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Like so many stories about misinformation, this one starts with a social media post.  “Australia is making a terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iran National Woman’s Soccer team to be forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed. Don’t do it, Mr. Prime Minister, give ASYLUM.” Not long after that, Donald Trump backtracked and set the record stra...

It’s been one year since dead fish began washing up on South Australian beaches, as the largest algal bloom in Australia’s history spread along the coast. Marine ecologist Dr Scott Bennett was part of the team that first surveyed the bloom – coming face to face with the algae’s devastating impact. Twelve months on, the bloom is still there, the damage has spread, and many o...

South Australia does not usually wake up on election day at the centre of the national mood. But this morning, a contest that looks settled on paper is carrying a much stranger energy. Peter Malinauskas is expected to win comfortably. The real movement is happening elsewhere; in the noise around One Nation, the protest vote in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis gathering around the once margina...

While the world focuses on the war underway in Iran, Israel and the Gulf, there is another war front developing – Lebanon. Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Shia group, Hezbollah dragged the country into the war, attacking Israel after a joint US-Israeli airstrike killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel then hit back, bombing Beirut and amassing tens of thousands of t...

Brett Hosking is a fifth-generation grain and livestock farmer, and has seen his fair share of heartache and hard times. But this time, it’s not a natural disaster or a foreign war that’s threatening to tip farmers over the edge, but a decision from the Victorian government. The state has passed new compulsory acquisition laws which make it easier for energy companies to acquire farmer...

Australians are in for a world of pain, with mortgages and rents set to rise after our second interest rate hike in as many months. It was a line-ball decision from the Reserve Bank – with five members voting for a quarter of a percent jump and four against – putting our official cash rate at 4.1 per cent. RBA Governor Michelle Bullock says high inflation left them with no choice, but...

The war in the Middle East has sent Australia’s fuel prices soaring. And people are worried that if the battle between the US-Israel and Iran continues for another month – Australia may have to begin rationing fuel. Already, drivers are panic buying, stockpiling and some country petrol stations are running dry. Global oil supplies are under threat as Iran attacks tankers in the Strait...

This month, one of the biggest shows in Australian radio was suddenly pulled off air. For years, Kyle and Jackie O have been treated as untouchable – a breakfast radio juggernaut that could pull huge audiences, generate endless headlines, and weather scandal after scandal. So much so that the Australian Radio Network handed the pair a $200 million deal – one of the biggest contracts Au...

For some time now, an alarming number of Australian boys have been engaging with, and looking up to, the misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate. This week, the conversation about misogyny and the “manosphere” has resurfaced. Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek has accused  Married At First Sight of platforming coercive control and misogyny, Netflix has released Louis Theroux&rsq...

In Canberra, accountability is often promised in moments of crisis. Much harder is what comes after. Matt Canavan has taken over the Nationals leadership, sharpening his party’s ability to confront One Nation. Former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson has walked away from the government’s antisemitism royal commission, raising fresh questions about a process already under pressure. And years...

John Bolton has spent years arguing that bombing Iran isn’t just justified but necessary.  For decades he has argued that American military force can solve the problem of hostile regimes in the Middle East. He backed the Invasion of Iraq, championed some of the most disastrous American interventions of the modern era, and despite that, he is still arguing more force, more intervention a...

This week Iran announced a new Supreme Leader. Mojtaba Khamenei is the son of the assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But who’s  really running the country now? We look into the heavily armed elite forces pulling the strings – the Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. Today, Iranian journalist and author Arash Azizi on what direction Iran’s elite armed forces could take the c...

On Sunday night, after Iran’s final game of the Women’s Asian Cup on the Gold Coast, protesters surrounded the team bus, banging on the windows and shouting “let them go”. Later, five members of the Iranian squad broke away from their minders. By Tuesday, the federal government had confirmed they had been granted humanitarian visas. The move followed days of concern about w...

Independent MP Monique Ryan can remember a time in Australian politics when small breaches could cost a career.  Now she says we’ve been gradually conditioned to tolerate corruption and the loss of transparency in parliament. Over recent years, there has been a marked increase in the number of lobbyists with access to Parliament House. Literally thousands move through the building, meet...

Who should hold the power to decide how AI is used on our battlefields? That’s the question being debated after a face-off between the Pentagon and one of the world’s biggest AI companies. Anthropic ultimately lost its contract with the US military after refusing to let its Claude program be used for mass surveillance of American citizens, or for fully automated weapons capable of kill...

It’s been revealed this week that Monash IVF has paid millions of dollars in secret settlements, after two nightmare mixups saw women implanted with the wrong embryos – one of them giving birth to a stranger’s baby. At least three families have now received compensation for the bungle, which was caused by human error. But these mistakes – at one of the oldest and most reput...

When the United States launched strikes on Iran, Australia was quick to back the move.  Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says it’s about defending global security. But critics say that argument sounds familiar. More than two decades ago, another Australian prime minister used almost identical arguments to justify joining America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Back then, Albanese h...

An effort by Congress to rein in President Trump’s war in Iran has failed. Democrats and a few Republicans tried to use the War Powers Resolution to force Trump to get approval from Congress to keep fighting – but it didn’t pass. Now the war is dragging in more countries, fuelling a global crisis and dividing nations. Today Jasmine El-Gamal, former Pentagon adviser and founder of...

When the High Court handed down its Mabo decision, it cracked open the legal fiction at the heart of the nation. Terra Nullius was gone. For John Howard, then in opposition, it provided  an opportunity. He framed the moment not as correction, but as a threat. A story was spun to suburban and regional Australia: your backyard, your lease, your livelihood were suddenly, all under threat. For Jo...

It’s just over two years into his first term and John Howard is taking the country to another election. In that short time he has seized the mantle of economic credibility away from Labor and rewritten the argument about who could be trusted to manage the economy.  The memory of Labor's reforms while in government were suddenly distant, and the constant reminder of the devastating reces...

It was the second of March 1996. After 13 years of Labor in power, Paul Keating’s government had been defeated in a landslide, closing the door on the Hawke-Keating era and opening another on a new political age. John Howard’s victory marked the beginning of a prime ministership that would run for eleven years – redefining the Liberal Party, reshaping the economy, hardening the c...

The United States has entered a new war in the Middle East – alongside Israel – launching strikes inside Iran. Iranian authorities say civilians have been targeted, including in a strike on a girls’ primary school in Minab – killing more than a hundred children. Israel says it’s targeting the regime’s military and nuclear infrastructure. And across the region, I...

Immigration is back at the centre of federal politics – again. The Coalition’s new leadership is arguing Australia needs lower numbers, tougher rules, and a clearer cap on how many people we bring in each year. It’s a familiar conversation. In the lead up to the 2024 election, Peter Dutton tried to put a hard number on it – promising to cut migration by 100,000 a year, sayi...

In Canberra, a fight both major parties have tried to avoid is back. The Senate is examining the capital gains tax discount – the Howard-era change that slashed tax on asset profits and helped turn housing into a national obsession. It’s long been considered untouchable, especially after Labor’s bruising 2019 election defeat. But with house prices entrenched, inequality rising an...

Whistleblowers have exposed some of Australia’s biggest scandals – from Robodebt and misconduct in the banking sector, to alleged war crimes in Afghanistan – stories that often only come to light because someone inside decides to speak up. But for the people who do, the personal cost can be devastating: retaliation at work, legal threats, even prosecution. And that fear keeps oth...