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Migration is shaping up to be the next big battleground in federal politics as Labor desperately tries to wrestle back control of the narrative from One Nation.

But does this week’s long-awaited plan leave the government stronger or weaker politically?

And could going harder on Pauline Hanson hold the key to tackling One Nation? This week, the major parties gave it a try as some of Hanson’s nasty comments came back to bite her.

Today, Contributing Editor at The New Daily, Amy Remeikis on immigration politics and whether some things are off...

After one false start and a hell of a lot of political pressure from the right, Labor has finally unveiled its long-awaited immigration plans.

Backpackers, students and visa overstayers will all be targeted by the measures – designed to bring net overseas migration down from around 300 thousand, to 225 thousand by 2028.

So what impact will the overhaul have on our economy, our communities, and on Labor’s re-election prospects? 

Today, journalist Peter Mares – who writes extensively on immigration for Inside Story magazine – on what’s in store, and whether the issue Labor’s addressing is a political p...

Last week, countries including the UK, Canada and France announced plans to restrict trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

In the past, Australia has joined its overseas allies in actions on Israel. This time it’s different – with Foreign Affairs Minister, Penny Wong, saying Australia isn’t considering joining the ban. 

So – why not? 

Today, Commissioner on the UN’s Commission of Inquiry into the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel, Chris Sidoti, on Australia’s responsibilities, and its failures. 

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In the last week, AI bosses around the world have suddenly grown a conscience – urging a global slowdown amid fears the race to develop artificial intelligence could outstrip humanity’s ability to control it.

For Dex Hunter-Torricke, that realisation came a little sooner. The big-tech insider walked away last year, disillusioned, after spending 15 years inside the belly of the beast.

He wrote speeches for Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, worked with Elon Musk at SpaceX, and most recently helped Google DeepMind explain the rise of artificial intelligence to the world.

Now, he says society is m...

The numbers are almost incomprehensible – last month US debt hit 40 trillion dollars. With an interest bill of more than three billion dollars a day.

And that’s before Donald Trump’s trillion dollar promise to hand every adult in America a cheque for five thousand bucks!

Now, as global debt levels rise to record highs, and the cost of paying that debt rises too – experts are sounding the alarm – warning the economic storm that’s brewing is starting to look an awful lot like the 2007 global financial crisis.

Today, Senior Economics Correspondent at the Age and...

One by one, the Aboriginal leaders, organisations and watchdogs the Northern Territory government is supposed to work with are walking away.

The Children’s Commissioner has resigned. An Indigenous MP has left parliament after more than a decade. And now almost the entire Aboriginal side of the Territory’s Justice Policy Partnership has suspended its involvement.

They’re all making a remarkably similar complaint – that the government isn’t listening, and that the structures supposedly designed to give Aboriginal people a say have become meaningless.

Today, National Indigenous Times journalist Dechlan Brennan, on how relati...

From afar, Alice Springs is a whirlpool of myth and truth. A town with competing interests and few solutions, marked by chaos and decades of government overreach.

In cities and towns across Australia, we read about a “crisis” about “rampages”. One newspaper described the children of Alice Springs as “tiny menaces stuck on a turnstile of trouble”.

In this first episode of our three part series This is Alice Springs, Daniel James visits the town at the heart of our nation, to find out how all the interventions, big and small, by governments of all persuasions h...

In 2020 Anthony Albanese called for the sacking of then-sports minister Bridget McKenzie over her involvement in the infamous sports rorts – which he labelled a farce. Not long after, she resigned.

But now that similar pork barrelling claims have been levelled at the Prime Minister, he’s come out swinging – refusing to admit any wrong-doing over his failure to declare membership at a golf club which received a six million dollar grant.

Also coming out swinging this week was Andrew Hastie. The Liberal MP delivered a masterclass in how to take on One Nation as he labell...

When Donald Trump was sworn in for a second time, some of the most powerful men in the tech world had the best seats in the room.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg – a display of just how close silicon valley had aligned itself to the administration.

But within that world, journalist Gil Durán says, is a smaller, more radical group with a much bigger ambition: get rid of democracy, and use technology to build a new order in its place, controlled by a wealthy elite. And in his new book, The Nerd Reich, Gil...

Last month, an emotional Jacqui Lambie revealed a private health battle connected to her time in the army – a debilitating prolapse that required surgery.

The Tasmanian senator called out gaps in health care services for female veterans, and raged against the government’s plans to introduce a $5,000 cap on allied health services for veterans.

This week fellow veterans joined her calls, laying down their war medals outside parliament house in protest, as Lambie promised to continue the fight.

Today, Senator Jacqui Lambie on why veterans are getting a raw deal.

If...

One Nation is copping heat for a proposal that would let Australians take some of the money going into their super as extra pay instead.

For up to three years, renters and mortgage holders could choose to take home a quarter of the money that would normally be put into their retirement – worth about $44 a week for someone on the average full-time wage.

At the same time, the Coalition has been looking at its own ways to give people greater access to their super now – and some of its MPs want to go further.

So...

In imposing scenes in the UK over the weekend, hundreds of masked men belonging to the hard-right group Patriot Platform stopped traffic.

Around the same time, political party AfD was making history in Germany – becoming the first far-right party to win in the country since World War two.

And on the other side of the world, Australia’s high court will today hear from our most high profile Neo-Nazi group in a challenge, legal experts say could see the federal government’s ban on White Australia (formerly known as the National Socialist Network) overturned.

Toda...

On the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, Labor has promised a vast new national park to protect more than 12,000 koalas.

But there’s a catch.

The New South Wales government wants carbon credits to help pay for it. By ending planned logging, it could generate credits that are then sold to companies to offset their emissions.

For the Greens, that creates a dilemma at a moment when both major parties are bleeding voters – voters who are walking straight past the Greens as an alternative.

They want the forests protected, but...

For years, Australia has made cigarettes increasingly expensive in an effort to drive down smoking. Now, the Coalition wants to dramatically reverse course.

It's promised to slash the tobacco excise by 80 per cent, arguing that soaring cigarette prices have fuelled a violent black market. It also wants to legalise and regulate vapes and nicotine pouches.

Labor says there’s no evidence the tax cuts would draw smokers away from the black market, while public health authorities warn it could undo decades of progress in reducing smoking.

So, who’s right?

Today, Mart...

Paul Keating has been out of office for thirty years. But he’s never really left the national conversation.

Keating wanted Australia to find its security in Asia, not from it, and to stop defining itself through bigger powers in the Anglosphere.

That vision now sits uneasily alongside AUKUS, a more powerful China, and an Australia tied ever more closely to the United States.

Today, historian and author of Grand Ambition James Curran, on Keating’s argument for a more independent Australia – and why it continues to challenge the modern Labor Party.

Speaking at the Press Club this week, consent education advocate Chanel Contos outlined how social media companies are feeding misogynistic content to young men online. 

Now, she wants the government to compel social media companies to give people the option to restrict their algorithm. 

So can, and should, the algorithm be contained? And would social media companies even comply? 

Today, CEO of Teach Us Consent, Chanel Contos on the damage the algorithm is doing – and the next tech frontier. 

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They’ve been dubbed pervert glasses. And with good reason  – women around the world are reporting being sexually harassed, filmed without their consent, often without their knowledge.

But this week, the federal government ruled out an import ban on smart glasses – as concerns about the technology rise and examples of their misuse flood the internet.

Today, Associate Dean of Interaction Technology & Information at RMIT Dana McKay,
on the rising popularity of smartglasses, how to regulate their use, and the dangers if wearable surveillance tech becomes widespread.

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One Nation has declared that “politics has changed” after snatching a formerly safe Labor seat in a surprise by-election victory in WA over the weekend.

Until now, it had been the Coalition feeling the effects of the orange wave, but now Labor officially has a Pauline problem of its own.

So what does this mean for the government, and the country?

Today, WA political reporter for Business News, Gary Adshead on how One Nation won over WA voters and whether it can replicate that victory elsewhere.

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A wall of grey, silted water tears through a Himalayan Valley. 

People look on in shock, disbelief and fear as buildings are swallowed. Cars are swept away and people run as the flood surges down below. 

In its aftermath, more than 800 people are dead and thousands are missing, including 43 Australians.

In the search for answers, scientists now believe the disaster began high in the mountains, when an enormous mass of ice and rock, weighing around 500 million tonnes, collapsed and unleashed a torrent of water down the valley. 

Today, glaciologist at University of...

On day one of his role as communications director for the White House, Anthony Scaramucci sung Donald Trump’s praises. 

He would serve in that role for just another ten days, a span of time that has become known as a “mooch”.

Since leaving the White House, Scaramucci has become one of the president’s most vocal and scathing critics. Now, he says Trump’s return to power is the product of deeper failures in American politics, and a warning about what happens when economic anger goes unanswered.

Today, The Rest is Politics US host Ant...

The latest NAPLAN results show around a third of Australian students are still falling short in literacy and numeracy – results that have barely budged since 2023.

At the same time, Australia is settling a decades-long fight over how children should be taught to read.

For years, many schools relied on outdated methods that encouraged children to work out words using context, pictures and other cues. Now, some classrooms are increasingly moving towards phonics and explicit instruction.

But the evidence for that approach has been around for decades. So why is it taking so long fo...

Australia has changed in ways our politics is still struggling to understand. 

We are now a majority migrant nation. Professional women have overtaken blue-collar men as the largest group in the workforce. And the two countries Australia has relied on most, China and the United States, have become less predictable. 

Labor has adapted to parts of this new reality. The Coalition, so far, has struggled to do the same. 

Today, author of Three Shocks, George Megalogenis on the tectonic plates reshaping Australian politics. 

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Over the past two weeks, allegations of sexual assault involving some of the country’s most powerful institutions – the Swans and Sydney’s Scots College – have forced an uncomfortable question about how Australia responds when women say they have been harmed.

But behind those cases is an even more troubling shift. New research suggests some young men are becoming more hostile towards women, while misogyny and sexual violence is being normalised online. 

And with pressure building on leaders and governments across the country to confront it, the question is whether the response is keeping pace with the...

As Trump’s war with Iran reaches the six-month mark, the US is increasing its economic pressure – threatening harsher sanctions not just against Iran, but against anyone else who does business with it.

That puts China, the country’s most important trading partner, directly in Washington’s sights.

But how much of this is just bluster? And has Trump lost the ability to turn this conflict in his favour?

Today, The National Interest’s editor-at-large, Steve Clemons, on the dwindling options available to the US – and what that means for its increasingly unpopular president.<...

Bird flu has reached a new milestone, crossing over to infect and kill a seal in South Australia. 

It marks a new phase of the outbreak, and has sparked fears for many endangered wildlife species, which face the possibility of extinction. 

So how does the way we farm, eat, and live make us vulnerable to viruses like this? And could humans be at risk with the next mutation? 

Today, journalist and author of Sentinel: when diseases spread between animals and humans, Michael Dulaney on the root cause of the virus - and the futu...

Last year, the Prime Minister was ambushed in his hotel lobby by far-right figures boasting of being fed “private intel” during the last election campaign. 

The incident was one of about a dozen stunts targeting Labor, the Greens and some Independents. 

It turns out, this wasn’t just about influencers trying to generate content. It was actually a co-ordinated campaign allegedly paid for by a wealthy Christian sect. 

Today, investigative journalist at The Age Sherryn Groch on the Exclusive Brethren, its bags of cash, and connections to the Liberal Party. 

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Donald Trump has found a new way to make money. Trump Media and Technology Group is monetising the president’s social media posts, selling Wall Street firms early access to them for as much as $100,000 a month. And in the world of traders, a few milliseconds can mean millions of dollars.

Now, Trump is being sued over the arrangement, amid claims it gives paying customers preferential access to official presidential communications.

At the same time, Trump Media is also moving into prediction markets – a fast-growing corner of finance that can turn political events into betting oppo...

Almost one year ago, the Supreme Court of Victoria allowed a television camera to broadcast a sentencing for the first time ever – the hearing for convicted triple murderer Erin Patterson.

Justice Christopher Beale imposed life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 33 years for murdering three in-laws – and attempting to murder a fourth – by lacing their beef Wellingtons with poisonous death cap mushrooms in 2023.

Now, Patterson has been back in court appealing her convictions, while prosecutors argue her sentence is too lenient and that she should never be released.

Today, we revisit our conversation with i...

For more than a decade, Independent MP Andrew Wilkie has been talking about gambling addiction.

His advocacy means he’s become a lightning rod for people to share their stories.

Now, as the government this week passed legislation aimed at reducing gambling harms, Wilkie is among an angry group of dissenters who say the bill is a “national shame”.

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In 2022, Masha Alyokhina escaped Russia disguised as a food delivery courier. 

She had spent years being arrested, imprisoned and watched by the state for her work with punk rock protest group Pussy Riot and for speaking out against Vladimir Putin.

But Alyokhina says the Russia she fled wasn’t transformed by one dramatic moment. Repression came piece by piece, until fear, censorship and eventually silence became part of everyday life. 

Now, she says the same pattern is taking hold elsewhere, as people become overwhelmed, disengaged from politics, and complacent that the freedoms they inhe...

When news broke this week of an alleged sexual assault involving the Sydney Swans AFL team in Melbourne, old faultlines in the way the sport handles accusations against its players re-ignited. 

Everything from the players involved, to the language used by the club, and the way the media reported the allegations, came under the microscope. 

So how much has changed when it comes to footy players doing the wrong thing. And what would a good response from the AFL look like? 

Today, journalist and author of Night Games, Anna Krien, on the way for...

Over six days of public hearings, Australians with a disability told parliament what losing NDIS support would mean for their independence, their families, and their everyday lives.

Despite more than 4,000 submissions and calls for reforms to be paused, the government’s overhaul of the scheme passed the senate yesterday, with support from the Coalition.

By tightening access and reducing some supports, the changes are forecast to save $37.8 billion over the next 4 years. But advocates warn the cuts will leave people worse off, and shift the costs onto families, hospitals and the states.

Today, CE...

Last week Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for fewer childhood vaccines, sprouting links to autism – which have been definitively disproved by scientists and health organisations around the world.

During Trump’s second term, the misinformation from the president and his health secretary, RFK Jr, has been relentless – undermining public trust in vaccines, as outbreaks of previously eliminated diseases flare up again.

Today, Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney’s Infectious Diseases Institute Julie Leask on the politicisation of antivax sentiment, and the implications for Australia

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For most of Australia’s recent history, preparing for war has meant preparing the military. 

Now, the government is turning its attention on the rest of us. 

A new parliamentary inquiry will examine Australia's civilian preparedness and whether we could keep fuel flowing, supply chains moving and essential services running through a major conflict. 

It comes as the government warns Australia is facing the most threatening strategic circumstances since the Second World War. 

Today, Sam Roggeveen, Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program, on what major conflict would actually mean for...

Whistleblower David McBride has been released from prison on parole, after serving 27 months for leaking classified Defence documents to journalists.

Those documents helped expose allegations of war crimes by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.

Years on, he’s still the only person to have been sent to prison over the Afghan Files.

Today, as McBride is released, we’re returning to an interview Ashlynne McGhee recorded with him just before he was jailed – on why he leaked those documents, whether he had any regrets, and how Australia keeps its secrets.

This episode was fi...

After years of pressure to tackle gambling harm, the Albanese government is trying to get its long-awaited reforms through parliament, looking to cut a deal with the Opposition, sparking a debate over just how far the government is prepared to go to get its reforms through. 

Meanwhile, immigration is becoming one of the defining battles in federal politics, as One Nation’s growing support and hardline approach force both major parties to confront how they respond to its agenda. 

And amidst it all, Barnaby Joyce declared One Nation “one of the gayest parties in Australia”, after a...

For decades, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has helped shape politics and public debate, and in doing so, has often left lasting consequences for some of the people caught in its sights, from politicians, to public figures to everyday people. The consequences can be devastating. 

Journalists Matthew Ricketson and Andrew Dodd have a name for what happens when that attention becomes a campaign, they call it ‘getting Murdoched’.

Today, co-author of their new book Getting Murdoched, Matthew Ricketson on the people who’ve found themselves on the receiving end, and the media culture that could outlast Ru...

Just when you thought world politics couldn’t get any more ridiculous: tonight, far-right British politician Nigel Farage is set to face a by-election of his own making. His main opponent? A joke candidate by the name of Count Binface, who says he’s an alien space warrior, and wears a superhero costume featuring a bin for a head.

The contest has turned into a circus, but the five-million-pound donation scandal which prompted it, is deadly serious.

Today, European correspondent for the Australian Financial Review, Andrew Tillett, on the contest, the scandal behind it, and the...

The Reserve Bank of Australia yesterday left interest rates on hold at 4.35 per cent: a relief for those with a mortgage. 

But as the bank weighs up future interest rate hikes to try and combat inflation, some economists say there’s a fairer way to keep spending under wraps and spread the pain around. 

And the alternative could leave us all with bigger retirement nest eggs.

Today, independent economist Saul Eslake on whether superannuation could be used to manage inflation, and what it all means for the future of housing. 

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As One Nation’s political clout rises, so too does its bank balance, courtesy of the very elites Pauline Hanson often rails against.

Now an investigation by the Brisbane Times and SMH has detailed some of the places One Nation’s cash is coming from: from exclusive parties hosted at Gina Rinehart’s mansion, to movies, to merch.

But perhaps even more pertinent are the contributions hidden from public view.

Today, SMH Investigative Reporter Patrick Begley on the sources of One Nation’s wealth. 

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