building”. The state was effectively held hostage by a militant union and a Labor government too weak or too compromised to protect the public.
I link that contempt straight into the way elites talk about voters. Labor and Greens MPs sneer that Pauline Hanson supporters are poor, uneducated racists. Malcolm Turnbull pops up to claim real Australians are all centrists and that the Liberal Party is making a mistake speaking to Sky News viewers. I explain why this is anti‑democratic: politics is supposed to represent real divisions — left vs right, globalist vs nationalist — not enforce one mushy Uni‑Party forever.
We look at how Turnbull and his faction hollowed out the Liberal Party’s conservative core, how Susan Ley now seems to stand for everything and nothing, and why a fake “centre” actually drifts toward soft dictatorship. If only one set of opinions is considered legitimate, elections become a ritual, not a choice — and parties like One Nation start soaking up the working‑class rage.
Finally, I unpack the hip‑pocket squeeze that’s driving that revolt. Jim Chalmers sharpening the knife for higher super taxes and wealth grabs, the way middle‑income earners on roughly $100k–$250k carry the system, and new data showing households in 2025 with a fraction of the disposable income they had in 2022. Housing, rates, immigration‑driven demand and redistributive policy all stack up — and the people who tightened their belts, skipped holidays and built a nest egg are now treated as thieves to be looted.
If you’re sick of protest theatre, union rackets, “centrist” gaslighting and politicians who empty your wallet while calling you stupid, this episode is for you.
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