Articles & Opinions
House prices hit a blip and it’s all media panic. Please, let’s have some perspective
Of all the stupidity Australians have accepted as “normal”, our relationship with house prices may be among the most ridiculous. This nation is in the grips of a media panic over a small blip in house prices. This blip apparently deserves wall-to-wall coverage and dire warnings of impending doom. Maybe – shock – the current
Labor soars, Coalition fumbles – and no one’s really looking at the big issues
Labor finished the last parliamentary week on a high. There is a feeling within caucus that the party has a plan for dealing with One Nation, helped along by the fact the Coalition is completely without one. The Liberals’ switch to Angus Taylor has put a spring in the steps of Anthony Albanese and his
After decades of hugely helping the rich, can the rest of us finally get ahead now?
The biggest and best tax reforms in 25 years just passed the Parliament. In fact, you would have to go back way before the noughties to find tax reforms that will make Australia fairer than Labor’s reforms passed this week with the support of the Greens and David Pocock in the Senate. Most tax reforms
June 2026
Saving women? Spare me. This is hatred of women at its heart
The far right often cloaks itself as a movement to save women and girls, while doing the exact opposite.
May 2026 Media Highlights
May was a busy month for us here at the Australia Institute!
The sports betting double standard: why our politicians blinked on gambling ads
Everyone with a smartphone walks around with the entire internet in their pocket, but thanks to the gambling industry that also means there’s a casino in everyone’s pocket as well.
May 2026
Are we being lied to about what our nation can actually afford?
Did you notice what was different, really different, about the budget this year?
Labor’s bait and switch: Focus on a broken promise means we miss the real budget cruelty
There has been a lot said about trust and honesty in politics in the days since Labor handed down its budget, but not a lot has had to do with integrity.
April 2026 Media Highlights
April was another jam-packed month here at the Institute!
Working hard will not buy a roof over your head. If you can’t inherit one, you’re screwed
Australia has been in the grip of housing crisis for years.
April 2026
‘Not the right time’? Why Albanese’s safety first is no longer enough
In 2014, Noel Pearson delivered an eulogy for Gough Whitlam. Professor Tom Clark wrote about it for The Conversation and said “Pearson came to praise Caesar on Wednesday, certainly not to bury him” as he listed the achievements of one of Australia’s greatest reformers. Pearson said he was speaking to “this old man’s legacy with no partisan brief” but named
It’s time for Australia’s super-rich to pay their fair share
For a lot of Australians, life has become much more expensive.
March 2026 Media Highlights
March was a busy month here at the Australia Institute!
A simple gas tax has broad support. It could help soften the coming blow
With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Australia has significant power in the world, we should be using it more wisely
There are just under 200 countries in the world and Australia is in the G20.
March 2026
We had several opportunities to prevent this energy crisis. So why didn’t we?
Well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of our own actions.
Running on empty: Australia’s hard truths on security
Energy security is national security. And for all the posturing from conservatives about “seeing Mad Max levels around the country right now” (whatever that means, the LNP’s Phil Thompson), they did this.
Australia’s gas ripoff cuts across political lines
Something happened in the Senate this week.
If you win most literary prizes, you pay tax. If you win The Block, you don’t. How is this fair?
When Goorie and Koori poet Evelyn Araluen won last week’s $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature, along with the $25,000 Indigenous Writing prize, she called on the Australian government to change the way it taxes arts prizes. Araluen won for her poetry collection, The Rot, described by the judges as “a work of remarkable poetic intelligence;
February 2026 Media Highlights
It’s been a busy month here at the Australia Institute!
Australians are fed up with our governments giving our gas resources away for free
If you drink beer, congratulations, you’re the backbone of the Australian economy! After all, that’s how politicians and the media describe the gas industry. But the truth is the federal government collects more money from the beer excise than from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, as Independent ACT Senator David Pocock pointed out in Parliament,
Australians are fed up with our governments giving our gas resources away for free
If you drink beer, congratulations, you’re the backbone of the Australian economy!
February 2026
One Nation’s rise gives progressive voters unexpected power in ‘safe’ Coalition seats
The rise of One Nation creates a surprising opportunity for progressive voters.
New ideas from a new-look Coalition? Don’t bet your house on it
After months of speculation, the Liberal Party has a new leader, and the Coalition has a new frontbench. So, does that mean we can expect some new ideas?
The beatings will continue until social cohesion improves
This week, Australia rolled out the red carpet for a world leader who has been accused of inciting genocide, while NSW police were caught on camera bashing people protesting against genocide.
Lightweight Libs have Labor laughing all the way to an early election
In five days, Anthony Albanese will become Australia’s longest-serving prime minister since John Howard.
This is not ‘social cohesion’ – it’s just a tighter net to trap us all
Australians have been lectured a lot in the past couple of years about social cohesion, but it reached a fever pitch this week in response to protests against the visit by Israel’s head of state.
‘Disunity is death’ – but Labor’s cowed caucus has a cost too
The first Labor national government anywhere in the world was elected in Australia in April 1904.
January 2026 Media Highlights
Our first month of 2026 was an eventful one!
January 2026
Algorithms are a problem for Australian music
Last weekend, music fans across Australia tuned into national youth music station Triple J for the 33rd annual Hottest 100.
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