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On this episode of What’s the Point?, Richard Denniss discusses how global gas industry has pulled off the greatest con in Australia’s history, and why Australians are living with the consequences. He spells out the simple steps we need to take to fix it.

This episode was recorded on Friday 10 July.

Host: Richard Denniss, co-Chief Executive Officer, the Australia Institute // @richarddenniss

Host: Anna Chang, Managing Editor, The Point // @annachang

Show notes:

Plebiscite petition: https://gas-plebiscite.australiainstitute.org.au/

More Fool Me (Vantage Point Issue 6) pre-order: https://australiainstitute.org.au/store/more-fool-me-vantage-point-issue-6

Climate Integrity Summit 2026 tickets: https://events.humanitix.com/sydney-climate-integrity-summit-2026?c=website

The Point: https://thepoint.com.au/

Abraham Lincoln vastly admired the founders and the Declaration of Independence. But he felt compelled to add a silent corollary to the clause “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights among them the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That addition stated, in effect: “and the right to advance economically and socially as far as their talent, industry, ability, ambition, and determination will take them.”

Half a century ago, the late Gabor S. Boritt noted that Lincoln undertook “the task of updating the Declaration of Independence to meet the needs of a society exploding economically.” The Declaration, Lincoln believed, should be considered a ringing endorsement of social and economic mobility as the foundation of a free society. Equality of opportunity meant that everyone should have an equal chance in the race of life, but it did not mean equality of outcomes. Instead, it meant what Boritt felicitously called “the right to rise,” though he rather narrowly confined it to the realm of economics, whereas Lincoln included social as well as economic mobility.

Commenting on the Declaration’s phrase “all men are created equal,” Lincoln said,

By Henry Williams Originally published in Pearls and Irritations. State governments are giving away billions in development rights that create huge private land windfalls, when pricing those rights could fund housing, infrastructure and fairer state taxes. The debate over capital gains tax has exposed a deeper issue in our property market. Many of the gains […]

A few months ago in Mercer County, Kentucky, more than 200 residents packed a planning and zoning commission meeting until every seat was filled, with citizens standing along the walls. Yard signs reading “NO DATA CENTER” lined farm roads from Harrodsburg to Burgin. Diane Floyd’s “We Are Mercer County” had gathered thousands of signatures against a proposed 555-acre hyperscale data center on prime farmland off Handy Road near Burgin, and speaker after speaker rose to be heard.

The frustration was not abstract. It was in the soil, the homes, and the way of life that residents were watching get priced out. One speaker after another said the same thing in different words: “This isn’t development, it’s sacrifice.”

Residents described how the facility would pull millions of gallons of water daily from the same aquifer that irrigates their crops and fills their wells. They talked about the constant low-frequency hum from a sprawling, windowless complex the size of dozens of football fields, the kind of noise that would end the quiet nights that drew horse breeders and retirees to the area. Backup diesel generators the size of shipping containers would sit ready to roar, and similar projects elsewhere had already driven up residential rates while delivering almost none of the promised local tax revenue following massive abatements.

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.

Supreme Court Roundup with John Eastman, Part 1 | The Roundtable Ep. 325

This is a premium piece of Notes on the Crises. Subscribe here to read the full piece- and series. Find part one here and part two here.

Dear readers. I was interrupted by sickness last winter from finishing this series. However, it's only become more relevant in the intervening months so I thought it was important to finish and publish the “payoff” final piece in the series.

Modern democratic politics began with three great revolutions, with the English, American, and French Revolution each marked, though in very different ways, by a memorable public Declaration justifying and explaining the political changes. Americans’ impending commemoration of the 250th anniversary of our Revolution—and our Declaration of Independence—invites at least a brief comparison with these other revolutions’ declarations, followed by a more sustained interpretation of our own illuminated by its differences with them.

The English Bill of Rights

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Matt Grudnoff joins Elinor to talk about the federal government’s “piss poor” online gambling reforms and the push to pay super to under 18s.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 9 July 2026.

If this episode raised issues for you, you can call the National Gambling Helpline on 1800 858 858 for free, professional and confidential support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Or visit Gambling Help Online at www.gamblinghelponline.org.au.

If you or anyone you know needs help, you can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or online at www.lifeline.org.au.

Host: Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist, the Australia Institute // @mattgrudnoff

Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek

Of all the stupidity Australians have accepted as “normal”, our relationship with house prices may be among the most ridiculous.

This nation is in the grips of a media panic over a small blip in house prices. This blip apparently deserves wall-to-wall coverage and dire warnings of impending doom.

Maybe – shock – the current 0.4 per cent decrease in national house prices (not a typo, it is less than 1 per cent) COULD reach 8 per cent. MAYBE 10 PER CENT. Get the army ready – society itself may be about to collapse.

It is very rare that we see these numbers put into context.
A fall usually follows a rapid rise in prices and Australia has seen more of a rapid rise than most.

Let’s go from 2000, a nice round number, which also happens to be when John Howard and Peter Costello’s ideological war against the capital gains tax kicked in. Since then, house prices have increased fivefold.

The average home has increased in value by about $70,000 a year over the past five years. Again, that is not a typo. That’s about $350,000 in five years.

The people who have benefited from this increase did nothing but have the luck and means to own a house. If their home was to decrease by even 10 per cent, they are still doing OK – their homes will go back to what they were worth at the end of 2024. Back when media was wringing its hands over what could be done about the unaffordable housing market.

With all of the justifiable disappointment in the Supreme Court’s term-concluding decisions on birthright citizenship and mail-in ballots, one could be forgiven for overlooking the significance of the blow it dealt to the administrative state. While there are some important qualifications which I will go on to explain, the Court in Trump v. Slaughter strongly embraced the American Founders’ principle of unity in the executive branch. It repudiated the idea that parts of the federal bureaucracy should be free to wield executive power independent of the president and the voters who elect him.

The Court’s ruling in Slaughter and in a series of related cases leading up to it marks a restoration of democracy, not an assault on it. After all, how can it be an assault on “our democracy” to take power from those who are unaccountable to voters and give it, instead, to the only official for whom the entire nation votes?

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

'United States Has Wedded to Idiocy': Chris Hedges | Talk to Al Jazeera

 — Author: Chris Hedges — Sunday 5th July 2026

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From the Declaration to Donald Trump

 — Author: Thomas Zimmer — Sunday 5th July 2026

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Laura Field Mangles the Founders and Lincoln

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Saturday 4th July 2026

Laura Field once again accuses me of “distort[ing] and obscur[ing] a specific passage from an important speech by Lincoln.” She also accuses me, once again, of betraying the teaching and legacy of Harry Jaffa—an extraordinary claim for Field to make, considering that in her book she admits to finding Jaffa “unreadable” and plainly demonstrates that she doesn’t understand him.

In truth, Field is the one doing the distorting and obscuring—both in her new articles and in her book, which I showed when I reviewed it earlier this year. I will go through the logic chain line by line, which can get tedious, so be warned, but before I do, let me cut to the chase and state a few conclusions up front. Which will make this, in addition to tedious, a bit repetitive, so be warned about that too.

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07/03/2026 Market Update

 — Organisation: Applied MMT — Friday 3rd July 2026

Update Preview

A big jobs miss (57k vs. 129k expected) shook markets yesterday, but price stabilized right back to where it started and the bigger picture hasn't changed. Flows are re-accelerating strongly into July, and everything in our toolkit still points to a sideways grind before a breakout into August.

This week I spend some time on a macro topic I think is more important than ever: the dollar, and why its direction quietly matters for your returns even when the index looks flat. I walk through the actual math of how a falling dollar affects a US portfolio versus a hedged international one and why I've been positioning for dollar weakness since early 2025.

On markets, there's one signal flashing caution amid an otherwise constructive setup, and I explain why I read it as noise rather than a warning. Plus: the strongest flow re-acceleration we've seen in a while, what it means for the cycle's runway, and the volatility pattern I'm watching as we head toward September. Full breakdown below.

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Stop, Collaborator, and Listen!

 — Author: Sarah Kendzior — Friday 3rd July 2026

It is the 250^th anniversary of St Louis and the city is covered in cakes and police tape.

The cakes are colorful plastic creations placed at local landmarks in early 2014, before officials knew St. Louis’ tourist rush would consist of reporters and activists and militias drawn to mass protests over the police murder of teenager Michael Brown.

St. Louis turned 250 the year the Ferguson uprising gripped the nation. Americans were more innocent back in 2014. We still believed that exposure brought accountability. So we exposed the police, we exposed the system, and we exposed ourselves — to tear gas, to exploitation, to betrayal. We used new technology sold as liberation: the same apps that serve as technofascist tracking tools now.

It’s been a long twelve years.

The 2026 Fourth of July festivities mark my second go-round with a 250th birthday celebration in a violent police state. No one can say I don’t know how to party like an American.

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Women’s and LGBTIQ+ groups say Coalition’s Bill will undermine the safety and privacy of all women

 — Organisation: Equality Australia — Friday 3rd July 2026

3 July 2026 – LGBTIQ+ groups and women’s organisations say the Coalition’s Bill to redefine ‘sex’ would undermine the privacy and safety of all women, and strip trans people of basic legal protections.

The Bill, voted down in the Senate 30 votes to 21 on Wednesday, would have also overridden existing state and territory protections, reversed decades of progress in anti-discrimination law for women and created unintended consequences for intersex people.

Chair of the Women’s Legal Services Australia, Elena Rosenman:

“The SDA provides critical protection for women, trans and gender diverse people and people who are intersex. This Bill would weaken these protections and take Australia backwards by inviting gender policing.

“No woman should have to prove she is 'woman enough' to be protected from discrimination. The strength of the SDA is that it reflects the reality of women's lives and protects people from discrimination based on harmful gender stereotypes.

“At a time when women continue to face discrimination, harassment and gender-based violence, Parliament should be focused on strengthening those protections for everyone - not creating a two-tiered system where some women are protected and others are left behind.”

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It’s important to celebrate the wins | Between the Lines

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — Friday 3rd July 2026

The Wrap with Matt Grudnoff

The government’s changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax passed the parliament last week. This is a big moment in the fight to make housing more affordable.

For too long policies to make housing more affordable have done nothing to slow the rapid increase in house prices. In fact, many of them made prices rise faster.

While it is early days, it seems that the housing market is already slowing and there are predictions that there will be small falls in house prices. These falls in prices are mainly being driven by uncertainty in the market. Many people are waiting on the side lines to see how everything washes out.

Photo: AAP Image/Dean Lewins

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Requiem for America on the Fourth of July

 — Author: Chris Hedges — Friday 3rd July 2026

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John Quincy Adams and the Promise of an American Golden Age

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Thursday 2nd July 2026

One of the earliest civic traditions to emerge in the United States was the Fourth of July oration. Prominent citizens gave speeches in churches, town halls, and philanthropic societies reflecting on what it meant to be an American. These speeches often included a full reading of the Declaration of Independence, an exercise recommended by founding mother Mercy Otis Warren to American youth “as a palladium of which they should never lose sight, so long as they wish to continue a free and independent people.”

One of the most famous—and arguably best—of these orations was delivered by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams on July 4, 1821, on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Today, Adams’s speech is best known for his brief concluding remarks on foreign policy—that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” But his task was even larger than sketching out an enduring approach to U.S. foreign policy. The speech was intended to show his fellow citizens that the principles of justice and philosophical claims embedded in the Declaration of Independence cohered with their own political experience and could guide them to national greatness.

Up from Monarchy

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What Canadians Can Learn from Progressive Governance in Mexico

 — Publication: Perspectives Journal — Thursday 2nd July 2026

Out of the ashes of decades of neoliberalism, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has focused on empowering the working class.

Drop Site News Latin America Reporter José Luis Granados Ceja spoke to Broadbent Institute about what Canadians can learn from Mexico’s experience in building a progressive movement that is transforming the country, lifting citizens out of poverty, and pushing back against US economic threats.

Centering the working class, creating universal social programs, and presenting a progressive transformative are needed for a mass movement to stand alongside their nation’s leadership to defend sovereignty and democracy.

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