The Morning Edition

Today we're sharing the first episode of Virginia – The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald's latest investigative podcast on Jeffrey Epstein's most prominent victim.
Walkley-award winning journalist Melissa Fyfe and WA Today reporter Carla Hildebrandt spent more than six months investigating Virginia Giuffre's life in Australia and the months before her death.
Despite Virginia's heroic battle in the most notorious sex-trafficking case of the 21st century, few knew about one of her toughest fights. It was one she fought privately at home in Australia.
Follow The Age and SMH Investigates to listen to all four episodes of...

Today we’re hot off the press, to use an old newsroom cliche, to talk about the federal government’s new plan for migration. Immigration Minister Tony Burke gave a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra on Thursday where he announced significant changes.

These changes included curtailing visa hopping, targeting international students, implementing a ballot system for backpackers, and ramping up the deportation of unlawful non-citizens.

If these aims are achieved, what will the consequences be? Will demand for housing drop? Will there be labour shortages in agriculture, or aged care? What about deport...

When Donald Trump announced his so-called Liberation Day tariffs in April last year, one question seemed to dominate: which country would suffer the most economic pain?

But since then, one country after the next seems to have awoken to a starkly hopeful realisation: the United States accounts for only 15 per cent of total global imports and trade. So, could these countries join a newly powerful trading bloc?

Today, international and political editor Peter Hartcher on recent moves by Canada to possibly join the European Union, and if Australia could follow suit.

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For nearly 35 years, hundreds of thousands of readers around the world have turned to Caitlin Moran for laughter and her signature nouse about how to cope with life's worst bits.

Having grown up in poverty in a down-at-heels English town and helping to support her siblings from the age of 15, Moran was resilience personified.

And then Trump, the universe and everything nearly stole her sanity.

Today, in a break from the doom and gloom of news, the British author on how we can rediscover how life really is a "quiet loving thing".

Pauline Hanson has finally announced her party’s migration policy, after weeks in which various One Nation MPs publicly contradicted one another on the plan.

Today, hear federal political reporter Brittany Busch on which visa holders Pauline Hanson has in her sights – and whether her plan could risk our prosperity.

Further reading:

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Australia. Join host Samantha Selinger-Morris, from the newsrooms of The Sydney Morning Herald...

Finals in Australia’s major sporting codes are in full swing.

And six weeks after the AFL grand final is played, the other biggest show of the year - the men’s, and women’s, draft - begins.

But the work to find the next big thing starts years earlier, when scouts hunt for teenagers who possess unusual qualities.

I’m Samantha Selinger-Morris, and you’re listening to The Morning Edition, from The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.

Today, explainer reporter Madeleine Heffernan and sports reporter Peter Ryan, on the making of a sport...

This week we’re joining the dots between two different stories: the fight over superannuation, and the colourful past of One Nation’s leader in Victoria, Warren Pickering.

On Monday, Pauline Hanson told voters her party would allow renters and prospective home buyers to withdraw their superannuation early. The policy was scant on details, but it had the desired effect of controlling the national debate.

The same thing happened with the Pickering press conference.

Normally, a leader of a right-wing political party admitting to taking drugs would not be good for electoral prospects. But...

This week marks twenty-five years since the United States suffered a terrorist attack that was predicted to change the world forever.

Today, international and political editor Peter Hartcher talks about the lessons that the US learned – and failed to learn – and examines the costs and rewards of Australia's full-throated support of its ally following the attack.

Hartcher also discusses what Australia's alliance looks like today in the face of Donald Trump's presidency.

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Australia. Join host Samantha Selinger-Morris, from...

A far-right party in Germany has just trounced its rivals in a state election – the closest such a party has come to holding power in a German state since World War II.

The result sent shockwaves through a country that has, since the destruction of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime, created a political system that prevents extremist parties from returning to power.

Today's guest, Europe correspondent David Crowe, discusses what the rise of the Alternative for Germany party, otherwise known as the AfD, means for Europe and the rest of the world.

Further reading:

It’s the Australian government versus big tech yet again in parliament this week, with Labor planning to introduce a bill that would tackle online harm and hand back control of social media algorithms to users.

It comes as toxic online content is increasingly linked to violent sexualised behaviour in young men.
But is what we see on social media a matter for a government? Or has the algorithm become so out of hand that guardrails need to be put in place?

Today's guest is federal bureau chief Michelle Griffin.

Background reading:

It was a dramatic fall from grace for a brand that had taken the world by storm by making sunscreen sexy, with influencers around the globe extolling how flawlessly the products wore under make-up and felt virtually undetectable on the skin.

Today, lifestyle reporter Lauren Ironmonger and business reporter Jessica Yun talk about the fallout a year on from the Choice findings, and whether the safety of sunscreens in Australia has been improved.

Further reading:

In this week’s episode, we dissect Labor’s brutal loss to One Nation in a supposedly safe seat in Western Australia.

Does this byelection really signify, as victor Luke Herdegen put it, that no MP is safe from the “orange tsunami”?

One Liberal MP who is worried is Andrew Hastie. Liberal strategists have been telling us his stance against accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith may cause voters in his electorate to defect to One Nation.

Also, this week One Nation leader Pauline Hanson claimed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s rhetoric was fuelling violence t...

In terms of criminal jury trials, what unfolded in the infamous death cap mushroom case was unique.
Because when the jury was locked away from the outside world to consider a verdict, they were staying in the same hotel, in the same country town, as the police who investigated the case, the lawyers who prosecuted, and the media reporting on it.

This strange arrangement has opened the case to suggestions that the jury was tainted – a central tenet of Erin Patterson’s appeal against her conviction.

Patterson was sentenced to life imprisonment last year, with...

Fashion designer John Galliano announced yesterday that he would step away from being honoured with a retrospective at next year’s illustrious Met Gala, the so-called Oscars of the fashion world.
Many had hailed Galliano as one of modern history's most important fashion designers, but he was also, as fashion insider Amy Odell puts it, "the industry's most famous antisemite”.

Today Odell, author of Anna, a biography of former Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, and the host of The Back Row podcast, talks about whether Galliano’s cancellation was fair and if it was a wider rebuke to an i...

Six days ago, a massive flash flood descended like an avalanche through villages and towns on the Nepal-Tibet border, sweeping away homes, roads and bridges.
Hundreds of people are dead and thousands are missing, including 43 Australians.
Joining us today is South-East Asia correspondent Zach Hope, who is reporting from the disaster zone in Nepal.

Background reading:

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Australia. Join host Samantha Selinger-Morris, from the newsroo...

If you’ve applied for a job in the past few years, you may have been humiliated by an AI program. Maybe while it interviewed you. Or threw out your CV.

But lately, as AI recruitment programs have become way more sophisticated, so, too, have job hunters, enlisting AI agents of their own.

Today, freelance writer Stephanie Wood on new ways that AI can discriminate against workers. And the best way to nab a job.

Read Stephanie's feature here.

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the be...

Egg freezing has become a popular choice for more and more young women, many of whom are looking for something of an insurance policy against missing out on becoming a mother.

It’s become big business, which means fertility companies are beholden not just to their patients, but also to their shareholders.

Today, reporter Bronte Gossling and deputy lifestyle editor Courtney Thompson discuss the latest data on egg freezing, as well as what it’s actually like for the women who undergo it.

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This week we reported on some interesting polling that grappled with what makes One Nation voters tick, and one issue stood out.

There’s also been an argy-bargy in the party this week over immigration numbers, the net result of which being, perhaps, that One Nation is not totally against migration. 

Meanwhile, the Labor government is yet to announce its migration plan and which visa classes it may cut, but the early talk of deportation of migrants sent shockwaves through some communities.

Finally, we also talk about the AI data centres cropping up in...

When news broke last week that America’s national debt had surged to a record high of $US40 trillion, it was notable enough. If the US economy shakes, the rest of the globe feels it.

And then came the kicker: Donald Trump suggested he could use the military to stage an “intervention” on bond markets.

Today, international and political editor Peter Hartcher discusses the declining global confidence in the American dollar and the US Treasury – and what Trump will have to do to avoid a global financial crisis.

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It’s been a year since a murderous ambush in rural Victoria led to Australia’s biggest manhunt, and the consequences are being felt beyond the dense bush that Dezi Freeman fled into after he shot and killed two police officers.

Today crime journalist Sherryn Groch on the underground network and doomsday preppers in the High Country. And why Freeman, a monster to some, has become an outlaw hero to an entrenched part of Australian society. It’s Wednesday, August 26.

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Our domestic spy agency copped a lot of criticism in December after the Bondi Beach massacre for failing to prevent the attack.

But is the answer expanded powers?

A bill passed in parliament last week is proposing just that – laws that force suspects to answer questions, or face a jail sentence.

Today national security correspondent Matthew Knott talks about the new expanded powers of ASIO and the politicians arguing they amount to a breach of our rights.

Background reading

Chanel Contos is a young Sydney woman who, five years ago, made headlines after she collated and published the testimonies of thousands of women and girls about instances of sexual assault they’d experienced.

Many had made allegations they’d been assaulted by teenage boys who went to some of Sydney’s most elite private schools.

So have things changed, since then? Judging by the last week or so with allegations of sexual assault made against boys from two separate schools, and then the Sydney Swans, perhaps not.

Today, sexual consent activist and author...

Today we have something special and a little bit different because Tony Wright, one of the stalwarts of Australian political writing, is stepping back from daily newsroom duties after 50 years in journalism.
For about 30 of these years, Tony reported on federal politics. Bob Hawke was the first prime minister he covered, while Paul Keating often rang Tony at home in the mornings to, at first, berate, and then debate, the stories he had written.

He witnessed great moments - such as the apology to the stolen generations - and the fracturing of Australian politics from the...

We know that Donald Trump has made a habit out of rewarding dictators and throwing off the shackles of long-standing relationships with allies.

Today international and political editor Peter Hartcher discusses Donald Trump’s latest appeasement of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, and the threats he’s issued to Oman.

Background reading

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Aus...

Another scandal involving an alleged sexual assault has erupted in the AFL.
One player from the Sydney Swans football team was spoken to by police after an alleged sexual assault said to have taken place in the early hours of Monday.
Today, The Age’s chief AFL writer, Jake Niall, discusses what's known, and not known, about what's unfolded.

And, just a note, we're not suggesting the players are under investigation by police, just that they are assisting with their inquiries.

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Our four biggest banks say that fewer people are taking out mortgage loans. One has even forecast a significant fall in house prices in two cities.

Meanwhile, Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock has issued a stern warning ...

Today, senior economics correspondent Shane Wright discusses whether the housing bubble is indeed starting to burst.

Background reading

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Australia. Jo...

Which dog owners among us haven’t wondered about their pets: What are they thinking? Do they like me? Are they – oh no! – judging me?

Well, a new study has revealed that dogs are even better at reading our emotions than chimpanzees, our closest evolutionary relative.

Today, science reporter Angus Dalton on how researchers reached this conclusion, and how to help our dogs lead their best lives.

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Australia. Join host Samantha Selinger-Morris, from the newsrooms of The Sydney Morning...

We’re back to talking about melons and the podcast interview that continues to cause dramas for the prime minister.

Six weeks ago, Anthony Albanese appeared on a podcast called ‘Bush Deep’ and was asked about the worst gift he received. Melons, he replied, gifted to him by Japanese prime minister.

What was said, and not said, has become the focus of attacks from the media, the Coalition and One Nation this week.

So why has the issue reared its head again? And is it affecting Albanese’s reputation or are the Coalition and co o...

Donald Trump has suffered a cascade of humiliations at the hands of Iran and Iranian allies in the last two weeks.
But, according to international and political editor Peter Hartcher, humiliation is the least of Trump's problems now.
In today's episode, Hartcher discusses the strikes from Houthi rebels over the weekend, which confirm a new front to this war. And the significance of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan creating a new pact, dubbed the 'Islamic NATO'.

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Australia. Join h...

Car insurance in Australia has leapt by nearly 50 per cent in the last six years and this week, the financial regulator blasted insurers for failing to adequately explain to customers why they have jacked up prices by so much.
So what's behind the spike in premiums?
Insurers talk about the cost of repairing cars these days and global volatility, but there's plenty of evidence that companies will reduce the cost if you threaten to walk.
Today's guest, national consumer affairs reporter Elias Visontay, talks about the real reason premiums have risen so steeply, and what you...

Kyle Sandilands commanded massive audiences on commercial radio before his now infamous sacking. And on Monday, his new subscriber-only live show was launched.

It was the old Sandilands but even more uncensored, and with a political bent, featuring guests such as NSW Premier Chris Minns and One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.

So why do we care, and what does this new era of media – free of the rules of commercial radio – signify? And why would politicians appear on his show anyway?

Today's guests are culture reporter Kayla Olaya and senior columnist Jacqueline Maley.
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In a win that has sent shockwaves through the Democratic Party, an unabashedly left-wing epidemiologist has been chosen as the Democrat nominee to fight for a senate seat in Michigan in November.

Some see it as a desperate move at a time when the Republican Party is moving full steam ahead to prosecute opponents such as Dr Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden's former COVID tsar, who was browbeaten just over a week ago in a heated Senate hearing.

Today, North America correspondent Michael Koziol discusses why Democrats are gambling their ability to regain power in November...

This week on Inside Politics, we take a look at some of the major policy challenges facing the Albanese government – from migration numbers, to gambling-advertising reform and the news media bargaining code between Australian media and big tech companies.

Joining host Jacqueline Maley are chief political correspondent Paul Sakkal and federal political correspondent Natassia Chrysanthos.

If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, please rate, review & subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or whichever platform you find your pods.

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There’s a battle brewing over which country will lead the world in Artificial Intelligence, and the US has bet the house, economically, that it will be the winner.

Today, international and political editor Peter Hartcher on what previous infrastructure booms – such as the craze for building railways in the 1840s or the dotcom boom of the 1990s – tell us about where all this will lead, and which countries might be hit hardest in an AI bust.

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Australia. Join host Samanth...

Is Alan Jones guilty of multiple counts of indecent assault? Or are the allegations against him - by six men - the result of treachery, desperation and opportunism, as Jones’ barrister has argued?

Today crime reporter Clare Sibthorpe on the allegations aired in court, so far, in the trial of Alan Jones, which began this week.

If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please rate, review & subscribe on Apple, Spotify or whichever platform you find your pods.

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It’s the latest health buzzword, proposed as a magic cure for everything from dementia to low libido. But is it safe, or even advisable, to take supplementary testosterone? 

Today, we talk to Madeleine Heffernan on what the experts want us to know, and what this latest cultural obsession says about us right now.

If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please rate, review & subscribe on Apple, Spotify or whichever platform you find your pods.

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Virginia Giuffre was fearless in taking down some of the world's most powerful people. As Jeffrey Epstein's most prominent victim, she helped expose his crimes and hold his friends to account, including the man formerly known as Prince Andrew.

But despite her heroic battle in the most notorious sex trafficking case of the 21st century, few knew about one of her toughest fights. It was one she fought privately, at home in Australia.

Today, Good Weekend magazine senior writer, Melissa Fyfe, and WA Today reporter, Carla Hildebrandt, on their four-part investigative podcast, Virginia.

...

It’s been another roller coaster this week for mortgage holders. Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock issued a stern warning about inflation, before the clouds parted a little when there was a welcome dip in the numbers.

We check in with the state of the economy with senior economics correspondent Shane Wright, before crossing to state political editor Chip Le Grand after quite a momentous week in Victoria.

This week, Jacinta Allan was ousted as premier, with Ben Carroll taking the reins ahead of what is shaping up to be a genuine three-way contest in th...

They are wars on different fronts, but both are showcasing what international and political editor Peter Hartcher says are the deep misjudgements of leaders.

Reporting this week revealed US armaments are running low as war continues in the Middle East. And the ramifications of the “unbelievable” nuclear deal that US President Donald Trump signed with Saudi Arabia are beginning to surface.

Meanwhile, in the Russia-Ukraine war, Hartcher says the decisions being made by Vladimir Putin aren’t much better, with the Russian president poised to begin a widespread and desperate recruitment drive for more soldiers.

...

The Victorian government made headlines, for all the wrong reasons, in 2023, when it pulled out of hosting the Commonwealth Games on the grounds that it was too expensive.

Now, the Games are on in Glasgow, with many locals barely registering that it’s even taking place in their city, according to our reporter on the ground.

Today, senior sports writer Michael Gleeson on whether the competition, which started in 1930 as a means of uniting the colonies and honouring the monarchy, is on its last legs. 

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