What’s On around Naarm/Melbourne & Regional Victoria: Nov 24-30, 2025 With thanks to the dedicated activists at Friends of the Earth Melbourne! . . . See also these Palestine events listings from around the country:
On this special episode of After America, we explore the state of the Australia-United States relationship under the Whitlam government, the machinations at the time around the renewal of Pine Gap, and the previously untold account of Dr Liz Cham, former executive assistant in the office of Prime Minister Whitlam, who recalls handing over a mystery letter to an American official just before the Dismissal.
The interview with Liz Cham was recorded on Thursday 30 October.
When I sat down with the Venezuelan political activist and media producer, Ambar Garcia, in 2016, I was somewhat taken aback by her sombre prognosis: “If the social movements do not assume the necessary critique for repoliticising the process… then we will not be talking about ALBA in three years.” Unfortunately for those of us who saw great promise in this novel form of international socialism, Ambar’s statement now seems prescient. The search for signs of life within the ALBA-TCP yields a string of summits and agreements that are big on rhetoric and small on delivery of public policy or economic transformation. On the academic side, the flurry over this counter-hegemonic region has certainly tempered. Notwithstanding some recent achievements, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, even sympathetic observers note that “it is unclear to what extent ALBA, as an international coalition, still exists.”
A friend who works with high school students recently said to me, “I overheard a group of boys talking about ‘international Jewry.’” He was in disbelief to hear these seemingly mild-mannered kids express views that, not 20 years ago, would have been considered taboo.
What is going on with Gen Z?
I’ve written elsewhere that Gen Z is experiencing a kind of church resurgence. That remains true. But at the same time, Gen Z is one of the most polarized generations in American history.
In 2024, Gen Z—led in part by young activists like Charlie Kirk and Scott Pressler—shifted toward Donald Trump. He won 46% of Gen Z voters—56% of young men and 40% of young women. This led many to expect that a younger, more populist generation would shift the country rightward. But now, in 2025, the self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won 78% of the youth vote in New York City—67% of young men and 84% of young women. Far from being locked into any one existing political party, young people are more divided than ever.
One cause of this is what I call “Nomadic Progressivism.” Kids born between, say, 1997 and 2012 have been thoroughly inundated with progressivism and identity politics from birth. They came of age amid several key developments that shaped their moral and social formation:
Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Keshav Dogra, Sebastian Heise, Edward S. Knotek II, Brent H. Meyer, Robert W. Rich, Raphael S. Schoenle, Giorgio Topa, and Wilbert van der Klaauw
Unless the state and federal governments can agree to make big structural changes to the way they collect revenue and spend it on health, then millions more people will die sooner than they need to, live in more pain than is medically necessary and waste years of their lives navigating a broken system rather than doing something far more productive — like working, caring for their kids or simply gardening.
The problem is that we have left the problem to the state health ministers to negotiate solutions with the federal health minister and they are stuck in a zero-sum game.
In the current negotiations, every dollar gained by one state either comes at another’s expense or adds to the Commonwealth deficit.
The obvious solution is to find more revenue, but that’s usually a conversation for treasurers, not health ministers.
Trying to fix our public health system without talking about how to collect more revenue is like trying to cure heart disease while ignoring the need for better diet and exercise.
Systemic problems respond best to systemic solutions. And luckily there is a simple solution to the health ministers’ woes.
But before prescribing the cure, let’s first accurately diagnose the problem.
The states’ major source of revenue from the Commonwealth comes from the GST.
When John Howard and Peter Costello proposed the GST, they roped in state premiers to help sell the idea by promising that all of proceeds from the GST would flow to states to fund services such as health and education.
In it, he described exactly what we see happening today.
This will not be an attempt to cast Calwell as some sort of heroic prophet. The former immigration minister and leader of the Labor party, known as the architect of Australia’s postwar immigration framework, was racist. He harboured racist views against Asians and other people of colour, tried to extend the White Australia policy for as long as he could and, even after politics, continued to rage against non-European immigration and people.
If there was one thing Calwell did understand intimately, it was structural power and the politics that dictated it. He wrote of the Labor Party as being a “duality”:”
“It is a political party in the accepted meaning of the term; but, at the same time, whether in power or out of power, it is a mass movement. It is always a propagandist movement seeking to change society in accordance with its policy. This gives the Labor Party a continuity which no other party possesses, a continuity of purpose which persists whether it is in power or not. For the conservative parties, possession of power is an end in itself, because conservative parties have never thought it part of their duty to attempt to change society fundamentally.”
Of Robert Menzies, who he had observed from his entry into politics, Calwell wrote” “Menzies was enough of a realist to be a socialist when necessary”.
Government policies that incentivise property investment do so at ever increasing personal debt levels resulting in Australia evidencing the second highest level of personal debt after the Swiss. This means that Australian households while wealthy in net wealth and asset terms, carry far more risk than nearly all other individuals within advanced economies in the OECD notwithstanding the Swiss who evidence a much smaller development available land mass and population.
It is therefore very important to consider the resilience of Australian households. Recent research from the RBA (2020) is instructive. The RBA research results suggest that risks arising from Australian household indebtedness are more subtle than sometimes conveyed (RBA, 2020). Most pertinently key market parameters, and factors, such as changes in the level of real income, nominal rate levels and household ownership of rental stock, account for currently household debt levels.
Prosper Australia submission to Inquiry into Local Government Funding and Fiscal Sustainability (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Development, Infrastructure and Transport) – 19 November 2025 Introduction Prosper Australia welcomes the Committee’s examination of local government funding and the relationship between local government and other tiers of government. Our submission outlines three key points […]
The editors of the Journal of Australian Political Economy like to encourage and enable students to progress to publishing articles based on their work. Particularly for any student who has been writing a dissertation or thesis, getting an article published in a reputable journal like JAPE is potentially helpful in job-seeking and career development. It is also a personally fulfilling process.
The JAPE Young Scholar Award also provides a more direct incentive because a prize of $1000 goes to the Award winner. A further $1000 is payable when the resulting article is published.
The descriptor ‘Young Scholar’ does not set an age limit: rather it indicates that applicants should be in the transitional stage from student essay-writing to publishing an article for a more senior audience. Applicants may be of any age, but should be in at least their third year of undergraduate study in political economy or a related social science subject. They may have already completed their degree.
Students who are completing an honours thesis and would like the experience of doing further research during part of the following year (or the year after) would be particularly welcome to apply.
The winner of the Award will receive guidance about how to convert their work into a publishable form for a journal like JAPE.
Applications need to be submitted to the JAPE editorial coordinator, Frank Stilwell [frank.stilwell@sydney.edu.au], by 6 December 2025.
The charge that newly elected New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is an “Islamist” has mostly been derided either as Islamophobic or mocked as Boomer bait. In response, many cite Mamdani’s commitments to various leftist social causes that are antithetical to radical Islam, such as his promise to use $65 million in taxpayer funds for “sex change” operations. And indeed, he seems to use his Muslim faith as more of a chit in the great progressive oppression game—“Muslim and brown: two points!”—than being genuinely dedicated to its tenets, let alone the fundamentalist version of it.
However, his campaign’s success is owed at least partially to what may be New York City’s first politically organized Muslim voting bloc. It represents what is likely the beginning of a new chapter in the city’s long history of ethnic retail politics.
Even in his transition period, Mamdani’s deep connection to this voting bloc is clear. For example, Hassaan Chaudhary, the political director for Mamdani’s transition and inaugural committee, was not only outed by the New York Post for anti-Semitism, which is par for the course in left-wing politics, but also for the more traditional Muslim skepticism of gay rights, which is decidedly not.
Three incidents from Mamdani’s campaign stood out as notable, showing his connections to this growing group.
In November 2025, Between the Lines books published Women United: Stories of Women’s Struggles for Equality in the Canadian Auto Workers Unionby Peggy Nash and Julie White. The co-authors were interviewed by Tricia Wilson, Director of Equity and Racial Justice at Unifor, at their November 13 book launch event held in Toronto.
This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible’s list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actor
Introduction The relationship between wealth and democracy has always been uneasy. In principle, democracy rests on political equality, the idea that each citizen’s voice carries equal weight. In practice, vast wealth inequality has created parallel economies of influence. Obscene wealth increasingly dictates who is heard, what issues are prioritised, and whose interests shape policy decisions. […]
20 November 2025: Free Palestine Melbourne is shocked and appalled that a pro-Israel group is holding an event aimed primarily at children that celebrates the killing of Lebanese people.
Fifty-three years ago, Gough Whitlam swept to power with the slogan ‘it’s time’.
Looking at this Labor government, you now have to wonder what are they waiting for?
It’s past time for fair tax reform. Past time for an end to fossil fuel expansion. Past time for the government to start governing for people, and not vested interests.
The gambling reforms are a perfect example of how hesitant Labor is to use power. Because what does it have to lose? The public supports it. Unlike the under-16s social media ban, there is evidence it will reduce harm. There are a multitude of ways for Labor to address the roadblocks of free-to-air television and media suffering a loss of gambling ad revenue, including by putting a levy on the gambling companies which trade in people’s hope and addictions. But they won’t do it.
And it’s a wake-up call for government. At precisely the time you would expect Australia to be building its ability to conduct cutting-edge public science, our premier scientific agency is sacking people.
CSIRO tried to characterise the cuts as “a renewed emphasis on inventing and deploying technological solutions to tackle national problems”, but it’s blatant cost-cutting. The news of the 350 full-time-equivalent researcher jobs being cut comes on the back of another 800 jobs being cut in the past 18 months.
Australians have always been fiercely proud of the CSIRO – and rightly so.
Few public institutions anywhere in the world can boast a track record like it. CSIRO is globally respected. From fast Wi-Fi, the polymer banknote, the Hendra virus vaccine, breakthroughs in radio astronomy, and world-leading climate modelling, CSIRO has repeatedly punched above its weight. The debt of gratitude Australians owe CSIRO for Aerogard alone can never be repaid.
Which is why it’s so alarming to watch its funding – and its people – bleed away.
The timing of these cuts couldn’t be worse. With the United States gutting its universities and medical research sector – Trump’s America has become a terrifying place to do science – Australia has a once-in-a-generation chance to attract some of the world’s top researchers. Instead we’re sacking researchers by the hundreds.
An annual growth rate of 3.4 per cent is reasonable. The long run average is 3.1 per cent, so it’s slightly above average.
However, as the graph below shows, the growth rate in wages has fallen since it peaked at the end of 2023.
The Reserve Bank will certainly be happy, as it firmly believes that higher wages are a cost for businesses, who will push up prices in order to protect their profits. For the Reserve Bank, higher wages lead to higher inflation.
Is the cost-of-living crisis over?
Not so fast. Wages growth is only part of the picture. What people should really be focused on is what economist call real wages.
Real wages is a measure of how much stuff you can buy with your wage.
On this special episode of Dollars & Sense, Liam O’Brien from the Australian Council of Trade Unions and Dr Ingrid Burfurd from The Superpower Institute join Dr Richard Denniss to discuss taxing the gas industry more effectively.
This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 29 October 2025 at the Australia Institute’s Revenue Summit at Parliament House in Canberra.
Dr. D, as I called him, was a scholar and a gentleman. He earned his PhD from Yale after writing a dissertation on Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, and Wittgenstein, published as Wittgenstein and Political Philosophy by The University of Chicago Press in 1981. Later he wrote David Hume and the Problem of Reason, from Yale University Press, and a book published by ISI called The Roots of Freedom, based on lectures he gave for Radio Free America. After starting his career at the University of Chicago, Dr. D moved to the University of Houston and then to Loyola University Chicago in 1993, just as I was enrolling there in graduate school.
It has a big majority in the lower house, an easy Senate and an opposition in a shambles.
Less widely remarked is that, outside of Parliament, some key potential critics are also at a low ebb, and it’s not just the traditional media critics that are no longer able to influence elections.
The mining and gas lobbies are also historically weak.
This might not seem obvious, given the Albanese government’s tendency to do whatever the resource sector asks – whether it’s approving carbon-bomb gas export projects for Woodside, putting environment law reform on the go-slow for the mining industry, or doing as little as possible to end the “great gas giveaway”.
But the government’s subservience to the resource lobbies stems more from the personal preferences of Anthony Albanese and his ministers, rather than the power of the lobbies themselves.
Long-gone are the days of 2010 when, the mining industry could claim – apocryphally or otherwise – to topple prime ministers and governments. These days it can hardly organise a meeting in a conference centre.
Last week the Minerals Council of Australia and the gas lobby Australian Energy Producers hosted Australia’s first Energy and Minerals Tax Conference.
Two of the country’s most powerful industry groups were teaming up to “highlight the significant economic and tax contribution of the natural gas and mineral resources sectors”.
Why did they need to have three-day conference with government, opposition and media invited to talk about how much tax they pay?
Jesse Merriam has inaugurated this symposium on the future of the conservative legal movement with a provocative essay arguing that the movement needs to reassess itself in light of our current political and cultural moment. He argues that it should shed its technocratic “focus on how precedents are interpreted and distinguished” in favor of a broader project “that conceives of law as a way to sustain the American way of life.” Legal conservatism, Merriam continues, should “develop a constitutional morality that reflects the larger project…of constitutional and…civilizational restoration.” He does not want to abandon originalism but says that the conservative legal movement needs to mount a positive project to meet today’s considerable challenges.
I agree.
In order to clarify Merriam’s argument, it is important to point out that the movement has always needed, if it has not quite always had, at least three separate but overlapping projects.
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.
I Will Be Your Tootsie-Nuzzi | The Roundtable Ep. 294
He had no evidence for this – just some spurious numbers around what he said a carbon price would cost – but it didn’t matter. As he wrote himself in Weatherboard and Iron, the claim took off.
Australia dumped the carbon price under the Abbott government and lamb hit record prices in 2025 – because of drought.
Joyce also claimed in 2014 that the “country would go broke” if the 2014 budget wasn’t passed (much of it wasn’t) and – surprise, surprise – the country is not broke.
But we never go back and check what is right or wrong in these debates, which is why people like Joyce can continue to make outrageous claims and have them reported as having the same weight as actual facts, with no responsibility or accountability for when it’s revealed as bullsh-t.
The Coalition did the same with the carbon price, a tax that was never a tax as admitted by one of the architects of the successful scare campaign, Peta Credlin herself years later.
Because that’s the thing – the people who deliberately muddy the waters through misinformation, cherry-picking facts or straight-up falsehoods then brag about their success, admitting they knew it was wrong, but hey, “that’s politics”.
They can do it time and time again, because every time they change the lie, it’s treated as a serious input into the debate.
Leader (for now – those who wanted net zero gone will wait for the polls to officially end her career) Sussan Ley was particularly egregious, answering the question of “what will you tell your grandchildren?” with:
“The other thing that I want to be able to say to my grandchildren is that you should inherit a better standard of living than my generation and your mum and dad’s generation. Right now, they are set to inherit the worst standard of living since the Second World War.”
Now, enough words have been written on this most recent bout of stupidity, but those particular words lingered.
The same week the Liberal Party sucked up any and all political oxygen, the Victorian Labor government made a mockery of evidence-based solutions and research by capitulating to populist scare campaigns and announcing that children as young as 14 could be treated as adults in court.
This is happening as the federal government makes a big song and dance about banning under-16s from social media. Too young for TikTok but apparently old enough to face the adult incarceration system.
But we don’t care about children when there are tough-on-crime headlines to be made.
Just as we don’t care about children when setting climate policy – even as the consequences hit us. Both major parties have voted against having a duty of care for future generations included in legislation, as well as having fought against it in court. Children are to inherit our consequences, but have no say in the decision-making.
Shortly after I started, the printing press was closed and that magic became a memory, a period of time I was lucky to experience in an industry that has been in flux since.
But when I was lucky enough to get to stay around and watch the paper get put to bed, you would also get the benefit of learning from the salty news dogs who’d spent decades in journalism and learnt some universal truths.
They were usually on the night shift because they were no longer fit for human consumption, but also because they’d spot the errors others wouldn’t even know to look for (like an ad for funerals on the same page as a horror car smash or a story on air mattresses across from a sky-diving accident) and if they liked you, they’d tell you how little your university degree had taught you.
That was where I was told about “whinge and win”. It’s not specific to journalism, and it’s also known as being the loudest voice in the room.
Whinge and win is how the bullies, the incompetent and the plain annoying seem to always get their way. It’s easier to give in than to stand and fight, because the whinging winners have enough audacity to outlast all but the most staunch.
It’s how issues that aren’t issues end up dominating everyone’s agenda. How the worst people you know seem to always have victories, reinforcing their delusions the world is there to bend to them.
Because the flip side of whinge and win is suffering in silence. Which is what most people do, because the fight seems so overwhelming.
This is despite an increase in public funding through Workforce Australia, a Commonwealth Government service which pays private job agencies to help people who are unemployed find jobs.
The involvement of private agencies in the unemployment benefit system began in 1998, when the Howard Government replaced the government-run Commonwealth Employment Service. It instead contracted private or community-run job agencies to help people find jobs.
This was combined with the “mutual obligation” requirement for those receiving the benefit. This became known as the “Work for the Dole” program. Those receiving payments are required to do “work like” activities for a certain number of hours and/or to demonstrate an effort to find employment. Jobseekers sign up with private job agencies as a way of showing they are looking for a job. An agency claims “outcome payments” from the government when a client has completed 4, 12, or 26 weeks of work (the latter being considered long-term).
In short, instead of helping some of its most vulnerable citizens directly, the Commonwealth Government makes them jump through hoops to receive Jobseeker payments, and private companies who capture handsome profits in the process.
Over one-in-four of Jobseeker payment recipients have disability or health conditions which affect their capacity for work, as recognised by the Albanese Government’s employment whitepaper from September 2023.
Filmmaker, author and journalist Antony Loewenstein documents how Israel has used Gaza as a weapons showcase. Spyware, killer drones, robot dogs and other weapons are debuted in Gaza and field-tested on the civilian population, demonstrating their effectiveness to regimes around the world that await their chance to purchase them.
I am on stage at the Ryman Auditorium, the most famous concert hall in Nashville. A photographer tells me to smile. I hate getting my picture taken, but that day smiling came easy.
After years apart due to the pandemic, my family was reunited: my mother and father, my husband and children, and my sister and her husband and kids. We were in Nashville to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. My parents drove from Connecticut, my sister flew from Dallas, and we drove from St. Louis. It was the first time the ten of us had taken a vacation together.
We didn’t know it would be the last.
Sunlight poured through the stained-glass windows of country music’s holy ground. Legends surrounded me: Willie, Dolly, Hank, and my favorite, Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash, who sang with the weariness of reconciling mortality with morality; Johnny Cash, apocalyptic and American to the end.
There is no better music to ride out a pandemic than Johnny Cash. That’s a truth I never wanted to learn. Twenty-first-century truths are like that.
Today’s conservative legal movement is the proverbial dog that caught the car. After years of effort (and more than a little fortuity), a solidly conservative majority now sits on the Supreme Court. The movement has racked up a string of wins on longstanding priorities, ranging from affirmative action to abortion to administrative agency deference, with perhaps the most seismic changes still to come. The Court’s blessing of the long-theorized “major questions doctrine,” which grants courts broad power to deem a particular action outside the purview of administrative agencies and properly committed to Congress, is a blade perfectly forged for dismantling that perennial movement bogeyman, the administrative state.
Broadbent Research Fellow Angella MacEwen explains how public ownership and public investment are needed to fight inflation, fix inequality, and improve economic productivity. MacEwen shows that Canada has the power to build a stronger, democratic economy to fight back against the US Trump administration’s trade war and as an alternative to Mark Carney’s austerity agenda.
Progressive Political Economy is a video series that spotlights progressive economics and political ideas that push for a just and equal society.
Through interviews with Canada’s leading progressive economic thinkers, we lay out alternative approaches to orthodox economic thinking that have lent today’s inequalities and injustices.
On this episode of Follow the Money, Mike Rann addresses the fossil fuel industry’s tobacco-like tactics, South Australia’s leadership of progressive reform, and why policy bravery can be great politics, as he delivered the Australia Institute’s Hugh Saddler Memorial Lecture.
This episode was recorded live on Thursday 13 November.
President Donald Trump’s latest comments on semiconductor exports sounded almost conciliatory—until they weren’t. Speaking recently on 60 Minutes, the president said he would let NVIDIA “deal with China,” but drew a bright red line: Beijing could buy chips, just not the “most advanced” ones. The message was calibrated for maximum effect: permissive enough to please markets, hawkish enough to claim toughness. NVIDIA’s stock jumped immediately—but China did not get what it wanted.
Days later, in a Financial Times interview, NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang warned that if the U.S. blocked his company from selling more of its advanced chips to China, it would “lose” the AI race. The argument was astonishing in its candor: cut us off, Beijing wins.
The comparison between a president sounding measured and a CEO trying to sound indispensable captures a dangerous inversion of power. NVIDIA has become more than America’s most valuable company. It’s attempting to become its policymaker, shaping the boundaries of what Washington thinks possible in its competition with China.
To understand how one company reached that position, it helps to revisit what happened in Washington just days before Trump met Xi Jinping in South Korea.
Launched on 31 October 2025 at Gleebooks, Sydney, this post focuses on the book by Brett Heino, Literary Geographies and the Work of David Ireland, which follows last week’s commentary from the same evening delivered by Brett Heino.
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In acknowledging that we are on Gadigal land of the Eora Nation, I want to start by paying my respect to elders past, present, and emerging and also to those Indigenous peoples that are either in the audience or reading this commentary. Sovereignty in what is now called Australia was never ceded but, rather, violently dispossessed. In paying respects to Indigenous voices, I also want to draw inspiration from Tara June Winch’s novel The Yield(2019) that received, among others, the 2020 Miles Franklin Award. To cite one key passage:
Don’t know what it is about us that seems to rile the white man. The burden, the burden of their memory perhaps, or that we weren’t extinguished with the lights of those empires after all!
This episode looks at one of the first feminist social democrats in Canadian history: Francis Marion Beynon. Her work as journalist in Winnipeg in the early 1900s was critical for pointing out how exploitation wasn’t just about workers and bosses — it was also about the way that women were being treated by their husbands at home.
On this episode of After America, Crikey’s Charlie Lewis joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss Congress’ failure to extend life-saving health insurance tax credits, Trump’s inability to make the Epstein files go away, and whether there is evidence of US involvement in the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
This discussion was recorded on Friday 14 November.
