Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee Morgenbesser, Associate Professor, School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University
Secret police are a quintessential feature of authoritarian regimes. From Azerbaijan’s State Security Service to Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation, these agencies typically target political opponents and dissidents through covert surveillance, imprisonment and physical violence.
In contrast to the regular police and armed forces, secret police primarily use preemptive repression to thwart threats to the government.
In Nazi Germany, for example, Gestapo informants penetrated all levels of society, producing an atmosphere of distrust among those against Adolf Hitler. In Uganda, Idi Amin’s State Research Bureau employed sophisticated spying equipment and intercepted mail at the post office to root out supposed saboteurs.
In Syria, Bashar al-Assad relied on the General Intelligence Directorate to oversee a network of torture centres. And in Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro has used the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin) to spy on opponents overseas, often running operations out of diplomatic missions.
Since US President Donald Trump took power in January, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become a far more visible and fearsome force on American streets.
Though ICE is ostensibly still bound by constitutional limits, the way it has been operating bears the hallmarks of a secret police force in the making.
As an expert on authoritarian regimes, I’ve studied historical and contemporary secret police forces extensively across Africa, Asia and Europe. They typically meet five criteria:
they’re a police force targeting political opponents and dissidents
they’re not controlled by other security agencies and answer directly to the dictator
the identity of their members and their operations are secret
they specialise in political intelligence and surveillance operations
they carry out arbitrary searches, arrests, interrogations, indefinite detentions, disappearances and torture.
How close is ICE to becoming a secret police force? Let’s consider each of these criteria.
Targeting dissidents
ICE has used the pretext of combating antisemitism to target dissidents. A branch of the agency previously used to target drug smugglers and human traffickers has reportedly been directed to scan social media for posts sympathetic to Hamas.
On March 8, ICE arrested the prominent pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a legal resident. It was a similar story for Rumeysa Ozturk, a university student grabbed off the street on March 25 by ICE agents.
Trump has cited the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 as the legal pretext for ICE’s actions in these cases and others. The law allows the US government to deport anyone whose presence has “adverse foreign policy consequences” for the country.
Because Khalil and others are being targeted for their activism, legal scholars say the government appears to be “retaliating” against constitutionally protected free speech it disagrees with.
Directly controlled by a dictator
While ICE does not report directly to Trump, the agency is controlled by people who have shown intense loyalty to him.
ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which is overseen by stalwart Trump ally Kristi Noem. She is supported by Tom Homan, a former ICE director who Trump appointed as his “border czar” in November 2024.
Despite a court order barring the deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador, Homan has remained defiant:
We are not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think.
The pertinent question now is whether Noem or Homan would refuse to follow a dictate from Trump in the face of a direct court order.
Opaque operations
ICE agents are increasingly operating in secret. The individuals who took Ozturk off the street in a widely shared video claimed to be police officers, even though they were in plain clothes and face marks.
Similarly, ICE agents in plain clothes detained two men during a raid on a courthouse in Charlottesville, Virginia, on April 22. When two bystanders asked to see a warrant, they were ordered not to “impede” the agents’ lawful duties. ICE later said the two women would be prosecuted.
Also last week, ICE agents attempted to arrest a man at a Wisconsin courthouse without a warrant. After a judge intervened, she was arrested herself by the FBI and charged with two felonies.
Its Homeland Security Investigations arm includes an intelligence division, while its Enforcement and Removal Operations arm uses third-party companies such as Geo Group, Giant Oak, and Palantir to conduct mass surveillance.
Most worryingly, ICE is trying to procure greater intelligence and surveillance capabilities by soliciting pitches from private companies to monitor threats across the internet.
According to a procurement document, contractors would be directed to focus on the backgrounds of social media users and use facial recognition capabilities to gather information on people. Criticisms of ICE itself would be monitored, too.
Unlawful policing
There has been a stream of reports exposing how ICE is conducting arbitrary searches, arrests, interrogations, and indefinite detentions.
Some of the most egregious reported examples include:
Overall, the evidence shows ICE meets most of the criteria for being a secret police force. It has yet to target political opponents, which I define narrowly as members of the Democratic Party. And it is not directly controlled by Trump, although the current structure provides him with plausible deniability.
While the agency is far from resembling history’s most feared secret police forces, there have so far been few constraints on how it operates.
The worst may be yet to come. A budget bill making its way through Congress would provide ICE with up to US$175 billion (A$274 billion) in funding over the next decade. (Its current annual budget is US$9 billion, or A$14 billion.) This would supercharge its use of surveillance, imprisonment and physical violence.
When combined with a potential shift towards targeting US citizens for dissent and disobedience, ICE is fast becoming a key piece in the repressive apparatus of American authoritarianism.
Lee Morgenbesser does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Climate breakdown poses immense threats to global economies, societies and ecosystems. Adapting to these impacts is urgent. But many cities and countries remain chronically unprepared in what the UN calls an “adaptation gap”.
Building climate resilience is notoriously difficult. Economic barriers limit investment in infrastructure and technology. Social inequities undermine the capacity of vulnerable populations to adapt. And inconsistent policies impede coordinated efforts across sectors and at scale.
My research looks at how cities can better cope with climate change. I have identified five ways to catalyse more effective – and ultimately more progressive – climate adaptation and resilience.
Though understandable, resilience doesn’t just entail coping with the effects of climate change. Instead of “bouncing back” to a pre-shock status, those in charge of responding need to encourage “bouncing forward”, creating places that are at less risk in the first place.
After the Christchurch earthquake in February 2011, the New Zealand authorities “built back better”, improving building codes and regulations and relocating vulnerable communities. Critics suggested reconstruction provided too much uncertainty and failed to acknowledge private property rights. But the rebuild did encourage better integration of planning policies and land use practices.
Swales and sustainable urban drainage in Gorton climate resilient park, Manchester, UK. Paul O’Hare, CC BY-NC-ND
2. Informed by risk
It can be difficult to predict what the consequences of a crisis might be. Cities are complex, interconnected places. Transboundary risks – the consequences that ripple across a place – must be taken into account.
The best climate adaptation plans recognise that vulnerability varies across places, contexts and over time. The most effective are holistic: tailored to specific locations and every aspect of society.
Assessments must also consider both climatic and non-climatic features of risk. In 2015, in the UK, a flood affected one of Lancaster’s electrical substations, causing a city-wide power failure that took several days to rectify. In this instance, as with so many others, people had to deal not just with the direct impacts of flooding, but the ‘cascading’ or knock-on impacts of infrastructure damage.
Many existing assessments have limited scope. But others do acknowledge how ageing infrastructures and pressures to develop land to accommodate ever intensifying urban populations exacerbate urban flood risk. Others too, such as the recently published Cambridge climate risk plan, detail how climate risk intersects with the range of services provided by local government.
Good risk assessments will, for example, take note of demographics, age profiles and the socio-economic circumstances of neighbourhoods, enabling targeted support for particularly vulnerable communities. This can help ensure communities and systems adapt to evolving challenges as climate change intensifies, and as society evolves over time.
Complex though this might be, city leaders can access advice about improving risk assessments, including from the C40 network, a global coalition of 100 mayors committed to addressing climate change.
Progressive climate resilience looks beyond the immediacy of shocks, attending to the underlying root causes of vulnerability and inequality. This ensures that society is not only better prepared to withstand adverse events in the future, but thrives in the face of uncertainty.
Progressive climate resilience therefore demands tailored responses depending on the population and place. In Bangladesh, for instance, communities are building floating gardens to grow crops during floods. These enhance food security and provide a sustainable livelihood option in flood-prone areas.
Effective climate resilience demands collective action. Sometimes referred to as a “whole of society” response, this entails collaboration and shared responsibility to address the multifaceted challenges posed by a changing climate.
The most effective initiatives avoid self-protection, of people, buildings and cities alike, and consider both broader and longer-term risks. For instance, developments not at significant risk should still incorporate adaptation measures including rainwater harvesting or enhanced greening to lower a city’s climate risk profile and benefit local communities, neighbouring authorities and surrounding regions.
So, progressive resilience is connected, comprehensive and inclusive. Solidarity is key, leveraging resources to address common challenges and fostering a sense of shared purpose and mutual support.
Solar panels on the surface of a reservoir not only provide a source of renewable energy but also provide shade and therefore help conserve water. Tom Wang/Shutterstock
5. Exploiting co-benefits
The most effective resilience projects exploit co-benefits – what the UN calls “multiple resilience dividends” – to leverage additional benefits across sectors and policies, reducing vulnerability to shocks while addressing other social and environmental challenges.
In northern Europe, for example, moorlands can be restored to retain water helping alleviate downstream flooding, but also to capture carbon and provide vital habitats for biodiversity.
In south-East Asia solar panels installed on reservoirs generate renewable energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while providing shade to reduce evaporation and conserve water resources during droughts.
As we enter the final days of campaigning, Labor leads with its nose in front on most polls, but the devil is in the detail of particular seats.
To help get a read on what the voters are feeling at this late stage, we’re joined by RedBridge director Kos Samaras.
RedBridge – a political research company, whose directors include both former Labor strategists like Samaras and former Liberal strategist Tony Barry – has been conducting focus groups and polling throughout the campaign.
On Labor’s polling lead, Samaras says
At the moment we’re looking at a situation where Labor will end up possibly forming minority government, with an outside chance of majority.
On the large number of soft voters, Samaras says soft voters are more likely to represent people shifting from the majors to the minor parties, rather then from Liberal to Labor.
The best way we can describe soft voters is it’s a permanent state of mind, and again we go back to talking about younger voters here, or those under the age of 45 in particular, who have very low levels of values connection to party politics in this country.
Very low numbers of people switch from the majors these days. So I think a lot of political strategists, particularly on the Coalition side, still think they are living in the world of 20 years ago where a large soft vote means people will just transfer their entire support over to the other major party. That no longer is the case.
By Saturday April 27, more than 2.3 million Australians (more than 13%) had already voted with a week to go to election day, according to analyst Antony Green. More than half a million votes were cast on the first day alone – a new record.
On that early voting trend, Samaras says while it’s “standard practice now” that people vote early, both major parties have been too slow to adapt to this change.
I would say, we haven’t seen any real evidence of the major parties really understanding the importance of starting early, although I would say Labor did start very early in the beginning of March. But you saw that the Coalition was very late to the game.
I think there’s a way to go before the majors fully wrap their heads around that Australians are now voting very differently, and they need to actually alter their campaign to suit those practices.
After a lacklustre campaign, voters are seeing Albanese as “the least worst option”:
The best way we can capture it is they view Anthony Albanese as the least worst option and we can see that in our quantitative analysis as well. Both major parties and both leaders are still in the negative territory but Labor and Albanese have improved their position dramatically, whilst at the same time the Coalition and Peter Dutton’s ratings have actually dropped.
And on political candidates lying in elections, Samaras says Australians think
They all lie. That’s fundamentally what most Australians will tell you. They all lie and they don’t live the lives we live. That’s the sort of saying we hear all the time.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Communities in Vanuatu are learning to grow climate resilient crops, 18 months after Cyclone Lola devastated the country.
The category 5 storm struck in October 2023, generating wind speeds of up to 215 kmph, which destroyed homes, schools, plantations, and left at least four people dead.
Save the Children Vanuatu country director Polly Banks said they have been working alongside Vanuatu’s Ministry of Agriculture and local partners, supporting families through the Tropical Cyclone Lola Recovery Programme.
“It really affected backyard gardening and the communities across the areas affected – their ability to pursue an income and also their own nutritional needs,” she said.
She said the programme looked at the impact of the cyclone on backyard gardening and on people’s economic reliance on what they grow in their gardens, and developed a recovery plan to respond.
“We trained community members and also provided them with the equipment to establish cyclone resilient nurseries.
Ready for harsh weather “So for example, nurseries that can be put up and then pulled down when a harsh weather event – including cyclones but even heavy rainfall — is arriving.
“There was a focus on these climate resilient nurseries, but also through that partnership with the Department of Agriculture, there was also a much stronger focus than we’ve had before on teaching community members climate smart agricultural techniques.”
Banks said these techniques included open pollinating seed and learning skills such as grassing; and another part of the project was introducing more variety into people’s diets.
She said out of the project has also come the first seed bank on Epi Island.
“That seed bank now has a ready supply of seeds, and the community are adding to that regularly, and they’re taking those seeds from really climate-resilient crops, so that they have a cyclone secure storage facility,” she said.
“The next time a cyclone happens — and we know that they’re going to become more ferocious and more frequent — the community are ready to replant the moment that the cyclone passes.
Setting up seed bank “But in setting the seed bank up as well, the community have been taught how to select the most productive seeds, the seeds that show the most promise; how to dry them out; how to preserve them.”
Banks said they were also working with the Department of Agriculture in the delivery of a community-based climate resilience project, which is funded by the Green Climate Fund.
Rolled out across 282 communities across the country, a key focus of it is the creation of more climate-resilient backyard gardening, food preservation and climate resilient nurseries.
“We’re also setting up early warning systems through the provision of internet to really remote communities so that they have better access to more knowledge about when a big storm or a cyclone is approaching and what steps to take.
“But that particular project is still just a drop in the ocean in terms of the adaptation needs that communities have.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The government has dug out last-minute savings of more than
A$7 billion, to ensure its election commitments are more than offset in every year of the forward estimates.
Its costings, released Monday, include savings of $6.4 billion from further reducing spending on consultants, contractors and labour hire, as well as non-wage expenses including travel, hospitality and property.
The second saving is $760 million from increasing the visa application fee for primary student visa applicants to $2000 from July 1.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers told a news conference Labor’s costings “show that we will more than offset our election campaign commitments in every year of the forward estimates”.
“We will finish this election campaign with the budget in a stronger position than at the start of the election campaign”.
“We have improved the budget position by more than $1 billion, comparing the pre-election outlook to the costings that we release today,” he said.
With its costings out, Labor is piling the pressure onto the opposition to produce its numbers.
“We call on the Coalition now to come clean on their cuts. We’ve made it very clear what our costs are and how we will pay for the commitments that we have made in this election campaign,” Chalmers said.
The opposition “need to come clean on what their secret cuts for nuclear reactors means for Medicare, for pensions and payments, for skills and housing and other essential investments.
“They have committed more than $60 billion in this election campaign and in their policy commitments, and that’s before we get to their $600 billion of nuclear reactors.”
Chalmers said if the opposition costings did not include the cost of the nuclear reactors they “will not be worth the paper they are written on”.
Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor said opposition costings, coming later this week, would project a stronger budget position than Labor’s. He also said if the Coalition was elected it would have an economic statement later this year.
As the costings war ramps up, ratings agency S&P warned Australia’s AAA credit rating could be threatened if election promises resulted in larger structural deficits, and debt and interest expenses increased more than expected.
Given deficits and international circumstances, “how the elected government funds its campaign pledges and rising spending will be crucial for maintaining the rating”, the agency said.
Asked about the comments, Chalmers said: “I say to that particular agency, indeed, all of the ratings agencies, that in our time in office, we’ve engineered the biggest positive turnaround in a budget of any parliamentary term ever”. He pointed to the improvement in the budget numbers during the campaign to underline Labor’s credentials.
The fresh impact of Labor’s promises on the bottom line has also been limited because most of them were already factored into the budget.
After the savings and spends are netted out the deficit for 2025-26 is estimated to be $41.9 billion compared to the $42.2 billion in the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook.
Chalmers says Dutton to build nuclear reactor in his own seat
Jim Chalmers must carry off the prize for the most brazen “scare” of a campaign full of attempted scares.
Chalmers picked up on Anthony Albanese’s question to Peter Dutton in Sunday’s debate, when the PM asked the opposition leader whether he’d be willing to have a nuclear power plant in his seat of Dickson. Dutton said he would.
Chalmers’ message to voters in “that wonderful part of southeast Queensland” is: “your local member wants to build a nuclear reactor in your suburbs.”
“[The Labor candidate,] Ali France, is not going to build a nuclear reactor in your local community but Peter Dutton wants to.
“I would encourage you to think about that […] as you choose your local member,” Chalmers told his news conference.
The treasurer kept a straight face while delivering this warning to Dickson voters.
Dutton questions Welcome to Country ceremonies at Anzac Dawn services
Peter Dutton has widened his criticism of the extent of Welcome to Country ceremonies by saying he does not believe they belong at Anzac Day dawn services.
He said that listening to veterans, “I think the majority view would be that they don’t want it on that day”. But he said it was an individual decision up to the RSLs.
Discussion of the Welcome to Country ceremonies has come to the fore after a group of neo-Nazis heckled the ceremony at the Shrine of Remembrance service on Friday. It also came up in Sunday’s debate between the leaders, when Dutton said the ceremonies should be reserved for significant occasions such as the opening of parliament.
Questioned by reporters on Monday, Dutton said the acknowledgment to country given by Qantas when planes landed was “over the top”.
“We are all equal Australians,” he said. “I believe we should stand behind one flag united to help Indigenous Australians deal with disparity around health outcomes, around education outcomes, around housing, around safety […] I want to provide support for practical reconciliation. The prime minister’s policy is to please inner city Greens, which is not something we signed up to.”
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
With the May 3 federal election less than a week away, voters have only just received Labor’s costings and are yet to hear from the Coalition.
At the 2022 election, the costings were not released for nearly two months after polling day.
Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley last week told Sky News the Coalition costings will be “released in the lead up to election day and will be able to be fully interrogated”.
This is now too late for the voters who have already cast their ballots. We have seen a record number of pre-poll votes this election, with more than 2.3 million as of Saturday. This means a sizeable percentage of the electorate has voted without knowing what their votes will cost.
Voting without all the facts
Whichever side wins, taxpayers eventually pay to implement policies. So knowing at least in broad terms the costs of the policies would be helpful.
The Coalition has probably had many of its policies costed by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office. This process is thorough and impartial.
Importantly, the Parliamentary Budget Office costs policies over ten years. This allows the full costs of policies to be understood better. Some policies such as large infrastructure take many years before the full impact on the budget is felt.
Labor has already published the costs of many of its policies in the March 25 federal budget. This only covered the forward estimates, three years into the future, but is reliable for most policies. But we still need the costings for policies announced post-budget.
The true picture?
Even when we see the costings from both of the main parties, we can have no confidence their lists are accurate and complete. Parties may omit costings that might attract criticism.
They may also present costings prepared by consultants rather than the Parliamentary Budget Office. You may recall controversy late last year over private modelling of the Coalition’s plans for nuclear power.
Unfortunately we have to wait until after the election for a comprehensive and independent set of costings.
The Parliamentary Budget Office does not publish its full list of costings (in the election commitments report) until well after the election. This is either 30 days from the end of the caretaker period or seven days before the new parliament first sits, whichever comes later.
The election commitments report has some accountability value in relation to the party that forms government but does not help inform voters. It is a mystery why anyone would be interested in the costs of policies of the losing side. But they still must be published, according to electoral law.
The report must include the major parties, although minor parties and independents can also be included in the report if they wish.
Are there other approaches?
By contrast, in New South Wales the state Parliamentary Budget Office publishes a complete set of costings five days before the election. Policies announced after this date miss out but these rarely affect the budget bottom line.
Although, as occurs federally, many voters cast their ballots in advance, at least NSW’s approach gives most voters a chance to see the costs. This encourages the major parties to compete to produce a fiscally responsible total.
The NSW approach is self-policing. Each major party studies the statements and if the other side omits something – large or small – they rapidly and loudly complain. Parties therefore try to make their policy lists as accurate as possible.
Federally, the budget office takes on the time-consuming job of tracking down all the policy announcements to cost and include in its post-election report.
The differences arise from the different legislation that applies to each PBO.
NSW has arguably an easier job because it costs policies only for the premier and leader of the opposition. The federal budget office costs for all members of parliament.
The federal system requires policies submitted during the caretaker period, and their costings, must be published “as soon as practicable”. But major parties are highly unlikely to submit a policy only to have it and its costing released at a time not of its choosing.
The requirement is likely motivated by transparency, but clashes with political reality. In NSW costings remain confidential until the leader advises the budget office the policy has been announced. This gives parties a way to have policies costed with a low risk of their premature release.
DIY assessments
Federally, there are other ways to estimate the costs of policies. The budget office has a Build your Own Budget Tool, and a tool for modelling alternative
income tax proposals (SMART), both available online.
These provide a fair approximation and are often used by journalists trying to get behind political announcements.
The OECD lists 35 independent fiscal bodies in 29 OECD countries responsible for assessing election costings. Some are tiny, with just a few analysts. Some are
huge and influential, like the US Congressional Budget Office. Few have the same focus on costing election policies that applies in Australia.
Costs are a big deal here. Both parties have run advertisements attacking the other side on the question of whether their policies are affordable.
On major policies such as the Coalition plans for nuclear power there are massive differences between cost estimates put forward by each side. Such differences could be resolved by an independent and impartial costing. This is why Australian voters deserve to see such costings as soon as possible.
Stephen Bartos was NSW Parliamentary Budget Officer for the past three NSW general elections. He is now a professor at the University of Canberra.
The federal budget will be stronger than suggested in last month’s budget, according to Treasurer Jim Chalmers who released Labor’s costings on Monday.
Many of the policies included in the costings were already detailed in either the 2025 Budget or the Pre-Election Fiscal Outlook, so are shown as having a net zero cost.
But that does not mean they are costless. It means simply that their costs were included in previously published budget updates.
Monday’s media announcement is akin to the reconciliation table published in each update, prepared by the Treasury and Finance departments setting out how the numbers have changed.
It seems likely this media release drew on the same methodology.
It includes two savings measures. One is relatively small: $700 million from increasing the visa application charge for primary student visas. The big saving is $6.4 billion from further reducing spending on consultants, contractors, labour hire, and non-wage expenses such as travel, hospitality and property.
Travel, hospitality and property expenses are small bikkies. Undoubtedly departments could make savings on these, but they won’t get anywhere near the total. The bulk of the savings will come from reducing spending on consultants and contractors.
Labor has shown that such savings on consultants are possible; it did it in its first term. However, counterbalancing this, we saw increased spending on the public service.
It is the same problem as with the Coalition’s promise to make savings by cutting public servants. Without cuts to programs and activities, work remains to be done. People have to be employed to do that work, leading either to more spending on the public service (Labor) or bringing back consultants (Coalition).
There was no independent signoff suggesting Monday’s release included all of Labor’s policy announcements. We won’t get that until the Parliamentary Budget Office does its election commitments report.
But this full list of costings is not released by the PBO until well after the election. This is either 30 days from the end of the caretaker period or seven days before the new parliament first sits, whichever comes later.
However, Monday’s costings release does appear comprehensive, including not only the large headline announcements but several announcements of less than a million dollars a year.
What are missing, though, are costings of items that are off-budget because they are balance sheet adjustments – for example, the reduction in student HECS debt.
These do have a financial impact but due to their accounting treatment are not disclosed as hitting the budget balance. Ideally, these should be disclosed as well.
Stephen Bartos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
An antidepressant containing a form of the drug ketamine has been added to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), making it much cheaper for the estimated 30,000 Australians with treatment-resistant depression. This is when a patient has tried multiple forms of treatment for major depression – usually at least two antidepressant medications – without any improvement.
From May 1, a dose of Spravato (also known as esketamine hydrochloride) will cost $A31.60 and $7.70 for concession card holders.
However, unlike oral antidepressants, Spravato can’t be taken at home. Here’s how it works, and who it’s expected to help.
What is Spravato?
The chemical ketamine is used as an anaesthetic. In this formulation it combines both the right-handed (designated “R”) and left-handed (called “S”) forms of the molecule.
This means they are mirror images of each other, similar to how your left hand is a mirror image of your right hand. The left- and right-hand forms can have different effects in the body.
Spravato contains only the left-handed version, giving the drug its generic name esketamine.
Spravato works by increasing the levels of glutamate in the brain. Glutamate is a key chemical messenger molecule that excites brain nerve cells, lifting and improving mood. It also plays a role in learning and forming memories.
How is it taken?
Spravato cannot be taken at home.
A patient can self-administer, but it must be done at a registered treatment facility, such as a hospital, under the supervision of medical staff so they can look out for blood pressure changes and monitor potential side effects.
The drug is provided as a single-use nasal spray. This application means it’s absorbed directly through the nasal lining into the brain, so it starts to work within minutes.
Spravato must also be taken alongside an oral antidepressant. This will be a new one the patient hasn’t tried before. In clinical trials, it was usually an SNRI or SSRI medication.
When a patient first starts on Spravato, they are given the spray twice a week in the first month. It is then administered once a week for the second month, and then weekly or fortnightly after that.
Once there are signs the medicine is working, treatment is continued for at least six months.
You can use the spray yourself but it must be under medical supervision in a registered facility. Scarc/Shutterstock
How effective is it?
Spravato was approved for sale in Australia based on clinical trial data from more than 1,600 patients who were administered the drug for a period of four weeks. Each was given either Spravato, or a nasal placebo, and an oral antidepressant.
Patients were given a starting dose of either 28 or 56mg, which could be then increased up to 84mg by their doctor.
By the end of the four weeks, a greater percentage of patients who were given Spravato were found to have had a meaningful response to the treatment when compared with patients who received the placebo. Patients who were taking Spravato were also found to relapse at a lower rate. For those who did relapse, it took the Spravato patients longer to relapse when compared with patients who took the placebo.
It is expected Spravato will benefit a wide range of patients. The clinical trials demonstrated effectiveness for men and women, people aged 18 to 64, and those from a range of different ethnic backgrounds.
As with any medicine, Spravato may cause side effects, some of which can be serious. The most common include:
dissociation (feeling disconnected from yourself or what is around you)
dizziness
nausea and vomiting
drowsiness
headache
change in taste
vertigo.
Because Spravato can potentially increase blood pressure, medical staff will monitor a patient before and after it is administered.
Usually, blood pressure spikes around 40 minutes after taking the drug, so a reading is taken around this time. After taking Spravato, if their blood pressure has stayed low, or it’s dropping, the patient is given the all-clear to go home.
Due to the potential for this and other serious side effects, Spravato carries a black triangle warning. This means medical staff are encouraged to report any problem or side effect to the Therapeutic Goods Administration. A black triangle warning is generally used for new medicines or medicines that are being used in a new way.
Who will be eligible?
To be eligible for a prescription, a patient will need to have been diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression. In practice, this means they will have unsuccessfully tried at least two other antidepressant drugs first.
Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration approved Spravato for use in Australia in 2021, meaning it was available but not subsidised. Since then, the sponsoring company, Janssen-Cilag (an Australian subsidiary of the multinational Johnson & Johnson), applied to have it added to the PBS four times.
In December 2024, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee recommended a PBS listing.
The new PBS listing, capping the price of a single treatment at $31.60, is a significant price drop. In 2023, single doses of branded Spravato were reported to cost anywhere between $500 and $900.
However, patients may still have to pay hundreds of dollars for appointments at private clinics where Spravato can be administered. Public places are available but limited.
Spravato may be suitable for you if you’ve tried different antidepressants without success. If it is suitable for you, then your doctor can discuss the next steps.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Nial Wheate in the past has received funding from the ACT Cancer Council, Tenovus Scotland, Medical Research Scotland, Scottish Crucible, and the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance. He is a fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Nial is the chief scientific officer of Vaihea Skincare LLC, a director of SetDose Pty Ltd (a medical device company) and was previously a Standards Australia panel member for sunscreen agents. He is a member of the Haleon Australia Pty Ltd Pain Advisory Board. Nial regularly consults to industry on issues to do with medicine risk assessments, manufacturing, design and testing.
Shoohb Alassadi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In front of a crowd of party faithful last weekend, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton referred to the ABC, Guardian Australia and other news platforms as “hate media”. The language was extreme, the inference being these outlets were not simply doing their jobs, but attacking him and his side of politics because of ideological bias.
Speaking at a Liberal Party campaign rally in the Melbourne western suburb of Melton, Dutton said:
Forget about what you have been told by the ABC, The Guardian and the other hate media. Listen to what you hear [at] doors. Listen to what people say on the pre-polling. Know in your hearts that we are a better future for our country.
Melton is in the Labor-held seat of Hawke, which the Liberals believe they can win.
Dutton provided no evidence to support his accusation, for the good reason that there has been nothing in the ABC’s or Guardian Australia’s coverage of Dutton that could remotely justify it.
By a process of elimination, the “other hate media” to which he referred can only be The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, given the News Corporation mastheads have been unflagging in their support for him throughout the campaign.
What has been common to the campaign coverage by the ABC, Guardian Australia, The Age and the SMH has been close scrutiny of both sides and both leaders.
The three newspapers in particular have put renewed resources into independently fact-checking claims made by both Dutton and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and have caught out both men telling falsehoods.
The broadcast news media on the whole have played it straight, except of course for Sky News after dark, which has been as relentlessly pro-Coalition as their News Corp newspaper stablemates.
Beyond these professional mass media platforms, there have been clearly partisan social media influencers working on both sides, as well as a range of podcasters, but none of these has been guilty of hate speech towards Dutton or anyone else.
The inescapable conclusion is that Dutton equates scrutiny of him by journalists with hate speech.
This is where his attitude becomes dangerous to democracy. It comes straight from US President Donald Trump’s playbook, where the professional mass media are “fake news” and the “enemy of the people”.
It is designed to play not just on people’s longstanding distrust of the news media in general – though not of the ABC – but on some voters’ sense of grievance at the way governments have treated them.
This worked for Trump in the United States, but it became obvious early in the campaign that any association with Trumpism was a strong political negative in Australia, particularly in the atmosphere of alarm generated by his tariff war.
Dutton then took pains to distance himself from Trumpism, and at the Liberal launch in Western Australia his face was a picture of alarm when Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, whom he had appointed to the Trumpian-sounding post of shadow minister for government efficiency, used the slogan “Make Australia Great Again”.
But it is typical of his incoherent campaign that at the start of the last week he should be echoing the Trumpian view of the media in such extreme terms, creating even more instability. In an ABC interview, his shadow minister for finance, Jane Hume, refused to support him, saying “that wouldn’t be a phrase I would use”.
It also raises legitimate questions about how Dutton would treat the media should he become prime minister. For example, if a media platform refused to obey his wishes, or provide him with coverage of which he approved, would its representatives be excluded from prime ministerial access?
Not long ago, such a proposition would have been inconceivable, but Trump banned the Associated Press (AP) from presidential access because it would not obey his instruction to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. A federal judge later found the ban violated the First Amendment, and ordered AP’s access to be restored.
It is very improbable Dutton would even try to impose his will on the commercial media in Australia, especially the newspapers.
In fact, Guardian Australia has turned his remark into a fundraising opportunity. It emailed subscribers with the subject line “A note from the ‘hate media’,” comparing Dutton’s language to that of Trump, and asking for financial support to keep holding figures like Dutton to account.
But his potential to punish the publicly funded ABC is another matter.
From statements he has made during the campaign, it seems certain the ABC would be in for more funding cuts and an investigation into its operations of the kind Trump has launched into America’s National Public Radio.
Coalition prime ministers going back to John Howard have had a hostile relationship with the ABC. Howard stacked the ABC board, and the panel that nominates its members, with ideological mates.
In the eight years from 2014 to 2022, under the Coalition governments of Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, $526 million was cut from the ABC’s budget.
During that time, there was also a series of inquiries into the ABC, set up to satisfy politicians with a beef against the ABC, notably Pauline Hanson.
The day after Dutton’s “hate media” statement, the ABC’s 4 Corners program revealed he failed for two years to disclose he was the beneficiary of a family trust that operated lucrative childcare businesses when he was a cabinet minister.
This is unlikely to improve his view of the national broadcaster. He may even see it as more hate. In fact, it is just good journalism.
Denis Muller and Nicole Chvastek will discuss this further on their Truth, Lies and Media podcast on Wednesday April 30.
Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
After a successful beta-launch this month, PodTalk.live has now called for people to register as foundation members — it’s free to join the post and podcast social platform.
The foundation membership soft-launch is a great opportunity for founders to help shape a brand new, vibrant, algorithm-free, info discussion and debate social platform.
“PodTalk.live has been put to test by selected individuals and we’re pleased to report that it has performed fabulously,” said the the platform developer Selwyn Manning.
Manning is founder and managing director of the company that custom-developed PodTalk.live — Multimedia Investments Ltd.
PodTalk.live . . . a new era. Image: PodTalk screenshot APR
MIL is based in Aotearoa New Zealand, where PodTalk.live was developed and is served from.
And now, PodTalk.live has emerged from its beta stage and is ready for foundation members to shape the next phase of its development.
An alternative platform PodTalk.live was designed to be an alternative platform to other social media platforms.
PodTalk has all the functions that most social media platforms have but has placed the user-experience at the centre of its backend design and engineering.
PodTalk.live has been custom-designed, created and is served from New Zealand.
“We ourselves became annoyed at how social media giants use algorithms to drive what content their users see and experience,” Manning said.
“And, we also were appalled at how some social media companies trade user data, and were unresponsive to user-concerns.
“So we decided to create a platform that focuses on ‘discussion and debate’ communities, and we have engineered PodTalk to ensure the content that users see is what they choose — rather than some obscure algorithm making that decision for them.
“PodTalk.live is independent from other social media platforms, and at best will become an alternative choice for people who seek a community where they are the centre of a platform’s core purpose.
Sign-up invitation ““And today, we invite people to sign up now and become foundation members of this new and ethically-based social community platform,” Manning said.
What PodTalk.live provides includes:
user profiles with full interactivities with other users and friends;
user created groups, posts, video, images, polls, and file sharing;
private and secure one-on-one (and group) messages;
availability of all the above for entry users with a free membership;
premium membership for podcasters and event publishers requiring easy to use podcast publication and syndication services; and next-level community engagement tools that users have all on the one platform.
Manning said PodTalk.live was founded on the belief that for social, political and economical progress to occur people needed to discuss issues in a safe environment and embark on robust debate.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mohan Yellishetty, Professor, Co-Founder, Critical Minerals Consortium, and Australia-India Critical Minerals Research Hub, Monash University
The world needs huge quantities of critical minerals to make batteries, electric vehicles, wind turbines, mobile phones, computers and advanced weaponry.
Many of these minerals lie under Australian soil. Australia is able to produce 9 out of 10 mineral elements required to produce lithium-ion batteries, such as lithium, nickel and cobalt. It also has the highest total reserves of battery minerals.
But at a time of major geopolitical upheaval, critical minerals are also contested. China controls many critical mineral supply chains, allowing it to dominate clean energy technologies. The ongoing United States–China trade war has intensified competition for access to critical minerals.
It’s against this backdrop that Labor has proposed a A$1.2 billion strategic reserve of critical minerals. It’s a timely and welcome step in the right direction.
Why is this reserve needed?
Critical minerals are vital to the industries of the future. But supply can be hard to secure and disruptions can be devastating.
After US President Donald Trump jacked up tariffs on China, Beijing responded by clamping down on critical mineral exports. Almost 80% of US weaponry depends on Chinese critical minerals.
China now dominates mining and refining of many critical minerals. Beijing controls 90% of the world’s rare earth refining, 80% of lithium refining and 68% of nickel refining. The US and other nations are belatedly trying to catch up.
Mining has long been a major Australian industry, particularly iron ore and coal. But Australia has huge reserves of many critical minerals, producing the largest volume of lithium ore in the world as well as stocks of cobalt, manganese, rutile and others. Australian miners Lynas and Australian Strategic Materials are two of the few rare-earth mining companies not owned by China.
That’s where this strategic reserve comes in. If it comes to fruition, the federal government would buy agreed volumes of critical minerals from commercial projects, or establish an option to purchase them at a given price. It would then keep stockpiles of these key minerals to prevent market manipulation by China and stabilise prices by releasing or holding stocks strategically.
The reserve would give Canberra more leverage in negotiating with trading partners and enable a rapid response to supply disruptions. Government backing for the industry would boost onshore processing, scale up domestic production and encourage more high-wage, high-skill jobs in regional areas.
Which minerals will be stockpiled? That’s yet to be determined. The list of ‘critical minerals’ can vary between countries, and a mineral critical to one nation may not be to another.
The minerals most commonly included in these lists include cobalt, gallium, indium, niobium, tantalum, platinum group minerals and rare earth elements.
Why is the government intervening?
In 2023, major miners produced close to a billion tonnes of iron ore in Western Australia.
By contrast, critical mineral volumes are small. For instance, only 610 tonnes of gallium were mined in 2023. Major miners such as Rio Tinto, BHP and Vale don’t tend to bother.
Critical mineral markets are often opaque and highly concentrated. The barrier to entry is high. Globally, the market for the 31 critical minerals on Australia’s list is valued at around A$344 billion – about the size of the global aluminium market.
That leaves it to mid-tier and small miners to bridge the gap between rapidly growing demand and supply. The problem is, raising capital is often very difficult. The price of critical minerals can fluctuate wildly. The price of lithium and nickel have fallen sharply over the last two years due to market oversupply.
The strategic reserve would make it easier for these miners by providing access to capital through loans from Export Finance Australia and private investors, reducing financial uncertainty and cost overruns and acting as a buffer against market volatility.
For instance, mid-tier miner Illuka Resources is building Australia’s first rare earths refinery in Western Australia. The project already has significant government support, but it is likely to need more.
Despite Australia’s significant mineral resources, it faces an uphill battle to gain market share. China’s dominance has been driven by low production costs; low environmental, social and goverance standards; and a competitive labour market. But intensifying geopolitical competition between China and the US means Australian minerals would likely be sought by the US.
How can Australia best play its hand?
In volatile market conditions, cheaper operations have a significant advantage, while new mines face an uphill battle.
Australia’s critical minerals hub framework could help offset capital costs. Smaller miners could form cooperatives to share infrastructure and manage logistics, processing and access to international markets. Sharing infrastructure such as roads, rail, energy and ports would reduce the investment risk.
There are other challenges to overcome, such as the long lead times of 10 years or more to go from discovery to production, limited access to low-cost renewable energy and a shortage of technical and scientific capabilities.
Labor’s strategic reserve would help. But it won’t be enough to make Australia into a critical mineral giant. The government should consider:
building more regional processing hubs with shared infrastructure and microgrids
offering royalty exemptions, tax incentives and energy subsidies early on
giving incentives to retrofit facilities to produce critical minerals found alongside main ores, such as cobalt found alongside copper and antimony with gold
encouraging models where rare earths are concentrated in Australia and processed overseas in partner countries
establishing Centres of Excellence on critical minerals and creating shared libraries of intellectual property to support research, avoid duplication and optimise resource allocation.
Overall, the proposed reserve is an excellent idea. Government intervention will be necessary to absorb and mitigate risks from price fluctuations and geopolitical shocks.
Mohan Yellishetty receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Geoscience Australia, Defense Science Institute, Boral Limited, AGL Loy Yang, Indian Ministry of Education. He is affiliated with AusIMM as its fellow, Honorary Academic Fellow, Australia India Institute, Foreign Fellow, Indian Geophysical Union, and affiliated with Indian Institute of Technology (Dharwad, Mumbai, Hyderabad). David Whittle contributed to the research base and data for this article.
But these pressures aren’t new. In 2022, voter frustration over living costs helped Labor oust the Coalition.
With economic pressures persisting, will history repeat?
Analysis of cost-of-living trends and voting patterns in the last election reveals the voters most motivated by hip-pocket concerns: young women.
What was the situation in 2022?
In the 2022 Australian Election Study – a nationally representative post-election survey – about 23.3% of respondents (577 out of 2,478) identified cost of living as the most important issue shaping their vote.
Younger Australians were the most concerned about the issue. Among the age groups, 38.9% of those aged 18–30 prioritised it, compared with 30.4% aged 31–45, 28.5% aged 46–60, and just 15.4% among those aged 61–90.
The generational pattern was clear: the younger you were, the more likely you were to vote on cost-of-living concerns.
Gender also played a role. A slightly higher proportion of women (25.1%) than men (21.1%) rated cost of living as their top issue.
But the age-gender breakdown reveals more: among cost-of-living voters aged 18–45, women made up roughly 70%.
In contrast, men outnumbered women among older cost-of-living voters (aged 60 and over).
These trends suggest the cost of living is especially salient for younger women — a key electoral demographic to watch. Evidence shows this cohort is almost twice as likely as young men to be undecided voters.
If we look at housing, cost-of-living concerns were most prevalent among renters, with 38.5% of public housing tenants and 32.3% of private renters citing it as their top issue, compared to just 16.4% of those who own their home outright.
Those paying off a mortgage (27.3%) and people in alternative living arrangements such as boarding or living at home (35.6%) also reported elevated concern, highlighting the strong link between housing insecurity and financial stress.
Looking at household incomes, it’s no surprise low-income households were overrepresented among cost-of-living voters.
But concern wasn’t limited to them. Middle-income households, including many earning six-figure incomes, also featured prominently, reflecting how rising rents and mortgage repayments are squeezing even those once considered financially secure.
A generation defining crisis
Cost-of-living pressures are widespread, but financial vulnerability heightens the risk of poverty, which already affects more than three million Australians.
As shown above, young people and young families are at the deep end of the crisis.
For many, this is a generation-defining crisis, reshaping life expectations.
In 2017, 62.2% of Australians aged 18–24 saw home ownership as highly important. By 2024, that dropped to 49.5%. A similar decline occurred among 25–34-year-olds.
Those in the poorest suburbs or the poorest household are the least likely to value home ownership. This is potentially a sign they feel permanently locked out, deepening inequality.
As renting becomes more common, and rent prices skyrocket, young people are increasingly struggling to secure affordable rent.
It’s no surprise Gen Z is more financially anxious than any other generation. The mental health toll of financial stress is stark, contributing to the high prevalence of mental health disorders among this age group.
With a sizeable youth electorate this time around, financially struggling young voters could be the power brokers of the election. So who might they vote for?
The politics of living costs
In the last election, 61.7% of voters concerned about the cost of living backed a left-of-centre party, while 38.3% voted for the right. Despite the Coalition’s historic advantage on economic issues, they faced an incumbent disadvantage among cost-of-living voters.
In an Election Monitoring Survey conducted in October 2024, only 23.7% of Australians were living comfortably on their present income, while 46.4% were coping, and 29.9% were struggling.
Those facing financial hardship were more dissatisfied with the country’s direction, less confident in the government, and more likely to dislike both major party leaders.
Unsurprisingly, October 2024 saw a decline in trust in the federal government, with 15.7% of Australians reporting no trust at all, up from 8.3% in May 2022. Those who did trust the government remained around 32%.
This shows cost-of-living voters – much like young and female voters – are likely to explore alternatives beyond the major parties, continuing the 2022 trend.
Both major parties have seen a steady decline in support over the past two decades, with less than 70% of the primary vote between them in 2022.
This time around, Labor can afford to lose only two seats before facing minority government. Peter Dutton, on the other hand, faces a tougher task, needing nearly 20 seats for a majority.
With increasing dislike for the major parties among financially struggling voters, there’s a real chance of a hung parliament, where neither party secures the 76 seats needed to govern outright, making negotiations with minor parties and independents crucial.
Notably, Labor’s proposal to top up stage three income tax cuts won’t kick in until mid-next year, but will cost the government $17 billion over four years.
Meanwhile, the Coalition’s pledge to halve the excise on fuel duty for a year, will cost $6 billion in lost tax revenue in a year.
But whether it will be enough to stop cost-of-living voters siding with a minor party or independent remains to be seen.
Intifar Chowdhury does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Angus, Professor of Digital Communication, Director of QUT Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology
In the lead-up to the 2025 Australian federal election, political advertising is seemingly everywhere.
We’ve been mapping the often invisible world of digital political advertising across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
We’ve done this thanks to a panel of ordinary Australians who agreed to download an ad tracking app developed through the Australian Internet Observatory.
We’re also tracking larger trends in political ad spending, message type and tone, and reach via the PoliDashboard tool. This open source tool aggregates transparency data from Meta (including Facebook and Instagram) which we use to identify patterns and items of concern.
While the major parties are spending heavily and are highly visible in the feeds of our participants, it is the prevalence of third-party political advertising that is most striking. We’ve observed a notable trend: for every ad from a registered political party, there is roughly one ad from a third-party entity.
Astroturfing and the illusion of grassroots support
One of the most concerning trends we’re seeing is a rise in astroturfing. This refers to masking the sponsors of a message to make it appear as though it originates from ordinary citizens or grassroots organisations.
Astroturfing ads do often adhere to the formal disclosure requirements set out by the Australian Electoral Commission. However, these disclosures don’t meaningfully inform the public on who is behind these misleading ads.
Authorisation typically only includes the name and address of an intermediary. This may be a deliberately opaque shell entity set up just in time for an election.
A key example seen by participants in our study involves the pro-gas advocacy group Australians for Natural Gas.
It presents itself as a grassroots movement, but an ABC investigation revealed this group is working with Freshwater Strategy – the Coalition’s internal pollster. Emails obtained by the ABC show Freshwater Strategy is “helping orchestrate a campaign to boost public support for the gas industry ahead of the federal election”.
Other examples we’ve encountered in our monitoring include groups with benign-sounding names like Mums for Nuclear and Australians for Prosperity. These labels and the ads they are running suggest grassroots concern, but they obscure the deeper agendas behind them.
In the case of Australians for Prosperity, an ABC analysis revealed backing from wealthy donors, former conservative MPs and coal interests.
The battle over energy
Nowhere is this more evident than in messaging around energy policy, especially nuclear power and gas.
In recent months, both major parties and a swathe of third-party advertisers have run targeted online campaigns focused on the costs and benefits of different energy futures. These ads play to deeply felt concerns about cost of living, action on climate change, and national sovereignty.
Yet many of these messages, particularly those that promote gas and nuclear, come from organisations with opaque funding and undeclared political affiliations or connections. Voters may see a slick Facebook ad or a sponsored TikTok explainer without any idea who paid for it, or why.
And with no obligation to be truthful, much of this content may be deeply misleading. It muddies public understanding at a critical moment for climate action.
Truth not required
Truth in political advertising isn’t legally required in all of Australia. While businesses can’t mislead consumers under consumer law, political parties and third-party campaigners are exempt from those same standards.
This means misleading or outright false claims – about opponents, policies or the state of the economy – can be repeated and amplified without consequence, provided they’re framed as political opinion.
South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory do have truth in political advertising laws, but there is still no national standard.
In the digital advertising environment, where ads are fast, fleeting, and often tailored to individuals, the absence of such independent scrutiny allows misinformation to flourish unchecked.
Most people are seeing very little – or so it seems
Paradoxically, our data shows the majority of participants are seeing very few political ads. Of the total ads seen, less than 2% pertained to political topics or the election specifically.
This is partly a result of how the advertising products offered by platforms like Meta and TikTok allow ads to be targeted to specific demographics, locations or interests. This means even two people in the same household may have entirely different ad experiences.
But it’s also a reminder social media ads are just the tip of the iceberg. Much political persuasion online happens outside paid ad campaigns – via influencer content, YouTube recommendations, algorithmic amplification, mainstream media coverage and more.
Because platforms and publishers aren’t required to share this broader content with researchers or the public, we can’t easily track it – although we are trying.
We need meaningful observability
If democracy is to thrive in a digital age, we need to be able to independently observe online political communication, including advertising.
Existing measures like campaign finance disclosures and transparency tools provided by platforms will never be enough. They don’t include user experiences or track patterns across populations and over time. This inevitably means some advertising activity flies under the radar.
We lack robust tools to understand and analyse our current fragmented information landscape.
Where platforms don’t provide meaningful data access to researchers and the public, tools like the Ad Observatory and PoliDashboard offer valuable glimpses into a fragmented information landscape, while remaining incomplete.
However, tools on their own are not enough. We also need to be willing to call out and act when politicians mislead the public.
Acknowlegement: The Australian Ad Observatory is a team effort. The authors wish to acknowledge the contribution of Jean Burgess, Nicholas Carah, Alfie Chadwick, Kyle Herbertson, Tina Kang, Khanh Luong, Abdul Karim Obeid, Lina Przhedetsky, and Dan Tran.
Daniel Angus receives funding from Australian Research Council through Linkage Project ‘Young Australians and the Promotion of Alcohol on Social Media’. He is a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society.
Christine Parker receives funding from the Australian Research Council through the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.
Giselle Newton received funding from the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education for the project ‘How alcohol and gambling companies target people most at risk with marketing for addictive products on Facebook’.
Mark Andrejevic receives funding from the Australian Research Council through the Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society and through the Discovery Program.
Kate Clark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
With the May 3 federal election less than a week away, voters still have little reliable information on the costs of Labor or Coalition policies.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has said Labor’s policy costings will be released imminently. At the 2022 election, the costings were not released for nearly two months after polling day.
Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley last week told Sky News the Coalition costings will be “released in the lead up to election day and will be able to be fully interrogated”.
This is now too late for the voters who have already cast their ballots. We have seen a record number of pre-poll votes this election, with more than 2.3 million as of Saturday. This means a sizeable percentage of the electorate has voted without knowing what their votes will cost.
Voting without all the facts
Whichever side wins, taxpayers eventually pay to implement policies. So knowing at least in broad terms the costs of the policies would be helpful.
The Coalition has probably had many of its policies costed by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office. This process thorough and impartial.
Importantly, the Parliamentary Budget Office costs policies over ten years. This allows the full costs of policies to be understood better. Some policies such as large infrastructure take many years before the full impact on the budget is felt.
Labor has already published the costs of many of its policies in the March 25 federal budget. This only covered the forward estimates, three years into the future, but is reliable for most policies. But we still need the costings for policies announced post-budget.
The true picture?
Even when we see what the parties release, we can have no confidence their lists will be accurate and complete. Parties may omit costings that might attract criticism.
They may also present costings prepared by consultants rather than the Parliamentary Budget Office. You may recall controversy late last year over private modelling of the Coalition’s plans for nuclear power.
Unfortunately we have to wait until after the election for a comprehensive and independent set of costings.
The Parliamentary Budget Office does not publish its full list of costings (in the election commitments report) until well after the election. This is either 30 days from the end of the caretaker period or seven days before the new parliament first sits, whichever comes later.
The election commitments report has some accountability value in relation to the party that forms government but does not help inform voters. It is a mystery why anyone would be interested in the costs of policies of the losing side. But they still must be published, according to electoral law.
The report must include the major parties, although minor parties and independents can also be included in the report if they wish.
Are there other approaches?
By contrast, in New South Wales the state Parliamentary Budget Office publishes a complete set of costings five days before the election. Policies announced after this date miss out but these rarely affect the budget bottom line.
Although, as occurs federally, many voters cast their ballots in advance, at least NSW’s approach gives most voters a chance to see the costs. This encourages the major parties to compete to produce a fiscally responsible total.
The NSW approach is self-policing. Each major party studies the statements and if the other side omits something – large or small – they rapidly and loudly complain. Parties therefore try to make their policy lists as accurate as possible.
Federally, the budget office takes on the time-consuming job of tracking down all the policy announcements to cost and include in its post-election report.
The differences arise from the different legislation that applies to each PBO.
NSW has arguably an easier job because it costs policies only for the premier and leader of the opposition. The federal budget office costs for all members of parliament.
The federal system requires policies submitted during the caretaker period, and their costings, must be published “as soon as practicable”. But major parties are highly unlikely to submit a policy only to have it and its costing released at a time not of its choosing.
The requirement is likely motivated by transparency, but clashes with political reality. In NSW costings remain confidential until the leader advises the budget office the policy has been announced. This gives parties a way to have policies costed with a low risk of their premature release.
DIY assessments
Federally, there are other ways to estimate the costs of policies. The budget office has a Build your Own Budget Tool, and a tool for modelling alternative
income tax proposals (SMART), both available online.
These provide a fair approximation and are often used by journalists trying to get behind political announcements.
The OECD lists 35 independent fiscal bodies in 29 OECD countries responsible for assessing election costings. Some are tiny, with just a few analysts. Some are
huge and influential, like the US Congressional Budget Office. Few have the same focus on costing election policies that applies in Australia.
Costs are a big deal here. Both parties have run advertisements attacking the other side on the question of whether their policies are affordable.
On major policies such as the Coalition plans for nuclear power there are massive differences between cost estimates put forward by each side. Such differences could be resolved by an independent and impartial costing. This is why Australian voters deserve to see such costings as soon as possible.
Stephen Bartos was NSW Parliamentary Budget Officer for the past three NSW general elections. He is now a professor at the University of Canberra.
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on April 28, 2025.
Reefs in the ‘middle’ light zone along NZ’s coast are biodiversity hotspots – many are home to protected species Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James J Bell, Professor of Marine Biology, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington James Bell, CC BY-SA The latest update on the state of New Zealand’s environment paints a concerning outlook for marine environments, especially amid the increasing push to use the marine estate for
Pokies line the coffers of governments and venues – but there are ways to tame this gambling gorilla Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University Recently, much public attention has been given to the way online wagering and its incessant promotion has infiltrated sport and our TV screens. Despite a 2023 parliamentary inquiry that recommended new restrictions on online
Vancouver SUV attack exposes crowd management falldowns and casts a pall on Canada’s election Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ali Asgary, Professor, Disaster & Emergency Management, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies & Director, CIFAL York, York University, Canada A car attack at a Filipino street festival in Vancouver just two days before Canada’s federal election has killed at least 11 people and injured many
Is Canada heading down a path that has caused the collapse of mighty civilizations in the past? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Hoyer, Senior Researcher, Historian and Complexity Scientist, University of Toronto Canada is, by nearly any measure, a large, advanced, prosperous nation. A founding member of the G7, Canada is one of the world’s most “advanced economies,” ranking fourth in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s
Rwanda’s genocide: why remembering needs to be free of politics – lessons from survivors Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Lakin, Lecturer, Clark University Memory and politics are inherently intertwined and can never be fully separated in post-atrocity and post-genocidal contexts. They are also dynamic and ever-changing. The interplay between memory and politics is, therefore, prone to manipulation, exaggeration or misuse by clever actors to meet
In talking with Tehran, Trump is reversing course on Iran – could a new nuclear deal be next? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeffrey Fields, Professor of the Practice of International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences A mural on the outer walls of the former US embassy in Tehran depicts two men in negotiation. Majid Saeedi/Getty Images Negotiators from Iran and the United States are set
What will the UK Supreme Court gender ruling mean in practice? A legal expert explains Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Maine, Senior Lecturer in Law, City St George’s, University of London jeep2499/Shutterstock The Supreme Court’s decision in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers will mean changes in how trans people in the UK access services and single-sex spaces. In the highly anticipated judgment announced
What are ‘penjamins’? Disguised cannabis vapes are gaining popularity among young people Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Chung, PhD Candidate, National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research, The University of Queensland Stenko Vlad/Shutterstock E-cigarettes or vapes were originally designed to deliver nicotine in a smokeless form. But in recent years, vapes have been used to deliver other psychoactive substances, including cannabis concentrates and
Used EV batteries could power vehicles, houses or even towns – if their manufacturers share vital data Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryoush Habibi, Professor and Head, Centre for Green and Smart Energy Systems, Edith Cowan University EV batteries are made of hundreds of smaller cells. IM Imagery/Shutterstock Around the world, more and more electric vehicles are hitting the road. Last year, more than 17 million battery-electric and hybrid
Climate change and the housing crisis are a dangerous mix. So which party is grappling with both? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ehsan Noroozinejad, Senior Researcher and Sustainable Future Lead, Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University Australia is running out of affordable, safe places to live. Rents and mortgages are climbing faster than wages, and young people fear they may never own a home. At the same time,
Why film and TV creators will still risk it all for the perfect long take shot Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristian Ramsden, PhD Candidate, University of Adelaide Apple TV In the second episode of Apple TV’s The Studio (2025–) – a sharp satirical take on contemporary Hollywood – newly-appointed studio head Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) visits the set of one of his company’s film productions. He finds
Is there a best way to peel a boiled egg? A food scientist explains Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paulomi (Polly) Burey, Professor in Food Science, University of Southern Queensland We’ve all been there – trying to peel a boiled egg, but mangling it beyond all recognition as the hard shell stubbornly sticks to the egg white. Worse, the egg ends up covered in chewy bits
Australia once had ‘immigration amnesties’ to grant legal status to undocumented people. Could we again? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Dehm, Senior Lecturer, International Migration and Refugee Law, University of Technology Sydney The year is 1972. The Whitlam Labor government has just been swept into power and major changes to Australia’s immigration system are underway. Many people remember this time for the formal end of the
Independents may build on Australia’s history of hung parliaments, if they can survive the campaign blues Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Visitor, School of History, Australian National University Major parties used to easily dismiss the rare politician who stood alone in parliament. These MPs could be written off as isolated idealists, and the press could condescend to them as noble, naïve and unlikely to succeed. In
Peter Dutton: a Liberal leader seeking to surf on the wave of outer suburbia Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra In searching for the “real” Peter Dutton, it is possible to end up frustrated because you have looked too hard. Politically, Dutton is not complicated. There is a consistent line in his beliefs through his career. Perhaps the shortest cut
Albanese has been a ‘proficient and lucky general’. But if he wins a second term, we are right to demand more Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Strangio, Emeritus Professor of Politics, Monash University Barring a rogue result, this Saturday Anthony Albanese will achieve what no major party leader has done since John Howard’s prime-ministerial era – win consecutive elections. Admittedly, in those two decades he is only the second of the six
Peter Dutton declares Welcome to Country ceremonies are ‘overdone’ in heated final leaders’ debate Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andy Marks, Vice-President, Public Affairs and Partnerships, Western Sydney University Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton have had their fourth and final leaders’ debate of the campaign. The skirmish, hosted by 7News in Sydney, was moderated by 7’s Political Editor Mark Riley. Cost of
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Trump’s war on the media: 10 numbers from US President’s first 100 days Reporters Without Borders Donald Trump campaigned for the White House by unleashing a nearly endless barrage of insults against journalists and news outlets. He repeatedly threatened to weaponise the federal government against media professionals whom he considers his enemies. In his first 100 days in office, President Trump has already shown that he was not bluffing.
The latest update on the state of New Zealand’s environment paints a concerning outlook for marine environments, especially amid the increasing push to use the marine estate for economic gain.
But many shallow coastal ecosystems remain largely unexplored. As our latest fieldwork shows, many of these areas are hotspots for protected species, but are largely unprotected from human impacts.
Gardens of the red calcified stylasterid hydrocoral off the coast of Doubtful Sound, Fiordland.
Ecosystems in the ‘middle’ light zone
Subtidal rocky reefs have been the focus of scientific research for centuries. During the past eight decades, with the advent of SCUBA diving, they have been studied even more intensively.
However, rocky reefs extend much deeper than most SCUBA divers can typically reach, into what is known as the mesophotic or “middle” light zone.
While seaweeds dominate in the well-lit shallow waters, there is limited light to sustain photosynthesis in the mesophotic zone below around 30 metres. The decline in seaweed creates more space for animals, which leads to the development of communities containing species not found in the shallows.
Deep-water stony corals at around 100 metres off the coast of Northland.
Because these ecosystems are no longer affected by surface wave action, they are often dominated by large, fragile three-dimensional species.
We still know very little about the ecology of the species that live in mesophotic ecosystems. Many are likely to be slow growing and long-lived, with some living for hundreds or possibly thousands of years.
Research is ongoing and empirical data still sparse, but observations show many fish are associated with these mesophotic communities. We eat some of them, or they are important within the ocean food web.
Diverse ecosystems and protected species
We shared some of the first high-resolution videos of New Zealand’s mesophotic ecosystems in 2022. Back then, we thought these deep-reef communities were dominated by sponges.
However, we have since deployed a Boxfish remotely operated vehicle more than 200 times around New Zealand and found sponges are not always the most dominant organism.
In fact, mesophotic ecosystems along New Zealand’s coast are very diverse, with regional variation in the types of communities.
Our team found sea squirts dominated communities off Rakiura Stewart Island, anemone stands in the Wellington region, red coral beds along the Fiordland coast and coral “reefs” in Northland.
Asicidian or sea squirt beds at 130 metres off the coast of Rakiura Stewart Island.
Importantly, many of these reefs support species protected under the Wildlife Act.
During our most recent trip to Doubtless Bay in Northland, we explored more than 20 locations. At many sites we encountered protected coral species. The term coral is broadly defined in the Wildlife Act – it includes groups such as black corals (order Antipatharia), gorgonian corals (Gorgonacea), stony corals (Scleractinia) and hydrocorals (family Stylasteridae).
Protected black coral and seafans at around 90 metres offshore at Doubtless Bay, Northland.
Under the Wildlife Act, it is illegal to deliberately collect or damage these species. If they are brought to the surface accidentally (in fishing gear or by anchors, for example), they must be returned to the sea immediately.
Many of these corals are typically considered deep-sea species, but they are commonly found in New Zealand’s mesophotic ecosystems. Northland’s mesophotic communities have examples from all these groups of corals, as well as other fragile ecosystems dominated by glass sponges.
While glass sponges are not protected, they are thought to be very slow growing, with some species living for thousands of years.
Glass sponge gardens at around 100 metres off the coast of Northland.
Current and future impacts
Many mesophotic organisms grow slowly and rely on food carried in the water. This makes them particularly sensitive to activities that disrupt the seafloor, such as fishing and anchoring, and to the effect of higher sediment loads.
Sediment can either smother or clog mesophotic organisms such as corals and sponges. Many of these species show some tolerance to sediment, but prolonged exposure or very high levels can kill them off.
Many of the mesophotic ecosystems we have explored show clear evidence of human impacts, including lost recreational fishing gear and anchor lines.
The government plans to maximise the economic potential of the marine estate and much of this development is focused on coastal areas. Any activities that generate coastal sediment plumes are of particular concern.
Seabed sand mining operations already occur at some sites around the coast of New Zealand. More have been proposed, potentially generating sediment plumes that could reach these mesophotic communities.
Protected black coral in a sponge garden at around 80 metres at the Poor Knights marine reserve in Northland.
A fundamental step for effective management of biodiversity is to understand its distribution. Our work over the past five years has characterised a wide range of mesophotic ecosystems, but there are still large areas of the New Zealand coastline that have not been explored. They are likely to contain undescribed communities.
As many regional councils around New Zealand are working through revisions to coastal policy plans, these deeper rocky reefs need to be fully included to protect the species they support.
Professor James J Bell receives funding from the Department of Conservation, Environment Southland, the George Mason Charitable Trust, The Royal Society of New Zealand, and the Greater Wellington Regional Council.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University
Recently, much public attention has been given to the way online wagering and its incessant promotion has infiltrated sport and our TV screens.
Despite a 2023 parliamentary inquiry that recommended new restrictions on online (especially sport) gambling advertising, the federal government neglected to implement any of the 31 recommendations.
This seems to have resulted from a furious and well resourced campaign by gambling’s ecosystem: wagering companies, broadcasters, sporting leagues, and others who currently drink from the fountain of gambling revenue.
Naturally, this issue garnered a great deal of attention, as it should.
But there’s another even bigger gambling gorilla that has steadily rebuilt its profits post-pandemic. You’ll probably find some at a hotel or social club near you.
This is, of course, pokies: Australia’s version of slot machines.
Australia’s major source of gambling problems
Australians lost A$15.8 billion on pokies in 2022–23, over half of that ($8.1 billion) in New South Wales. That’s an increase of 7.6% from 2018–19 (before pandemic restrictions closed many venues or restricted operations).
Wagering (sports and race betting) losses grew a hefty 45% over the same period, to around $8.4 billion. Even so, it remains way behind the pokies as Australia’s biggest source of gambling losses and problems.
Casino losses dropped by 35.5%. Casinos are also poke venues, but also offer other forms of gambling. Pokies in casinos are counted as “casino” gambling in national gambling statistics, while pokies in clubs and pubs continue to be counted separately.
A recent study found pokies responsible for between 52% and 57% of gambling problems in Australia. Wagering was estimated at 20%.
Recent growth may have altered these a little but pokies are still responsible for half of Australia’s gambling losses.
The gambling industry is fond of pointing out only a modest proportion of the population have serious gambling problems. That’s true, according to most prevalence studies.
But what also has to be remembered is, most people never use pokies. In 2024, the latest population study for NSW found only 14.3% of adults used pokies at all.
But around 18.5% of pokie users are either high or moderate risk gamblers: 35% of gamblers who use pokies at least once a month are classified as either high or moderate risk gamblers.
And in 2010 the Productivity Commission estimated 41% of the money lost on pokies came from the most seriously addicted, with another 20% coming from those with more moderate issues. Overall, well over half of the losses.
It’s little wonder pokie operators resist reforms.
Why are pokies so profitable?
The first and obvious answer to this is that there are a lot of them: they are widely accessible across Australia (apart from Western Australia, where they’re only in a single casino).
NSW alone has about 87,500. Queensland has about half that number, and Victoria about 26,000.
All of these are located in pubs or clubs, and in NSW they collect (on average) $93,000 per machine per year.
Second, they’re overwhelmingly concentrated in areas where people are doing it tough. Stress and strain are common where there are pokies.
Some people start to use them thinking they might alleviate financial woes. They don’t, of course. But they do provide an escape from the vicissitudes of daily life.
Once sampled, that can become addictive.
People who use pokies a lot call this escape from reality “the zone” – once you’re there, nothing matters, except staying there.
The zone is also known as “immersion”, or “loss of executive control”: people using pokies find it very difficult, if not impossible, to stop. Once the money’s gone, reality crashes in.
Pokies are also extremely addictive. Along with online casino games (which includes virtual pokies or slot machines), they are generally regarded as the most addictive and harmful gambling products.
They have a host of features engineered into them, including “losses disguised as wins”, “near misses” and many others.
They are engineered with 10 million or more possible outcomes and it is not possible for anyone to predict what outcome will come next.
Crucially, the house always wins. In a machine where the “return to player ratio” is set at 87% (a common, completely lawful setting), the machine would retain 13% of all wagers.
Unfortunately, few pokie users understand these characteristics.
Can’t we rein in the pokies?
So why do politicians resist reform?
One reason for this is the pokie revenue that flows into government coffers.
In 2022–23, state governments received a total of more than $9 billion in gambling taxes – 7.8% of all state tax revenue. Of this, $5.3 billion came from pokies. NSW alone got $2.23 billion from pokies, Victoria $1.3 billion, and Queensland $1.1 billion.
The venues, of course, receive a great deal more. One of the consequences of all that money flowing into the coffers of pubs and clubs is political access and influence.
We can, however, tame the pokies if we want to.
Various solutions are available, including pre-commitment, generally believed to be the most likely candidate.
This involves pokie users being required to set a limit prior to using the machines, which is now common in many countries in Europe, and has been proposed (but delayed or scuttled) in Australia for Tasmania, Victoria, and New South Wales.
More broadly however, this has been strongly resisted by the gambling ecosystem, including parties such as ClubsNSW and the Tasmanian Hospitality Association. Their influence appears profound.
Clearly, prohibition of gambling ads, and the termination of sports sponsorships that tie football, cricket and other major sports to gambling is needed urgently.
But if we really want to reduce gambling problems and their extraordinary catalogue of harm, reining in the pokies is a must.
That may take some serious effort.
Charles Livingstone has received funding from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the (former) Victorian Gambling Research Panel, and the South Australian Independent Gambling Authority (the funds for which were derived from hypothecation of gambling tax revenue to research purposes), from the Australian and New Zealand School of Government and the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, and from non-government organisations for research into multiple aspects of poker machine gambling, including regulatory reform, existing harm minimisation practices, and technical characteristics of gambling forms. He has received travel and co-operation grants from the Alberta Problem Gambling Research Institute, the Finnish Institute for Public Health, the Finnish Alcohol Research Foundation, the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Committee, the Turkish Red Crescent Society, and the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand. He was a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council funded project researching mechanisms of influence on government by the tobacco, alcohol and gambling industries. He has undertaken consultancy research for local governments and non-government organisations in Australia and the UK seeking to restrict or reduce the concentration of poker machines and gambling impacts, and was a member of the Australian government’s Ministerial Expert Advisory Group on Gambling in 2010-11. He is a member of the Lancet Public Health Commission into gambling, and of the World Health Organisation expert group on gambling and gambling harm. He made a submission to and appeared before the HoR Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs inquiry into online gambling and its impacts on those experiencing gambling harm.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ali Asgary, Professor, Disaster & Emergency Management, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies & Director, CIFAL York, York University, Canada
The carnage along a street lined with food trucks took place shortly after one of the men vying to become Canada’s prime minister — New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh — attended the event. A shell-shocked Singh observed a moment of silence in Penticton, B.C., during another campaign stop the next day.
Vancouver police say the suspect has mental health issues and was known to police prior to the attack. Police also told a news conference there was no indication there was a need for extra policing at the festival, deeming it to have a “low threat level.”
What goes into making that calculation, and is a public event ever truly low-risk?
Vancouver police hold a news conference on the SUV attack. (CTV News)
Difficulties of crowd management
The Vancouver SUV attack is now classified as a crowd-related or mass gathering type of disaster. There have been cases of public vehicle-ramming attacks in Canada in the past, in particular the 2018 Toronto van attack that left 10 people dead.
Unfortunately, many mass gathering events do not allocate either sufficient resources or time for crowd management procedures, particularly those related to risk and emergency management.
Organizing mass gathering events in public spaces should factor in different threats, including the potential for car ramming, and implement effective mitigation and preparedness measures.
‘Soft targets’
Many public spaces where these events take place are vulnerable to car attacks. Evidence shows that mass gatherings are soft targets, meaning they’re easily accessible to large numbers of people and have limited security, protective and warning measures in place. Extreme precautions are needed to protect the public from such attacks so that they don’t become mass casualty events.
Those in attendance should be aware that public spaces generally lack physical barriers, or the proper distribution of them, to resist car or vehicle attacks.
While public awareness programs exist for other hazards such as flooding, earthquakes and extreme weather events, it’s now clear that such awareness and education are needed for mass public gatherings too.
Police should be aware that relying on limited surveillance may not be sufficient to identify such threats at the scene. Vehicle access and traffic control should be in place throughout such events. Lack of warning systems to quickly inform the crowd about an ongoing attack further increases the impacts of vehicular attacks.
Much of the focus on these types of events has been on the motivations of the attackers. Since a considerable number of vehicle-ramming attacks have been attributed to terrorism, communities or events with the perception of lower terrorism threats may not pay close enough attention to this type of threat.
Canadians aren’t likely to get many more details about the Vancouver attack until after voting day on Monday. Could the tragedy have an impact on the outcome of the federal election?
Past and recent studies have drawn different conclusions about the impact of disasters on election results.
According to what’s known as retrospective voting theory, voters judge governments on how they manage disasters, particularly highly publicized, tragic events, when casting their ballots. Voters can evaluate governments based on their handling of the disaster and the amount of effort they have put into minimizing risk.
Voters can and do punish or reward governments and elected politicians based on the effects of recent disasters on them and governments’ responses to them.
Hopefully, however, it will have an influence on how organizers, police and other authorities manage public crowds and events at a time when vehicle-ramming attacks are becoming a recurrent threat. Those elected this election should prioritize efforts to ensure communities can have safer mass gathering events.
Ali Asgary does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In the highly anticipated judgment announced April 17, the court ruled that the definition of “sex”, “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act refers to “biological sex”. It found that this does not include those who hold a gender recognition certificate (trans people who have had their chosen gender legally recognised). In simple terms, “women” does not include transgender women.
It is important to note that the court’s remit was focused on interpretation of existing laws, not creating policy. The court affirmed that trans people should not be discriminated against, nor did they intend to provide a definition of sex or gender outside of the application of the Equality Act.
The prime minister has said he welcomes the “real clarity” brought by the ruling. But while it may bring some legal clarity, questions remain about the practical implementation. The judgment also raises new questions about the operation of the Gender Recognition Act, and what it now means to hold a gender recognition certificate.
What was the court case?
The gender-critical feminist group For Women Scotland challenged the Scottish government’s guidance on the operation of the Equality Act in relation to a Scottish law that sets targets for increasing the proportion of women on public boards.
The definition of a “woman” for the purposes of that law included trans women who had undergone, or were proposing to undergo, gender reassignment.
The issue that the court had to address was whether a person with a full gender recognition certificate (GRC) which recognises that their gender is female, is a “woman” for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. The act gives protection to people who are at risk of unlawful discrimination.
The court’s decision was that the meaning of “sex” was biological and so references in the act to “women” and “men” did not, therefore, apply to trans women or trans men who hold GRCs.
What has changed with this ruling?
Prior to the ruling, there were contested views as to whether trans people could access certain single-sex spaces – some of the most contentious being prisons, bathrooms and domestic abuse shelters.
The ruling does not require services to exclude trans people from all single-sex spaces. It does, however, clarify that if a service operates a single-sex space, for example a gym changing room, then exclusion is based on biological sex and not legal sex. Neither the court nor the government has said how “biological sex” would be defined or proven.
A service provider may operate a single-sex space on the basis of privacy or safety of users. To base this on biological sex must be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim – for example, the safety of women in a group for abuse survivors. This means that service providers may still operate trans-inclusive policies, but they may open themselves to legal challenge.
What does this mean for the Gender Recognition Act?
The Gender Recognition Act 2004 introduced gender recognition certificates (GRCs), which certify that a person’s legal gender is different from their assigned gender at birth. A trans person can apply for a GRC in order to change their gender on their birth certificate. For legal purposes, they are then recognised as their acquired gender.
The ruling does not strike down or affect the operation of the Gender Recognition Act. But it does give the impression that the GRA – and holding a GRC – is now less effective.
The ruling clarifies that a trans woman who has a GRC and is recognised legally in her acquired gender can be excluded from single-sex spaces on the ground of biological sex, as would a trans woman without a GRC. Before the ruling, a trans person with a GRC would have been able to access many single-sex spaces and services that match the gender on their GRC.
In order to be granted a GRC, a person must show that they have lived in their acquired gender for at least two years and that they intend to live in that gender until death. Their application must be approved by two doctors, but – in what was a world-first at the time it was introduced – does not require any medical transition.
The Supreme Court states that trans people (with or without a GRC) will still be protected from discrimination. Sex and gender reassignment are both protected characteristics under the Equality Act. This means that trans people may still rely on the law to protect them from direct or indirect discrimination levelled at them on the basis of being trans, or because of their perceived sex.
The court uses the example that a trans woman applying for a job being denied that job on the basis of being trans would still be entitled to sue for discrimination.
How will single-sex services operate?
The key question now, both for service providers and trans people, is what spaces trans people will be able to use. It is not the Supreme Court’s job to issue guidance on this – and the judgment is notably silent on the practical implementation of the ruling.
Service providers may choose to offer unisex spaces, for example gender neutral bathrooms. British Transport Police have already confirmed that strip searches of those arrested on the network would be conducted based on biological sex, and other services will likely follow.
It is up to service providers, employers and healthcare providers to interpret the ruling and decide how to apply it. The government has said that further guidance will be issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. But how the ruling is implemented in practice, and what it means for other laws like the Gender Recognition Act, will likely be debated for some time.
Alexander Maine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Joanna Vanderham as Desdemona and Hugh Quarshie as the title character in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of ‘Othello.’Robbie Jack/Corbis via Getty Images
What is “happiness” – and who gets to be happy?
Since 2012, the World Happiness Report has measured and compared data from 167 countries. The United States currently ranks 24th, between the U.K. and Belize – its lowest position since the report was first issued. But the 2025 edition – released on March 20, the United Nations’ annual “International Day of Happiness” – starts off not with numbers, but with Shakespeare.
“In this year’s issue, we focus on the impact of caring and sharing on people’s happiness,” the authors explain. “Like ‘mercy’ in Shakespeare’s ‘Merchant of Venice,’ caring is ‘twice-blessed’ – it blesses those who give and those who receive.”
Shakespeare’s plays offer many reflections on happiness itself. They are a record of how people in early modern England experienced and thought about joy and satisfaction, and they offer a complex look at just how happiness, like mercy, lives in relationships and the caring exchanges between people.
Contrary to how we might think about happiness in our everyday lives, it is more than the surge of positive feelings after a great meal, or a workout, or even a great date. The experience of emotions is grounded in both the bodyand the mind, influenced by human physiology and culture in ways that change depending on time and place. What makes a person happy, therefore, depends on who that person is, as well as where and when they belong – or don’t belong.
Happiness has a history. I study emotions and early modern literature, so I spend a lot of my time thinking about what Shakespeare has to say about what makes people happy, in his own time and in our own. And also, of course, what makes people unhappy.
But in modern English usage, “happy” as “fortunate” has been almost entirely replaced by a notion of happiness as “joy,” or the more long-term sense of life satisfaction called “well-being.” The term “well-being,” in fact, was introduced into English from the Italian “benessere” around the time of Shakespeare’s birth.
The word and the concept of happiness were transforming during Shakespeare’s lifetime, and his use of the word in his plays mingles both senses: “fortunate” and “joyful.” That transitional ambiguity emphasizes happiness’ origins in ideas about luck and fate, and it reminds readers and playgoers that happiness is a contingent, fragile thing – something not just individuals, but societies need to carefully cultivate and support.
For instance, early in “Othello,” the Venetian senator Brabantio describes his daughter Desdemona as “tender, fair, and happy / So opposite to marriage that she shunned / The wealthy, curled darlings of our nation.” Before she elopes with Othello she is “happy” in the sense of “fortunate,” due to her privileged position on the marriage market.
Later in the same play, though, Othello reunites with his new wife in Cyprus and describes his feelings of joy using this same term:
…If it were now to die,
‘Twere now to be most happy, for I fear
My soul hath her content so absolute
That not another comfort like to this
Succeeds in unknown fate.
Desdemona responds,
The heavens forbid
But that our loves and comforts should increase
Even as our days do grow!
They both understand “happy” to mean not just lucky, but “content” and “comfortable,” a more modern understanding. But they also recognize that their comforts depend on “the heavens,” and that happiness is enabled by being fortunate.
“Othello” is a tragedy, so in the end, the couple will not prove “happy” in either sense. The foreign general is tricked into believing his young wife has been unfaithful. He murders her, then takes his own life.
The seeds of jealousy are planted and expertly exploited by Othello’s subordinate, Iago, who catalyzes the racial prejudice and misogyny underlying Venetian values to enact his sinister and cruel revenge.
“Othello” sheds light on happiness’s history – but also on its politics.
While happiness is often upheld as a common good, it is also dependent on cultural forces that make it harder for some individuals to experience. Shared cultural fantasies about happiness tend to create what theorist Sara Ahmed calls “affect aliens”: individuals who, by nature of who they are and how they are treated, experience a disconnect between what their culture conditions them to think should make them happy and their disappointment or exclusion from those positive feelings. Othello, for example, rightly worries that he is somehow foreign to the domestic happiness Desdemona describes, excluded from the joy of Venetian marriage. It turns out he is right.
Because Othello is foreign and Black and Desdemona is Venetian and white, their marriage does not conform to their society’s expectations for happiness, and that makes them vulnerable to Iago’s deceit.
Similarly, “The Merchant of Venice” examines the potential for happiness to include or exclude, to build or break communities. Take the quote about mercy that opens the World Happiness Report.
The phrase appears in a famous courtroom scene, as Portia attempts to persuade a Jewish lender, Shylock, to take pity on Antonio, a Christian man who cannot pay his debts. In their contract, Shylock has stipulated that if Antonio defaults on the loan, the fee will be a “pound of flesh.”
“The quality of mercy is not strained,” Portia lectures him; it is “twice-blessed,” benefiting both giver and receiver.
It’s a powerful attempt to save Antonio’s life. But it is also hypocritical: Those cultural norms of caring and mercy seem to apply only to other Christians in the play, and not the Jewish people living alongside them in Venice. In that same scene, Shylock reminds his audience that Antonio and the other Venetians in the room have spit on him and called him a dog. He famously asks why Jewish Venetians are not treated as equal human beings: “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”
Shakespeare’s plays repeatedly make the point that the unjust distribution of rights and care among various social groups – Christians and Jews, men and women, citizens and foreigners – challenges the happy effects of benevolence.
Those social factors are sometimes overlooked in cultures like the U.S., where contemporary notions of happiness are marketed by wellness gurus, influencers and cosmetic companies. Shakespeare’s plays reveal both how happiness is built through communities of care and how it can be weaponized to destroy individuals and the fabric of the community.
There are obvious victims of prejudice and abuse in Shakespeare’s plays, but he does not just emphasize their individual tragedies. Instead, the plays record how certain values that promote inequality poison relationships that could otherwise support happy networks of family and friends.
Systems of support
Pretty much all objective research points to the fact that long-term happiness depends on community, connections and social support: having systems in place to weather what life throws at us.
And according to both the World Happiness Report and Shakespeare, contentment isn’t just about the actual support you receive but your expectations about people’s willingness to help you. Societies with high levels of trust, like Finland and the Netherlands, tend to be happier – and to have more evenly distributed levels of happiness in their populations.
Shakespeare’s plays offer blueprints for trust in happy communities. They also offer warnings about the costs of cultural fantasies about happiness that make it more possible for some, but not for all.
Cora Fox has received funding from an NEH grant for activities not directly related to this research.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeffrey Fields, Professor of the Practice of International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
A mural on the outer walls of the former US embassy in Tehran depicts two men in negotiation.Majid Saeedi/Getty Images
The scheduled talks follow the two previous rounds of indirect negotiations that have taken place under the new Trump administration. Those discussions were deemed to have yielded enough progress to merit sending nuclear experts from both sides to begin outlining the specifics of a potential framework for a deal.
The development is particularly notable given that Trump, in 2018, unilaterally walked the U.S. away from a multilateral agreement with Iran. That deal, negotiated during the Obama presidency, put restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. Trump instead turned to a policy that involved tightening the financial screws on Iran through enhanced sanctions while issuing implicit military threats.
But that approach failed to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program.
Now, rather than revive the maximum pressure policy of his first term, Trump – ever keen to be seen as a dealmaker – has given his team the green light for the renewed diplomacy and even reportedly rebuffed, for now, Israel’s desire to launch military strikes against Tehran.
Jaw-jaw over war-war
The turn to diplomacy returns Iran-US relations to where they began during the Obama administration, with attempts to encourage Iran to curb or eliminate its ability to enrich uranium.
As a long-time expert on U.S. foreign policy and nuclear nonproliferation, I believe Trump has a unique opportunity to not only reinstate a similar nuclear agreement to the one he rejected, but also forge a more encompassing deal – and foster better relations with the Islamic Republic in the process.
There are real signs that a potential deal could be in the offing, and it is certainly true that Trump likes the optics of dealmaking.
But an agreement is by no means certain. Any progress toward a deal will be challenged by a number of factors, not least internal divisions and opposition within the Trump administration and skepticism among some in the Islamic Republic, along with uncertainty over a succession plan for the aging Ayatollah Khamenei.
Conservative hawks are still abundant in both countries and could yet derail any easing of diplomatic tensions.
Many Iranians would say relations have been strained since 1953, when the U.S. and the United Kingdom orchestrated the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran.
Washington and Tehran have not had formal diplomatic relations since 1979, and the two countries have been locked in a decadeslong battle for influence in the Middle East. Today, tensions remain high over Iranian support for a so-called axis of resistance against the West and in particular U.S. interests in the Middle East. That axis includes Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
For its part, Tehran has long bristled at American hegemony in the region, including its resolute support for Israel and its history of military action. In recent years that U.S. action has included the direct assaults on Iranian assets and personnel. In particular, Tehran is still angry about the 2020 assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Standing atop these various disputes, Iran’s nuclear ambitions have proved a constant source of contention for the United States and Israel, the latter being the only nuclear power in the region.
The prospect of warmer relations between the two sides first emerged during the Obama administration – though Iran sounded out the Bush administration in 2003 only to be rebuffed.
U.S. diplomats began making contact with Iranian counterparts in 2009 when Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns met with an Iranian negotiator in Geneva. The so-called P5+1 began direct negotiations with Iran in 2013. This paved the way for the eventual Iran nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2015. In that agreement – concluded by the U.S., Iran, China, Russia and a slew of European nations – Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program, including limits on the level to which it could enrich uranium, which was capped well short of what would be necessary for a nuclear weapon. In return, multilateral and bilateral U.S. sanctions would be removed.
Many observers saw it as a win-win, with the restraints on a burgeoning nuclear power coupled with hopes that greater economic engagement with the international community that might temper some of Iran’s more provocative foreign policy behavior.
Yet Israel and Saudi Arabia worried the deal did not entirely eliminate Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, and right-wing critics in the U.S. complained it did not address Iran’s ballistic missile programs or support for militant groups in the region.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, draws a red line on a graphic of a bomb while discussing Iran at the United Nations on Sept. 27, 2012. Mario Tama/Getty Images
When Trump first took office in 2016, he and his foreign policy team pledged to reverse Obama’s course and close the door on any diplomatic opening. Making good on his pledge, Trump unilaterally withdrew U.S. support for the JCPOA despite Iran’s continued compliance with the terms of the agreement and reinstated sanctions.
Donald the dealmaker?
So what has changed? Well, several things.
While Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA was welcomed by Republicans, it did nothing to stop Iran from enhancing its ability to enrich uranium.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, eager to transform its image and diversify economically, now supports a deal it opposed during the Obama administration.
In this second term, Trump’s anti-Iran impulses are still there. But despite his rhetoric of a military option should a deal not be struck, Trump has on numerous occasions stated his opposition to U.S. involvement in another war in the Middle East.
In addition, Iran has suffered a number of blows in recent years that has left it more isolated in the region. Iranian-aligned Hamas and Hezbollah have been seriously weakened as a result of military action by Israel. Meanwhile, strikes within Iran by Israel have shown the potential reach of Israeli missiles – and the apparent willingness of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to use them. Further, the removal of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria has deprived Iran of another regional ally.
Tehran is also contending with a more fragile domestic economy than it had during negotiations for JCPOA.
With Iran weakened regionally and Trump’s main global focus being China, a diplomatic avenue with Iran seems entirely in line with Trump’s view of himself as a dealmaker.
A deal is not a given
With two rounds of meetings completed and the move now to more technical aspects of a possible agreement negotiated by experts, there appears to be a credible window of opportunity for diplomacy.
This could mean a new agreement that retains the core aspects of the deal Trump previously abandoned. I’m not convinced a new deal will look any different from the previous in terms of the enrichment aspect.
There are still a number of potential roadblocks standing in the way of any potential deal, however.
As was the case with Trump’s meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during his first term, the president seems to be less interested in details than spectacle. While it was quite amazing for an American leader to meet with his North Korean counterpart, ultimately, no policy meaningfully changed because of it.
As has become a common theme in Trump administration foreign policy – even with its own allies on issues like trade – it’s unclear what a Trump administration policy on Iran actually is, and whether a political commitment exists to carry through any ultimate deal.
Top Trump foreign policy negotiator Steve Witkoff, who has no national security experience, has exemplified this tension. Tasked with leading negotiations with Iran, Witkoff has already been forced to walk back his contention that the U.S. was only seeking to cap the level of uranium enrichment rather than eliminate the entirety of the program.
For its part, Iran has proved that it is serious about diplomacy, previously having accepted Barack Obama’s “extended hand.”
But Tehran is unlikely to capitulate on core interests or allow itself to be humiliated by the terms of any agreement.
Ultimately, the main question to watch is whether a deal with Iran is to be concluded by pragmatists – and then to what extent, narrow or expansive – or derailed by hawks within the administration.
Jeffrey Fields receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Memory and politics are inherently intertwined and can never be fully separated in post-atrocity and post-genocidal contexts. They are also dynamic and ever-changing. The interplay between memory and politics is, therefore, prone to manipulation, exaggeration or misuse by clever actors to meet a range of political ends.
This applies too to Rwanda’s commemoration period (Kwibuka). It runs from April to July each year, dedicated to remembering the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
Remembrance poses a challenging paradox. Often, when new conflicts arise, memorialisation falls into two distinct and competing categories. There is politically motivated commemoration, where memory is used as cover to advance a political agenda. Then, there are memory practices that transcend politics. These two types of memory coexist at the same time and place.
Drawing from more than a decade of original research on genocide memory in Rwanda, I explore commemoration practices that transcend politics, and identify why Kwibuka is still needed and how individuals keep Kwibuka relevant in today’s challenging socio-political climate.
Three ways genocide remembrance transcends politics
Firstly, Kwibuka can be a freeing practice for survivors.
For many Rwandans, genocide remembrance practices like Kwibuka still hold meaning. According to interviews I held with several Rwandan genocide survivors based in the US and in Rwanda, the commemoration period can be surprisingly and unexpectedly freeing.
One Rwandan woman in her early 40s who survived rape and was forced into hiding during the genocide explains:
When survivors gather for Kwibuka, we feel like we are allowed to express our grief in ways that might seem bizarre to outsiders. As Rwandans, culturally we are expected to be strong and not overly emotional. Yet during Kwibuka, we cry, we tell stories, and we even laugh and tell jokes. During Kwibuka we are not judged for it. This is what it looks like for survivors to move forward.
Secondly, there is genocide memory as a responsibility.
Some survivors continue to engage in commemoration as an outward form of obligation to the victims lost during the genocide.
According to interviews with several early representatives of Ibuka, the main survivors’ organisation in Rwanda, established in 1995, right after the genocide, most survivors didn’t feel ready to put their own needs aside. They doubted that justice would ever be achieved. Yet, by and large, they did it anyway for the good of the collective, or out of respect for the leaders of the movement who were advocating for their rights.
The obligation to victims remains meaningful to genocide survivors today. When sharing her testimony at the UN commemoration on 7 April 2025, genocide survivor Germaine Tuyisenge Müller discussed her personal obligation to victims.
Many of us still have guilt. We do not know why we survived. We tell our stories out of responsibility.
She was only 9 years old during the genocide.
Out of 100 people I interviewed during my research from 2013 to 2020 in Rwanda, the majority feel it’s important to attend Kwibuka ceremonies. The main reason they give is to support their neighbours and their community.
This perspective represents a change that took place some time after 2014, the 20th Kwibuka, from negative incentives to attend (pressure, surveillance from the government and potential consequences), to Kwibuka being perceived as a positive collective good, with relatively little harm in attending ceremonies. As one Rwandan I interviewed in 2017 put it:
We go because it holds communal value, it’s better to go rather than cause a problem in the community, and it isn’t a hassle for me to go Kwibuka.
Thirdly, genocide remembrance provides agency.
Many Rwandan survivors view engaging in Kwibuka as a way to have agency in the present, contrary to the genocide period when they had no control over their fate. They exercise agency through commitments and actions that support victims who experience violence today.
The majority of interview respondents shared that they reflect on different things while attending commemorations, even when official stories told might not represent the diverse range of Rwandan experiences during the genocide. These include Rwandans from mixed marriages, or individuals falsely accused of committing acts of genocide in 1994.
Shaping commemoration
How can external actors and concerned citizens support efforts that shape commemoration that transcends politics?
While it may feel that there is not much “we” can do, as ordinary global citizens, we each play an important role in protecting and promoting truth in the wake of those who manipulate history to harm survivors and gain politically. But we must be discerning. When we learn, listen to and amplify survivor voices, we must focus on two main aspects. First, are people’s stories authentic? Second, are they dedicated to pursuing justice and peace, and not causing division and conflict?
Additionally, building peace is a long struggle. It cannot happen overnight, nor can we expect it to.
Genocide survivors from Rwanda teach us that it takes active dedication and ongoing, daily work from individuals and organisations to confront and challenge rising manipulation by those who seek to promote violence and conflict. Suffering in the world is increasing. Survivor stories and testimonies shared around the world during Kwibuka become even more important to inform analysis and prevention of modern-day crimes and human rights abuses.
By remembering and honouring the struggles and sacrifices made for the right to gather and remember, the international community and stakeholders dedicated to pursuing peace can learn from the forms of remembrance that transcend politics. This includes its critical role in protecting historical truth from manipulation, one of the most significant challenges faced today.
Samantha Lakin, PhD, is a specialist in comparative genocide and a Senior Fellow at The Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development (CPDD) at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Please note: the author is writing in her personal capacity as a genocide scholar, and her views do not represent those of her current employer.
However, all of this prosperity and ostensible stability can mask social tensions, which can simmer for years, even decades, before boiling over into widespread unrest, civil violence and even societal collapse.
Our new organization, Societal Dynamics (SoDy), works to translate what we learn from observing historical patterns into lessons for today.
Even the most powerful empires can collapse
Devoting my time to studying historic crises has shown me just how fragile societies are. Even big, powerful, famous civilizations can succumb to crises.
What happened to these once-mighty empires? The aforementioned study gives some answers. The authors explored the distribution of wealth and income in these empires, comparing it to the modern United States.
They found that each of these empires permitted fairly high disparities to accumulate.
In each case, the richest five per cent and one per cent of citizens controlled an outsized share of their society’s wealth. This leads to fairly high “gini index” values as well. The gini is a commonly used measure of inequality in nations — the higher the number up to one, the more inequitable a society is. For comparison, the current average gini among OECD countries is 0.32, notably lower than each of the four societies shown above.
The researchers suggest this high level of inequality contributed to the eventual collapse of these empires.
It creates conflict as the upper classes become bloated with too many wealthy and powerful families vying for control of the vast spoils that accumulate at the top. It also erodes society’s ability to respond to acute shocks like ecological disasters or economic downturns as the government loses capacity and authority.
Canada today bears several similarities with these and other famous civilizations of the past — and that should make Canadians nervous.
Canada, like the Romans, Han, Aztecs and many other once great societies, has maintained a relatively peaceful and secure rule over a large territory for a time. It’s generated a great deal of wealth, has facilitated the exchange of technology, ideas and movement of people over vast distances and has produced amazing works of art. But Canada has also allowed inequality to grow and linger for generations.
The measurement quantifies the ratio of wealth or income between the richest 10 per cent and the poorest 40 per cent of citizens. Higher numbers indicate that the richest are capturing the lion’s share of a country’s overall wealth.
Canada’s economy has been growing steadily as measured by GDP per capita — with a few notable exceptions — since the Second World War.
Initially, inequality held steady, but starting in about 1980, the Palma ratio jumps up sharply. This suggests the bulk of this growth was making its way into the hands of the wealthy. After a downturn in the late 2000s, inequality has begun to grow again in recent years.
By comparison, the U.S. has experienced similar trends, though without the momentary downturn in the 2000s. Note also that these two graphs show different levels — the Palma ratio in the U.S. in 2022 (the latest available data) is about 4.5, while it’s just over two in Canada.
Heading down a dangerous path
Most citizens living in the heyday of these once mighty empires probably thought that collapse was unfathomable, just as few living in the U.S. or Canada today feel that we’re headed that way.
Canada remains, in many ways, a stable, thriving, modern democratic-socialist country. But it’s on a dangerous path.
If Canada allows inequality continue to rise unchecked as it has over the last few generations, it risks ending up where Rome, Han, the Aztecs and hundreds of other societies have been before: widespread unrest, devastating violence and even complete societal collapse.
As Canadians head to the polls, the country is at another crossroads. Will it continue down this all-too-familiar path, or will it take the opportunity to forge a different route and avoid the fate of the fallen societies of the past?
Daniel Hoyer is director of SoDy and affiliated with ASRA Network, Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, and the SocialAI lab at the University of Toronto. He has received funding from: the Tricoastal Foundation; the Institute for Economics and Peace; and the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation.
In the second episode of Apple TV’s The Studio (2025–) – a sharp satirical take on contemporary Hollywood – newly-appointed studio head Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) visits the set of one of his company’s film productions.
He finds the crew anxiously attempting to pull off an extremely audacious and technically demanding shot known as a “oner”, or “long take”. Chaos ensues.
But despite the difficulties associated with it, the long take has a long history and continues to be a promising creative choice in contemporary film and television.
High stakes on the set
The long take is a shot which captures a scene in a single, unbroken take.
It’s a risky endeavour. While most film and TV production is constructed through the use of coverage – different shots edited together – the long take can’t hide behind the editing process. Every minute detail needs to be perfectly planned, executed and captured.
As a result, the oner is often associated with big, ostentatious, showstopping set pieces that exemplify technical and directorial prowess. Think of the “Copacabana” sequence from Goodfellas (1990), or the opening scene of Children of Men (2006).
Yet the practice also has its detractors. Film critic A.A. Dowd’s recent article for The Ringer says that “to the unimpressed, oners often come across as an act of glorified self-glorification”.
This dichotomy is also highlighted in The Studio, when one executive complains long takes are just directors showing off. Rogen’s character counters the oner is, in fact, “the ultimate cinematic achievement”.
A theory of the long take
The long take has existed in nearly every stage of film history – from silent films to sound, from Asian films to European, and from art-house to mainstream.
The greatest advocate of the long take was arguably French film theorist André Bazin. In his piece The Evolution of Film Language, Bazin argued cinema’s greatest asset was its ability to capture reality – and the long take was central to his understanding of how film achieved that.
For Bazin, editing “did not show us the event, but alluded to it”. To illustrate his point, he examines a scene from Robert Flaherty’s controversial silent documentary Nanook of the North (1922), in which a hunter patiently waits for his prey.
The passage of time could have been suggested by editing but, as Bazin notes, Flaherty “confines himself to showing the actual waiting period”. If the act of editing creates a synthetic manipulation of space and time, then the long take does the opposite – bringing us closer to a true representation of reality. For Bazin, the length “is the very substance of the image”.
The tradition of the long take – of showing “reality” – is perhaps most upheld in the world of art-house cinema. Directors such as Chantal Akerman, Béla Tarr, Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tsai Ming-liang have used the long take to “de-dramatise” narrative, creating a deliberately slow pace to prompt audiences to contemplate aspects of existence traditional narratives usually ignore.
Mainstream cinema also uses the long take to show “reality”, albeit in a different manner. Here, the long take has often been used as a mark of authenticity for the amazing feats of practical performers, whether this is the wild stunts or camera trickery of Buster Keaton, the balletic graces of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers or this white-knuckled fight scene from The Protector (2005), starring Thai martial artist Tony Jaa.
However, our strong association between the oner and a distinct directorial vision likely began with Citizen Kane (1941). In this film, screen reality itself is manipulated, as director Orson Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland liberated the camera to move as if it was its own player in the drama.
In the below example, the camera starts outside, before reversing backwards through a window and two different rooms. The actors are constantly repositioning themselves around the camera for dramatic impetus, rather than for reality.
Bazin would refer to this as “shooting in depth”. Subsequent auteurs also embraced this technique, including William Wyler, Max Ophüls, Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg.
Many viewed it as a chance to up the ante from Welles, something the director did himself with the remarkable opening sequence of his 1958 film Touch of Evil.
The future of the long take
There are far too many oners for me to list here, and they seem to only be increasing. It’s now common to see entire films seemingly shot in one take, such as Russian Ark (2002), Birdman (2014), 1917 (2019) and Boiling Point (2021), to name a few.
Technological advancements have made the long take more achievable. Camera stabilisers enable greater freedom of movement, while digital camera tech allows us to record for longer durations.
Furthermore, digital compositing has made it easier to fake the long take, such as in Birdman and 1917. Both of these films use multiple long takes that are strategically edited to look like a single shot. Impossible-to-see cuts may be hidden in dark moments, or through fast whip pans.
Prestige television has also lifted the oner practice, with examples from shows such as Mr. Robot (2015-19), True Detective (2014–), The Bear (2022-), Severance (2022) and, of course, The Studio.
But perhaps the most remarkable recent example comes from Netflix’s Adolescence (2025), a show in which four separate standalone episodes are all shot in a single long take.
In the age of TikTok and shortening attention spans, it should strike us as positive to see a resurgence of the long take as a creative choice in so much contemporary film and TV.
Kristian Ramsden receives funding, in the form of a research stipend, from The University of Adelaide.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ehsan Noroozinejad, Senior Researcher and Sustainable Future Lead, Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University
At the same time, climate change is getting worse. Last year was Australia’s second‑hottest on record. Global warming is leading to more frequent and severe bushfires, floods and heatwaves.
These two crises feed each other. Energy-hungry homes strain the grid on hot days, and urban sprawl locks residents into in long car commutes. And dangerous, climate-driven disasters damage homes and push insurance bills higher.
It makes policy sense to deal with both crises in tandem. So what are Labor, the Coalition and the Greens offering on both climate action and housing, and are they fixing both problems together?
A returned Labor government would also allow first home buyers to use a 5% deposit to purchase a property. And it would invest in modern construction methods to speed up the building process and make housing more affordable.
The verdict: Labor’s plan represents progress on both climate and housing policy, but the two are moving on separate tracks.
Buildings account for almost a quarter of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. But Labor has not made any assurances that the promised new homes will have minimal climate impact.
Labor’s commitment to new construction methods is welcome. Modern solutions such as prefabricated housing can substantially reduce emissions.
However, the spending represents only a tiny proportion of Labor’s $33 billion housing plans.
A Dutton-led government would also freeze building standard improvements for a decade, because it claims some improvements make homes more expensive.
On climate change, it would review Labor’s 43% emissions-reduction target, expand gas production and build small modular nuclear reactors at seven former coal sites.
The verdict: The Coalition’s housing and climate policies are not integrated. And while freezing changes to the national building code might lower the upfront costs of buying a home, it may prevent the introduction of more stringent energy-efficiency standards. This would both contribute to the climate problem and lock in higher power bills.
The party says its housing plans slash energy bills and emissions, because more homes would be energy-efficient and powered by clean energy.
The verdict: The Greens offer the most integrated climate-housing policy vision. But its plan may not be feasible. It would require massive public expenditure, significant tax reform, and logistical capabilities beyond current government capacity.
An integrated fix matters
Neither Labor, the Coalition nor the Greens has proposed a truly integrated, feasible policy framework to tackle the issues of housing and climate together.
Resilient, net-zero homes are not a luxury. They are a necessary tool for reaching Australia’s emissions-reduction goals.
And government policy to tackle both housing and climate change should extend beyond new homes. None of the three parties offers a clear timetable to retrofit millions of draughty houses or protect low-income households from heat, flood and bushfire, or has proposed binding national policies to stop new homes being built on flood plains.
Whichever party forms the next government, it must ensure housing and climate policies truly pull in the same direction.
Dr. Ehsan Noroozinejad has received funding from both national and international organisations to support research addressing housing and climate crises. His most recent funding on integrated housing and climate policy comes from the James Martin Institute for Public Policy (soon to be the Australian Public Policy Institute).
Around the world, more and more electric vehicles are hitting the road. Last year, more than 17 million battery-electric and hybrid vehicles were sold. Early forecasts suggest this year’s figure might reach 20 million. Nearly 20% of all cars sold today are electric.
But as more motorists go electric, it creates a new challenge – what to do with the giant batteries when they reach the end of their lives. That’s 12 to 15 years on average, though real-world data suggests it may be up to 40% longer. The average EV battery weighs about 450 kilograms.
By 2030, around 30,000 tonnes of EV batteries are expected to need disposal or recycling in Australia. By 2040, the figure is projected to be 360,000 tonnes and 1.6 million tonnes by 2050.
Is this a problem? Not necessarily. When a battery reaches the end of its life in a vehicle, it’s still got plenty of juice. Together, they could power smaller vehicles, houses or, when daisy-chained, even whole towns.
For this to work, though, we need better information. How healthy are these batteries? What are they made of? Have they ever been in an accident? At present, answers to these questions are hard to come by. That has to change.
Gauging the health and reliability of a used EV battery is harder than it should be. Fahroni/Shutterstock
Huge potential, challenging reality
Old EV batteries have huge potential. But it’s not going to be easy to realise this.
That’s because it’s hard to get accurate data on battery performance, how fast it’s degrading and the battery’s current state of health – how much capacity it has now versus how much it had when new.
Unfortunately, vehicle manufacturers often make it difficult to get access to this crucial information. And once a battery pack is removed, we can’t get access to its specific data.
This comes with real risks. If a battery has a fault or has been severely degraded, it could catch fire when opened or if used for an unsuitable role. Without data, recyclers are flying blind.
Reusing EV batteries will only be economically viable if there’s sufficient confidence in estimates of remaining capacity and performance.
Without solid data, investors and companies may hesitate to engage in the repurposing market due to the financial risks involved.
Extracting minerals from a battery
EV batteries are full of critical minerals such as nickel, cobalt, lithium and manganese. Nearly everything in an EV battery can be recycled – up to 95%.
Here, too, it’s not as easy as it should be. Manufacturers design batteries focusing on performance and safety with recyclability often an afterthought.
Battery packs are often sealed shut for safety, making it difficult to disassemble their thousands of individual cells. Dismantling these type of EV batteries is extremely labour-intensive and time-consuming. Some will have to be crushed and the minerals extracted afterwards.
EV batteries have widely differing chemistries, such as lithium iron phosphate and nickel manganese cobalt. But this vital information is often not included on the label.
EV batteries require significant quantities of critical minerals. Pictured: lithium salt evaporation ponds in Argentina. Freedom_wanted/Shutterstock
Better ways of assessing battery health
Used EV batteries fall into three groups based on their state of health:
High (80% or more of original capacity): These batteries can be refurbished for reuse in similar applications, such as electric cars, mopeds, bicycles and golf carts. Some can be resized to suit smaller vehicles.
Medium (60-80%): These batteries can be repurposed for entirely different applications, such as stationary power storage or uninterruptible power supplies.
Low (below 60%): These batteries undergo shredding and refining processes to recover valuable minerals which can be used to make new batteries.
Researchers have recently succeeded in estimating the health of used EV batteries even without access to the battery’s data. But access to usage and performance data would still give better estimates.
What’s at stake?
An EV battery is a remarkable thing. But they rely on long supply chains and contain critical minerals, and their manufacture can cause pollution and carbon emissions.
Ideally, an EV battery would be exhausted before we recycle it. Repurposing these batteries will help reduce how many new batteries are needed.
If old batteries are stockpiled or improperly discarded, it leads to fire risk and potential contamination of soil and water.
Right now, it’s hard for companies and individuals to access each battery’s performance data. This means it’s much harder and more expensive to assess its health and remaining useful life. As a result, more batteries are being discarded or sent for recycling too early.
Recycling EV batteries is a well-defined process. But it’s energy-intensive and requires significant chemical treatments.
What needs to change?
At present, many battery manufacturers are wary of sharing battery performance data, due to concerns over intellectual property and other legal issues. This will have to change if society is to get the fullest use out of these complex energy storage devices. But these changes are unlikely to come from industry.
In 2021, California introduced laws requiring manufacturers to give recyclers access to data and battery state of health. Likewise, the European Union will require all EV batteries to come with a digital passport from January 2027, giving access to data on the battery’s health, chemistry and records of potentially harmful events such as accidents or charging at extreme temperatures.
Australia should follow suit – before we have a mountain of EV batteries and no way to reuse them.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
E-cigarettes or vapes were originally designed to deliver nicotine in a smokeless form. But in recent years, vapes have been used to deliver other psychoactive substances, including cannabis concentrates and oils.
Cannabis vapes, also sometimes known as THC vape pens, appear to have increased in popularity in Australia over the past few years. Among those Australians who had recently used cannabis, the proportion who reported ever vaping cannabis increased from 7% in 2019 to at least 25% in 2022–23.
The practice appears to be gaining popularity among young people, who are reportedly using devices called “penjamins” to vape cannabis oil. These are sleek, concealable vapes disguised as everyday objects such as lip balms, earphone cases or car keys.
On social media platforms such as TikTok, users are sharing tips and tricks for how to carry and use penjamins undetected.
So what’s in cannabis vapes, and should we be worried about young people using them?
Are cannabis vapes legal in Australia?
While medicinal cannabis is legal for some users with a prescription, recreational cannabis use remains illegal under federal law.
In Australia, recent vaping reforms have made it illegal to sell disposable vapes such as penjamins.
Cannabis vaping is often perceived to be less harmful than smoking cannabis as it does not involve combustion of the cannabis, which may reduce some respiratory symptoms. But that doesn’t mean it’s without risk.
Most forms of cannabis can be vaped, including cannabis flower and cannabis oil. The difference is, cannabis oil typically contains much higher concentrations of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) compared to cannabis flower.
THC is the ingredient responsible for the “high” people feel when they use cannabis. THC works by interacting with brain receptors that influence our mood, memory, coordination and perception.
The strength of these effects depends on how much THC is consumed. Vaping can produce a more intense high and greater cognitive impairment compared to smoking cannabis, as less THC is lost through combustion.
Our research in the United States and Canada found many people who vape cannabis are moving away from traditional cannabis flowers and increasingly preferring highly potent products, such as oils and concentrates.
Cannabis oil typically contains much higher concentrations of THC compared to cannabis flower. Nuva Frames/Shutterstock
Prolonged consumption of products with high THC levels can increase the risk of cannabis use disorder and psychosis.
Young people are particularly vulnerable to the risks of high THC exposure, as their brains are still developing well into their mid-20s. Those without previous experience using cannabis may even be more susceptible to the adverse effects of vaping cannabis.
Our study found those who vape and smoke cannabis reported more severe mental health symptoms, compared to those who only smoke cannabis.
Cannabis vaping can also affect the lungs. Findings from large population-based surveys suggest respiratory symptoms such as bronchitis and wheezing are common among those who vape cannabis.
Cannabis vapes don’t just contain cannabis
The risks associated with cannabis vapes do not just come from THC, but also from the types of solvents and additives used. Solvents are the chemicals used to extract THC from the cannabis plant and produce a concentrated oil for vaping.
While some can be safe when properly processed, others, such as vitamin E acetate, have been linked to serious lung injuries, including E-cigarette or Vaping Use-Associated Lung Injury (EVALI).
This condition hospitalised more than 2,500 people and caused nearly 70 deaths in the US between late 2019 and early 2020. Common symptoms of EVALI include chest pain, cough, abdominal pain, vomiting and fever.
This raises concerns about product safety, particularly when it comes to unregulated cannabis oils that are not subjected to any quality control. This may be the case with penjamins.
There’s no simple answer to this question. Both nicotine and cannabis vapes come with different health risks, and comparing them depends on what you are measuring – addiction, short-term harms or long-term health effects.
Nicotine vapes can be an effective way of helping people quit smoking. However, these vapes still contain addictive nicotine and other chemicals that may lead to lung injuries. The long-term health effects of inhaling these substances are still being studied.
Cannabis vapes can be used to deliver highly potent doses of THC, and pose particular risk to brain development and mental health in young people. Regular cannabis use is also linked to lower IQ and poorer educational outcomes in young people.
In unregulated markets, both these products may contain undisclosed chemicals, contaminants, or even substances not related to nicotine or cannabis at all.
The “worse” option depends on the context, but for non-smokers and young people without any medical conditions, the safest choice is to avoid
both.
Jack Chung receives research scholarship funding from the University of Queensland. He has not received any funding from the alcohol, cannabis, pharmaceutical, tobacco or vaping industries.
Carmen Lim receives funding from the National Medical Health Research Council (2024–2028). She has not received any funding from the alcohol, cannabis, pharmaceutical, tobacco or vaping industries.
Wayne Hall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Barring a rogue result, this Saturday Anthony Albanese will achieve what no major party leader has done since John Howard’s prime-ministerial era – win consecutive elections. Admittedly, in those two decades he is only the second of the six prime ministers (the other is Scott Morrison), who has been permitted by his party to contest successive elections. The other four – Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull – were cut off at the knees by their colleagues before having the chance to seek re-election.
For a prime minister who has spent much of the past three years derided as a plodder, uninspiring and weak, this is no small feat. If longevity in office is the principal measure of the success of prime ministers, then Albanese will soon have claim to be the best of the post-Howard group. Before election day, he will leapfrog Turnbull’s tenure and if, as the polls suggest, he is returned to government on May 3, he will shortly thereafter exceed Gillard’s incumbency with a whole three years ahead to build on his reign.
Of course, duration of office is not the only benchmark of prime-ministerial achievement – more important is how power is exercised, the legacy that is left behind. Arguably, the productive Gillard still outranks Albanese in this respect, highlighted by her government’s establishment of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. This is widely regarded as the most transformative social reform since the advent of universal health care. On the other hand, if he is granted a second term by voters, Albanese will be in a position to build on his policy edifice and produce his own signature reform, something he still lacks.
A leader for the times?
When sitting down to write this essay about Albanese, I looked back at two of the questions I raised about him shortly before and after his May 2022 election. The first was whether he was capable of switching “to a more dynamic galvanising mode of leadership or will the circumspection that has defined him in opposition shackle him in government?”
The second question was whether voters would stick by the dogged and gentler type of leadership Albanese promised. Or if, in an environment of pent-up dissatisfaction with the order of things, they would lose patience with him and instead hanker for a “strong” leader: one who conquered and divided, and offered black and white solutions to the complex challenges of the early 21st century.
As recently as early March, the answer to both of these questions seemed a definite no. For some 18 months, the opinion polls had signalled the electorate was profoundly underwhelmed by Albanese and his Labor government.
Despite a busy legislative program, the incremental methods of his prime ministership had proved incompatible with the public’s disenchantment with business-as-usual practices. Precious little Labor had done had registered with voters.
By way of contrast, the Liberal opposition leader, Peter Dutton, gave the impression of being in tune with the disgruntled milieu. Not that the public had warmed to him: a common focus group reaction was he was “nasty”.
Yet Dutton had the hallmarks of a quintessential “strong” leader. He was a political hard man, a trader in fear and division. He projected decisiveness. Where Albanese was prone to looking wishy-washy, Dutton was a man to get things done.
As Niccolò Machiavelli recognised in his notorious, and mostly misunderstood, treatise on statecraft, The Prince, the fate of political leaders is significantly determined by “fortuna”. These are the forces largely beyond a prince’s control.
Fortuna has undoubtedly intervened in Albanese’s favour over the past couple of months. This began with Cyclone Alfred giving him a steal on Dutton. Manning the deck during the cyclone’s painstakingly slow landfall on the east coast of the Australia, Albanese had the advantage of a prime ministerial bearing. His government’s response to Alfred also enabled him to exercise two of his emotional calling cards: empathy and compassion.
Additionally, the cyclone was a timely demonstration of the increased frequency of extreme weather events in a climate change affected environment. This is a phenomenon the prime minister could credibly speak to. Whereas the opposition leader, at the head of a Coalition in which climate change denialism still runs deep, has dissembled about a connection by protesting he is not a scientist.
Alfred also compelled the delay of the election to a time more propitious for Labor. The April campaign has been heavily shadowed by the spectre of US President Donald Trump’s wilful and reckless disturbance of geopolitics and the international economy. Unquestionably, Albanese would have been better placed to capitalise on Washington’s caprice and the undiscriminating damage it is visiting on purported allies like Australia had his government opted for a less orthodox America-dependent defence and security posture.
Yet Trump’s second presidency is principally a liability for Dutton. This is not because he is a Trump ventriloquist. Dutton’s right-wing populist stance on issues such as immigration and climate change and his hostility to identity politics are indigenous to Australia rather than imported from America. He is exploiting themes unleashed in the Liberal Party by Howard, which have been rendered more aggressive by Howard’s successors, first Abbott and now Dutton.
My hunch has always been the opposition leader was misreading the national psyche. Australians are more optimistic, forward-looking and generous-hearted than he was banking on. They are less scared and less paranoid. Women and young voters especially loomed as a formidable barrier to his prime-ministerial ambitions. But the parallels between his locally originated brand of reactionary populism and Trumpism are sufficient to have made his tilt for power still more difficult.
Bloodless, perhaps, but methodical and scandal-free
Albanese’s political renaissance since March, however, is not solely a product of happenstance. Nor is it only due to Dutton’s unravelling: his quest for office has also been damaged by the Coalition’s flimsy policy development and his stumbles on the hustings.
The opinion polls currently indicate Labor’s primary and two-party preferred votes are hovering around the same level as at the 2022 election. If this translates into Saturday’s result, it would represent the first time a novice government has not shed support in modern Australian political history on its initial return to the polls. Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Howard and so on all went backwards.
It is true Albanese is starting from a low base because of his slender victory in 2022. Still, should Labor hold its ground, this will surely owe something to an acceptance by the electorate, even if grudging, that Albanese deserves a second term. In other words, this could not merely be considered a victory by default, but also a degree of positive endorsement of his prime ministership.
On the cusp of his 2013 election win, Abbott pledged a return to “grown-up” government. After three years of destructive leadership conflict between Rudd and Gillard, he assured voters the “adults” would be back in charge. Over the course of the next nine years of Coalition rule, Abbott’s promise went woefully unfulfilled. It was a period blighted by further leadership civil war and policy indolence. By way of contrast, Albanese’s government has been united, orderly, industrious and scandal-free.
With the exceptions of the Gillard and Turnbull administrations, the other post-Howard governments have been notable for departing from conventional cabinet practices, an unhealthy level of leadership centralisation, a domineering Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and a tendency to run roughshod over the bureaucracy. The evidence from Albanese’s first term is he has learned from, and chiefly avoided, these follies.
An admirer of the governance practices of Hawke and Howard, the latter whom he closely observed over the despatch box between 1996 and 2007, Albanese does not “sweat the small stuff”. He avoids micromanaging his government, as Rudd was notoriously guilty of.
Detractors attribute this to a dearth of policy curiosity and a want of drive. But, whatever its explanation, the effect has been to give a competent ministerial team, many of them battle-scarred veterans of the tumultuous Rudd-Gillard years, leeway in their portfolios rather than choking their autonomy. The prime minister reaches down only when things “go awry” and, in those circumstances, he intervenes “forcefully” to “assume control”.
His PMO, headed since 2022 by Tim Gartrell, has been largely stable and has resisted the excessive command and control methods of many of its predecessors. After a decade of cutbacks under the Coalition and the degrading of its policy function through widespread outsourcing to giant consulting firms, the public service has been replenished and its policy input encouraged and respected.
Albanese has maintained a tight group of ministerial confidants around him, including the talented economics portfolio duo of Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher, as well as Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Mark Butler, Penny Wong and Tony Burke.
The continuity in membership of this “kitchen cabinet” suggests a prime minister gifted in collaboration and relationship management.
The downside to the ‘lone wolf’
The story is not all blue skies. As originally identified by the political correspondent, Katharine Murphy, now a media director in Albanese’s office, his early life as the only child of a single mother and invalid pensioner planted in him a powerful streak of self-sufficiency. This “lone wolf” element can see him lapse into relying too much and too stubbornly on his own judgement.
After a lifetime in the game, he is convinced he possesses uncommon political instincts. Yet his radar is sometimes astray. Examples include little things such as attending the wedding of shock jock Kyle Sandilands, as well as bigger miscalculations, such as purchasing an expensive beachfront property during a housing affordability crisis.
Few, if any, prime ministers avoid the urge for captain’s calls. Indeed, on occasions, going out on a solitary limb is essential for leaders. But Albanese has left ministers high and dry with some of his unilateral interventions, including blindsiding and humiliating environment minister and one-time leadership rival, Tanya Plibersek, by vetoing legislation to establish a national environment protection authority.
Albanese routinely cites a laundry list of achievements from the past three years. Against a backdrop of significant international turbulence, Labor’s handling of the economy has been mostly deft: inflation has been reduced, employment has grown, interest rates are finally on a downward trajectory and real wages have increased.
Analysis indicates it is households from low socioeconomic areas that have benefited most from the government’s tax and welfare changes. In short, redistributive action we expect from a Labor government.
The government has thrown its weight behind pay increases for poorly renumerated and predominantly female workforces in aged care and childcare. Childcare support has been extended and cheaper medicines delivered.
Labor has also introduced free TAFE and trimmed the debts of university students. In addition, the government has presided over amendments to industrial relations laws to improve protections for vulnerable workers in the gig economy.
Notwithstanding criticisms of its approval of new fossil fuel projects, Labor has pursued a concerted strategy to curb carbon emissions, encouraging a major increase in renewable energy supply and implementing complementary measures such as the vehicle efficiency standards scheme.
On the other hand, there have been glaring gaps in the Albanese government’s record. These include:
the stalling on banning gambling advertising, despite this being widely desired by the Australian public
the failure to lift many of the most disadvantaged members of the community out of poverty through a meaningful increase in JobSeeker and related income support payments, despite this being repeatedly recommended by the Labor appointed Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee
the inadequate due diligence applied to the Morrison government’s AUKUS agreement, an oversight all the more imprudent given the inconstancy of Trump’s America
the doleful silence on the Uluru Statement of the Heart agenda since the defeat of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum. This leaves Albanese at risk of joining several of his predecessors, including Malcolm Fraser and Hawke, who later identified the lack of progress on First Nations affairs as the greatest regret of their prime ministerships.
The government’s reputation for stolidity has been exacerbated by Albanese’s deficiencies. In retrospect, he booby-trapped his own prime-ministership by crouching too low at the 2022 election. The Australian people wanted desperately to be rid of Morrison, affording Labor scope for a more expansive manifesto. The absence of audacity in the party’s program undoubtedly contributed to the public’s tepid embrace of the incoming government. Labor’s primary vote was at a century low.
In turn, because Albanese was intent on not exceeding his narrow mandate, he was hamstrung in office. He had to be needled by colleagues to finally walk away at the beginning of 2024 from the campaign promise not to amend Morrison’s stage three tax cuts despite their regressive nature – a change of stance the public welcomed.
His pedestrian communication skills, while congruent with his everyman persona, have had a dulling effect on his government. As Gillard did to her cost, he seems to operate on the premise his government will be known by its deeds rather than words or gestures of emotional freight. He is devoid of memorable or moving phrasing. Where Keating had the Redfern address, Rudd the Stolen Generation apology and Gillard, after repetitive provocation, the misogyny speech, it is hard to imagine Albanese delivering anything commensurately stirring or enduring.
The lament that governments lack an overarching narrative is commonplace in contemporary politics. But Albanese has showed little proclivity for weaving a compelling tale for his government, to joining the dots between its actions, or projecting what lies ahead on the horizon.
In that absence, each measure has been at risk of disappearing into the ether through the warp-speed media cycle. And he has been conspicuously tongue-tied on interpreting Australia’s national identity, a theme fruitfully mined by his most accomplished predecessors. At a moment when the distinctiveness of Australia’s democracy has come into sharp relief, this is a missed opportunity.
Some Labor insiders are confident that, in a second term, Albanese will pursue a more adventurous program. Change to an outmoded tax regime, which is particularly fuelling generational inequality, is widely considered the holy grail of reform.
One reason why the centre is holding better in Australia relative to other comparable democracies can be traced back to the modernising reforms executed in the final decades of the 20th century by the governments of Hawke and Keating, and the early Howard government. Crucially, under the former intrepid Labor duo, major social stabilisers were also introduced, such as Medicare and compulsory superannuation.
Though not without their own destabilising effects, these policy innovations helped insulate Australia from the deadly combination of drastic austerity, severe erosion of living standards and gross inequalities experienced in a number of other countries. These are the conditions on which aggressive right-wing populism has dined. The rub is, however, that the reforms of late last century are running out of puff, and patching the policy edifice built in those years is also exhausting its utility. We are on borrowed time.
If he is returned to the prime ministership on Saturday, there is an imperative for Albanese to spread his wings, to go beyond doggedly nudging the country along. Yet the danger is he will interpret election success as proof of his self-narrative that he has always been underestimated. As confirmation of his rare power of political intuition. As evidence he need not deviate from his first term formula of what he characterises as “considered, measured government”.
Albanese is a well-intentioned prime minister of evidently decent values. An individual of good character at the helm of nations matters, as anyone who studies leadership comes to recognise. What we can confidently say of him is that as prime minister, he has fulfilled the injunction of the Greek physician and philosopher, Hippocrates: “first, do no harm”.
In an era in which the potential of mad and bad rulers to wreak havoc is painfully on display, doing no harm is actually quite a mighty thing. To have a prime minister, who believes, as Albanese said during one of the campaign leader debates, that “kindness isn’t weakness” is, indeed, comforting as we witness shrivel-hearted strong men menance the globe.
Albanese has been a proficient as well as a lucky general. But we are right to yearn for more. A second term will test whether he can make the transition from a solid to a weather-making prime minister. We will also discover, should that step be beyond him, if he has the self-knowledge and grace of spirit, to pass the office on.
In the past, Paul Strangio received funding from the Australian Research Council
In searching for the “real” Peter Dutton, it is possible to end up frustrated because you have looked too hard.
Politically, Dutton is not complicated. There is a consistent line in his beliefs through his career. Perhaps the shortest cut to understanding the Liberal leader is to go back to his maiden speech, delivered in February 2002.
The former Queensland policeman canvassed “unacceptable crime rates”, the “silent majority”, the “aspirational voters”, how the “politically correct” had a “disproportionate say in political debate”, the “grossly inadequate sentences” dispensed by the courts, and the centrality of national security. The way the last was handled was “perhaps the most significant challenge our society faces today,” the novice MP told the House of Representatives.
“National security” would be a foundational pillar of Dutton’s career, as well as his political security blanket.
Dutton had been a member of the Liberal Party since about age 18 and hoped “to use my experience both in small business and in law enforcement to provide perhaps a more practical view on some of the issues and problems” of the day.
The 32-year-old Dutton, who’d recently been in the building business with his father, following his nine years in the police force, arrived in parliament on a high, as something of a dragon-slayer in his Brisbane seat of Dickson. He had defeated Labor’s Cheryl Kernot, former leader of the Australian Democrats who had jumped ship in a spectacular defection in October 1997.
Dutton came from Brisbane’s outer suburbia, just as the Liberals were reorienting their focus towards this constituency, the so-called “Howard battlers”.
The eager newcomer was soon noted by the prime minister who, after the 2004 election, appointed him to the junior ministry. One Liberal insider from the time says that when campaigning in Dickson, John Howard saw Dutton “was very good at establishing himself in a marginal seat”. (Years later, when a redistribution turned Dickson into a notional Labor seat for the 2010 election, Dutton tried to do a runner to the safe seat of McPherson. But he failed to win preselection; in the event he held Dickson with a hefty swing. This election Dickson is on 1.7%.)
Dutton brought to his first ministry, workforce participation, the view he had expressed in his maiden speech: “We are seeing an alarming number of households where up to three generations – in many cases by choice – have never worked in their lives, and a society where in many cases rights are demanded but no responsibility is taken.”
By 2006 he had been promoted by Howard to assistant treasurer, a job that gave the ambitious Dutton a chance to work closely with Treasurer Peter Costello. Nick Minchin was finance minister then. He paints a picture of Dutton as a sort of guard dog protecting the revenue. In the cabinet expenditure review committee, “Peter was particularly helpful and supportive of Costello and my fending off the demands of spending ministers”.
The one-time police officer was “strong and resolute in questioning ministers”. Minchin was impressed; the junior minister was “obviously going places”.
From defensive to offensive
After the Liberals went into opposition, Dutton “shadowed” health, becoming health minister in Tony Abbott’s government after the 2013 election.
His legacy from the health portfolio dogs him in this campaign. He presided over the government’s failed attempt in the 2014 budget to put a co-payment on bulk-billed services. A poll conducted by Australian Doctor magazine voted him the worst health minister in memory.
A former senior public servant who observed him at the time presents a more positive picture, saying it was a very difficult time and Dutton was well across the complexity of the portfolio. On the notorious co-payment, Abbott says it was not Dutton’s idea: “It was absolutely 150% my idea”.
When in December 2014 Abbott moved him to immigration and border protection, Dutton was both in his comfort zone and on the escalator. Looking back, Abbott says Dutton was “a better match” for that portfolio. “In health the Coalition tends to play a defensive game. In border protection it plays an offensive game.”
Partnered by empire-building bureaucrat Mike Pezzullo, Dutton agitated for the creation of a mega security department (a push that earlier originated with Scott Morrison when he was in immigration). Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull felt the need to accommodate Dutton – then one of his conservative backers – with the creation of the home affairs super department, which was controversial and divided ministers. Someone who observed him closely in that portfolio says Dutton was always clear what he wanted, but didn’t get too deeply involved in the processes of policy.
Dutton, however, had another goal, and the turmoil surrounding Turnbull’s leadership seemed to offer the opportunity to shoot for the top. It was a false hope. Tactically outsmarted by Turnbull, Dutton lost the first face-off between the two in August 2018. The second bout, later the same week, provided not victory but a pathway to the prime ministership for Scott Morrison.
It wasn’t all downside for Dutton: during the Morrison government he became defence minister. The post suited a China hawk when the bilateral relationship was in a deep trough.
Early on, he met with one-time Labor defence minister (and later Labor leader) Kim Beazley. Beazley recalls: “He wanted to talk to me about what being defence minister was like”. They spoke about submarines: Beazley suggested Australia should cancel its then-existing contract for French conventional submarines and get a new contract for their nuclear subs (this was before AUKUS).
“He knew a fair bit,” Beazley says. “So he was looking to think a way through the huge problems we confronted.” Dutton was “aware we were slipping into an era of constant danger. He had all the attitude you would want of a contemporary defence minister” (although, Beazley adds, the Morrison government had “a propensity for unfunded defence annoucements”).
Leadership and control
By the time the Liberals went into opposition, Dutton was the only leadership candidate standing. His long-term rival Josh Frydenberg had lost his seat – a bonus for Dutton, who hasn’t had to look over his shoulder in the past three years, but a big loss for a party deprived of choice. The Liberals’ moderate wing had been decimated with the rise of the “teals”.
Many immediately declared Dutton unelectable, a view that would soften over time, then return again, to an extent, close to the election.
As opposition leader, Dutton’s laser-like focus was on keeping the party together, avoiding the backbiting and schisms that often follow a serious loss. Colleagues found him approachable and willing to listen. A backbencher says: “He was always very respectful of people in the party room. He will make himself available if people want to talk.”
Yet how much was he willing to hear? The same backbencher says, “I don’t think there was a lot of consultation in the development of policy – it was a bit of a black box. The emphasis has been on unity and discipline.”
Russell Broadbent, a moderate Liberal who defected to the crossbench in 2023 when he lost preselection for his seat of Monash (which he is recontesting an an independent) says, “I’ve never had a cup of tea or a meal with [Dutton]. I wasn’t in his group – I was on the wrong side of the party somewhere.” He says their only conversation was when Dutton told him his preselection was under threat. Broadbent said he knew his opponents had the numbers: Dutton asked whether he’d go to the crossbench. “I said, ‘probably’”.
Anthony Albanese gave his opponent a big political break, when the Voice, opposed by the Coalition, crashed spectacularly in October 2023. The prime minister had invested heavily in a doomed and faulty campaign that misread the mood of Australians, just when many people were being dragged down by the cost of living.
It took Albanese well over a year to recover his stride. Indeed, he did not do so fully until early 2025, when a pre-campaign burst of announcements put the government in a strong position. Dutton’s miscalculation was to believe that when he had Albanese down, his opponent would be out for the count.
Dutton gambled by holding back key policies until the campaign and making the opposition a relatively small target. The big exception was the nuclear pitch, released fairly early and driven in part by the need to keep the Nationals, a number of whom were restive about the Coalition commitment to the 2050 net zero emissions target, in the tent. Saturday’s result will be the ultimate test of the “hold back” tactic.
As the election neared, there was increasing criticism in Coalition ranks of the handling of the campaign, which has been shambolic at times. One example was the delay in producing modelling for a signature policy – the proposal for a gas reservation scheme. That pales beside the fiasco of the (aborted) plan to force Canberra public servants back into the office.
The bold defence policy, to take spending to 3% of GDP within a decade, was not only released after pre-polling had started, but came without detail.
On strategy and tactics, Dutton is controlling, wanting to keep things tight, in his own hands or those of a small group. Perhaps it is the policeman’s mindset. Certainly it has worked to the disadvantage of his campaign, which has appeared under-cooked on large and small things. Among the latter, Dutton’s office insisted on doing his transcripts, rather than having them done by the campaign HQ. Predictably, they were overwhelmed and the transcripts ran late.
Dutton seemed to be working on the assumption he was in a similar situation to Abbott in 2013, when Labor was gone for all money. But this election people needed to be convinced the alternative was robust and, late in the day, many swinging voters remained sceptical about that. Dutton is a strong negative campaigner, who hasn’t put much work into strengthening his weaker skill set to be a “positive” voice as well.
Going into the campaign’s final days, Labor held the edge in the polls. But the Liberals maintained that in key marginals, the story was rather different.
There is a degree of mismatch between the private Dutton and the public figure. Often those who meet or know him remark that one-to-one or in small groups he is personable. Yet his public demeanour is frequently awkward and somewhat aloof. This leaves him open to caricature, and raises the question of why he has been so unsuccessful in projecting more of his private self into his public image.
The latest Newspoll, published Sunday night, had Dutton’s approval rating at minus 24, compared to Anthony Albanese’s minus 9. A just-released Morgan poll on trust in leaders found Dutton had the highest net distrust score (when people were asked in an open-ended question to nominate whom they trusted and distrusted). It’s a long-term thing: he was third in the 2022 list.
The gender problem that dogs the Liberals
One of Dutton’s problems has been the women’s vote. The Poll Bludger’s William Bowe says looking at the polls, “Dutton wasn’t doing too badly [with women] in the first half of the term, but a gap opened up in 2024 and substantially widened in 2025”. Sunday’s Newspoll found 66% of female voters had “little or no confidence” the Coalition was ready to govern, compared to 58% of male voters.
Retiring Liberal senator Linda Reynolds, who preceded Dutton in the defence portfolio, has worked on gender issues in the Liberal Party for 15 years. She believes this is “a party problem, not specifically a Peter Dutton problem”. She says the Liberals’ failure to embrace and deal with gender issues “leaves the leader of the day vulnerable”.
Kos Samaras, from Redbrige political consultancy, agrees. “It’s a brand issue, rather than him personally. He’s just the leader of [the brand].” Scott Morrison made the brand problem a lot worse. “It’s gone back to a normal [Liberal] problem, be it still bad.”
There are differences between constituencies, but there is a “very significant problem with professional women”, Samaras says, which highlights the Liberals’ challenge with the “teal” seats.
Dutton is classic right-wing on law and order, defence policy, nationalism, anti-wokeness, and much more. But he can be pragmatic when the politics demands.
He was personally opposed to marriage equality, but was behind the postal survey that enabled the Turnbull government to achieve it, so removing the issue from the agenda. And the China hawk has recently softened his line on that country, in part to facilitate a pitch for the votes of Chinese-Australians, alienated by the Morrison government.
In this campaign, Dutton has been painted by his opponents as “Trump-lite”. Confronted with this in the third leaders’ debate, he was unable to provide an answer. Initially expecting the election of Trump would be potentially helpful for the opposition, he failed to appreciate the dangers for him, which only increased as the new president became more arbitrary and unpredictable.
The opposition leader’s anti-public service attitude might be a milder version of Trump’s stand but it is also a Queenslander’s view of Canberra, as well as typical of what the Liberals roll out before elections. But his appointment of Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price as shadow minister for government efficiency was blatantly and foolishly Trumpian.
Dutton is not nimble or nuanced. He is also prone to going off half-cocked, which can lead to missteps (as when he wrongly said the Indonesian president had announced a Russian request to base planes in Papua). Earlier examples are easy to find. In his autobiography A Bigger Picture, Turnbull wrote of him that he would do interviews with right-wing shock jock in which he would “echo their extreme views […] He always apologised for going too far, and I generally gave him the benefit of the doubt”.
Dutton talks little about Liberal Party history, or political philosophy. Is he ideological? Abbott says he is ideological in the way Howard was. “He has strong instincts, he has convictions but they are more instinctual than ideological.”
Dutton at every opportunity points to Howard as his lodestar. Howard also came from a small business family, didn’t have much time for the public service, and had the quality of political doggedness. Regardless of some similarities, however, it is a very long stretch to see Dutton walking in Howard’s shoes.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Major parties used to easily dismiss the rare politician who stood alone in parliament. These MPs could be written off as isolated idealists, and the press could condescend to them as noble, naïve and unlikely to succeed.
In November 1930, when independent country MP Harold Glowrey chose to sit on the crossbench of the Victorian parliament while his few peers joined the new United Country Party, the local newspapers emphasised that he could not “become a cabinet minister” or “have a say” in making policy from the sidelines. (As if he wasn’t aware.) Australia was a place where, according to the scribes at The Ouyen Mail, “very few constituencies were prepared to elect independent men”.
Things are rather different now. Lifelong loyalty to a single party has become a rarer thing among voters, with the Australian Election Study showing fewer than four in ten voters give their first preference vote to the same party at each election. It was more than seven in ten back in 1967.
Voters have gravitated towards alternatives to the two major parties. A new interactive data tool from the ABC shows just how much more competitive federal elections have become. Australians are now world leaders in sending independents to represent them in state and federal parliaments.
And who could call the independents of the recent past naïve? Independent MPs held the balance of power in New South Wales in the early 1990s, and in Victoria later that decade. Both parliaments saw substantive reforms and improved parliamentary processes.
A strong track record
At the federal level, a lineage of independents such as Ted Mack, Peter Andren, Zali Steggall, Cathy McGowan and her successor in Indi Helen Haines have all found new ways to give voice to their community in parliament. Voters, especially in rural electorates and formerly “safe” seats, have been attracted to candidates who promise to “do politics differently”, as McGowan so often puts it.
There are dozens of candidates making that promise at this election. At least 129 candidates are listed on House of Representatives ballot papers as independent or unaffiliated candidates in 88 seats. That’s almost twice as many independent candidates than in the 2013 election for the lower house. Around 35 of these are community independent candidates. A further 28 people are running as independents or ungrouped candidates in Senate races.
So who are the independent candidates, and what role might they play after May 3?
Who are the independent candidates?
For a start, around a third of all independent candidates for House of Representatives seats are women. Among the “community independent” candidates (commonly referred to as “teals”), it’s closer to four out of five.
This is entirely in keeping with the role daring women have played as the strongest custodians of non-party politics in Australia over the past 120-odd years.
Most of the women on ballot papers this year are professionals and public figures. Nicolette Boele, candidate for Bradfield, NSW, is a former consultant and clean energy financier who came close to unseating cabinet minister Paul Fletcher in 2022. In the seat of Calare, also in NSW, candidate Kate Hook describes herself as “a professional working mum” and “small farmer” with an interest in regional development and renewable energy. Caz Heise, candidate for Cowper (NSW) is a healthcare expert who carved a sizeable chunk out of the National Party vote in 2022. Independent candidate for Groom (Queensland) Suzie Holt is a social worker by training who finished second at the last election. Berowra’s Tina Brown is a local magazine publisher with deep roots in Sydney’s Hills District.
Who are the dozens on men putting themselves forward? Many are former mayors and councillors running for parliament while the opportunity presents itself. There are a small but noteworthy coterie of men running on a specifically Muslim platform, some of whom are running with the support of the Muslim Votes Matter organisation.
Of the few “teal” men, the most competitive by far is Alex Dyson, a third-time candidate in the western Victorian seat of Wannon, currently held by Dan Tehan, shadow minister for immigration and citizenship.
A former Triple-J presenter and comedian with a “side-hustle” as an Uber driver, Dyson will hope to benefit from his positioning at the top of the ballot paper for Wannon.
Crossbench contenders
Most of the women who swept into parliament in 2022 are campaigning to retain their seats. Dai Le in Fowler, Sophie Scamps in Mackellar, Allegra Spender in Wentworth, Zoe Daniel in Goldstein, Monique Ryan in Kooyong and Kate Chaney in Curtin all fit that category. Kylea Tink, who won the division of North Sydney in 2022, was inadvertently knocked out of the race by the Australian Electoral Commission, which abolished her seat last year.
Andrew Gee, Russell Broadbent and Ian Goodenough are all incumbent MPs running as independents in seats where they were previously elected as Coalition candidates. Tasmania’s Andrew Wilkie, a long-serving independent with first-hand experience of a federal hung parliament, is seeking his sixth successive victory.
Bob Katter and the Centre Alliance’s Rebekah Sharkie also seeking re-election to the lower house, while in the Senate, crossbenchers such as David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie are all looking to retain their places. So is Coalition defector Gerard Rennick, who quit the Liberal National Party in Queensland over a preselection loss.
Rennick’s is perhaps the tallest order of that bunch, but none of them can take anything for granted. Even Katter, with his half-century of parliamentary experience and huge local popularity, is almost 80 and is facing a large field of younger challengers, all of whom will appear above him on the ballot paper.
Campaign blues?
Plenty of people have been watching national opinion polls during this campaign. But the polls are not terribly insightful for seat-by-seat contests involving large numbers of independent contenders. Even experienced pollsters are saying it has “never been harder to get pre-election polling right”.
Months out from the election, polls conducted on behalf of Climate 200 were showing possible wins for Heise in Cowper and Boele in Bradfield. Both could win. Heise has reportedly amassed a formidable team of 3,500 volunteers in support of her grassroots campaign.
But the pressure and scrutiny of an election campaign can quickly put frontrunners under pressure. This is certainly true of Boele, whose campaign momentum stalled with a surprising scandal involving an inappropriate comment in a hair salon, as well as distancing herself from allegedly antisemitic posts on her social media posts in 2022, saying a former volunteer was responsible for them.
Multi-cornered contests between defector MPs, the major parties and community independents will also make for interesting viewing on election night. Broadbent and Goodenough both seemed quietly confident about their prospects when asked by the Australian Financial Review last week. The same cannot be said for Calare’s Andrew Gee, who began the election with a “Facebook fail” and has since endured a stressful few weeks of bitter campaigning.
When it comes to winning back the seats that independents won last time, Liberal feelings range from bullishness to bluster. Daniel faces a well-resourced campaign from her predecessor Tim Wilson in Goldstein and nothing is being spared in the contest against Chaney in Curtin.
In Kooyong, Ryan’s campaign has been hampered by the occasional error, such as her husband’s removal of an opponent’s corflutes and an awkward exchange with Sky News reporter Laura Jayes. In an election dominated by the housing affordability crisis, voters are less likely to remember these moments than the revelations that Ryan’s Liberal opponent, Amelia Hamer, a self-identified renter, happens to own two investment properties.
The biggest drama has been in the affluent Sydney seat of Wentworth, where Spender has weathered attacks about her political donations disclosures and approach to tackling antisemitism.
An anonymous person circulated 47,000 leaflets through the electorate criticising Spender’s “weakness” on antisemitism, flagrantly breaching electoral laws that require campaign material to be authorised. The Australian Electoral Commission has identified the culprit (said to have “acted alone”), but has been less forthcoming about whether it intends to litigate the issue after the election.
Making minority work
It seems premature to start talking, as some pollsters have, about a Labor majority after May 3. It remains entirely possible crossbenchers may hold the balance of power, and in doing so, exert significant influence on the next government.
In the third leaders’ debate, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, normally pragmatic, refused to countenance sharing power with other parties or MPs. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton made the surprising admission he would willingly make agreements with independent MPs in order to win.
He certainly wasn’t thinking of the “teals”, whom he so often berates as “Greens in disguise”. But there are others with whom he could easily work. Katter, Spender and Le are among Dutton’s preferred negotiating partners. Sharkie has already declared that in a hung parliament scenario, she would call Dutton first.
There is no rulebook for making a hung parliament work. In the past, new political configurations and coalitions have been born from hung parliaments, including the forerunners of the Liberal-National coalition.
Agreements can be limited to assurances of support on budget bills and confidence motions, or more expansive undertakings including policy commitments and institutional reform. In the event of a parliamentary impasse, crossbenchers can withdraw their support and allow a new minority government to be formed. The Australia Institute’s Frank Yuan recently pointed out seven changes of government have been triggered by the withdrawal of crossbench support. Indeed, during the second world war, two independent MPs effectively changed the government mid-term.
Much depends on the relationships forged at the start of a hung parliament. In his memoir, former New England MP Tony Windsor recounts the seventeen days of negotiations that followed the 2010 election. One of the factors that led him, along with follow independent Rob Oakeshott, to support the Labor Party was the “professionalism” and “respect” its leaders showed them. Former Coalition leader Tony Abbott, by way of contrast, gave Windsor the impression he was unlikely to endure minority government long enough to honour any of his commitments.
An especially aspirational crossbencher may even take on the role of Speaker. Wilkie and Sharkie have been recently touted as contenders for the role in a hung parliament scenario.
Reform hangs in the balance
Independents MPs would be likely to bring particular policy priorities to any minority government negotiation. Given the heated contests in independent electorates, truth in political advertising laws would probably be high on the agenda. Steggall has previously promoted reforms to Stop the Lies, but when the Albanese government chose not to progress its own version of this reform, independents signalled it would be high on their priority list in a hung parliament.
Crossbenchers – in both houses – might also treat recent changes to Australia’s electoral laws as a bargaining chip. Those changes, agreed between Labor and the Coalition in secret, promised to get big money out of politics by imposing donation and spending caps on everyone but with special caveats for major parties. Haines has declared these are “in her sights” if a hung parliament arises.
The menu of reform options gets wider from there. Spender has called for labour market and tax reforms that may not be palatable to all of her peers.
In the Senate (where “every day is minority government”), Pocock has outlined his firm demands for greater royalties from resources rents and reforms to negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions. Energy and climate policy, as well as support for rural Australia, would likely figure in a larger negotiation.
The crossbenchers would be hard-pressed to agree on everything, but there is strength and wisdom in numbers. Albanese and Dutton are both very experienced parliamentarians. Crossbenchers would likely need to put their heads together to exert maximum leverage.
If there is a hung parliament after May 3, history shows us it can be put to good use. The 43rd parliament, in which the Gillard government was in minority, was one of the most productive in recent history. It passed 561 bills including landmark measures such as the Clean Energy Future package and its centrepiece, a carbon price. It also passed needs-based funding for Australian schools, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and plenty more.
That seems a decent enough model for the next parliament to emulate. After all, as Harold Glowrey seemed to appreciate nearly a century ago, not everyone needs to be a cabinet minister to play their part in shaping the future.
Joshua Black is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Australia Institute.
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