The results show that support for taxing gas export cuts across party lines, including among voters often seen at opposite ends of the political spectrum, such as the Greens and One Nation.

Australia Institute research shows a 25 per cent tax on gas exports could raise  $17 billion every year, while incentivising producers to prioritise the supply of gas to domestic customers.

The findings come ahead of the upcoming Farrer by-election, expected to be contested by the Liberals, Nationals, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, and independent candidates.

Statement: “Gas export corporations should pay a flat 25% tax on gas exports” 

“Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of liquefied natural gas,” said Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO of The Australia Institute.

There is a shipwreck at the end of Zombie Road. I walked miles to see it: past moss-covered cliffs and century-old railroad tracks half-buried in the earth. I hadn’t hiked Zombie Road since 2022, when an elderly woman I used to pass on the trail disappeared. I didn’t know her name, but I knew her smile. When she went missing, I checked the news round the clock, hoping she would be found. Her face is on a memorial bench now. I put a flower there.

I finally felt ready to return to Zombie Road. 2026 leaves you ready for everything and nothing. I live in a nightmare echo chamber where topics I covered for over a decade in my books and articles — autocracy, institutional complicity, extremely specific details of the Epstein/Maxwell case — are now repeated by the same pundits and officials who dismissed them when it mattered most. They buried crimes in silence, then noise, and now spectacle.

The lack of accountability stays the same.

As America approaches its semiquincentennial, a surprising trend offers profound hope for the nation’s renewal: young Americans are returning to church. If you are like me and have noticed week by week more younger attendees and far fewer gray heads in your house of worship, this is anecdotal confirmation that change is afoot.

Recent data from the Barna Group reveals that Millennials and Gen Z are leading a resurgence in church attendance, with younger generations attending nearly two weekends per month on average in 2025—up significantly from just over one in 2020. Young men in particular are driving this shift, with higher weekly attendance rates than women for the first time in decades. This marks a historic generational reversal, as younger adults outpace older cohorts in frequency of worship.

The Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and his equally despotic wife are under lock and key in a New York prison, living embodiments of President Trump’s revivification of the Monroe Doctrine. Maduro, the chosen successor of the demagogic leftist tyrant Hugo Chávez, presided over a gangster regime that had reduced its people to hunger and penury, driving a third of Venezuela’s 24 million citizens into exile. Maduro’s regime maintained power through stolen elections, the machinations of the Cuban secret police, and active collaboration with the most unsavory drug cartels.

For a time, Chávez’s so-called Bolivarian socialism bought off the poor with bread and circuses—that is, massive subsidies and assorted free goodies made possible by high oil prices. This was bolstered by the ideological illusions of leftist political elites and Hollywood stars, ranging from Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone, and Bernie Sanders to Danny Glover and Sean Penn, who saw another exotic socialist paradise and an avatar of social justice in the making. But over time the Chavista regime revealed itself as yet another nightmare scenario, where political liberty was confiscated, arbitrary power went unchallenged, and food was remarkably scarce. The war on the rich and the entrepreneurial middle classes always turns out to be a war on everyone, including the urban and rural poor.

Martin Almuzara and Geert Mesters

Full Text:

The vicious and sustained campaign mounted against Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, by Israel and the U.S. now includes the German, Italian, French, Austrian and Czech foreign ministers demanding her resignation. This campaign is part of an effort by industrial nations to at once sustain the genocide in Gaza — nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the sham ceasefire took effect — and silence all those who demand the international community abide by the rule of law.

The latest assault on Francesca, part of a concerted effort to discredit international bodies such as the U.N., is based on a deliberately truncated video of a talk Francesca gave in Doha on February 7 that distorts and misconstrues her words. But truth, of course, is irrelevant. The goal is to silence her and all who stand up for Palestinian rights.

On the 4th February, Professor Kate Pickett launched her new book, The Good Society, online with our friends at Compass and an all-star guest list comprising Baroness Ruth Lister, George Monbiot, and Caroline Lucas. We were delighted to have over 500 people in attendance to hear about the ways we could start building the more […]

The post The Good Society appeared first on Equality Trust.

Though Presidents’ Day is here, the nation as a whole does not seem to take much notice. That’s too bad, because we can learn some valuable lessons—both for our country and for ourselves as individuals—by taking time to reflect seriously on the character and actions of America’s presidents.

At first sight, it may seem paradoxical for a democratic nation to celebrate Presidents’ Day. In a democracy, after all, the people call the shots, and their elected leaders, even those of the highest rank, are just servants of the public. What is there to celebrate if the president is no more than an instrument of the people’s will? Why honor him more than any other public official? Why not have a holiday in honor of the sovereign people instead?

If we turn to the constitutional thought of our nation’s Founders, however, we find that these initial impressions do not capture their views of the presidency—nor of America’s democratic republic. The Federalist teaches us that we have a unitary executive, which makes the presidency unique among the political offices created by the Constitution. In the other branches of the federal government, the houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, power and responsibility rest with a majority of the members.

On this episode of After America, Jon B Wolfsthal, former Special Assistant to President Obama for National Security Affairs, joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the expiry of the New START nuclear weapons treaty between the United States and Russia, AUKUS and Australia’s nuclear capabilities, and why “nuclear weapons are back with avengeance”.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 12 February 2026 Australian time.

The latest Vantage Point essay, What we owe the water: It’s time for a fossil fuel treaty by Kumi Naidoo, is available now for $19.95. Use the code ‘PODVP’ at checkout to get free shipping.

Guest: Jon B Wolfsthal, former Director of Global Risk, Federation of American Scientists // @jonatomic

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis

Show notes:

Trump has scrapped the long-standing legal basis for tackling climate emissions by Robyn Eckersley, The Conversation (February 2026)