As world media and leaders normalise US President Donald Trump’s erratic behaviour, Pope Leo XIV must resist and keep his distance. (more…)
Category: Politics
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Grief, proximity and the failure of moral judgement
After Bondi, intense grief and fear shaped public response. But emotional proximity can distort moral judgement, narrowing debate and crowding out the analysis needed to prevent future violence.
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Best of 2025 – Mr Albanese goes to Washington
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is scheduled to meet President Donald Trump in Washington on 20 October. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Blame and frame: How Chinese Australians are counted when blamed, discounted when needed
We say we want to understand China. Then we glance past a million Chinese speakers at home and start counting somewhere else. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – A deserved defeat for Albanese on freedom of information
Thanks to Opposition leader Sussan Ley, the government’s disgraceful attempt to squeeze the life out of the Freedom of Information Act is as dead as a herring. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Who are ‘Advance’ and what are they doing to our politics?
Launched in 2018 as a conservative answer to GetUp!, the group Advance likes to style itself as the voice of the average person against “the elite”. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Shameful distortion that lies at the heart of US conservative politics
The news of ceasefire and release of hostages in Gaza is cause for great rejoicing and for giving credit where it is due. But the big questions remain: where to from here, and how did the world allow this to happen in the first place? (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Israel’s response to the International Court of Justice
The ceasefire plan in Gaza has dominated our news in recent days and weeks. One aspect of the plan is the obligation of Israel in the first phase to release a number — a large number — of Palestinian prisoners. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Disarming extremism in the algorithmic age
Amelie Szczecinski is one of six talented young Australians who will travel to the UN General Assembly in New York next week as part of the Global Voices project. (more…)
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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. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Lack of China capability can only do harm to society: Our current situation is a disgrace
In March 2023, the Australian Academy of the Humanities sounded the alarm on the decline in our understanding and knowledge of China through a report on “Australia’s China Knowledge Capability”. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Ignorance is complicity: Australia must end its arms trade with those committing crimes
Rayana Ajam is one of six talented young Australians who will travel to the UN General Assembly in New York next week as part of the Global Voices project. (more…)
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The USA today: a derangement threatening the World
The response to events in Venezuela exposes how breaches of international law are absorbed, reframed, and normalised – and what that reveals about power, decadence, and global silence.
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Best of 2025 – A masterclass in agency: What Singapore can teach Australia about China
Singapore’s new Prime Minister Lawrence Wong sat down with the ABC on 2 October and offered something rare in Australia’s China debate: clarity, confidence, and a middle-power strategy that doesn’t involve shouting or submission. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Between two wounds: Gaza confronts Trump’s plan to end the war
On a cold morning in central Gaza City, Nevin Al-Barbari, 35, sat in what remained of her family home, watching her two-year-old daughter, Reem, explore the rooms she had only recently come to know. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – ‘Disaster season’: What is that?
Anika Wells, in announcing a meeting with three telco giants to discuss Optus’s Triple Zero emergency call system catastrophe in September, referred to the need for Australians to have confidence in the system before the coming “disaster season”. By that she meant summer. Is there really such a season? (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Journos as heroes and villains – ‘The Hack’ reviewed – Part 1
In films and on the small screen, journalists are portrayed as heroes or villains. In The Hack they are both. Does this reflect the diminished, benighted standing journalists hold in society today or is it a step forward in showing the complexities of the work? (more…)
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Best of 2025 – 7 October not a day to abuse protesters
When it comes to the domestic political fallout from the Gaza conflict, there are no more reliable and uncritical friends of Israel than Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan and her New South Wales counterpart Chris Minns. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Inequality and the future of democracy
Rising inequality and declining living standards have posed a threat to democracy in several democracies, but so far not in Australia. However, the increasing inequality of wealth, driven by housing becoming unaffordable without rich parents, is a threat. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Australia faces a looming crisis of older women retiring in poverty. Here’s what we can do
Australia faces a serious challenge. Despite important progress on gender equality over recent decades, a looming crisis now threatens the economic security of older women. Without urgent and bold action, we risk consigning further generations of women to poverty in retirement. (more…)
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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. (more…)
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Francesca Albanese and the lonely road of defiance
The UN special rapporteur investigating Gaza is sanctioned, blacklisted and treated as a criminal. The response reveals how power reacts when accountability is applied to the powerful.
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Best of 2025 – No justice or peace for Palestinians in Trump’s Plan
The Trump Plan is designed to reframe the issues in favour of Israel. Palestinians have been betrayed again. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Israel’s interception of the Gaza aid flotilla is a clear violation of international law
The Israel Defence Force has intercepted a flotilla of humanitarian vessels seeking to deliver aid to Gaza, taking control of multiple vessels and arresting activists, including Greta Thunberg. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – States increase pressure on Commonwealth to address hospital cost increases
Hark back to December 2023. National Cabinet endorsed a historic agreement setting the parameters for future Commonwealth-state sharing of public hospital costs over the next decade. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Ben Saul on Palestinian recognition and the Trump plan
At the National Press Club this week, Ben Saul argued that Australia is more than a “modest middle power” and must step up on Palestine. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Chris Sidoti’s prescription for action on Palestine
At the National Press Club this week with Ben Saul, Chris Sidoti argues that recognition of Palestine is important, but that Australia must also comply with international law obligations, including acting on arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Trump’s mongrel punt
In the Australian vernacular, a mongrel punt is an erratic kick forward of a football which leaves those participating in the game with an awkward choice between contesting possession (possibly at the cost of broken fingers) and waiting to see where the ball bounces. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Age policy is a shambles. Where to from here? Part 1 & 2
Wherever you look, at residential aged care institutions, at retirement village life, at the home support package scheme, or talk to the people over 65 — called “the old” — living at home making no claim on the system, just coping by whatever means they can, this stage of life means grappling with overwhelming challenges. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Could the Teals win Senate seats in an expanded parliament?
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…)