January 12, 2026

Best of 2025 - These are fighting words

As political violence escalates in the United States, chaos is spreading and democracy itself is under threat. The words of anger, ill-considered and increasingly crude, are accelerant on the American bonfire.

January 5, 2026

Best of 2025 - John Menadue in conversation with David Marr

In a wide-ranging discussion, P&I editor-in-chief John Menadue discusses a life full of achievement driven by conviction, and nominates seeing off the White Australia policy and establishing P&I as highlights. He is speaking with David Marr on ABC Radio National's Late Night Live.

December 16, 2025

AUKUS meets reality – what's not in the AUSMIN Media Release (Part 1)

Despite official assurances, the US submarine program is falling well short of its own targets, raising serious doubts about whether Australia will ever receive the Virginia class submarines promised under AUKUS.

October 9, 2025

Ian McEwan’s new novel explores resentment and vengeance in a fractured world

Ian McEwan’s new novel, his 18th in a long career of writing books that play with startling premises, bold ideas and big dilemmas, begins as a work of futurist fiction set in 2119.

November 26, 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.

November 7, 2025

The new political economy of innovation: Why Australian policymakers need better tools

When the Commonwealth Government reorganised its innovation responsibilities for the fourth time in a decade, public servants made jokes about updating their email signatures again.

November 20, 2025

A search for purpose, vision and identity in Australian universities

The Australian university sector has become disconnected from the national imagination and needs a compelling new vision for the future.

October 24, 2025

The crumbling illusion: Why American public opinion on Israel is shifting

For the first time in decades, the public in the United States and across the West has begun to see Israel’s wars and occupation for what they truly are: acts of systemic injustice driven by malevolence and impunity.

October 29, 2025

Is the Great Barrier Reef collapsing?

It’s the largest living structure on Earth, 3000 individual reefs, 900 islands, 1430 miles, and it may be collapsing.

November 15, 2025

The ‘othered’ genocide: Sudan’s suffering and the world’s indifference

Sudan is enduring the largest humanitarian crisis on earth, with more than 25 million people needing urgent assistance and nearly nine million displaced as entire cities are reduced to rubble.

November 3, 2025

The pearling past and the multicultural present: A story of connection and contribution

In the late 1990s, during a field study in Wyndham, a remote town in Western Australia, I met a small tourism operator whose story has stayed with me ever since.

November 1, 2025

Protest wave challenges Indonesia’s authoritarian drift

In late August 2025, Indonesia was shaken by a wave of protests following the death of Affan Kurniawan, a motorcycle taxi (“ojek”) driver who was struck and killed by a police tactical vehicle during demonstrations. His death became the spark for mass mobilisations across several cities.

October 20, 2025

APEC Summit opens a window for Korea – and for Australia

On 1 November, the leaders of the nations of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum will meet in the historic South Korean city of Gyeongju.

November 25, 2025

Massacres, memory and the Memorial: facing our most deadly war

The evidence is overwhelming – Australia’s Frontier Wars were real, deadly, and long, and a landmark new book lays it out in full. So when will the Australian War Memorial fully face the truth?

October 18, 2025

South Korea has missed the alternative media train

US alternative media is awash with stories on Israel and Gaza, Ukraine and Russia, and now Iran and Venezuela.

October 17, 2025

Grieving for the US

I recently viewed the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting. The final shot is a widescreen view of an old car driven through a verdant landscape, as the hero, who happens to be a mathematical genius (Matt Damon), drives into his future, having resolved his issues, seeking new opportunities in California.

November 13, 2025

Only Arabic: When 'multicultural' media turns to racial profiling

I recently noticed something troubling while watching a British drama on SBS On Demand. Between episodes — over two full seasons — I kept seeing advertisements about Victoria’s new bail laws.

November 8, 2025

Making them pay: Wielding influence in a world with no shame

One of the upshots of US support for Israeli criminality over the past two years has been the cowardly position adopted by US supplicant states who feel wedged by realpolitik and morality.

December 22, 2025

Australia’s roads are full of giant cars, and everyone pays the price

Australia’s growing love affair with SUVs and utes is reshaping road safety. Larger vehicles don’t just cause more harm in crashes – they may also change how drivers behave.

October 31, 2025

Continuation in China's five-year planning

The outline of China’s 15th five-year plan was released last week. Often the objectives of a new five-year plan are a disruptive departure from the previous five-year plan. They set new directions.

January 9, 2026

Best of 2025 - Government is planning hardship for older Australians living at home

Aged care has again been in the media for all the wrong reasons. Two failures are attracting particular attention.

October 27, 2025

Boosting equity and safety for Australia's children

In Australia, 37% of students aged between about 5 or 6 and 18 years go to private schools which charge fees – but while those schools are private, they are not run for profit.

December 17, 2025

The market lie at the heart of public education policy

Treating public schools as competitors in an education marketplace shifts blame downward, obscures chronic underfunding and corrodes the very purpose of public education.

November 22, 2025

BBC and ABC targeted by conservative critics for the wrong reasons

Right-wing critics attack the ABC and BBC, but the real media bias is in ignoring Palestinian voices and defending power.

November 5, 2025

Moral inadequacy in national leadership

“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do,” Voltaire

December 1, 2025

Uncertainties trail behind Japanese PM's strong start

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s early popularity rests on speculative public expectations, a fragile LDP–Ishin arrangement and her dependence on party heavyweight Taro Aso, leaving her authority vulnerable despite high initial approval ratings.

January 16, 2026

Best of 2025 - The debate about net zero ignores the evidence

Those in the Coalition who are opposed to targeting net zero carbon emissions, argue that it will cost too much. But that claim is false and not supported by the evidence. How can they get away with it?

December 11, 2025

From partnership to pressure: why India–US ties have frayed

The downturn in India–US relations during Trump’s second presidency exposes deeper structural weaknesses in the partnership, from trade and strategic autonomy to diverging political priorities.

October 30, 2025

The fog of electricity price disinformation

The federal government should collect and make available data that shows comparative wholesale electricity costs on a global basis and where Australia sits. This information should show average spot prices, average industrial prices.

November 4, 2025

When will immigration return to 'normal'?

Despite assurances from Immigration Minister Tony Burke that immigration is “ trending back towards historically normal levels”, all indicators suggest it is once again overshooting Treasury’s projection. Indeed, it looks like the descent may have stalled and might rebound.

January 11, 2026

Best of 2025 - 7 October 2023: What really happened? Part 1

At dawn, on 7 October 2023, Hamas fighters blast over 100 holes in the walls and fences that separate the Gaza Strip from Israel.

October 6, 2025

Individualism and desire – are we really in control?

In an age of influencers and online echo chambers, the French literary theorist and anthropologist René Girard (1923-2015) feels strikingly relevant.

November 6, 2025

Venezuela and Trump’s war to save the old order

“The past is not dead; it is not even past.” William Faulkner was right: past events continue to inform and shape our world.

November 18, 2025

Nuclear testing threatens global stability

Gareth Evans, Robert Hill, and Larissa Waters are among the Australian signatories of a statement calling on Trump to clarify that the US will not resume nuclear explosive testing.

December 18, 2025

2025 in Review: What this year taught us about life, loss and shared humanity

Amid violence, war and deepening polarisation, 2025 has shown that despair and passivity are choices too – and that human survival depends on rejecting dehumanisation in all its forms.

January 7, 2026

Best of 2025 - Courts brace for next wave of 'sovereign citizens'

When I wrote about the “ Cavalcade of the Cretinous” in February 2022, I thought the anti-vaccination early incarnations of “sovereign citizens” were just a hopeless joke (“Summernats without the sophistication”) that would quietly go away.

November 21, 2025

Australia’s toxic algal bloom has killed 87,000 animals – and summer’s coming

An unprecedented toxic algal bloom in South Australia has devastated marine life, tourism and fishing. With no clear end in sight, scientists warn it may become a permanent feature of local waters – and research cuts risk making it worse.

October 15, 2025

From Gaza, Palestinians have reasserted their agency on the world stage

If we are to speak of a Palestinian victory in Gaza, it is a resounding triumph for the Palestinian people, their indomitable spirit and their deeply rooted resistance that transcends faction, ideology and politics.

December 19, 2025

The Bondi Beach massacre: exploiting tragedy

The tragic massacre at a Hanukkah celebration in Bondi was followed by a rush to assign blame, inflame fear and curtail dissent.

December 9, 2025

Gaza and the unravelling of the post-war world

The war on Gaza exposed deep cracks in international law, Western power, and the institutions meant to enforce them. From global protests to shifting alliances, a different world order is now taking shape.

December 9, 2025

The Bondi Beach massacre: exploiting tragedy

The tragic massacre at a Hanukkah celebration in Bondi was followed by a rush to assign blame, inflame fear and curtail dissent.

December 3, 2025

UK–US drug deal risks turning the NHS into a casualty of Trump trade politics

A new agreement with the Trump administration would force Britain’s National Health Service to pay billions more for medicines to avoid tariffs – prompting outrage from MPs, health experts and patient advocates.

December 20, 2025

Shrinking East Asia needs a safety net

East Asia has led the global recovery since the pandemic, but deep welfare imbalances are now threatening the sustainability of its growth model.

December 4, 2025

From coal to solar: a new manufacturing bet in the Hunter

_A company headed up by one of the legends of Australian solar research and development has won more than $150 million in federal Solar Sunshot funding to build a commercial-scale PV panel manufacturing plant in one of the nation’s biggest coal hubs – the New South Wales Hunter Valley.

October 14, 2025

The half-life of humiliation and the hunger for revenge

The trauma, humiliation and rage of those that survive are concomitants of the indiscriminate killing with impunity and the deracination of innocent men, women and children by the invaders and occupiers of a country.

November 11, 2025

Graham Richardson's environmental legacy

In the week that Labor is struggling to pass its environmental legislation, the death of Graham Richardson is a reminder that, as Labor environment minister, he oversaw the passage of the biggest suite of environmental legislation put forward by any minister or government before or since.

October 22, 2025

China’s FDI, not the BRI, drives a global green transition

Over the past few years, outward Chinese foreign direct investment commitments in green manufacturing have grown rapidly and now dwarf the Marshall Plan in their scale.

October 10, 2025

Campus leaders mobilise to battle Trump’s anti-education ‘Compact’ tooth and nail

“Workers, students, campus community members across this great country are coming together to fight for a higher education system that actually works for all – one that is affordable, strengthens freedom and democracy, and stands up to its public mission.”

January 16, 2026

Best of 2025 - How the Dismissal ripples reached Beijing: Some personal recollections

Life in Beijing in 1975 was not easy and the events leading up to the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government in November piled on the pressure.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal