Keep the Bastards Honest

It’s budget time again, and Elana Mitchell and Steve Baty are joined by Young Democrat Rhiannon Kernot (no relation) to discuss the budget. While this episode was delayed by events, ...

Governments use the budget process to establish spending priorities and identify revenues to pay for those activities. The size and scope of those decisions make the budget process one of ...

Join National Vice Presidents Elana Mitchell and Steve Baty as they discuss the challenges facing the Albanese Government in its first major (but technically second) budget, and their wish list ...

When Speaker of the House Milton Dick scheduled the Aston by election for April 1st we’re sure that April Fools Day was the furthest thing from his mind.  He made ...

It’s just as well Elana and Steve committed to completing their review of the NSW state election after the results were finalised, because their second thoughts on the NSW state ...

This episode was recorded the day the Albanese government and the Greens came to an agreement on the implementation of the safeguard mechanism, originally developed by Tony Abbott’s government, and ...

Elana and Steve agreed very firmly that they would not discuss the NSW state election until after the count was finished and they had a clear understanding of the make ...

Ever wondered how something about Australian government or politics worked, or saw a hot button topic on the news that you wanted to know more about?  Along with our regular ...

Tim Dunlop is a writer, researcher, speaker and thinker, who’s written extensively on grassroots democracy and the role of the media, as well as technology and the future of work. ...

Victoria went to the polls for the second time this year, returning the Andrews government with an increased majority, and the slow motion collapse of the Liberal party continues. Steve ...

Budget nerds got a second Christmas this year, with the Albanese government fulfilling their election promise of holding another budget if they were elected. National Vice Presidents Elana Mitchell and ...

The Queen is dead.  Long live the King of Australia. It felt like the world came to a stop for a number of days with the passing of her majesty ...

National Vice Presidents Elana Mitchell and Steve Baty take a look at the Albanese Government’s jobs summit, the Stage 3 tax cuts (and the government’s weird determination to die on ...

The revelations that Scott Morrison had himself appointed as minister to five other portfolios without telling the incumbent ministers or the Australian public, and the ramifications of this trashing of ...

And we’re back! We had an inadvertent hiatus after the election due to various illnesses and commitments getting in the way, but Elana and Steve are back in the podcast ...

Meet our lead Senate candidates for Victoria and South Australia (and the ones for Western Australia and New South Wales, but they’ll be pretty familiar!), as they discuss our Accountability, ...

On the eve of an election, Steve and Elana find themselves with questions about the Senate, and how it works. Luckily, former Senator and National President Lyn Allison is on ...

Young Democrat Rhiannon Kernot joins us to conduct an autopsy on the final budget of the 46th Parliament of Australia. It’s a budget that’s political, short term, and not really ...

Greg Wah, science communicator extraordinaire and co-host of the immortal-in-podcast-years Smart Enough to Know Better podcast joined Elana and Steve to yell at them about science, why it’s awesome and ...

Aaand we’re back! We didn’t mean to drop one episode about the bin fire of 2021 and then have a hiatus for a few weeks, but Steve and Elana got busy with National Vice Presidential tasks for the party and time flew. In light of the events overtaking the world at the moment, Elana thought it would be timely to share the audio of a special members’ webinar we hosted with Dr Nathan Bell in October 20...

On this first episode for 2022 Vice Presidents Elana Mitchell and Steve Baty are joined by Young Democrat Rhiannon Kernot as they look back on the bin fire that was 2021, including its greatest hits like the pandemic and its impact on young people, Federal Parliament’s #MeToo reckoning, reconciliation with First Nations, and the many and varied catastrophes that befell the government through its o...

On our final episode for 2021, National President Lyn Allison joins National Vice Presidents Steve Baty and Elana Mitchell to discuss COP26, electric vehicles and how the government isn’t… governing. Show Notes Peter Martin’s article on the simple policy change that could transform the Australian EV market Our Decade of Climate Action , Sustainable Agriculture and Recycling and Waste policy platfo...

Dr Anika Molesworth is a farmer, an author, a newly minted PHD in agriculture and environmental science, and a champion for agro-ecological systems resilience, which is a fancy way of saying she’s committed to helping create sustainable and vibrant farming landscapes, and building the capacity for farmers to respond to climate change. Thanks to her work on raising awareness of the impact of climat...

On this episode we welcomed our first guest! Stilgherrian is a freelancer writer who’s been covering internet policy and all the cyber things for a decade and a half, primarily for tech news site ZDNet and before that Crikey. He also produces and presents the podcast The 9pm Edict. He joined us to talk about a bunch of cyber security and, well, general security legislation that’s either recently b...