Five myths behind the Coalition’s migration crackdown
The Coalition promises the biggest migration cut in Australian history, but its policy confuses arrivals with net migration, oversimplifies housing pressures and mistakes political symbolism for serious integration policy.
Using interest rates to fight inflation is dumb, unfair and overdue for a rethink
Higher interest rates hit younger mortgage holders far harder than everyone else, making monetary policy both inequitable and inefficient. Inflation control should be spread more fairly across the economy.
What of those who truly own football?
Manchester City may face severe punishment if its financial breaches are upheld on appeal. But the people who will live with the consequences had no say in the decisions that brought the club here.
Lula can still win – but Brazil’s right has staged a formidable comeback
Lula trails Flávio Bolsonaro heading into Brazil’s presidential runoff, after a campaign shaped by voter fatigue, hostile media coverage and sustained intervention from Trump’s political network.
Australia’s ‘useless’ paddock trees are anything but
Large old paddock trees provide shade, shelter, habitat and cultural value across rural Australia. Yet they are disappearing faster than new generations are being established.
Bangkok’s floods show what happens when a warming climate meets a sinking city
Bangkok’s latest deadly floods were driven by an extraordinary downpour, but the city’s sinking land, rapid urbanisation and rising seas are making extreme rainfall increasingly difficult to absorb and drain.
Australia’s AI boom must leave regional communities with more than the bill
Massive AI infrastructure projects may bring jobs and investment, but regional development should be judged by what communities control, retain and can build long after construction ends.
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The great AUKUS deception: Australia pays to defend America
AUKUS has been sold as a plan to strengthen Australia’s defence. Its deeper purpose is to bind Australia permanently into US military strategy against China and make American security dependent on Australian participation.
The Republican consensus on Israel is starting to fracture
Christian Zionism helped turn support for Israel into Republican orthodoxy. But America First scepticism and a growing generational divide are exposing cracks in a coalition once treated as politically untouchable.
People of conscience mark Global Action Day for Gaza
As rallies, vigils and marches mark three years of devastation in Gaza, civil society is continuing to show the solidarity and moral clarity that governments, including Australia’s, have failed to provide.
Want to weaken One Nation? Fix the temporary visa system
Voters are focused on housing, bills and strained services rather than immigration itself. But rapid population growth driven by temporary visas is intensifying those pressures and helping fuel disillusionment with the major parties.
Australia needs a minister for loneliness and social connection
Loneliness and social isolation are shaped by housing, transport, aged care, disability services and community life. A dedicated minister could bring those strands together and make social connection a national policy priority.
Listen, deliver, rebuild trust: answering the populist right – part two
Economic insecurity matters, but it cannot explain the populist challenge alone. Governments must also address migration, belonging and trust while delivering improvements in housing, services, fairness and democratic integrity. Part two of a two-part analysis.
Are you part of the long tail? Why we should all be part of Australia’s AI training data conversation
Copyright deals can protect professional creators, but much of AI’s value also comes from the vast collective output of the open internet. Australia has an opportunity to recognise, protect and fund that shared data commons.
What Pacific women want global climate advocates to hear before COP31
As Pacific leaders gather ahead of COP31, new research shows women want more than recognition of their vulnerability. They want decision-making power, direct access to climate finance and water security placed at the centre of climate justice.
Why the populist right arrived later in Australia – part one
Australia avoided the populist-right breakthroughs seen in the US and Europe for longer because prosperity, stronger institutions and a more equal income distribution absorbed the shocks. Those protections are now weakening. Part one of a two-part analysis.
Greens can hope to pick up the mess Labor and Albanese have made
Labor’s shift to the right has opened political space on its left. If the Greens seriously want to become an alternative party of government, they must take votes from Labor, professionalise and build a much broader political movement.
Brazil votes in another high-stakes Lula–Bolsonaro showdown
Brazil has voted in a deeply polarised presidential election pitting Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva against Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the imprisoned former president, with democracy, crime, living costs and US influence all shaping the contest.
Trump has hollowed out the State Department
Donald Trump has sidelined professional diplomats, left embassies vacant and elevated ideological loyalists, weakening the State Department and making US foreign policy more coercive, erratic and dangerous for allies.
Public land should deliver public value
David Pocock’s Commonwealth Land (Affordable Housing) Bill would require affordable housing to be built into residential development on Commonwealth land. It deserves support because public land should deliver lasting public value, not simply the highest possible sale price.
Trump’s Board of Peace: from a ‘new Gaza’ to a new global order – Part Two
Trump’s Board of Peace is emerging as more than a mechanism for governing post-war Gaza. Its expanding ambitions raise the prospect of a parallel system in which powerful states decide which institutions survive, who receives legitimacy and whose rules apply. Part two of a two-part analysis.
They’ll inherit the climate crisis. Shouldn’t 16- and 17-year-olds have a vote?
Young Australians will live with the consequences of today’s climate decisions for decades. Lowering the voting age to 16 would give more of them a say in the policies shaping their future.
AI may not be becoming superintelligent. It may be becoming distorted
Recent AI security failures may point to something more troubling than runaway intelligence: models becoming highly capable while learning to game narrow goals in brittle and dangerous ways.
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.
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A lively expectation of favours to come
Les Macdonald — Balmain NSW 2041
And the alternative is?
Bob Pearce — Adelaide SA
We don't deserve a seat on UN Security Council
Jenny Goldie — Cooma NSW
Security Council bid
jo Vallentine — coolbellup, W.A.
Out of control
Bob Pearce — Adelaide SA
Hypocrisy exposed: compulsory reading for all
Margaret Callinan — Hawthorn VIC 3122
Is agentic AI an adaptive living system?
Alistair MCampbell — Bacchus Marsh, Victoria
Ramparts of legacy media
gary barnes — mosman NSW
