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On this episode of After America, New Zealand-based journalist Anna Fifield joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the American media during Trump’s second term, views of the United States and China in New Zealand, and what the Australian government can learn from Kiwi diplomacy.

This episode was recorded on Friday 17 July.

Pre-order More Fool Me: How the gas industry tricked Australia by Richard Denniss, the latest Vantage Point essay from Australia Institute Press. Use the code ‘FOOLME’ on a four-edition Vantage Point subscription to receive a free copy of Richard’s book, Econobabble.

Guest: Anna Fifield, New Zealand-based independent journalist and foreign affairs analyst // @annafifield

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

Show notes:

Shorter America: How to steal an election; the US in the World; New and old friends by Emma Shortis, The Point (July 2026)

When New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani referred to the African National Congress’s (ANC) Freedom Charter as a key inspiration during his inaugural address, it prompted a pointed question: Will New York City undergo “South Africanization” under his watch?

If Afghanistan is famously referred to as the graveyard of empires, South Africa surely qualifies as the laboratory of empires. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the phenomenon of toppling statues, which originated in South Africa with the “Rhodes Must Fall” movement. At the University of Cape Town in March 2015, Chumani Maxwele threw human feces at the bronze statue of Cecil Rhodes, the 19th-century prime minister of the Cape Colony, sparking a movement that eventually succeeded in having the statue removed. From there, this phenomenon spread to campuses across the West, becoming one of the defining political spectacles of the following decade.

On this episode of What’s the Point?, Richard Denniss discusses how the Federal Government’s new carbon credits method for ‘protecting’ native forests will allow fossil fuel companies to greenwash their climate pollution and expand coal and gas production.

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:

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

The Point: https://thepoint.com.au/ 

We’d love to hear your feedback on this series, so send in your questions, comments or suggestions for future episodes to podcasts@australiainstitute.org.au. Subscribe to What’s the Point? with Richard Denniss on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

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The bearish calls are stacking up — Iran escalating, oil back above $80, and the semiconductor index down over 20% from its highs. So this week I steelman the bear case: I lay out every piece of evidence I'd use to argue for a rollover, from the chart pattern to overbought sentiment to the dark pool divergence. It's a fair case, and worth understanding.

Then I take it apart. The core reason I'm still constructive comes down to flows — and this week I dug into exactly why fiscal is re-accelerating this late in the game. There's a specific driver I'll admit had fallen off my radar, and once you see it in the data, it's hard to look at this market as fundamentally overpriced. It's significant enough that it's pushing my cycle-top timing even further out. Full breakdown below — the bear case, the bull case, and the one longer-term chart that genuinely gives me pause.

Productivity growth is supposed to be the key to boosting wages and living standards in the economy. However, just as housing price growth decoupled from wage growth in recent decades, new research shows that real wages have not kept up with productivity growth.

So, who is getting the benefit?

Firstly, it’s important to understand productivity. Productivity is getting more output from the same number of inputs, or the same output from a reduced number of inputs. For example, if workers are producing thingamajigs a new innovative way and now make more thingamajigs with the same hours of work, then productivity goes up.

This increase in thingamajigs is sold, and then that the extra money made is then supposed to flow to workers in higher living standards. Productivity has been described as “the engine of living standards”, and the Productivity Commission says the more productive the economy is, the more workers are supposed to enjoy either higher wages, lower prices, or by working less and having more free time.

The Productivity Commission claims that outside of mining and agriculture, productivity has been flowing to higher real wages. But there is new evidence that the Productivity Commission is wrong.

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

The Trump administration has embroiled the United States in another quagmire, similar to the Vietnam War and recent wars in the Middle East, by going to war against Iran. Now that the June 17^th Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Iran is dead, the US and Iran seem to be stuck in a tit for tat war where the US bombs Iran and Iran retaliates against US and allies’ in the region. As Gulf States that are being targeted by Iran mount pressure on President Trump to stop the attacks, and a global economic crisis looms, the US is running out of options and time.

The Wrap with Matt Grudnoff

The reaction to the slowdown in house prices in some parts of Australia makes me wonder, do people actually want affordable housing?

Some in the media have lost their minds at the very idea that house prices might not continue increasing. But rapidly rising house prices are the opposite of affordable housing.

The tax changes in the budget are likely not the only thing that is weighing on house prices. There have also been three interest rate rises this year. But the budget changes, which got rid of negative gearing for investors buying existing housing and made the capital gains tax discount less generous, are likely to be an important part of the slowdown.

Of course, there are predictions that prices will fall further. They range from almost no drop to about 10%.

Is this going to cause economic ruin?

Thanks to Joe and Tracy for having me on and thanks to Lev Menand for joining me on Odd Lots. I think this conversation documents, in a comprehensive manner, the tensions and complexities coming out of the Supreme Court’s adoption of “Unitary Executive Minus the Fed” Theory. Thanks also to Odd Lots for letting me take the rough transcript and clean it up (with thanks to Juan Hanes for taking the first pass on short notice).

Odd Lots Description:

Listen to Odd Lots on Apple Podcasts
Listen to Odd Lots on Spotify
Watch Odd Lots on YouTube

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

To find out more about how to set up assembly based movements to overcome fascism and build real democracies come to the international online call 7pm BST, Sunday, 19th of July. The time for just watching videos is over, register for the Zoom here: https://resilientuprising.org/online-events#upcoming

Europeans often tease Americans that they live in a young country that’s barely 250 years old. But after spending two weeks traveling across the American East Coast as part of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program, I came away more convinced than ever that these clichés miss something essential. The United States is not a country without memory. Quite the opposite.

In America, storytelling is not reserved for intellectuals or academic elites. It is a civic practice woven into public life—the task of the people, done by the people, for the people. You are expected to know how to explain who you are, where you come from, and what you stand for. American institutions operate the same way.

Alongside fellow Hungarian colleagues, I visited sites dedicated to preserving the past, such as the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Department of the Interior. What struck me most was not simply the scale of these efforts, but the coherence behind them. Each featured an exhibit, collection, or carefully curated display explaining not only what the institution does, but why it exists. Perhaps that is the real difference between America and Europe.

Every technological leap in history has come with promises and social tensions, and the digital transformation now underway is no exception. What makes today’s technology different, however, is the speed of change and the concentration of ownership by a handful of corporations, accelerating the inequalities that already existed in our societies. This concentration is happening while we experience a broader crisis in the neoliberal economic order, where control over knowledge itself, rather than traditional production, has become a central axis of power.

The scale of investment now flowing into artificial intelligence and the “digital stack,” the layered infrastructure underpinning these tools, has taken on the character of an arms race, with U.S. and Chinese firms competing for global dominance. Meanwhile, automation and the growth of gig-economy labour relations continue to erode job security, extending the sense of precarity into sectors once considered insulated from disruption, including highly skilled professions. This is compounded by the weakening of the state itself through layoffs of public employees, as is currently occurring in Canada, where more than 40,000 workers are expected to lose their jobs, carried out under the inference that AI tools can take over their functions.

In a calamitous capper to its most recent term, the Roberts Court blessed birthright citizenship for the hundreds of thousands of children born annually in the U.S. to illegal aliens and “birth tourists.” Would that same Court be willing to abide by the removal of the birthright babies’ parents, along with millions of fellow illegal aliens, from the census figures used to apportion House seats, redistrict, and distribute trillions in federal funds?

Trump v. Barbara begs that question. Given several notable parallels between immigration-related exclusions to birthright citizenship and cases poised to arise concerning immigration-status-related exclusions to the apportionment base, it is fair to examine what a future case may hold based on the Court’s ruling in Barbara.

If the Supreme Court were to take a similar tack, it would prove disastrous for our country. It would legitimize the further twisting of the Constitution and a Reconstruction-era amendment to grant millions of non-citizens representation in our political system—a prospect never contemplated by the 14th Amendment’s drafters. It would distort the American political map, dilute Americans’ voting power, and incentivize still more illegal immigration and sanctuary policies.

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.

Marco Rubio to the Globalists: Get Lost | The Roundtable Ep. 326

This is a free piece of Notes on the Crises. All pieces in this OMB series will be free. Please take out a paid subscription to support this work. Or leave a tip. 

Joshua Lawrence is a research fellow at Notes on the Crises and graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. Find him on Bluesky here.

Juan Hanes is a research fellow at Notes on the Crises and a Journalism student at NYU. Find him on Bluesky here.

Prosper Australia says the Federal Government’s focus on the rapid expansion of data centres is welcome, but argues it is overlooking one of the biggest economic questions: who benefits from the enormous increases in land values created by the AI boom? As governments approve data centres and invest in the infrastructure they require, the value […]

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Matt Grudnoff joins Elinor to discuss Anthony Albanese’s speech on artificial intelligence, lessons for data centre regulation from Australia’s experience with the gas industry, Barnaby Joyce’s vision for the Reserve Bank, and Matt’s guide to voodoo.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 16 July 2026.

Pre-order More Fool Me: How the gas industry tricked Australia by Richard Denniss, the latest Vantage Point essay from Australia Institute Press. Use the code ‘FOOLME’ on a four-edition Vantage Point subscription to receive a free copy of Richard’s book, Econobabble.

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

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

Show notes:

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Forced to leave her home country due to political and economic repression under the dictatorship of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish author Ece Temelkuran sought an understanding of how a population can be led down the path to fascism. Whether it is under Narendra Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey or Donald Trump in the United States, she found that the stages are very similar and so are the mistakes people make along the way. Temelkuran strives to provide readers with an understanding of the roots of the fascist new world order and the language necessary to change direction.

Listen to the full conversation on the Perspectives Journal podcast, available to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and all other major podcast platforms.

The global economy is overly dependent on U.S. tech giants for digital infrastructure, data, and artificial intelligence. U.S. laws and corporate dominance threaten external control over digital systems, putting sovereignty, privacy, and democracy at risk.

Narcissism has given itself a new name: socialism. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that the generation that has grown up scrolling through social media feeds tends to be self-obsessed. This is evident in fewer marriages, lower birth rates, and a greater likelihood of mental illness. Politically, it is reflected in the alarming percentage of young people who have favorable views of socialism.

Over the past few months, members of the Democratic Socialists of America have found success in political races across America. Whether it’s Zohran Mamdani’s cadre of candidates in New York City or Colorado’s Melat Kiros, it seems like no place is safe from the DSA’s growing influence.

The scandal that has swamped KPMG in the past month has many moving parts, but it can all be summarised in one earthy Australian expression – “same s–t, different bucket”.

We have seen this show many times before, including in 2022 when it was revealed that PWC worked with the federal government on new business tax plans and then sold secret information about those plans to major corporations to help them avoid paying the new taxes.

Like PWC (PriceWaterhouseCooper), KPMG is a big business that obtains highly sensitive information from its work with major corporations and governments, meaning that conflicts of interest are impossible to avoid.

And like other big businesses, in the absence of an effective deterrent and robust regulation, the pursuit of profit maximisation will inevitably move the business towards doing harm – whether it be to clients, customers, employees, taxpayers, the environment or democracy.

The whistleblower who exposed this KPMG scandal attributed it to the “pursuit of revenue growth at all costs”.

When former High Court judge Kenneth Hayne presided over a royal commission into misconduct in the banking and financial services sector, he had to consider why major banks were engaged in illegal money laundering, charging fees for no service, selling useless insurance to unsuspecting customers and steering poor retirees into high risk dud investments.

The explanation wasn’t complicated. In Haynes words:

On June 30, the Supreme Court affirmed in Trump v. Barbara that the 14th Amendment says that if you are born on American soil, you are an American citizen. Chief Justice Roberts, citing Calvin’s Case from 1608, called citizenship “the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community.”

The ruling settled the question of birthright citizenship in the courts—for now. But it opened a harder one: If citizenship is unconditional, what holds a nation of citizens together?

For most of American history, civic identity was a set of specific commitments, transmitted through institutions everyone belonged to and enforced by law. Alexis de Tocqueville saw this in 1831: “Without ideas held in common, there is no common action, and without common action, there may still be men, but there is no social body.” He viewed Protestantism as a political habit of mind that held the American republic together: every citizen is competent, no priestly caste is required, and individual conscience is the final authority. To Tocqueville, that was the epistemology that made America’s self-governance thinkable.

Australia’s climate debate has long focused on three central pillars: clean power, future economic prosperity and protecting the planet. After nearly two decades of “the climate wars”, we’ve heard the calls: we must decarbonise our energy system, we must develop our green industries and clean tech, and we must do more to keep global temperature increases within safe limits.

Yet while climate change affects us all, the arguments for climate action are rarely framed in terms of the impact on ordinary Australians. In the face of high electricity and petrol prices, how can more households benefit from cheaper renewable energy and electric vehicles? Given our continued reliance on fossil fuel exports, how can Australia avoid falling off an economic cliff in the coming decades? With swathes of the country at risk of climate-related disaster, how can we enhance our resilience and avoid insurance loss? And what are the real benefits at home of seeking to be an international climate leader?

In this clear-sighted volume, Woodroofe outlines why the next wave of climate and energy policy in Australia must focus intently on middle Australia, designing policies that make sense from the Cabinet Room to every lounge room across the mortgage belts and beyond. The price – economically, politically and environmentally – is too great if we do not.

Thom joined Per Capita for our July 2026 John Cain Lunch. Watch the recording below.

South Australia has a proud history of challenging conventional thinking. Some of the most influential ideas about land, taxation and economic reform found fertile ground here, and they have never been more relevant. As Australia grapples with soaring housing costs, growing inequality, and the search for a more productive economy, it’s worth asking whether we’ve […]

In May 2025, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese led the Labor Party to a historic victory and the Liberal Party suffered its worst result since World War 2. But with the rise of One Nation at home and crises multiplying abroad, the world already looks very different to how it did at the election.

On this episode of Follow the Money, Australia Institute co-CEO Richard Denniss, Chief Political Analyst Amy Remeikis and Democracy & Accountability Director Bill Browne discuss what’s changed in Australian politics since the last election and where it might go from here.

This episode was recorded live on Thursday 9 July.

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Pre-order More Fool Me: How the gas industry tricked Australia by Richard Denniss, the latest Vantage Point essay from Australia Institute Press. Use the code ‘FOOLME’ on a four-edition Vantage Point subscription to receive a free copy of Richard’s book, Econobabble.

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

For much of the 20th century, Maine was not primarily known as a vacationland. It was a working state. Paper mills dotted the rivers. The forests supplied a robust timber industry. Its small towns revolved around businesses that turned natural resources into exportable wealth. The image of Maine that entered the American imagination was a place of rugged lobstermen, loggers, and hardscrabble Yankees rooted in a productive economy. In very short order, Maine became something different.

The state increasingly resembles what might be called a statewide retirement community—sustained not by the production of goods but by the consumption of scenery, lifestyle, and wealth accumulated elsewhere. It lacks dynamism and youthful vitality: Maine’s total fertility rate has been below replacement for more than 30 years. The state attracts few remote workers and struggles to retain its own young people.

This transformation did not happen by accident. It emerged from a series of political choices made over decades, as Maine shifted from a purple state with divided partisan loyalties to a solidly blue state. Environmental organizations, regulatory agencies, political leaders, and affluent newcomers together moved Maine’s priorities from production to preservation.