Very local, state, national and the wider world, in everyday language, for people who haven’t got all day.
From a council meeting where nothing happening was the good news, to the women flocking to Pauline Hanson, to a Congress telling Trump to stop his war, here’s the local-to-global wrap for 4 June 2026.
Betty from Blacktown and her brother Kevin from Kiama, making sense of the world’s chaos the only sensible way: over toast, a strong cuppa, and a good long natter on the phone. That’s what this Catch Up is for.
Very Local: the extraordinary meeting where nothing happening was the good news
Here are the bits that caught my attention.
Council held an Extraordinary Meeting on Wednesday 27 May, and the headline is that nothing much happened, which in this case is the good news. Councillors voted unanimously to accept the variation to the Performance Improvement Order that Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig had offered. The State has given Council an extra twelve months to balance its budget, pushing the deadline out to the end of the 2027 to 28 financial year. CEO Jane Stroud was to write to the Minister confirming Council will work towards the new requirements.
Mayor Cameron McDonald welcomed it, and his framing was that it means Council will not have to cut community services or staff, at least not on the timetable that the original draft budget had been threatening. That is a real reprieve for the people whose jobs were on the line a few weeks ago.
The extra time does not make the underlying problem go away. The Minister was careful to say the order remains necessary because Council still faces serious financial sustainability challenges, and that the order does not make Council’s decisions for it. Council still has to do the hard work itself, just with more breathing room. So the unanimous vote was less a moment of drama and more everyone agreeing to accept a longer rope.
The detail I am keeping an eye on sits underneath all the calm. The revised timeline gives Council more flexibility to look at the long term future of its five tourist parks, and there are reportedly three unsolicited partnership offers from large operators already on the table. That is the holiday parks question we have been circling for a while, and it is the kind of thing that gets decided quietly while everyone is relieved about the budget extension. The strategic business case for Blue Haven Terralong is also written into the varied order, so that thread is still very much live.
The next one to watch is the Extraordinary Meeting on 30 June, where the actual budget and the planning documents get adopted. That is the one where the real numbers land.
Across the State (NSW)
The PIO variation is the local face of a wider NSW story, which is what happens to small councils that cannot make the sums work. Hoenig has chosen the patient path with Kiama rather than the heavy hand, more time and a Strategic Finance and Governance Improvement Plan rather than administrators. It is worth watching whether other councils in similar trouble get the same latitude, because that tells you whether Kiama is being treated as a special case or as a template.
Across the Country (Federal): the Hanson surge, and the women driving it
A Redbridge Group and Accent Research poll published by the Australian Financial Review put One Nation’s primary vote at 31 per cent, ahead of Labor on 28 and the Coalition on 20. Two years ago One Nation was sitting around 7 per cent. That is not a wobble, that is a genuine shift, and it follows real electoral results in South Australia and in the federal seat of Farrer rather than poll noise alone.
According to an April study by the same pollsters, Hanson is the most popular party leader among women voters, ahead of the Prime Minister, and One Nation is women’s leading first preference party. On net favourability, her approval minus her disapproval, Hanson came in at zero, which sounds unremarkable until you see that every other leader was in negative territory. Anthony Albanese was on minus 19. So Hanson is the least disliked leader in the country, and she is doing it partly on the strength of women.
That cuts against decades of assumption. Far right parties have traditionally been thought of as men’s parties, both in who votes for them and in the very masculine image they project. The Conversation ran a good piece making the case that what we are seeing here is not a local quirk but part of a global pattern. Across Europe, parties of the hard right are pulling in more women than they used to, and a striking number are now led by women. Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France, Alice Weidel in Germany. Hanson belongs in that company now, not as an oddity but as part of the trend.
So why women, and why now? The pollsters point at mood rather than ideology. Around 63 per cent of respondents said the country is heading in the wrong direction, and Redbridge’s read is that this pervasive sourness is what is feeding anti establishment support. When people stop believing the major parties understand their lives, especially on cost of living and housing, the protest vote has to go somewhere, and One Nation has positioned itself as the somewhere. The voters switching are not all lifelong believers. The coverage is full of former Liberal and former Labor voters, including women in their thirties working in sectors like aged care, who say the old parties no longer speak for them.
It is tempting to read a 31 per cent poll as the country falling into the sea, but keep some perspective. On a two party preferred basis Labor still leads One Nation 51 to 49, our preferential voting system makes it very hard for a minor party to convert a big primary vote into actual power, and Hanson sits in the Senate, which means she cannot be Prime Minister from where she is. Some commentators argue, fairly, that the surge is being over read and that One Nation remains more brand than government in waiting. I think that is partly right and partly wishful.
A party does not need to win government to reshape what the major parties say and do. The Coalition’s troubles and Labor’s negative numbers are exactly the soil this grows in, and the women’s vote is the signal that it has broken out of its old, narrow base. That is the bit I would not wave away.
The deeper point, and one we have talked about before, is that the conventional remedy of voting people out does not seem to be producing the policy change voters actually want. The cost of living and housing pressures that are driving this have not been fixed by changes of government, so the frustration keeps looking for a new outlet. Hanson is the current outlet. If the conditions do not change, the outlet will keep finding voltage. I have had more to say about this on Substack here
Around the World (International): Congress tells Trump to stop the war
The Sydney Morning Herald has been fairly thin on Trump and tariffs lately, while the American press is consumed by something our papers are barely touching, which is the war with Iran and the political revolt it is now causing inside Trump’s own party.
The United States, alongside Israel, struck Iran in late February. More than three months on, the war is still going, six American servicemembers have been killed, and it was launched without Congress authorising it. That last point matters constitutionally, because under the American system only Congress can declare war, and there is a War Powers Act designed to force a president to either get authorisation or withdraw.
On Wednesday 3 June, the House of Representatives, which the Republicans control, passed a war powers resolution directing Trump to end hostilities with Iran. The vote was 215 to 208, and four Republicans crossed the floor to vote with the Democrats. That is the clearest rebuke yet of how Trump has handled the war, and it came from his own chamber. The four who broke ranks were Tom Barrett, Warren Davidson, Brian Fitzpatrick and Thomas Massie.
The vote is largely symbolic. The Senate has tried and failed several times to pass its own version, an earlier attempt was blocked 52 to 47, and even if both chambers passed it, Trump would almost certainly veto it, and his administration disputes whether the War Powers Act is even constitutional. So Congress has sent a message rather than pulled a lever. House Speaker Mike Johnson defended Trump and reached for the line that Iran declared war on America decades ago.
It still matters. The reason Republicans are nervous is the economy. American producer prices posted their biggest jump in four years in April, petrol has gone up, and Democrats have made affordability their central midterm message ahead of the November elections that decide control of Congress. Privately, Republicans in tight races are reportedly worried the war could become a political liability if it drags on. Trump’s own answer to that pressure has been to say he is in no hurry to do a deal. So the war, the tariffs and the cost of living are not three separate stories. They are one story about prices and patience, and the politicians who are closest to the voters are the ones blinking first.
This is why it pays to read across. The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Reuters and CBS have all been on the war powers vote and the economic fallout. Al Jazeera has the detail on the earlier Senate blockages. Our own papers, by contrast, have given Trump’s domestic troubles a light touch. If you only read the Herald you would think tariffs were a minor item. If you read the American press you would think the Trump presidency was being tested by its own party. Both are looking at the same man.
The bottom line
It all joins up, Betty. People are unhappy about prices and housing and the feeling that nobody in charge is listening, and that unhappiness is showing up everywhere. In Kiama it looks like a council buying time on a budget it cannot yet balance. In Canberra it looks like a third of voters, women now very much included, parking their vote with Pauline Hanson. In Washington it looks like members of the President’s own party voting to stop his war because they are frightened of what petrol prices will do to them in November. Different countries, different scales, same engine.
hopeful note, and I do look for one, is that the American vote is a reminder that institutions can still push back.
It was mostly symbolic, but a legislature telling an executive to stop, with members crossing party lines to do it, is the system doing what it is meant to do. That is worth holding onto when the news makes you want to switch it all off. Plenty to chew over with Kevin on the next call.
Sources: The Bugle, Wave FM, Kiama Council, Mirage News, Australian Financial Review, The Conversation, The New Daily, NPR, Washington Post, Reuters, CBS News, Al Jazeera, and others.
A note on Betty and Kevin: Betty grew up in Kiama before life took her to Blacktown. Her brother Kevin still lives in their old home town. Keeping up with what’s happening down the coast is partly nostalgia for the place she came from, but mostly it’s how she and Kevin fill those long phone calls she looks forward to all week. That’s what this Catch Up is really for. Not just the news, but the conversations it keeps alive.
Pay did rise since 2021. Prices rose faster, every single year, so the average wage now buys about 5 per cent less than it did. And this measure leaves the mortgage out, so anyone paying one off has gone backwards further than the gap here shows.
Same house, same loan, nothing changed but the interest rate. The repayment on the average new loan has gone from about $2,950 a month to about $4,500. That is an extra $18,000 a year out of a household that did nothing differently.
Renters copped it a different way. The typical New South Wales rent has climbed from about $450 a week a decade ago to about $670 now, roughly $11,000 more a year for the same roof over your head.
Put all of it together and this is what it does to the country. Since 2015 the inner cities have edged ahead while the outer suburbs and the regions have gone backwards. The same nation, pulling apart into three.
Same money, two doors. Most of it went to the houses.
