Comment

Canberra is a small city. Forget six degrees of separation. If you’re not actually living across the road from the prime minister, you could well be next door to his chief of staff, married to his press sec, playing golf with his departmental head, sitting next to his driver at the footy, passing him and his partner walking up and down Red Hill at the weekend.

While equity remains a vague buzzword in education reform, governments continue to avoid accountability for improving it in schools. The lack of a clear definition can lead to misdirection of taxpayer funds … This has been the case in Australia for decades.

The Albanese government’s signature, visionary policy for the next election is shaping up to be the Future Made in Australia. So far, the prime minister has faced criticism for his government’s reliance on subsidies in its support for high-priority projects and sectors under that framework, which the Coalition is calling ‘billions for billionaires’.

The events of this week have indeed been a very sad commentary on the ugly and dangerous state of US politics, the outcome of a longer-term slide into extreme tribalism, reliance on inflammatory and poisonous rhetoric and provocative actions.

Albanese and his ministers say the outcome of the presidential election is the business of the American people ... However, the risks to Australia if Trump wins cannot be overstated.

From Richard Nixon’s Watergate lies and corruption to both George Bushes and Bill Clinton, all roads lead to Donald Trump. Trump reveals not American greatness but American fragility. America has always teetered on the edge of collapse.

Albanese, unlike Starmer, faces the next election as an incumbent defending the slimmest of majorities ... The prime minister can take little consolation from the fact that the UK is another country: the similarities of our political cultures are too significant to dismiss.

If all of the predictions about China that I have read or covered were accurate, then either China would have collapsed or conquered the world. Neither has happened. According to the books on my shelves, we are way overdue for a war over Taiwan.

In order to hold those responsible for climate and environmental harm accountable, and to drive urgent action, we need more Australians to call out the wrongdoing they see at work that is hurting our ecosystems and our climate ... We need transparency for the planet.

Ordinary Australians have suffered heavily over at least 15 years of poor performance by ASIC as it repeatedly failed to respond early and effectively to allegations of misconduct, and then to punish those responsible.