Opinions

Julie Hare

ANU's council has signed a "voluntary" agreement with the regulator about how Julie Bishop's successor will be chosen. It doesn't reflect well on the council.

Richard Denniss

Japan has no oil, gas or coal, yet it has better fuel security than Australia. And given Australia is the world’s third-largest energy exporter, that’s quite a feat. Meanwhile, Australians are regularly told we can’t have the same “nice things” as Japan or Europe because we don’t collect enough tax — when we could be taxing gas properly.

Allan Fels

Following several recent high-profile whistleblowing cases, Australia must now reckon with its flawed whistleblower protections regime and seek to do better. A single policy solution stands to make a big impact. A whistleblower reward scheme for Australia has long been debated, but has always been nipped at the bud, citing concerns that rewarding whistleblowing is fundamentally ‘un-Australian’, and that it may encourage bad faith claims and unreliable information.

Amy Remeikis

Anthony Albanese ruling out a tax on gas companies, with a narrative adopted by the incurious that it is “not the right time” because of the “global sensitivities” is not good policy or even a smart one. It is, however, what he considers to be a safe one, helped along by a media narrative that presents keeping the status quo as the “sensible” choice.

Louise Morris

At the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, conversations are circling back to first principles — what the science says, and what it would mean to act accordingly.

Julie Hare

Fixing the atrocious Job Ready Graduates scheme to make it fairer is not as hard as Jason Clare would have us believe.

Katherine Trebeck

Australia used to do fairly well in terms of predistribution (that is, for white, able-bodied males). But no longer; we've become an ‘assetocracy’ where access to assets tends to be what shapes folks’ life chances and life choices.

Gemma Tillack

There is nothing like a trek in the jungle. Rock hopping up a wild river and losing time amidst the glow of a lush green canopy. Australia is blessed with some of the world’s oldest tropical rainforests, and lucky for us, they are protected in the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.