Important discussions are taking place within the government and before the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters about increasing the size of the federal parliament. (more…)
Category: Politics
-
The economics of Indonesia’s discontent
Economic discontent erupted in protests across Indonesia in late August 2025. The trigger was the proposal to give generous housing allowances to members of parliament, but unrest had been bubbling since early in the year. (more…)
-
Will Hastie face his manifest destiny?
Assuming that Andrew Hastie is not taken from us by the apparently imminent Rapture, he may soon come up for judgment. It is very hard to imagine him leading the Liberal Party anywhere other than over a cliff. (more…)
-
Seeking the positive-sum economy where everyone wins a prize
What is this “abundance” thing that progressive economists are suddenly banging on about after reading the latest American pop economics book? At last, one of them has explained it. (more…)
-
Recognition of Palestine: What follows?
If a pathway to translating Palestine into reality remains elusive, and the wounds of today are not healed, a grim future awaits – not only for Palestinians, Israel and Israelis, but for the cohesion of Australian society as well. (more…)
-
New revelations of the Murdoch empire’s underbelly – From The Hack’s real-life journalist
This is the humblest day of my life, declared Rupert Murdoch to a parliamentary committee on 19 July 2011. (more…)
-
Scarborough collision triggers Beijing’s strategic hardening
On 11 August 2025, Chinese law enforcement and naval vessels reportedly collided during an interception of a Philippine coast guard ship near Scarborough Shoal. (more…)
-
Shark nets do protect human life
In the well orchestrated war against shark nets in NSW, truth has long been the first casualty. The fatal shark attack on a 57-year-old man at Dee Why Beach in Sydney on 6 September is arguably the second. (more…)
-
What’s wrong with America’s democracy? There has never been one
We cannot but sympathise with those who lament the destruction of American “democracy” as they see the rule of law dissolve before them and the once revered Constitution thrown into the wastepaper basket. (more…)
-
China’s long game in Iran’s short war
Following the 12-day Iran-Israel war in June 2025, China has quietly accelerated its strategic partnership with a weakened Islamic Republic through renewed infrastructure commitments, expanded technological co-operation and deepened diplomatic alignment. (more…)
-
What should Australian Governments do about ‘mental health’?
Along with climate change and ecological damage, Australians face an equally important challenge of exposure to stressful social conditions leading to declining psychological health for millions. (more…)
-
Goodbye petrostates, hello ‘electrostates’: How the clean energy shift is reshaping the world order
For more than a century, global geopolitics has revolved around oil and gas. Countries with big fossil fuel reserves, such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, have amassed significant wealth and foreign influence, helping shape the world order. (more…)
-
Message from the editor
I am writing from the back of a minibus in Chongqing this week, the mountainous mega city in southwestern China. (more…)
-
The Chris Hedges Report: We are all antifa now
The designation of the amorphous group antifa as a terrorist organisation allows the state to brand all dissidents as supporters of antifa and prosecute them as terrorists. (more…)
-
How AI-based eye scans can detect high blood sugar, heart disease
Retinal scans, aided by artificial intelligence, may soon offer doctors a simple, non-invasive way to detect several medical conditions. (more…)
-
Justice over comfort – Rethinking DEI across borders and battles
Diversity, equity and inclusion programs are often defunded, dismissed as divisive, symbolic, performative, or reduced to box-ticking exercises, but in the shadow of the genocide in Gaza, we need to ask ourselves – what is DEI really about? (more…)
-
Labor has a narrow window to effect change
Australia is a quarter of the way into the twenty-first century and stuck on a trajectory that cannot last. (more…)
-
Legitimacy or leverage? The battle over what recognition really means
When Britain, Canada, Australia, France and others moved in quick succession to recognise the State of Palestine, observers described it as a “cascade” – a diplomatic avalanche that broke a Western taboo and forced an international conversation about statehood, occupation and impunity. (more…)
-
Typhoon Ragasa – We hardly blinked
One doesn’t have to look very far to find criticism by Western governments and media of the system of governance we use here in Hong Kong. Words like authoritarian, dictatorial, totalitarian flow from these lips on a regular basis. (more…)
-
Our age of unreason
We have lost that connection between reason and morality …. We have decisively lost our idea of the commonwealth as the anchor from which reason will make its case. (more…)
-
America’s democratic decline
As Donald Trump’s second term as president unfolds, his authoritarian tendencies and autocratic proclivities are increasingly cast into sharp relief. (more…)
-
Environment: Arctic and Europe warming at double the global average
The Arctic and Europe are melting in the heat. Rapid renewable energy transition for Africa will bring multiple benefits and save money. NSW Planning Commission decides all emissions are significant, no matter how small. (more…)
-
The world in 2050 is already here
Dr Mike Gilligan has reminded us that Australia’s defence and foreign policies are pulling in opposite directions: we preach “equilibrium” in the Pacific while binding ourselves ever more tightly to Washington’s war plans against China. His warning is timely, but we must go further. (more…)
-
Social cohesion: The velvet glove for assimilation
For two decades, Australian governments have invoked social cohesion as a national virtue. It appears in budget papers, multicultural statements, speeches, and media briefings. (more…)
-
Two rights experts to address Press Club on Palestine recognition
Two globally renowned figures in the field of human rights will address the National Press Club in Canberra on 1 October on the topic “Palestine recognition: necessary but insufficient”. (more…)
-
Interview that described the hell Gaza has become
I am sure I am not the only person who stopped what she was doing early on Tuesday morning to listen the most anguished interview I have ever heard on radio. (more…)
-
The fish rots from the head
What we in the West are observing, some with equanimity others with revulsion, is the failure of the Western form of governance that we have so long held up to the rest of the world as the pinnacle of human achievement in national and international governance. (more…)
-
US a partner not an enemy, China says – Asian Media Report
In Asian media this week: Writer warns of US-China collusion “nightmare”. Plus: Trump asks Muslim bloc to back Gaza peace plan; Big US visa fee another blow to Modi; Cambodia’s decline under “dictator” Hun Manet; Progressive, conservative clash in Japan’s leadership race. (more…)
-
Gas is not a climate policy
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has thrown himself into a fight that is not his own. (more…)
