News Weakly with Sami Shah

This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah looks at how disasters become PR opportunities. Telstra somehow fixes a nationwide outage by creating another one, Narendra Modi gets the rock-star treatment in Melbourne while human rights concerns barely get a mention, and China reminds the Pacific what "friendly" military exercises look like. Plus, the Royal Commission into Antisemitism turns its atten...

This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah marks America's 250th birthday by asking what its greatest populist, Huey Long, can teach us about Donald Trump, democracy, and why every generation keeps looking for a king. Plus, Australia's aged care system discovers that maybe humans should assess human beings after all, and the debate over journalists killed in Gaza descends into another battle over...

This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah explains why Donald Trump's favourite movie might also explain his foreign policy. From Jean-Claude Van Damme's  Bloodsport  to the Iran war, this episode explores the dangers of confusing spectacle with strategy, humiliation with victory, and refusing to flinch with actual courage. How did America win every battle but still end up negotiating o...

This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah takes a deep dive into Pauline Hanson’s first National Press Club address and the global rise of populist politics. From multiculturalism and immigration to childcare, abortion, transgender rights, and the meaning of “Australian culture”, Hanson’s speech offers a masterclass in the political lessons democracies keep refusing to learn from Donald Trump. Wh...

This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah looks at how every political problem somehow ends up being blamed on immigrants. Comedian Dave Hughes goes viral railing against Labor’s housing policies, permanent residents, and falling property values, accidentally arriving at the same talking points that have fuelled One Nation’s resurgence. Meanwhile, anti-immigration riots erupt in Belfast after a v...

This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah dives into the latest Australian culture war, where an autism podcast somehow becomes a referendum on Israel, Gaza, free speech, antisemitism, cancellation, and who should be allowed to work. The ABC finds itself under fire after commissioning a podcast hosted by Grace Tame, despite controversy surrounding her comments about October 7, Hamas sexual violen...

This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah looks at what happens when political parties mistake nostalgia for strategy and spreadsheets for compassion. Tony Abbott returns as Liberal Party president, raising questions about whether the Coalition plans to solve its existential crisis or simply appoint it to a leadership role. Meanwhile, sweeping changes to the NDIS could see hundreds of thousands o...

This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah looks at what happens when populism accidentally stumbles into good policy while everything else quietly catches fire. The federal government tweaks negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, triggering a media meltdown from a property-owning class suddenly discovering class warfare. Meanwhile, Pauline Hanson unveils a gas policy so interventioni...

This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah looks at what happens when politics stops pretending to care equally about everyone. Labor’s latest budget is compared to the brutal Abbott-Hockey austerity budget of 2014, revealing how conservative outrage mysteriously only appears when wealthy Australians lose tax advantages. Meanwhile, the Albanese government finally responds to gambling reform recomm...

This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah looks at the stories Australia keeps turning into culture wars instead of solving. The death of Kumanjayi Little Baby reignites debate around Indigenous communities, systemic neglect, Welcome to Country ceremonies, and the country’s ongoing inability to confront its own contradictions. Sami explores the idea of the “Pink Flamingo”: the national dysfunctio...

This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah takes on one of the most circular, exhausting debates in modern politics: how we talk about Israel and Palestine—and why the conversation keeps going nowhere. Using the comparison between Pakistan and Israel, this episode reframes the discussion away from slogans and toward something more useful: treating countries like countries, not symbols. From the le...

This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah looks at power, money, and the systems that insist everything is working fine while clearly not working at all. The UAE exits OPEC, raising the prospect of cheaper oil and a full-blown Gulf power shuffle. Pauline Hanson receives a $1 million plane from Gina Rinehart, because nothing says anti-elite politics like private aviation funded by billionaires. Me...

This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah looks at what governments call “hard choices” and what they quietly refuse to choose. The federal government plans to remove 160,000 people from the NDIS, citing unsustainable costs, while economists and crossbench MPs push for higher taxes on gas companies making billions from public resources. Meanwhile, a children’s book is pulped after controversial c...

NEWS WEAKLY 208 – April 18, 2026 This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah returns to a world that somehow got worse while he was away. The Middle East descends into a surreal loop of ceasefires, blockades, and immediate betrayals, with Trump now proposing to “blockade the blockade.” In Australia, Ben Roberts-Smith is granted bail on serious war crimes charges, raising questions about justice, po...

NEWS WEAKLY – 207 – 28 March 2026 | Australia Politics, Middle East Ceasefire, Teacher Strikes, ABC Walkout TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah breaks down the biggest news stories in Australia and around the world, including the latest Middle East ceasefire developments, the rise of One Nation in South Australia, the Rio Tinto bailout, and major strike action by tea...

NEWS WEAKLY #206 – War on Iran, RBA Interest Rate Rise, Sydney DJ Controversy & Forgotten Afghanistan War This week on  News Weakly , Sami Shah breaks down the escalating Iran-Israel-US conflict, Australia’s latest interest rate hike, a Sydney Biennale DJ controversy, and the war in Afghanistan that no one seems to remember exists. Sharp analysis, dark satire, and global chaos, all in one...

NEWS WEAKLY – The Story of Karbala This week, I step away from the headlines to tell one of the most powerful stories in the Muslim world: the Battle of Karbala. The death of Husain ibn Ali in 680 CE shaped the split between Sunni and Shia Islam and created a moral narrative about power, justice, and martyrdom that still echoes through modern politics, from Karachi to Tehran. It's a very different...

NEWS WEAKLY 204 – Married At First Strike, Melbourne Saves Australia, and the Geography Police Episode Summary Missiles fly, oil markets panic, reality television becomes a geopolitical framework, and Queensland decides the best way to fight hate is by outlawing metaphors about rivers. This week, News Weakly explains the escalating Iran–Israel–US conflict using the only analytical tool Australians...

NEWS WEAKLY 203 – March 3, 2026 Everything escalates, no one learns, and somehow the only consistent casualties are civilians. This week, News Weakly looks at the wars you are obsessing over, the wars you have forgotten, and the deeply online way Australians are processing both. Top Stories of the Week Pakistan vs Afghanistan: The War You Forgot Was Happening Cross-border strikes, Taliban accusati...

NEWS WEAKLY 202, 28 Feb 2026 Episode title:   Difficulty Level: National Hello and welcome to News Weakly, where we punch the news in the headlines weakly. This week, the world is in multiple active spirals, but Australia has bravely chosen to centre a word association game like it is the Cuban Missile Crisis with better catering. Top Stories of the Week 1) Things get difficult for Albo Antho...

NEWS WEAKLY 201 – 21ST FEBRUARY 2026 This week on News Weakly: Australian values get workshopped into meaninglessness, Pauline Hanson re-releases her Greatest Bigots collection, ISIS brides become the nation’s worst dating story, and Victoria’s Big Build proves the only thing constructed efficiently is defensiveness. TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK AUSTRALIAN VALUES GET DEVALUED! Angus Taylor rediscovers...

Episode 200: THE CONSPIRACY PROBLEM Summary A suicide bombing in a Shia mosque barely registers before the algorithm moves on, and that erasure opens the door to something darker. This episode looks at why conspiracy thinking no longer lives on the fringes, but feels increasingly rational in a world where intelligence agencies really do assassinate, destabilise, and lie, and institutions keep gett...

Social Cohesion, News Now… NEWS WEAKLY 199 – 07 Feb 2026 This week on  News Weakly : Australia discovers its newest national value, which mostly means everyone should stop talking while the government imports a global conflict and acts surprised when it doesn’t calm anyone down. The Epstein Files, News Now… Three million pages confirm the problem was never just Epstein, it was the elite ecosy...

NEWS WEAKLY 198 – 31st January 2026 This week on News Weakly: • Scott Morrison resurfaces to reform Islam, Western civilisation, and reality itself, proposing authoritarian religious controls while insisting this is what freedom looks like. • A bomb is thrown into a First Nations gathering in Perth, and Australia carefully waits to see who did it before deciding whether terrorism is the correct wo...

NEWS WEAKLY 197 – 24th January 2026 This week on  News Weakly : • George R. R. Martin gives an interview that finally, definitively kills  The Winds of Winter  and with it the last surviving shard of millennial optimism. • The Coalition explodes over hate-speech laws it demanded, negotiated, diluted, then rage-quit anyway, proving opposition is harder than outrage. • Australia passe...