The Briefing

The world watched on as Tesla founder Elon Musk told his staff working from home is over – and if they didn’t want to return to the office, they could look elsewhere for a job.  Atlassian’s Scott Farquhar came straight out and said any Tesla staffers looking for work would be welcome at Atlassian.  So is Musk right?  Is working from home dead?  Dr Libby Sander is Fellow of the Australian Institute...

So, you’ve been elected to Parliament.  What next?  How do you navigate the 75,000 square metres of Parliament House in Canberra?  Where do you get a coffee?  And where’s your office?  Annika Smethurst, the Age newspaper’s Victorian parliamentary correspondent and The Briefing’s Canberra insider, worked in the halls of federal parliament for more than a decade.  She explains what 35 new members of...

More than 3,000 Australians take their lives each year and a further 65,000 attempt suicide. A suicide aftercare service developed by Beyond Blue is helping to restore a sense of hope and belonging for people recovering after a suicidal crisis. Early evaluation findings show that measures of suicidality decreased 63% and psychological distress decreased 30% among those who participated in Beyond B...

The incredible Art Simone, fan favourite on Ru Paul’s Drag Race Down Under, joins us on this week’s episode of The Weekend Briefing.   In this conversation Jamila and Art cover it all! Everything from Art’s early forays into drag, her shock elimination and return from Drag Race Down Under. Plus, they dive into what it is about Aussie drag that sets this country apart. See omnystudio.com/listener f...

Pandemic restrictions have mostly lifted and Australians are gearing up to travel overseas. But many can’t get their passport to allow them to leave the country.  The queues to collect passports are hundreds of metres long, snaking outside passport offices in all capital cities. We’re joined by Amanda, a Briefing listener whose family had to cancel a holiday in Fiji because they couldn’t get passp...

It’s been a big week in international sport with FINA and the International Rugby League announcing bans on transgender athletes. It follows an announcement late last year from the International Olympic Committee that it would leave it up to individual sports to formulate policy on trans competitors. Trans athletes even surfaced as an election issue at the federal poll in May. Caroline Layt, a tra...

NASA is preparing to launch three rockets from the Arnhem Space Centre in the Northern Territory, scheduled for the end of this month and early July. Professor Melissa Zwart from Flinders University tells us the three rockets are “sounding” rockets. They won’t actually reach orbit, but they will collect scientific data.  It’s a big deal, it’s the first time NASA has conducted a rocket launch from...

An energy crisis across Australia took us to the brink of blackouts last week.  A cold snap; the war in the Ukraine; and escalating global coal and gas prices formed a perfect storm where we were being urged to turn the dishwasher off.  The crisis prompted the market operator to suspend the short term market and take control over supply.  Mark Ludlow writes for the Australian Financial Review on e...

It’s January 1982, Lyn and Chris Dawson appear to have the perfect marriage. He's a star footballer and popular high school teacher. She's a devoted wife and mother who worked as a nurse. Lyn Dawson goes missing shortly afterwards. Chris Dawson was charged with the 1982 murder of his wife, Lynette.  The cold case was at the center of widely popular investigative podcast series Teachers Pet, which...

Pete Helliar is one seriously funny dude. He is also seriously busy. Pete is a regular host on The Project and the creator and star of 10's How To Stay Married. He has created and co-produced two series of the award winning It’s A Date for ABC TV. He hosts a podcast called You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet, has written children’s books and his latest stand up special is streaming ...

Tik Tok has been the fastest growing social media app ever. In just five years it has had over 2 billion downloads and now reports 1.6b regular users - about half of Facebook, already.  Many of its users are young and so there’s obviously concern that it's being used to sell and promote drugs.   Dr. James Martin is a senior lecturer in Criminology at Deakin University who spec...

The Reserve Bank of Australia provides forward guidance for the economy.  One of the key levers of fiscal policy is interest rate projections. RBA boss Philip Lowe predicted he couldn’t see interest rates rising before 2024 – and many Australians took out mortgages based on that advice.  Well we now know he was wrong.    John Kehoe, the economic editor at the Austra...

The concept of the four-day working week has been around for almost a century, but like the idea of working from home which needed a pandemic to make happen, the four-day week concept hasn’t really taken off in Australia until recently.    Researchers have found a four-day work week without a pay cut improves both productivity and a sense of wellbeing, less stress and burnout,...

Johann Hari’s new book Stolen Focus is all about the crisis in concentration sweeping the world. The book goes into why it’s happening, how much it’s affecting us, and what can be done to tackle the problem.   Johann joins us to explain there are so many things competing for our attention, it makes it really hard to focus. Can we fight back against it as individuals......

Australia’s new government has appointed an Assistant Minister for the Republic.  Matt Thistlethwaite has been tasked with taking the Labor Party’s policy of making Australia a republic from policy to reality.   Mr Thistlethwaite joins us on the Queen’s Birthday holiday to talk about what his plans for a republic, what our new nation’s leader would be called&helli...

Sophie Cachia has always been in a rush. At twenty she met a bloke and fell in love, by age twenty-three she’d given birth to her first child, and within another year or two grew a formidable social media following for her account “The Young Mummy”. Then There Was Her is Sophie’s debut book. It’s intimate, illuminating and revealing - which might surprise readers give...

Filming on Australia’s longest-running television show Neighbours, finishes today…..after nearly 9,000 episodes, 63 weddings, 20 births and 68 deaths.   We’re joined by Ryan Moloney – who plays Jarrod "Toadfish" Rebecchi to talk about the show’s legacy – and his plans for the future; and Andrew Mercardo – the TV reviewer and historian about why the s...

Australian journalist Cheng Lei has been charged in a Chinese court of supplying state secrets. Detained since August 2020, her family and friends now say she’s been denied access to consular officials and prison officials have tightened her food supply.   Her partner, Nick Coyle joins us on the Briefing to talk about what the future looks like for Cheng Lei and what life is like for he...

In the next 20 years, almost 250 billion dollars will be transferred from baby boomers to Generations X, Y and Z.   We’re joined by Aleks Vickovich, the Wealth Editor at the Australian Financial Review to discuss what it means for the economy – and in particular young Australians hoping to buy their first home.   And with yesterday’s interest rate decision by...

Will Joe Biden be the US President who actually changes gun culture in America?   19 students and two teachers were shot at an elementary school in Texas last week.  It was the 27th school shooting in the US this year.  It feels like every time it happens we hear the same calls for action on guns, AND the same rhetoric from the NRA and gun owners…..that the Second Amendment i...

The LiSTNR team has launched a new podcast, Post: News In Five    Hosted by journalist and producer Ninah Kopel, Post: News In Five is a brand new, daily news short cast adapted from The Saturday Paper’s daily newsletter Post, written by Max Opray.  Each weekday morning, a five-minute episode will drop, bringing listeners up to speed on the top five ne...

In just 12 months, the video app TikTok has transformed the music industry….artists can reach audiences like never before.  Directly getting new music to their fans in seconds.  But some artists say they’re being told to create content purely for the short-attention span market of TikTok.  Halsey blew up last week after her record company insisted she create a FAKE post...

Daniel and Luke Mancuso are brothers who live in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. In 2010, after 23 years of marriage their parents separated. What followed was a campaign of intimidation and coercion by their father Paulino towards their mother Teresa. Hang up calls. Stalking. Threats. Rumors… Three years later, Daniel and Luke’s beloved mum was murdered at home by their father. T...

The Liberal Party began its rebuilding process under new leader Peter Dutton this week.  The Young Liberals are the next generation of conservative politicians.  So what do young Liberals see as the future of the party - they will, after all, potentially be candidates for election for the Liberal Party in years to come.  What will the Liberal Party look like in 2030? Deyi Wu is Pres...

New Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has promised a referendum on the Uluru Statement from the Heart.  So what is it?  What will Australians be voting on? The Statement itself calls for an Aboriginal voice to parliament and a Makarrata Commission, a process of agreement making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about their history.  It came from a convention brin...