Launching Pearlcasts
The 50th Anniversary of the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government
We kick off with a topic close to our hearts, the 50th anniversary of the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government. We have three of the best sources in the nation taking part: our editor-in-chief John Menadue – the living link to the scandal and the nation’s top public servant at the time; Jenny Hocking, author of The Palace Letters and Australia’s pre-eminent Dismissal historian; and Brian Toohey, the journalist who has dug deepest into the darkest elements of the events.
Go to Pearlcasts
28 November 2025
Why Labor can’t be bold without confronting tax reform
If the Albanese government wants to deliver lasting reform – in education, healthcare, housing and climate – it will have to confront the hardest political question of all: how to raise the revenue to pay for it.
28 November 2025
Why Medicare needs joint federal–state hospitals
Medicare’s founding promise is failing millions as jurisdictional division leaves patients stuck on waiting lists and priced out of specialist care. A shared federal–state hospital system is the missing reform.
28 November 2025
How 'deep links' journalism fuels pointless China panic
A former MP takes on a routine lobbying role, a Chinese university is named, and suddenly we are in national security territory. This is framing doing the work that facts do not.
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28 November 2025
Trump is melting down: Is this the beginning of the end?
Mental health professionals are warning that Donald Trump’s behaviour poses serious risks to democratic governance and international security – yet the media largely looks away.
28 November 2025
ASIO’s $12.5 billion espionage bill doesn’t add up
ASIO says espionage cost Australia $12.5 billion last year. But that figure relies on assumptions, speculative scenarios and opaque data that raise serious questions about credibility.
28 November 2025
Trying teenagers as adults won’t fix youth crime
Victoria’s proposal to send 14–17 year olds into adult courts ignores international law, expert evidence and decades of failed policy. Rehabilitation, not punishment, is what reduces future harm.
28 November 2025
What does Labor actually stand for in the Albanese era?
Sean Kelly’s Quarterly Essay The Good Fight asks a harder question than whether Labor is governing competently – it asks whether it still knows what it believes, and whether belief is translating into action.
28 November 2025
Why Australia needs a political party for the under-40s
With most Australians increasingly voting outside the major parties, Ian Bowrey argues it’s time for a new political force that genuinely represents under-40s and plans for the country’s long-term future.
28 November 2025
Welcome to BunkerWorld – home of the rich and fearful
From luxury bunkers to billionaire boltholes, the world’s richest are planning for collapse rather than preventing it. Julian Cribb argues this fear reveals a deeper failure of our economic system – and a stark choice for humanity’s future.
28 November 2025
When evidence stops leading policy-making
The Coalition has walked away from evidence. Labor still listens – but only up to the point where action becomes politically uncomfortable. That may prove just as dangerous.
27 November 2025
The inflation myth propping up private school privilege
Private schools regularly blame inflation for rising fees, yet funding arrangements mean they are largely compensated for cost increases. Their fee-setting power widens the resource gap while feeding back into inflation itself.
Latest on Palestine and Israel
25 November 2025
The ceasefire that isn’t: 400 violations in 40 days
Israel has violated the ceasefire in Gaza hundreds of times since October, using vague or unverified justifications to carry out strike in a recurring pattern of escalation and impunity.
23 November 2025
The UN embraces colonialism: the Security Council and the US Gaza plan
The Security Council's backing of the Trump plan for Gaza ignores international law, punishes the Palestinians, and rewards those responsible for genocide.
21 November 2025
UN Members complicit in genocide
UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese discusses why, in her most recent report, she called out more than 60 nations for their collective-crime roles in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
20 November 2025
UN approval of Gaza ‘Stabilisation Force’ slammed as ‘Denial of Palestinian self-determination’
CodePink said the plan “will leave Palestine in the hands of a puppet administration, assigning the United States, which shares complicity in the genocide, as the new manager of the open-air prison.”
18 November 2025
Gaza winter catastrophe repeating in tents that resist neither wind nor rain
The seasons change, but for those fighting for survival through wet winters and baking summers in Gaza's tents, the suffering remains.
17 November 2025
Israeli settler attack on West Bank mosque draws international condemnation
Calls for justice grow as Israeli settlers set Hajja Hamida Mosque ablaze in latest attack on Palestinians in West Bank.
16 November 2025
Trump’s ploy at the UN is American imperialism masquerading as a peace process
The Trump administration is pushing an Israeli-crafted resolution at the UN Security Council aimed at eliminating the possibility of a State of Palestine.
15 November 2025
Gaza woman blinded in Israeli strike opens bakery to subsist and hope
Despite her injury, Warda Abu Jarad has started baking cookies and bread to help provide for her family.
Israel's war against Gaza
Media coverage of the war in Gaza since October 2023 has spread a series of lies propagated by Israel and the United States. This publication presents information, analysis, clarification, views and perspectives largely unavailable in mainstream media in Australia and elsewhere.
Download the PDFLatest on China
26 November 2025
Self-interest is now the main driver of Britain’s Asia policy
There are a great many reasons why the UK government should pay more attention to the Asia-Pacific, but that does not mean that it will.
22 November 2025
US wants Seoul’s subs to counter China – Asian Media Report
In Asian media this week: Washington sees global role for South Korean navy; the military cements government control in Pakistan; Palestine is an obstacle to Trump’s new Middle East plan; Japan prepares for drawn-out dispute with China; why South Korea is turning its back on coal power; and boot camps for beauty queens.
21 November 2025
Democracies good, China bad – and history not required
Japan and China both have legitimate security concerns. But an informed debate needs major media outlets to stop systematically erasing the historical context that shapes how the region understands current events.
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