FUCK YOUR PAPER DON, WE’LL SELL IT TO SOMEONE ELSE

Australia’s only silicon manufacturer. One plant, Kemerton, Western Australia. Gone from the American market. Not trimming the sails, not “pausing to reassess market conditions” like some gutless press release from a company with a comms department. Done. Warehouse emptied, stock pre-sold, keys in the bin, get fucked.

The bloke who runs it went on the ABC and said it with the flat calm of a man who has stopped hoping.

“As of the 14th of August, we’re finished. We’re out of there.”

Now let me tell you what Simcoa actually makes, because this isn’t fucking novelty candles.

Silicon metal. High purity. Goes into aluminium alloys, into industrial chemicals, and into the polysilicon that becomes solar panels. The exact fucking material that every Western government on the planet has spent 5 years having anxiety attacks about, because China makes nearly all of it and somebody in a think tank finally worked out that maybe, just maybe, that’s a strategic problem.

So Australia makes some. Good stuff, high grade, hard to substitute. America needs it because America doesn’t make enough of its own. We sell it to them, they welcome us in, and the alliance functions the way it’s supposed to.

Then Mar-a-Lardo’s mango-tinted man-baby got his sausage fingers on the file.

Simcoa now cops around 40% in duties walking into the American market. Two hits stacked on top of each other like a shitty second storey on a house with no fucking footings. And here’s the part that should have you throwing your phone across the room.

The accusation that Simcoa was underselling the Yanks? Worth about 6% of it.

The other 33% is a fine for being an Australian company from a country that supports Australian industry.

Here’s where I drop a hint to slow down and read that shit again folks. A third of that tariff is a punishment for us having an industrial policy at all. For daring to back our own manufacturers instead of doing what we’ve done for 40 years and letting the whole sector rot into the ground while we dig holes and ship rocks.

They fined us for trying.

Miles got asked about the ruling that his company was selling below fair value. Here’s the whole answer, and it’s a beauty.

“Well, it’s absolute rubbish because we’re not.”

And then he pointed at who actually pulled the fucking trigger.

“US law in this particular case has been weaponised by two domestic companies, both of which are not American, to exclude us from the American market.”

He’s dead right, and it’s the single most perfect distillation of this entire grubby con I’ve ever seen.

The two outfits that filed the complaint that killed Simcoa? One’s owned out of London. The other is 80% Brazilian.

Two foreign companies used American trade law to boot out a third foreign-owned company, and then the whole rotten exercise gets wrapped in a flag and sold to voters in Ohio and Mississippi as protecting American workers from foreign fucking predators.

That’s the tell. That is always the tell. The flag comes out the second someone’s got their hand in the till. Wave the stars and stripes hard enough and nobody checks the ownership register.

NOW HERE’S THE PART THAT SHOULD MAKE YOU FUCKING SPIT CHIPS

October last year. Anthony Albanese stands in the White House next to the bone spur battler and signs a critical minerals agreement. Handshakes, cameras, big statements about allied supply chains and reducing dependence on Beijing. Two mates who’ve stood in every war together since 1918, locking arms for the century ahead.

The complaint that killed Simcoa was filed in April 2025.

Six fucking months before that handshake.

The machinery that shut our only silicon producer out of the American market was already turning over while our Prime Minister was standing there getting his photo taken, like a bloke buying a car off a dealer who’d already sold it to someone else that morning.

Miles was asked whether Canberra can fix any of this.

“Australia has a critical minerals agreement with the United States, but quite frankly, at the moment, I’m left wondering what that’s worth.”

Wonder no fucking longer, mate.

It’s worth exactly what every other thing that bankrupt casino boy has ever signed is worth. Ask the casinos. Ask the university. Ask the steel fixers and the plasterers and the sparkies who did work on his buildings and then had to fucking sue him to get paid, and half of them settled for cents on the dollar because lawyers cost more than the invoice.

That’s who we are in this arrangement. We’re the subbie who did the job, invoiced on time, and is now standing at the front gate finding out the head contractor has phoenixed the company.

And here’s our Resources Minister, straight-faced, assuring the nation this doesn’t undermine the critical minerals agreement.

It doesn’t undermine it, Madeleine. It fucking reveals it. There’s a difference, and the bloke actually losing his market can see it from Kemerton with the naked eye.

ONE WAY FUCKING TRAFFIC, ALL DAY, EVERY DAY

Let’s talk about what this relationship actually looks like when you open the books, because Australians have been fed the same line about it for 30 years and it’s horseshit.

America sells us close to twice what it buys off us. We’re one of the tiny handful of countries on this entire planet that America runs a trade surplus with. Has done for decades. We’re not a competitor and we’re not a threat. We’re a fucking customer. A loyal one, a big one, one that never misses a payment.

We buy their planes. Their software. Their films. Their medical gear. Their cloud. Their subscriptions. Their weapons systems. Their fucking everything.

On top of that, our superannuation, more than 4 trillion dollars of Australian workers’ retirement money, gets shovelled into American equities at a scale that should genuinely frighten people. Every single fortnight, a slice of your pay packet gets on a plane to Wall Street and doesn’t come back.

On top of that, we’ve handed over 3 billion dollars to prop up American submarine shipyards under AUKUS. Our money, into their industrial base, for boats that might never turn up, on a timeline that keeps sliding further away every time anyone asks about it.

On top of all of that, in late July we got hit with a 12.5% tariff dressed up as a forced labour measure. Australia. Modern slavery laws on the books, supply chain audits, penalties, reporting requirements, the lot. Hit anyway, alongside 37 other countries, because some fucking intern ran the list through a spreadsheet.

So what exactly are we getting out of this?

We’re paying the mortgage on a house we’re not allowed to walk into. We’re the mate who chips in for the barbecue, brings the meat, does the fucking dishes, and gets told there’s no room at the table.

Miles nailed it in one line.

“On one hand you’re encouraged, and on the other hand you get a kick in the backside.”

That’s the alliance in 2026, right there. Come in, mate, we love you, we need you, we can’t do it without you. Now bend over.

THE BARBECUE

Here’s the thing that spray tanned shitweasel has never once considered, because considering things has never been his strong suit.

Every morning, tens of millions of us wake up in Canada, in Denmark, in France, in Japan, in Australia, and we do the exact same thing. Reach for the phone. Squint at it. And think, right, what’s this clown done overnight. Which 80 year old friendship got torched while I was asleep. What’s he signed with a Sharpie this time.

That’s the shared experience of the entire democratic world now. Not shared values, not shared defence commitments. Shared fucking dread, delivered daily, push notification.

And here’s what he’s actually managed to build with it. He’s got Carney and Frederiksen and the French and the Poms and the Kiwis and us all standing around the same barbecue, beer in hand, shaking our heads at the same bloke.

He has united the entire free world in secondhand embarrassment. Never been done in human history. Genuine world-first. Someone give the Sharpie savant a plaque.

Because that’s what this is. It’s not policy. There’s no strategy, there’s no 4-dimensional chess. It’s a bloke trashing his mate’s house. He’s in there kicking over the furniture, drawing on the walls, pissing in the pool, telling everyone how much better the joint looks now, while the people who actually fucking live there stand in the doorway watching their home get wrecked by a man who’s never picked up a tool in his life.

And that right there is the part that gets lost in all the noise.

The people whose house this is are Americans. Not him. Them.

The Americans who welcomed Simcoa in because they were short on silicon and needed the supply. The blokes in the aluminium plants and the chemical works who’ll now pay more for a worse product from a dodgier supplier. The solar manufacturers being screamed at to break free of China while the raw material from an allied democracy gets taxed into fucking oblivion. The farmers. The small business owners who still believe the words printed on the packaging.

They’re who this orange sook is making a mockery of. Every single day, in front of the entire planet. He takes the one thing they were genuinely proudest of, the idea that America keeps its fucking word, and he wipes his arse with it live on cable television, then holds it up to camera.

I’ve got nothing but time for the American people. Said it a hundred times, I’ll say it a hundred more. Most of them are decent, generous, funny as hell, and absolutely fucking gutted about what’s being done in their name by a man they can’t get rid of fast enough.

The sooner the clock runs out on this prick, the better for every single one of us. Them most of all.

Last question of the interview. Have you got a message for the White House?

“No, I can’t repeat that online.”

Mate.

You didn’t fucking have to.

We all knew exactly what it was.

IFLA ~ Gman

GLOSSARY: AUSSIE TO YANK WORD EASER

Right. Housekeeping for the Americans in the room, and there’s a lot of you.

Simcoa just got locked out of your market over 40% in duties, so as of the 14th, the silicon stops flowing. Which makes this glossary the only Australian export you’re still getting duty free. No dumping margin. No countervailing duty. No complaint filed with the Commerce Department by two foreign companies wearing an American flag like a hi-vis vest. Just words, over the counter, at fair fucking value, which is more than can be said for anything else in this arrangement.

Nobody’s verified the cost response on it either. Enjoy.

Bloke: A man. Completely neutral. Not praise, not an insult, just the unit of measurement. “Some bloke” is a stranger. “A good bloke” is the highest honour available in this country and it cannot be applied for, only awarded.

Sheila: A woman. Older generation usage, still fully operational, and 2 of them run this publication.

Mate: Depending entirely on tone, this means “my closest friend of 30 years” or “you are 4 seconds from being removed from these premises.” Americans consistently get this wrong and it’s very funny to watch. Trump gets the second one.

Get fucked: Complete sentence. No further construction required.

Subbie: Subcontractor. The bloke who does the actual work, invoices the head contractor, and then finds out what “cash flow issues” means at 11pm on a Sunday.

Sparkie: Electrician. Also chippie (carpenter), brickie (bricklayer), truckie, garbo. If a trade exists, we’ve shortened it and stuck an “ie” on the end, because saying the whole word takes time we’d rather spend at the pub.

Steel fixer: Your rebar guys. Ties the steel before the concrete pour. Hard yakka, and yakka means work.

Phoenixing: Deliberately collapsing a company that owes money to workers and subbies, then reopening the following Monday under a new name, from the same shed, with the same ute out the front. It’s illegal here. It’s prosecuted about as often as you’d expect. The name comes from the bird that rises from the ashes, except the ashes are other people’s unpaid invoices.

Superannuation, or “super”: Your 401k, except compulsory, employer-funded on top of your wage at 12%, and legally untouchable until you’re old. You don’t have to remember to do it and you can’t wreck it by panicking. It’s now worth over 4 trillion dollars and a frightening slice of it is parked in American shares, which is the entire point of that section above.

Poms: The English. Kiwis: New Zealanders. Both terms carry roughly 200 years of affectionate abuse and neither group is allowed to be offended, per treaty.

Barbie: Barbecue. Not a doll. Also the natural habitat of Australian political discussion, where the actual national conversation happens, several beers deep, with someone’s uncle saying something you’ll be thinking about for a week.

Sook: Someone who carries on, cries about it, and needs everyone to know how hard done by they are. Applied to a grown man it is genuinely devastating. There is no American equivalent with the same kill power, which is why I keep using it.

Dodgy: Unreliable, suspect, probably a bit criminal, definitely not to be trusted with your deposit. Sits perfectly between “sketchy” and “under investigation.”

It’s a beauty: Excellent. Perfect. Nothing to add.

Digging holes and shipping rocks: Australia’s entire economic strategy for 40 years. We take enormous quantities of iron ore, coal, gas and lithium out of the ground, ship it overseas, buy it back as finished product at 10 times the price, and call it a market economy. Simcoa was one of the few outfits actually making something here, which is why this stings.

The ABC: Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Our public broadcaster. Not the one with Good Morning America. Taxpayer funded, relentlessly attacked by whichever government is in power, and still employs journalists who ask a question and then shut up and let the bloke answer it. The interview above ran 4 minutes on national television and nobody shouted over anybody.

Canberra: Our Washington DC. Purpose-built capital, sits between Sydney and Melbourne because the 2 of them wouldn’t stop arguing about it. Population around 470,000. Politicians, public servants, and more roundabouts than any human being needs.

Albo: Anthony Albanese, our Prime Minister. Every Australian PM gets shortened whether they like it or not. It’s not affection, it’s just efficiency.

AUKUS: The submarine pact between Australia, the UK and the US. We pay billions into American shipyards for nuclear submarines that arrive sometime in the 2030s, or the 2040s, or possibly never. Ask us about it after a few at the barbie.

Yank: An American. Not an insult. Genuinely, not an insult. If we didn’t like you we’d have a much better word ready to go.

Prick: General purpose. Sharper here than there. Can be delivered with real venom or with total affection depending on whether the word “old” goes in front of it.

HONESTLY… IT’S HARD TO TELL