The Briefing

Peter Dutton has provided Australians with more detail than ever before with how he plans to make the country enter a nuclear power boom. On Wednesday, the leader of the Opposition announced his plans to build seven nuclear power stations, flagging a major election promise which he hopes will be a “referendum on nuclear energy”. In this episode of The Briefing, Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe from Gri...

Planning on heading to the slopes this winter? A new study has found climate change could forever change Australia’s ski season, with less snow for fewer days. The traditional season, starting from the June long weekend through to the October long weekend, is 120 days or four months. New research has found due to ongoing changes in our climate the season will be reduced to just 55 days by 2050. In...

Yesterday the Reserve Bank of Australia announced that they were holding the cash rate at 4.35% - the same position since November, 2023.  While this decision came as no shock to the majority of economists, it was anticipated that cash rates would be falling by the end of 2024. Is this still the case?  To help unpack the details of our current economic situation, Scott Phillips from the Motley Foo...

Have you ever thought about the physical places where our most sensitive and private digital information is stored?  Around Australia lie ultra-secure databases that host everything from your medical records and internet passwords to our governments' records and national secrets. Unsurprisingly, given the sensitive nature of this digital information, most of us will never even know where these dat...

China’s long history of panda diplomacy is back in the headlines. Governments trading native animals is nothing new and can form a key part of diplomatic relations, but how did trading pandas become an integral part of China’s foreign policy? In this episode of the Briefing Senior Fellow in the Initiative for U.S-China Dialogue on Global Issues Dennis Wilder joins Sacha Barbour Gatt to explain the...

New research released today from Women’s Health Victoria is showing a sad state of affairs for how people see their genitalia in 2024. The research, which includes a nationally representative YouGov survey of more than 1000 Australians with a labia, found that porn and the 'online world' are having a significant impact on young people's anxiety and shame around their vulva and labia. In this episo...

New research has found 69 per cent of Australians access TV via the internet and millions will miss out on watching sport if proposed anti-siphoning laws are not applied to streaming services. A new study has found 29 per cent of Australians watch TV exclusively through an aerial and 18 per cent of those are considering switching to digital soon. If anti-siphoning laws are not extended to digital...

Sally McMullen and Alexandra Hourigan describe themselves as just two chicks trying to navigate their 20s and their love of online shopping. The duo turned their friendship and passion of scoring a bargain into Two Broke Chicks - dishing out everything from saving hacks to how to make friends as an adult in their podcast, new book and through socials. In this chat with Antoinette Lattouf, Sal and...

Animals communicate with one another all the time, but few species have the ability to call each other by individual names. Dolphins are known to invent their own signature whistle as names, while parrots have also been known to use names with each other – and now new research has found that African elephants have found their own way to call each other by name too. In this episode of the Briefing,...

There's been a surprising spike this year in the number of Monkeypox cases internationally and in Australia. In a post-pandemic world, fears of a virus that could spread amongst large groups of people are unsurprising - but are concerns about this latest spike warranted? And what's causing the spike of Mpox to occur? In this episode, The Briefing's Simon Beaton speaks with expert in infectious dis...

14 high-profile Australian women have joined forces to recreate the famous Calendar Girls campaign to raise awareness of domestic violence. Inspired by the Calendar Girls 25 years ago who stripped for a nude calendar to raise awareness of cancer, Let’s Get Explicit is trying to keep the conversation going and to raise awareness of domestic violence in Australia. Politicians like Victorian MP Georg...

The European Parliament held its elections over the weekend, with provisional results showing significant victory for radical-right political parties across the continent. As preliminary election results rolled in, French President Emmanuel Macron called a snap parliamentary election in the country later this month, following strong results for his right-wing rival party Marine Le Pen. In this epi...

Run clubs are trending. They've been called the new dating app, the millennial quarter life crisis, and the cozzie livs gym membership. So if you’ve found yourself lacing up or have signed up for the next fun run in your city - what’s the best way to start running and do it safely? And is this a 2024 fad, or here for the long haul? In this episode of the Briefing Former Australian Athlete of the Y...

There’s a lot of talk about AI taking our jobs, but what if we made it find us jobs instead? That’s the premise of UK-based AutogenAI, a rapidly growing generative AI company that went to market six weeks before ChatGPT. It developed software - written by a team that includes historians, psychologists and philosophers – to enable clients to write winning bids for tenders, contracts and proposals....

Four hostages taken by Hamas during last year’s October 7 attacks were rescued safely from Gaza at the weekend. According to the Gazan health ministry, 274 Palestinians were killed, sixty-four of them children, during the brutal operation to free the hostages. In this episode of The Briefing, we’re joined by Sarah Schwartz, a human rights lawyer and executive officer of the Australian Jewish Counc...

Robert Farquharson was convicted for murdering his three sons after driving into a dam on purpose on Father’s Day in 2005. A new campaign is trying to prove he is innocent - that he suffered a medical episode. In this episode of The Briefing we hear the other side of the story from crime journalist and author Megan Norris, who covered the original criminal trials and feels a sense of obligation to...

It seems that every few months another massive Australian business is accused of wage theft. Coles, Woolworths, the ABC, BHP, Qantas, big banks, major universities...the list of firms found to have not paid workers what they should is expansive. In response, the federal government has introduced new laws starting January 1 next year will make it a criminal offence to deliberately underpay staff, w...

Have you heard about wine mums, or seen videos on social media featuring women drinking at boozy brunches? Historically men have drunk more than women, but in recent years there has been an increase in women’s drinking. In this episode of The Briefing Sacha Barbour Gatt sits down with Maree Patsouras from La Trobe university to find out about the lives of Australian working mothers and the place a...

Nathan Paddison spent 13 years of his life in and out of prison for a range of crimes - some small and others violent. But he says art saved him. Antoinette Lattouf and Nathan went to school together in western Sydney and reconnected at his latest art exhibition. You cannot downplay some of his crimes, including a charge of domestic violence, but rarely do we hear about how criminals try to turn t...

Fiona Harvey is a Scottish lawyer who was depicted as a stalker in the Netflix hit, Baby Reindeer.  She’s denied the claims and is suing the streaming giant for $170m.  The program depicted Harvey – via a character named Martha – as a serial stalker who bombarded the British comedian Richard Gadd with tens of thousands of emails and text messages.  She says it never happened. The show said she was...

North Korea has launched a series of balloons packed with household waste over the border into South Korea. Pyongyang says it’s in response to Seoul distributing anti-North propaganda leaflets into cities and towns across the North. In this episode of the Briefing we take a deep dive with Justin Hastings, Professor of International Relations at the University of Sydney, on why the campaign was lau...

Another climbing season for those attempting to summit Mount Everest has come to a close.   This year, the Nepalese government offered fewer climbing permits in an effort to reduce congestion on the mountain and improve safety, after a record-breaking 18 climbers lost their lives in 2023.   Still, this year saw five climbers die on the climb, with three others still missing.  So what is it really...

New CoreLogic data has found rent in three quarters of Australia's biggest regional areas are now higher than ever – with WA and Queensland topping the list. The biggest increase was in Batemans Bay in NSW rising by around 6 percent in the past three months – which is about $32 extra a week. In this episode of The Briefing, we’re joined by CoreLogic’s Eliza Owen to find out why regional rents are...

QAnon first appeared in 2017 and quickly flooded the internet with conspiracy theories from child trafficking cannibal celebrities to suggestions JFK faked his own death and was returning to run for office. Observers say QAnon has gone strangely quiet. So what are they working on? The vast majority of QAnon supporters are Trump supporters so what can we expect as the US prepares to go to the polls...

The Albanese government will this morning introduce news laws to parliament banning the non-consensual sharing of deepfake pornography. Those caught sharing sexually explicit images that have been digitally created using artificial intelligence or other forms of technology could find themselves facing a six-year prison term - but is the government fighting a digital runaway train? Attorney-General...