Comment

With the cost-of-living crisis likely to dominate the next federal budget and election, attention will inevitably focus on the lived experience of particular groups across our community. How have they fared?

Jim Chalmers had a clear message for the inflation hawks as he embarked on his hectic round of budget scene-setting this week. ‘This is not the time,’ he declared, ‘for scorched-earth austerity.

If we are going to increase the participation of the least well-off students in tertiary education, we must first tackle their experience in primary and secondary education, not to mention early childhood, where the poorest are the ones most likely to miss out.

The world could be enduring death by America, whose cancer of inequality and populist political mayhem has metastasised into the global body politic.

Albanese said the flare-up should not become a distraction from the crisis of gender-based violence … The prime minister acknowledged the rallies were held to demand ‘that governments of all levels must do better, including my own, including every state and territory government’.

Funding cuts have meant extant services are reducing what they offer. People continue to be farmed into a for-profit system that cannot adequately service complexity, especially with only 10 funded sessions a year … At best we can perhaps say this government has done no worse than its predecessor.

Concern at the prospect of a minority government is misplaced… One measure of the success of the minority government formed by Julia Gillard was its legislative agenda, with record numbers of bills passed during her term.

With the Greens now so clearly focused on garnering all the votes they can on the issue, and inequality threatening to put home ownership and even affordable rent out of reach for a generation of young people, it’s hard to justify preserving billions of dollars of tax incentives.

This is a grim list. It is complete, but it will inevitably grow. It tells the story of a country in crisis.

Ominously, Musk used X to whip up a barrage of anti-Australian sentiment … Musk posted that his concern was ‘that if ANY country is allowed to censor content for ALL countries … then what is to stop any country from controlling the entire internet?