Best of 2025 - Charting Trump's decline
New polling reveals a clear and sustained decline in public approval of Trump and his policies that is already reshaping US electoral prospects, with significant implications for Congress and beyond.
Recent articles in Our Top Five Each Week
19 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Rising student visa refusals clash with plans to boost enrolments
After encouraging universities to expand overseas enrolments, the government has overseen a sharp fall in student visa approval rates – leaving institutions uncertain and applicants frustrated.
19 January 2026
Best of 2025 - We’re not about to go full Trump no matter what the culture warriors say
Strains on social cohesion cannot be dismissed as the embrace of multiculturalism has made the task of defining what holds the community together more challenging.
19 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Australia's strategic choices in a fragmenting global order
With Trump 2.0, the global order is changing and changing rapidly.
18 January 2026
Best of 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.
18 January 2026
Best of 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.
18 January 2026
Best of 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.
18 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Gaza’s economy has collapsed beyond recognition
Gaza’s economy, society and basic infrastructure have been almost entirely wiped out. With 90 per cent of people displaced, food systems destroyed and schools and hospitals in ruins, reconstruction is becoming harder by the day.
18 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Why the trauma community must break its silence on Gaza
As Gaza reels from unimaginable physical and psychological harm, the global trauma healing community has remained largely silent. Breaking that silence is essential if therapeutic work is to remain honest, ethical and grounded in the reality clients bring into the room.
18 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Making First Nations prisoners visible in Labor politics
Despite Western Australian Labor’s rhetoric on equality and Closing the Gap, incarcerated First Nations people remain politically invisible. Without formal representation and lived-experience voices in party deliberations, meaningful reform is impossible. The 2027 State Labor Conference is the moment to change that.
18 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Our politicians continue to fail us on immigration policy
As One Nation rises by recycling anti-immigration rhetoric, both major parties are fumbling their response – missing the chance to offer a clear, credible and principled long-term plan.
18 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Losing the democracy sausage vibe
The last federal election saw a sharp rise in harassment and aggression at polling places, according to submissions from around the country. From death threats to deception, the once-peaceful ritual of casting a vote is under threat – and Australia needs to act.
18 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Axed AG tells how Labor really changes the Constitution
Despite Labor’s longstanding appetite for constitutional reform, former Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus now points to a different path: bold, nation-shaping change without the need for a referendum.
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17 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Sudan cannot be an invisible tragedy
16 January 2026
Best of 2025 - The boy who cried antisemitism
15 January 2026
Best of 2025 - In memoriam: The slow death of the Quad
14 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Gunboat hypocrisy in the Caribbean
14 January 2026
