It’s that time again, when we as a nation lose all sense and will ourselves to believe that the Socceroos could maybe find a way to win the World Cup. The 2026 World Cup is the 7th that the Socceroos have qualified for, and the 6th in a row they have been a part of, a record stretching back to the 2006 tournament in Germany. Last time around, the team got to the round of 16, but can they do better this year?

In our minds, we all know, if they can get through the group stage and into the knockout rounds, that is a great performance. But following any team is about more than logic, and the World Cup especially is a tournament that gives a chance for every fan to dream big. So, Australia is going to win, and nothing more needs to be said about it.

Of course, you want to be part of that historic occasion, and here’s where there is some good news. While hosting the tournament partly in the US has attracted some controversy due to the political influence over things, it does mean that, at least for two of the team’s three group games, we can all follow along without having to get up in the middle of the night.

That’s right, we can forget the 2 am starts of previous tournaments, with the first group game kicking off in Vancouver in a match against Turkey on Sunday, June 14th, at 2pm AEST. On paper that is probably the toughest game in the group for the Socceroos, but at least you can sit back and watch it on a Sunday afternoon, the way any sport is meant to be enjoyed.

The last group game is played on Friday, June 26th, and this one is against Paraguay. With a midday kick off Australian time, is easy to follow along and see the fate of the team and whether it can reach that knockout round. That’s where the good news ends though, the game that sits between these two is probably the one with the most hype, as that is the game against the cohosts, the USA. Hosted in Seattle on Saturday June 20th, unfortunately you’ll have to be up at 5am if you want to watch it live.

Tony Popovic, the Socceroos’ coach, is an optimistic guy, and expects them to build on that 2022 performance, explaining that "I think they're fearless. We're trying to get that right mix, but it should be a very exciting group for the Australian public."

So, everything’s in place, the young team are ready, now don’t forget to tune in:

• Sunday, June 14th, 2pm AEST – Australia v Turkey
• Saturday June 20th, 5am AEST – Australia v USA
• Friday, June 26th, 12pm AEST – Australia v Paraguay

It’s time to dream again.

Sources:
SBS FIFA WorlD CUP
SBS on Demand
Official FIFA World Cup Site
SBS World Cup Schedule

People perform better with a regular beat.
Not a command, and not a rule set by an authoritarian ruler, but a beat that creates a wave on which humanity can surf.

For most of human history, people lived according to the slow beat of sunrise and sunset. The town woke. Shops opened. Schools started. Workers travelled. Newspapers landed on doorsteps. Families ate dinner. Weekends felt different from weekdays. There was a rhythm to life, and much of society was organised around it.

Most people found it easier to live in step with the daily rhythm, simply because it required less effort.

Take a simple coffee shop. When most people travel to work between 7:00 and 9:00 in the morning, the shop can hire extra staff, prepare more food, order more milk and serve customers efficiently. The morning rush is not a problem if it is predictable. It is a wave, and the business can ride it.

The same principle applies across society. Public transport works better when demand has a shape. Schools work because families share a timetable. Markets work because buyers and sellers gather at known times. Sport works because people watch the same match at the same moment. Even newspapers worked because readers, writers and advertisers shared a common cycle.

A beat creates efficiency because people can prepare for the wave before it arrives.

Times have changed. While the sun still rises and sets, many people and businesses have tried gaming the system for their own advantage.

Late-night shopping, weekend retailing, streaming services, social media feeds, online shopping, remote work and always-on communication have all given individuals more convenience. Each change makes sense on its own.

• A shop opens later to capture more sales.
• A platform personalises feeds to hold attention.
• A streaming service releases content whenever it suits the viewer.
• A business expects faster replies because the technology allows it.

Individually, such changes look like freedom.

Collectively, they become noise.

This is the tragedy of the commons applied to time, where the rhythm of society is a commons. Nobody owns it, but everyone benefits from it.

Individually, a person or business has an incentive to break the beat slightly to gain an advantage over the competition. Stay open a little longer. Work a little later. Shorten the cycle.

In the past, this did not happen so easily for the simple reason that operating off beat required more effort. Just imagine how much harder it would be to sell coffee in the afternoon. For most cafés, it would simply not be worth the effort.

Unlike humans, with a circadian rhythm of 24 hours and a heartbeat of around one second, machines love continuous operation. Computers run constantly. Networks never sleep. Algorithms refresh without fatigue. Markets increasingly want 24-hour attention.

But humans are not machines.

Social media feels like an orchestra without a conductor.
Every player is making a sound, but without a shared score and without a common tempo, the resulting performance is noise, not harmony. In music, this is called dissonance.

Humans don’t run at 2.5 MHz.
Believing that human efficiency increases endlessly with speed is a fallacy. Going to work three times a day will not make you three times more productive.

The answer is not to abandon technology or return to a vanished past, but to recognise that endless convenience has a cost.

A shared beat, with a common experience, makes people more efficient.

If everything is available all the time, nothing feels timely. When every person sees a different story, the public square becomes harder to find. When every business breaks the beat for its own advantage, society loses some of the rhythm that made coordination possible.

The world needs a beat.
Not because people need to be controlled, but because people need to function together.

On a large scale, governments play an important role by regulating retail opening hours, coordinating public holidays across the nation, and planning major events.

Politicians should not forget that you cannot keep everyone happy all the time, and that some rules exist for the benefit of society as a whole.

And on a personal level, we should all take a moment and listen carefully to the cacophony.

Can you hear the beat?

If you can hear it — dance to it!

Tragedy of the Commons "Wikipedia"

If you've had a stressful day at work recently, you might have turned to a smartphone app or an AI assistant to help you wind down. Maybe you logged your mood, used a chatbot to vent about your boss, or asked an AI for a quick three-step plan to calm your anxiety.

On the surface, this feels like an incredible tool for mental health. It's like having a therapist in your pocket, ready to fix your mood at any time of the day or night.

But psychologists are starting to notice a hidden, scary side effect to this instant comfort.

A fascinating study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology looked closely at how people use AI to track their emotions and get instant advice on how to calm down. The researchers found that instead of actually processing emotions, people are "outsourcing their resilience" to machines.

By letting an app explain exactly how to fix every bad mood, humans are quietly destroying their brain's natural ability to cope with life's ups and downs.

Losing the ability to survive a bad day
To understand why this is a problem, it helps to think about how the body's physical immune system works.

When you're a child, you play in the dirt, catch minor colds, and come into contact with bacteria. Your immune system fights off these small threats, and by doing that hard work, it builds up the antibodies it needs to protect you from major illnesses later in life. If you lived in a completely sterile, germ-free bubble, your immune system would waste away. The first real illness you encountered would completely wipe you out.

Your mind has a psychological immune system that works exactly the same way.

To build mental strength, you have to experience small amounts of stress, boredom, anger and sadness. When you sit with a bad mood, talk it through with a friend or figure out how to calm yourself down, you're building a vital psychological muscle. In short, you're learning how to survive a bad day.

Short-term benefit but long-term loss
The problem with AI mental health tools is that they act like a sterile bubble. They step in too quickly and do all the emotional heavy lifting.

Instead of people sitting quietly and trying to understand why they feel upset, they check an app that tells them, "Your stress is at 75 per cent, please breathe for two minutes." Instead of calling a friend to vent, and building a deeper human relationship, they chat with a bot that’s programmed to say exactly the right thing every single time.

It feels good in the short term, but it means they never learn how to self-soothe.

Humans are becoming heavily dependent on software just to manage our daily feelings. If the app glitches, if their phone dies, or if they face a massive life crisis that an algorithm can't solve, they’re left completely defenceless. They haven't built the inner strength needed to handle the storm on their own.

Reclaim being human again
This doesn't mean technology has no place in mental health. Apps can be great for tracking patterns or reminding people to take a break. But they should never replace natural coping mechanisms.

To protect mental resilience in a world full of smart technology, start leaning into the messy, uncomfortable process of being human again.
The next time you feel a wave of stress or anxiety hit, try to resist the urge to immediately check an app or ask an AI what to do. Sit with the feeling for ten minutes. Write your thoughts down on an actual piece of paper, go for a walk without your phone, or call a mate for a proper chat.

Life is always going to be full of stressful moments, and no algorithm can change that. The best way to secure your mental well-being isn't to rely on a computer to fix your mood, but to remember how to trust your own mind to get you through the day.

Resources
Digital Emotion Regulation and Psychological Resilience

The Australian Psychological Society (APS): Digital Health Tracking and Coping Mechanisms

Stanford University: The Impact of Digital Offloading

Holding onto an old university degree and expecting it to last a lifetime is a risky move in a world where technology moves this fast.

You’re qualified. Kind of.
For generations of ambitious Australians, the path to a successful career used to follow a remarkably predictable script. Young people finished high school, spent three or four years at university, and walked away with a framed qualification. That piece of paper was considered a golden ticket. It offered a lifetime guarantee of stable employment, a respectable salary and a steady, predictable climb up the corporate ladder.

But in the modern Australian economy, that traditional script feels increasingly out of date. The rapid acceleration of technology, shifting industry demands, and the rise of automation mean the knowledge landscape is changing faster than ever before.

Experts note that the technical skills a student learns in their first year of university are often completely obsolete by the time they graduate. This reality is sparking a massive structural shift across the country, as professionals realise that a single qualification can no longer sustain a forty year career.

Trading the postgraduate slog for stackable skills
This educational shift has given rise to a movement known as micro-credentialing. Instead of committing many years and several thousands of dollars to a broad postgraduate degree, workers are increasingly choosing to upgrade their capabilities in hyper-focused, bite-sized chunks. These short courses allow professionals to spend a few weeks mastering skills such as handling data analytics, learning how to ethically manage artificial intelligence within their industry, and learning specific digital tools.

The peak body frameworks from Universities Australia show that this isn’t about replacing traditional education, but unbundling it. Instead of treating tertiary education as a single event completed in early adulthood, modern professionals are treating it as a continuous process.

These short, industry-backed courses act like digital building blocks. Workers can complete them dynamically as their job requirements change, stacking the credentials together over time.

Landmark federal reviews, including the Australian Universities Accord, highlight that these flexible pathways can eventually credit toward formal higher qualifications, allowing workers to adapt in real time.

Why modern employers are changing their criteria
The true driving force behind this educational evolution comes from the employers themselves. There was a time when human resources departments would automatically filter out any résumé that lacked a specific bachelor's degree. Today, forward-thinking Australian companies are looking past the historical prestige of university logos, and asking a far more practical question about what a candidate can actually achieve on day one.

Major industry data indicates that corporate leaders increasingly value verified, current skills over generalised past knowledge. When businesses face immediate capability gaps, a portfolio of recent, highly relevant micro-credentials becomes incredibly attractive. It provides corporate managers with proof that an applicant possesses a growth mindset and a willingness to adapt.

For existing workers who earned their original degrees a decade ago, these targeted qualifications offer a way to signal to the market that their skills remain sharp, relevant and aligned with modern operational needs.

The new era of continuous professional evolution
While the landscape is shifting, traditional universities are certainly not about to vanish. Highly structured, multi-year degrees remain absolutely foundational for specialised professions such as medicine, civil engineering and constitutional law, where deep theoretical knowledge is non-negotiable, for now anyway!

However, for the vast majority of the modern workforce, the era of the one-and-done tertiary qualification is officially over. Education is no longer a distinct phase of life that people complete in their twenties and tick off a list. It has transformed into a running background habit that spans an entire working life.

By embracing this new age of continuous upskilling, everyday Australians are discovering that long-term career security does not come from holding tight to an old piece of paper, but from a commitment to never stop learning.

Resources
Australian Universities Accord Final Report

Universities Australia: Guidance for Portability of Australian Microcredentials

Sometimes in sport we see acts which are more important than the game itself, and that was certainly on show on Thursday night.

The setting was Accor Stadium, 11 June 2026 in Western Sydney, the act was rugby league, the protagonists were the South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Brisbane Broncos but the scene that stole the show was the opening scene with the star being the non-playing Jai Arrow.

While the night was about the Rabbitohs and the Broncos chasing an all important two competition points it quickly became just as much about former South Sydney forward Jai Arrow who has been stricken with Motor Neurone Disease (MND).

In front of Souths passionate fans with the Rabbitohs wearing specially designed white jersey in tribute to their teammate with Arrow being given the honour of ringing the Legacy Bell.

There was barely a dry eye in the stadium as the two sides stood side by side as Arrow rang the bell.

Arrow himself could not keep his emotions in check as the former Olympic Stadium played out one of the most emotional tributes ever seen at the Stadium. After Arrow rang the bell he was embraced by players from both sides as the emotion was evident on all their faces.

FoxSports commentator Andrew Voss summed up the feelings of most rugby league fans as he remarked to fellow commentator Michael Ennis “What do you say in moments like this?.
The truth is that moments like this are left unspoken as the scene said it all.

For the record Souths were too clinical and too classy for the Broncos, turning a 30-0 halftime lead into a massive 48-6 victory with winger and one of the all-time highest rugby league try scorers Alex Johnston leading the way with four tries.

Source
Rabbitohs Official Website

The Sydney press has picked up on a Bloomberg media report highlighting concern within the global Five Eyes community at PRC intelligence operatives using fake profiles and job offers on websites such as LinkedIn to recruit human assets.

According to a statement released by the Five Eyes ‘Western Alliance’ “(Mainland) China’s intelligence services are using an increasingly wide array of professional networking sites and online job platforms to target Five Eyes government and military personnel – focussing on people with access to classified or privileged information. PRC Intelligence officers or their affiliates are posing as employees of private consultancies, think tanks or human resource firms, placing online job advertisements for foreign policy and defence analysts.”

Those most at risk of being targeted, according to the Five Eyes claim, are foreign affairs, security and military personnel as well as people with peripheral access to government information, such as academics, think tank employees and journalists (which makes this writer one of its targets). Payment to the new recruits can be in the hundreds or thousands of dollars or in cryptocurrency.

Consider, for instance, the wealth of information available to the likes of the PRC Ministry of State Security once their operatives are active on platforms like LinkedIn. Just a few clicks and they can start their profile searches - filtering out those LinkedIn professions or ‘professionals’ who potentially have ‘special knowledge’ and might just be persuaded to supplement their rising mortgage payments by moonlighting as ‘information sources’.

It is no secret that Australia has historically been seen by countries hostile to us as the ‘soft underbelly’ of Western alliance groups such as Five Eyes. For this reason, this latest glimpse into the reputed PRC intelligence targeting of a range of Australians engaged in government, academia, think tank and media organisations must surely be of concern.

The subtlety employed by professional intelligence officers from the likes of hostile intelligence agencies such as the MSS, in eliciting information from unsuspecting human assets can be breathtaking. For instance, a hostile operative may use a ‘false flag’ approach; posing, for example, as a friendly Western Government representative or an academic who needs help with his or her thesis. Information is passed and paid for and the outcome becomes suddenly devastating for the target Country at play. Australia, for instance.

So, what to do about this? Well, the first step is to be aware of the problem. This article and others like it need to be read and taken on board. Thereafter, we all need to be very, very careful about what we know and why someone we bump into is suddenly interested in us because of this. If it doesn’t look or sound right, phone the Australian National Security Hotline on 1800 123 400 – available on a 24-hour basis - or report your suspicions by completing a National Security Online Report Form online.


References*

• Australian National Security
• Bloomberg
• AP News

The Aussie underdog spirit isn’t just about winning against the odds, it’s about the stubborn refusal to take a backward step when those odds are completely stacked against you.

As a young, isolated nation pushed down to the bottom of the world, we spent generations feeling like we had to punch well above our weight just to get noticed on the global stage.

We built a national identity around resilience, mateship, and a fierce belief in a “fair go,” which naturally translated into backing anyone who refuses to let a bigger reputation intimidate them.

Here are some famous Aussie underdog stories.

The America's Cup breakthrough
You can look right back to the 1983 America’s Cup, an event that had been ruthlessly locked down by the New York Yacht Club for 132 years.

When Australia II turned up with a radical winged keel and a crew of determined outsiders, they weren’t just racing a boat, they were taking on centuries of elite wealth and privilege.

Dragging themselves back from a 3–1 deficit to claim the oldest trophy in international sport didn't just stop a nation.

The Prime Minister at the time playfully declared it an unofficial national holiday, famously announcing that any boss who sacked a worker for skipping the day was a “bum.”

Kerri Pottharst and Natalie Cook first to win gold in beach volleyball
The Sydney Olympics in 2000 gave us a classic underdog tale through beach volleyball duo Kerri Pottharst and Natalie Cook.

Facing opponents from nations that had long dominated the sport, the Australians fought their way through the tournament with relentless determination and the backing of a passionate home crowd.

When they secured gold, they became the first Australians to win an Olympic gold medal in beach volleyball.

It was exactly the sort of victory Australians love, hard-earned, unexpected, and achieved against more fancied rivals.

The Opals take on the giants of the sport
For years, the Australian women's basketball team built a reputation as one of the toughest underdogs in world sport.

Competing against basketball superpowers with far larger player pools and resources, the Opals repeatedly found ways to challenge the established order.

Their silver medal at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 wasn't just a podium finish, it was proof that grit, teamwork and belief could take a group of Australian athletes toe-to-toe with the giants of the game.

In a country that loves seeing battlers punch above their weight, the Opals became a perfect symbol of the underdog spirit.

Alisa Camplin wins gold at the Winter Olympics
Then there was Alisa Camplin at the 2002 Winter Olympics, a moment that perfectly captured Australia's habit of succeeding where we're supposedly not meant to.

Coming from a country better known for beaches than ski slopes, Camplin wasn't considered the athlete to beat in the women's aerial skiing.

But while competitors from traditional winter sports powerhouses faltered under pressure, she delivered the performance of her life to claim gold.

Steven Bradbury's golden moment
Then there’s the winter of 2002, which gave us the ultimate symbol of survival and stubborn persistence in Steven Bradbury.

He knew he wasn't the fastest short-track speed skater on the ice at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.

But while his highly favoured rivals aggressively jostled, pushed, and ultimately wiped each other out in a chaotic heap on the final turn, Bradbury cruised past the carnage to take the gold.

It became an instant Aussie thing to "do a Bradbury", which is about staying on your feet, putting in the hard yards, and being ready to seize the moment when the giants fall.

The Socceroos shock the world
Even on the football pitch, our finest memories are soaked in this exact same spirit. Think back to the Socceroos at the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

Hidden away in a brutal group with global heavyweights like Brazil and Croatia, few people outside Australia expected them to progress beyond the group stage.

But that squad, packed with uncompromising characters, simply refused to read the script. Their gritty, breathless run to the knockout stages proved that a bunch of determined blokes from a non-traditional football nation could look the world's best dead in the eye and not blink.

Why the spirit endures
Ultimately, we love the underdog because their victories feel entirely human.

We love stories where the win is forged out of sheer ticker, self-belief and a refusal to give up on the mate standing next to you.

It’s a weekly reminder that on any given day on a level playing field, the giant can absolutely be taken down.

When most Australians picture a well-paid entry-level role, they picture a grad in a glass tower or a junior lawyer billing in six-minute blocks. They do not picture someone in a hard hat two kilometres underground, operating a tunnel boring machine beneath Melbourne's eastern suburbs. But a landmark enterprise agreement tied to one of the world's most expensive infrastructure projects is forcing a radical rethink of where Australia's best-compensated entry-level work actually lives.

Entry-level workers on Victoria's Suburban Rail Loop could earn up to Bold: $175,000 before overtime under a taxpayer-funded deal that includes divorce leave, reproductive health leave, wellness rooms, and hot weather shutdowns. It is a package that would make most white-collar workers blink and it sits at the centre of a fierce debate about the cost, value, and politics of megaproject spending. To verify these specific payroll figures, Link: click here.

The Project Behind the Paycheque

The Suburban Rail Loop is a planned 90-kilometre orbital rail loop linking Melbourne's eastern and western suburbs via the airport, with the Parliamentary Budget Office estimating in 2022 it will cost $125 billion. The Albanese Government's Federal Budget committed a further $3.8 billion toward SRL East alone, bringing its total contribution to $6 billion. To review the official federal funding breakdown, Link: click here.

The project will support 3,000 construction jobs and up to 8,000 long-term local jobs. Tunnelling is underway, with trains expected to run by 2035. That decade-long pipeline of guaranteed work is precisely what gives unions the leverage to negotiate hard. To track the current construction pipeline, Link: click here.

The Deal That Changed the Benchmark

The Australian Workers' Union lodged a landmark tunnelling agreement for Package C, negotiated with CPB and Acciona, describing it as the highest paid wages and conditions for civil construction workers anywhere in Australia. To read the official statement from the union, Link: click here.

AWU Victoria Secretary Ronnie Hayden was direct: Italic: "I am proud to have once again signed off on the highest paid civil construction agreement in the country. If this project is to be successful then we need to make sure the people building it, our members, get paid what they deserve."

The perks attracting most attention divorce leave, reproductive health entitlements, wellness provisions were until recently the exclusive language of progressive HR departments chasing white-collar talent. Their arrival in a civil construction agreement marks something genuinely new in Australian industrial relations.

The Taxpayer Question

Hayden pre-empted the backlash: Italic: "There will be those screaming from the rooftops that only people with a private school education are entitled to get paid big money, but we are used to that." It is a pointed observation. Outrage over a tunneller earning $175,000 tends to be quieter when investment bankers or senior bureaucrats earn the same which says more about Australia's assumptions around physical versus knowledge work than it does about the enterprise agreement itself.

The fiscal concern is real, though. The Victorian Auditor-General's Office has flagged plans to examine whether SRL East delivery is proceeding as planned and whether the benefits identified in the business case are on track to be realised. To read the full transparency audit scope, Link: click here. The AWU also warned that resisting a direct agreement would cost taxpayers more, not less labour hire and subcontractor arrangements typically carry a Bold: 10 to 15 per cent markup over direct engagement.

What "A Good Job" Looks Like Now

The SRL agreement is not an outlier. It is the loudest signal yet in a broader shift: sustained government-backed infrastructure investment is reshaping Australia's labour market from the ground up, dramatically improving the bargaining position of skilled tradespeople at exactly the moment when the trades pipeline is tightest. The definition of a "good job" is being rewritten. It just happens to be happening 30 metres below ground.

Links to earlier scenes:
The Other Panopticon - Synopsis
The Other Panopticon - Chapter 1, Scene 1+2
---

CHAPTER 1, Scene 3 + 4 (5 minute read)

Karim Pavliuk Tataryn sat by himself on a bench in a demountable near the main entrance of Darwin’s Northern Immigration Detention Centre, smoking what looked and smelt like a cheroot.
He was a middle-aged man, hirsute and big-boned; of medium height with dark bushy eyebrows and a receding hairline of thinning black hair. He had clearly not shaved for several weeks
‘Help yourself,’ he said to me as I hunkered into a chair opposite him, recoiling slightly from his body odour. He leant across and offered me a cigar from a small hessian zip bag that felt like it had just come out of the nearby kitchen freezer. Which it probably had.
‘You need to keep the humidity away from these little suckers,’ he smiled. ‘Otherwise, they’ll disintegrate in your hand.’
I shook my head and watched him jam the zip bag back into the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt that smelt like it needed a good wash. As did Karim.
I reached into my pocket and pushed the play button of my mini recorder. My subtle manoeuvre did not escape his attention.
‘The answer is yes,’ he announced.
‘Pardon?’
‘Yes, I said. I have no problem with you recording this interview.’
He drew luxuriously on his cheroot then stubbed it out on the edge of the bench he was sitting on. I managed a blank look.
‘My name is Michael,’ I began.
‘Which means you must be a gift from God.’
His English was near nigh perfect.
‘We all are, I guess, Karim,’ I replied.
He shuffled slightly in his chair.
‘I am Muslim. I’m guessing you are Christian,’ he said.
I nodded.
‘So you know about God then?’ I replied.
‘Comrade Putin professes to be a Christian,’ he proffered.
‘Is that why you’re here?’ I asked. ‘Because Putin sent you?’
‘Hardly!’ he barked, reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling another cheroot from the zip bag.
‘Are you working for Comrade Putin?’ he asked.
The question took me by surprise.
‘You know this is Australia you’ve landed in Karim?’ I replied.
He lit up.
‘So why would you ask such a question?’ I persisted.
He took his time to examine me through the stream of acrid smoke that was seeping from his nostrils.
‘I was hoping you would be the one I would get to talk to upon arriving here,’ he replied. ‘My former boss, Luda Yevgenyevich Kuznetsova, had rather a high opinion of you.’
It took a moment for the name to sink in. I must have been gaping at him. He blew another smoke stack while keeping his steel-blue eyes fixed firmly on mine. It was unnerving.
Finally, my brain cells aligned.
‘Ooshie!’ I gasped.
His look softened.
‘Her SVR[1] nickname – as you would call it,’ he smiled.
Something was not right.
‘What the hell are you doing in Australia then, Karim?’ I asked.

--- o0o ---

The rattling and rusting box air-conditioners above us were working overtime. One of my Immigration colleagues arrived with refreshments which he laid out on a small table between Tataryn and myself.
I kept my eyes on the Tatar as he wiped his brow with what could have been a handkerchief. He quickly swallowed half of his iced water after butting out his cheroot on a nearby window ledge, then watched as I emptied my water glass.
‘Your question is a short one. My answer is not,’ he announced.
‘I have all day, Karim.’
‘So I speak to you as one professional to another then?’ he asked.
‘In what sense?’
‘In the sense of kontrrazvedka[2],’ he replied.
‘So you are a trained counterintelligence officer?’
He nodded. His dark busy eyebrows seemed to have a life of their own.
‘I see you speak some Russian?’
I nodded.
‘And you worked with Luda Yevgenyevich?’ I asked.
‘Before she escaped from Putin. We were both KR Directorate[3] Then I was moved.’
‘Oh?’
‘To S Directorate.’
‘Overseas illegal agents – deep cover. Which Department – Operational, Regional or Support?’
‘The second – Regional.’
‘And your geographic responsibility?’
‘Asia and …’
His face broke into a smile.
‘Australia.’
‘Are you following in Luda Yevgenyevich’s footsteps?’ I asked, ‘Or do I need to have you arrested?’
He leant forward from his bench.
‘You know I’m risking my life by being here, don’t you Michael? Not since your Country’s Petrov[4] coup have you been able to stop leaking like the asylum seeker boat that brought me to Darwin.’
‘Go on.’
He plucked out and lit another cheroot.
‘As far as I know, I’m only the third highly-ranked Soviet or Russian intelligence asset, after Petrov and Kuznetsova, to defect to Australia and Luda Yevgenyevich was a CIA conquest so she doesn’t really count.’
‘So that’s why you’re keen to know if I’m yet another ASIO traitor?’ I asked.
He blew a perfect smoke ring.
‘I know enough about you Michael Millstone to know you’re not, but I’m not as confident about any of your colleagues.’
‘So what exactly is your plan Karim? How are you going to protect yourself from all these other SVR moles who I call my colleagues?’
‘Quite simple really, Michael. You tell no one about me – who I am, what I am and what I am about to provide you with. If you do, I will dry up and do my best to disappear.’
I finished the rest of my water.
‘It won’t work, Karim’, I concluded. ‘I will need at least one backup and that person should be my deputy director-general whom I trust with my life.’
‘No! It is just you, my friend, no one else. I’ve devised a cover story for myself and that is how you have to report me to your superiors. No one must know who I really am and why I am here.’
‘Your paranoia will be your undoing Karim,’ I replied. ‘I need at least one backup and it has to be at the highest level so that the two of us will have the tools and protection we need to see what you have in mind - through to its conclusion. That is assuming what you have filed away in your head really is going to cut the mustard with us.’
‘Oh it will, Michael, believe me,’ he replied. ‘But for all this to work we need to create a false flag.’
He reached into one of his torn trouser pockets and extracted a folded slip of paper which he handed to me.
‘These are my terms of engagement,’ he announced. ‘If they’re not suitable to you, then you are about to let a latter-day Vladimir Mikhaylovich Petrov slip through your fingers.’
He rose from his seat and gave me a two-finger salute before heading for the door. With his knuckles clutching the door handle he suddenly turned to face me.
‘I will know if you decide not to play by my rules,’ he grinned. ‘But don’t ask me how I’ll know.’
‘That just tells me that you are a plant, Karim – sent here by your SVR superiors to keep me and my organisation chasing our tails.’
‘You need to think all this through a little more carefully, my friend,’ he replied. ‘Putin has an illegal intelligence network operating in beautiful downtown Darwin, and I’m the only one who can point you in its direction.’

To be continued ....

[1] Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.
[2] Russian word for ‘counterintelligence’.
[3] SVR Counterintelligence Directorate.
[4] Vladimir Mikhaylovich Petrov was a member of the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service who, along with his wife, defected to Australia in 1954.