An Australia Institute submission to the inquiry has found that asking artists to beg for more money from donors ignores the much bigger issue of chronic underfunding of the arts.
The arts sector was devastated by the COVID pandemic and has never truly recovered. Once-iconic music festivals have been cancelled. Venues have closed. Artists are living in poverty.
The long-running cost-of-living crisis has left Australian consumers with very little money to spend on artistic pleasures like a trip to a gallery, buying a book, watching a movie or seeing a band.
The submission concludes that “this is a critical time for supporting Australian arts and culture”.
Key points:
In real terms, arts funding is at its lowest point since 2017/18
Australia has the 7th-lowest arts spending in the OECD
Despite the cost of living crisis, arts spending has been cut by more than half a billion dollars a year
While Australia-wide employment has grown by 13% since the end of the COVID pandemic, the arts sector has only just returned to pre-pandemic levels
“Artists, authors, musicians and other creatives have a huge impact on Australian culture, how Australians see themselves, and how the world sees Australians,” said Skye Predavec, Researcher at The Australia Institute.
“Australia’s arts and culture cannot be produced overseas, and cannot be moved offshore. It must be made here.
At 73 years old, Francis Fukuyama has become a meme. He is the victim of a title too good to be true. “The End of History?” was the name of a landmark essay published in The National Interest and later expanded into his career-making 1992 bestseller, The End of History and the Last Man. So now, when this urbane philosopher posts pictures of himself at conferences on Instagram, his comment section is flooded with plaintive young people saying things like “mr fukuyama please end history again” and “francis history keeps happening what do I do.”
History would appear to be rolling on undeterred, however. It’s far too soon to say how Operation Epic Fury, Donald Trump’s sudden all-out assault on Iran, will affect the course of world events. But it’s safe to say at this point that even his well-wishers sure hope he knows what he’s doing. This dramatic act by the commander-in-chief of America’s titanic army is the latest of several fresh reminders that sometimes things really do happen. Others include the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the calamities in Ukraine and Afghanistan, and Trump’s own election—both times. Cumulatively, these sorts of upsets have created the distinct impression that history might be starting up again. At the very least, it’s been an eventful millennium so far.
The war in Iran is a human catastrophe. It may also be the moment Britain finally asks which economic future it wants. Before anything else it is worth pausing on what is actually happening. People are dying. Families are being torn apart. A civilian population is living through something most people cannot begin to imagine. […]
2026 marks 30 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was a adopted as a UN resolution; a landmark global commitment to achieving equal representation for women in political life. Canada, however, is still behind on reaching that goal. Today, women and gender diverse people hold only 36 percent of elected offices in provincial and federal legislatures, and far behind other countries.
The contrast with Mexico, a country that shares Canada’s gender equality commitments, is striking. At the federal and state-levels, Mexico maintains legislated gender quotas, and women hold 50 percent of the seats in the federal Chamber of Deputies. Canada, on the other hand, relies only on voluntary party quotas for increased office-holding by women. As a result, while more than half of the deputies in Mexico are women, in Canada, women comprise less than one-third of the MPs in the House of Commons. Overall, Mexico ranks fourth in the world for women’s representation in national parliaments while Canada ranks 72nd.
The independence of the Federal Reserve System has become a major source of public controversy. As political leaders signal dissatisfaction with monetary policy, officials and commentators rush to defend the central bank’s insulation from democratic pressure. We are told, as if it were self-evident, that central bank independence is a pillar of sound economic governance.
But this confidence is misplaced. The economic case for central bank independence is far weaker than its defenders suggest. And the constitutional case is weaker still.
On this episode of After America, Dr Emma Shortis and Angus Blackman discuss the war on Iran and how American sanctions are creating a humanitarian crisis in Cuba, before Professor James Laurenceson joins the show to talk about the impact of the conflict on China and the postponed Trump-Xi summit.
This episode was recorded on Friday 20 and Monday 23 March.
Guest: James Laurenceson, Professor and Director, Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney // @j-laurenceson
Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis
Host: Angus Blackman, Executive Producer, Podcasts, the Australia Institute // @angusrb
There's something uniquely demoralizing about editing and editing and editing a book manuscript. The words all start to blur together and you start thinking that every sentence is crap, no one will ever want to read this, why bother completing the book. I was definitely in this state. And then... my publisher sent me the book cover and I squealed for joy at just how lovely it is. And it gave me hope. Check out this beauty!
And yes... that's a wobbly Jenga tower comprised of pieces made from census documentation cuz one of the core arguments in the book is that we're living in a world of "Jenga Politics" where different actors are pulling out pieces of our administrative infrastructure and putting pressure on top. Civil servants are exhausted, but they're trying to keep the tower from falling.
And now that I've seen the beautiful cover, I can't wait for you to read this book! And to come celebrate with me! I am starting to build a book tour so hopefully I will come to a city near you. But, in the meantime, here are some of the fun things I get to share:
Polycrisis has become a widely used concept. Politicians, public intellectuals and academics alike are drawing on it when describing our current global situation. In my article ‘Dissecting the Polycrisis, Charting the Conceptual Terrain of Enquiry’ [open access], recently published in the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, I explore how we can distinguish between fundamental crises on one hand, and crises, which are simply the concrete manifestations of those deeper, structural crises on the other. In this blog post, I summarise the main conceptual and empirical findings of the article.
This blog post is from long-time Trustee Gerry Boyle, who is hugely appreciated for the six years he has given to helping the Equality Trust operate. I have just stood down as a Trustee of the Equality Trust, having served two terms of three years each, the maximum allowed under our constitution. It has certainly […]
A national poll of 1502 voters, conducted by YouGov, found more than three in five Australians support a flat 25% tax on gas exports.
Separate polls in the seats of Kooyong, Mackellar, Wentworth and Farrer, conducted by uComms, found that more than two out of three voters support a flat 25% tax on gas exports.
Voters were told such a tax could raise around $17 billion a year. An overwhelming majority said that money should be spent improving health and aged care services.
In the national poll, a gas export tax was most popular among One Nation and Greens voters.
Key points:
In the national poll, 61% of voters agreed gas export companies should pay a 25% gas export tax. 5% disagreed.
In the seats of Kooyong, Mackellar, Wentworth and Farrer, between 68% and 75% of voters agree gas export corporations should pay a 25% gas export tax. Between 7% and 16% disagree.
In all polls, the most popular choice for where revenue from a gas export tax should be spent was health/aged care.
“It’s clear Australians think that making foreign owned gas companies pay for our gas isn’t an issue of left or right, but a simple issue of fairness,” said Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO of The Australia Institute.
“As petrol and electricity prices rise, the idea that gas export companies will make enormous windfall profits while Australians struggle with higher energy prices and interest rates is as untenable as it is unnecessary.
I am happy to share my latest contribution, a new deep-dive paper published by the Earth4All Initiative of the Club of Rome. The paper, titled “Africa’s Just Transition Opportunity: Decolonising Economic Transformation for Climate Resilience,” explores one of the most urgent questions of our time: how can Africa pursue climate action while simultaneously undoing the colonial economic structures that continue to restrain its development trajectory. You can read the full paper here. We will also discuss the key findings during the Earth4All deep-dive launch webinar on Monday March 23, 2026 at 10am EDT or 5pm EAT. You can RSVP for the webinar here. I hope many of you will join the conversation. I will highlight some of the paper’s main messages and will add a few points about the importance of Pan-Africanism, joint-industrial policies, and geopolitical strategies.
March 15, this past Sunday, was Long COVID Awareness Day.
I’d like to have published an article that day, or gone to a protest, or joined fellow patients at one of the various events taking place in honor of the occasion (shoutout as always to the excellent Sick Times). But I was too ill, as I often am.
I am homebound, only occasionally leaving my apartment with difficulty for medical appointments, and my welfare at home varies. On good days, I can read and write and spend time with friends. On bad days, I “crash,” am beset with migraines, I wait for the storm to pass. I take my medications. I am a reluctant convert to audiobooks. I cover my eyes with satin and silk. Little luxuries. I cry.
How to raise awareness for this disease that makes us so tired, so weak, and so small? I have tried so long to be loud, but who can hear me here, alone in this apartment?
On Long COVID Awareness Day, I posted a few tweets about my life, my experiences, yet felt so far away from the world. It felt perfunctory, hopeless. Is it possible to speak about Long COVID without having others speak over you? Without having people flood in to insist you are not ill, or that you are ill from the vaccines, or that your experiences haven’t happened, or that your suffering is unfortunate, but necessary?
Opponents of surgically mutilating healthy adolescents are currently relishing a moment of vindication. This month, the Supreme Court delivered a blow to California laws that obligate schools to aid and abet minors’ “gender transitions,” keeping them secret from parents. Back east, a New York court awarded two million dollars in damages to a woman on whom doctors performed a double mastectomy at age 16. Given this turn in the cultural tide, it’s understandable why conservatives would be fighting the urge to spike the football and offer much-deserved “I told you sos.”
And there’s more good news. A few months ago, researcher Erik Kaufmann noted a precipitous decline in the number of young people who identify as “non-binary” after 2023. More recently, Jean Twenge, a scholar who charts generational divides and characteristics, confirmed that Kaufmann’s findings are likely true and can be extended to include transgender identity specifically and LGBTQ identity in general.
There’s a shift happening in Australian politics right now.
And it runs straight through the gas industry.
For years, the idea of properly taxing gas exports has been treated as politically untenable – something governments approached dismissively, if at all. But as global conflict pushes up energy prices and gas company profits surge, that dismissiveness is starting to look like negligence.
If you are in Santa Fe on March 28, 2026, No Kings 3 day, you can now join a city march in the streets, free of vehicle traffic. Though the City of Santa Fe has yet to conform its policies and practices to the New Mexico and United States constitutions, months of work paid off yesterday morning. I received this email from the City Manager:
Feminism is sometimes presented by its proponents as something with which only an inveterate misogynist could disagree. “It’s just about fairness for women, allowing them the same freedoms to pursue their heart’s desire that we allow men,” it is claimed. “How can you be against that?!”
Some perhaps genuinely believe this. But it is nothing more than a rhetorical strategy to put critics on the defensive and to deflect attention from the radical core of virtually all contemporary feminist thought, at least of the kind one encounters among the cultural elite. The contemporary feminist worldview can be concisely summarized: men as a class oppose women as a class, and the only way to advance the cause of women in the face of collective patriarchal repression is to reduce or ignore the differences between the sexes altogether.
Where did such ideas come from? Some would have it that the basic ideas of feminism consist of the simple liberal principles articulated in the opening claim about freedom, and more radical divagations are of recent origin. Not true. You can find the extremism in the foundational sources of modern feminist thought. A consideration of Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 book, The Second Sex, which is widely acknowledged as an essential early inspiration of what would become modern feminism, proves the point.
On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss the economic impact of the US and Israel’s war on Iran, the Reserve Bank’s decision to raise interest rates, and why changes to the capital gains tax discount might finally be on the way.
This discussion was recorded on Thursday 19 March 2026.
As the chaos and destruction of the war in Iran escalates by the day, a lesser known element of the conflict remains ensconced in the shadows of statespeak and bureaucracy. Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, joins Chris Hedges to explain how an Israeli psychological warfare campaign worked to exploit Donald Trump’s imbecilic intelligence and increasing paranoia with the ultimate goal of luring the President into a war with Iran.
Blumenthal says the Israelis and their allies convinced President Trump that Iran was trying to assassinate him – a fear first stoked when Trump began a vicious cycle of violence with the regime after he assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani during his first term.
The Democrats are currently on track to take the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms. If this happens, they will empower resistance bureaucrats to slow down all Trump Administration initiatives. Of course, they’ll not only impeach Trump, but will also pursue impeachment proceedings against many Trump officials. This will substantially drain momentum from the administration and increase momentum for the Democrats heading into the crucial 2028 presidential election.
The Democrats are already putting together plans, formulating a narrative, and accumulating evidence, which they will use against Republicans should they retake power. We’ve seen this movie before.
The Marxist machine has had time to learn from its mistakes during 2020-2024. The Democrats will likely pursue criminal prosecution against key targets in the MAGA orbit, including big donors like Elon Musk, the DOGE bros, and even junior Trump staffers. We’ve already seen in Arctic Frost an effort to spy on sitting Republican United States senators—they’ll be on the target list, too.
This is power. Force is power. Politics is the management of force. For his tech-oriented publication Pirate Wires, Mike Solana recently published “Theory of Power,” which outlines how the Left will replicate California’s wealth tax to target billionaires on a nationwide scale. He believes that the Left is targeting billionaires because wealth is power. He’s half right.
Frank Meyer’s fusionism combined free-market libertarianism and religion-friendly traditionalism to create the modern conservative movement. As a political alliance against the threat of Communism, the movement served its purpose. But the principles that undergirded Meyer’s synthesis were not an adequate basis for attaining and sustaining national power.
The difference between the defeated Goldwater faction and the victorious Reagan coalition was the vote of white Catholic Democrats alienated from their former party by its anti-anti-Communism and embrace of the three A’s: amnesty (for draft evaders), acid, and abortion. Those former Democrats did not want smaller government, so Reagan preserved, for them and the country, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, along with generating ever-larger deficits.
The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
Does the Right Have a Woman Problem? | The Roundtable Ep. 309
In an age of existential threats for Australia and the world, what does society need from companies and how should companies respond? Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has a leading role to play in answering these fundamental questions. Yet current Australian and international debate remains stuck in polarised positions on CSR and related topics, including environmental, social and governance considerations (ESG), and diversity, equity and inclusion factors (DEI) for businesses.
In this groundbreaking book, Professor Bryan Horrigan provides a roadmap for navigating the complexity of CSR and the current controversies surrounding it. How is the corporate landscape changing for Australia and the world on corporate diversity, climate disclosures, and social and environmental harms? Do Australian businesses, the professions advising them, and even universities all have social licences to operate? Should they all speak and act publicly on controversial social and environmental issues, or stay out of the arena of partisan politics altogether?
How far should corporate governance standards for ASX-listed companies go in addressing social, environmental and climate issues? Do Australian company directors face legal liability for mismanaging climate risk and disclosure, and what safeguards can protect them? And how does the Trump administration’s war on so-called ‘wokeness’ create ripple effects for corporate Australia, Australian politics and Australian universities?
On this episode of Follow the Money, Rod Campbell and Ebony Bennett discuss why it’s time to call out the idea that governments can’t afford to support Australians in need yet still dish out $16.3 billion on fossil fuel subsidies in 2025-26 alone.
While there are many political and policy victories Trump supporters can point to after his first year back in office, there are also questions about what might have been. A lingering one is often uttered in the form of a sigh: “What the hell happened to DOGE?”
Elon Musk first suggested the Department of Government Efficiency to Trump during the 2024 campaign. A government agency specifically tasked with downsizing bloated federal agencies and rooting out fraud was politically popular, and signing an executive order establishing the agency was one of Trump’s first actions upon being sworn in.
Alongside the death and destruction occurring all throughout the Middle East as the war in Iran rages on, the rest of the world is experiencing the economic blowback of the conflict. Oil and natural gas prices are skyrocketing in the West as well as the Global South following the closing of the Strait of Hormuz.
Yanis Varoufakis, economist and former Greek finance minister, joins The Chris Hedges Report to explain how the war will continue to mangle the global economy and what countries can expect in the coming months.
Senior Economist at The Australia Institute, Matt Grudnoff, says the RBA Monetary Policy Board’s decision to lift the official cash rate from 3.85% to 4.10% is a case of “all pain, no gain” for Australians.
He says while skyrocketing fuel prices will push up inflation, they are the result of a supply shock caused by the war in the Middle East. The RBA has previously stated it should not respond to a supply shock by lifting rates.
“The Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Board has made the wrong decision to increase interest rates today,” said Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist at The Australia Institute.
“Inflation caused by a supply shock cannot be brought down by increasing interest rates. How can increasing Australian interest rates open the Strait of Hormuz?
“The increase in fuel prices is already acting to reduce demand in the Australian economy. Higher petrol and diesel prices mean people have less to spend on other things, and as these fuels are largely imported, all the extra revenue is flowing overseas.
“All this increase in interest rates will do is heap more misery on Australian mortgage holders who are already being hurt by higher fuel prices.
“The RBA needs to be honest with the Australian people that nothing it can do will reduce inflation caused by a world oil price shock.
“At a time of great economic uncertainty, now is not the time for the RBA to be tapping the breaks, trying to slow the economy down.”
If the federal government implemented a 25% tax on gas exports, which is supported by the ACTU, WELD Australia, The Australia Institute and many others, Australians would finally get a fair return for their resources.
“Ordinary Australians are being pummelled by skyrocketing petrol prices and, as their household bills go through the roof, the gas industry continues to get a free ride,” said Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO of The Australia Institute.
“The conflict in Iran is both driving up the cost of fuel for Australians and flooding multinational gas companies with windfall profits. Meanwhile, the Australian government is doing nothing to make sure Australians get a fair return for their resources that are being shipped overseas.
“It is a failure of public policy that the government has given so much of this country’s gas, which belongs to the Australian people, away to multinational companies for free. The continued refusal to tax these companies properly has left us poorer as a nation.
The Senate inquiry report into the capital gains tax discount adds to mounting evidence that the investor tax break is making Australia’s housing crisis worse, with social housing advocates warning the federal government can not afford to delay reform.
The report handed down on Tuesday highlighted that the CGT discount, in combination with negative gearing, is driving up home prices and worsening inequality, while foregoing much-needed revenue that could fund social housing.
The report also included warnings against grandfathering and carving out exclusions for different assets in the reforms, which would worsen inequity and weaken the impact on housing affordability.
Last month, Everybody’s Home analysis of organisation submissions to the inquiry found more than seven in 10 want the investor tax break to be abolished or reformed.
Around half of all organisation submissions supported or raised the idea of redirecting the billions in savings toward building affordable rentals.
Everybody’s Home, Australian Council of Social Service, Tenants’ Union of NSW and Better Renting said appetite for tax reform is growing and the government has no excuse not to act.
The groups are urging the government to wind back the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing, and use the billions in savings to build more public and community housing.
