Our summer podcast series brings you some of the best conversations from our webinars in 2021. This episode we talk to sexual assault activist Chanel Contos, whose petition calling for earlier sex education in schools prompted hundreds of testimonies from former Sydney schoolgirls about sexual assault. This episode was recorded live on 11 August 2021

On the eve of an election, without consultation and without scrutiny, the Morrison government, with the support of the Opposition, rushed retrospective amendments into the Parliament that will squash charities’ right to advocate, effectively stomping on our democracy. The Australia Institute’s Ben Oquist unpacks what happened and what the impacts will be for the Australian

New research reveals most major Australian superannuation funds have holdings in nuclear weapons companies

My Year of Living Vulnerably is a dazzlingly brilliant book about love, trauma and recovery, we chat with the author Rick Morton.

Grants with ministerial discretion skew towards Coalition seats

The Australian Senate: a unique and powerful legislative body that few people know about and fewer understand.

A wrap up of the Glasgow COP26 climate summit and what it means for Australia

The Federal Government’s net zero modelling is little more than an exercise in magical thinking

For the first time ever at a UN Climate Conference, fossil fuels are being tackled head-on at Glasgow COP26. But Australia has plans to massively expand gas and coal projects. If Australia succeeds, the climate loses.

The Glasgow climate summit is all about lifting ambitions over the next decade, but Australia brought a lazy 2030 target and is planning to massively expand gas and coal projects – helping to wreck ambition at Glasgow.

The Commonwealth Government spends over $1billion of public money annually on consultancies, but the advice and reports created by these consultancies is often kept secret from the public.

Climate of the Nation 2021 shows concern about climate change is at record highs and a majority of Australians support phasing out fossil fuels and electrifying appliances in their homes.

Will the AUKUS pact ensure Australia’s long term security or is it little more than a stunt?

Today’s episode examines carbon offsets, in other words, the credits companies can buy to offset their emissions. The Australia Institute, together with the Australian Conservation Foundation did a bit of digging into Australia’s offsets system and found some alarming things. Recorded live on 5 October 2021 The Australia Institute // @theausinstitute Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy

The number of independent Members and Senators elected to Parliament has been steadily increasing and the crossbench plays an important role in shaping the future of Australia. independent Senator for Tasmania Jacqui Lambie for an inside look at how it all works. Recorded live on 3 March 2021 as part of the Australia Institute webinar

Exploring the economic, political and strategic implications of Australia dumping a $90 billion French submarine program to secure a deal with the US and UK for nuclear-powered submarines.

Australia’s universities were uniquely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and recession. Now, 18 months after the borders were first closed, things are getting worse for universities, not better.

Extracting gas from the Northern Territory through hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is one of the largest potential sources of carbon pollution in the world. In this episode we explore the climate cost of a potential policy backflip on opening up the NT to fracking, as well as the community opposition and the economics of it all.

The Doherty Modelling makes clear that without a highly functioning Test, Trace, Isolate and Quarantine (TTIQ) system we have no chance of stopping Australia’s ICUs from being overwhelmed; the problem is the effectiveness of TTIQ declines as case numbers rise and that has not factored into the modelling.

In 2020, Australian GDP was $2 trillion but Australian households received another $1.7 trillion in capital gains as overall wealth increased to $12.7 trillion. But Australia currently has no taxes on wealth, so what does that mean for the economy in the long term and for reducing inequality?

Recorded live on 24 February 2021 as part of the Australia Institute webinar series. Professor Ross Garnaut is an economist and author of new book Reset – which explores the opportunity Australia has to reset its economy in the wake of the pandemic. Warning: there is a bit of feedback on the audio for the

When the Black Lives Matter protests swept the globe in 2020, it shone a spotlight on Australia’s legacy of Aboriginal deaths in custody. It was a subject journalist Amy McQuire had written about extensively. Amy McQuire was the Australia Institute’s Writer in Residence recipient for 2020 and in this episode she discusses her upcoming book

The assumption that terrorism can be defeated by military force doomed the war in Afghanistan from the start, says Allan Behm

The sixth IPCC assessment report sounded the alarm on the climate crisis, finding that human activity is changing the Earth’s climate in “unprecedented” ways, with some of the changes now inevitable and “irreversible”. We unpack the latest report and the urgency of change with Richie Merzian and Alia Armistead from the Australia Institute’s climate &

The government’s massive $300 billion income tax cuts package will proceed in full, making inequality worse and mainly benefitting high income earners. But what makes a tax good or bad? This week, Richard Denniss and Matt Grudnoff explain the principles of a good tax and run the ruler over different types of taxes like income