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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.

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. […]

The post Capitalism at a Crossroads appeared first on Equality Trust.

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.

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 […]

The post Board Blog: My Experience as a Trustee appeared first on Equality Trust.

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

Show notes:

Shorter America This Week: History sighs, repeats itself; Surprise: Trump doesn’t need allies; A bloodthirsty White House by Emma Shortis, The Point (March 2026)

The attacks on Iran hurt us all by Allan Behm, The Point (March 2026)

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.

Thomas Klitgaard

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.

Marco Del Negro, Ibrahima Diagne, Keshav Dogra, Elena Elbarmi, Donggyu Lee, and Michael Pham

The Wrap with Louise Morris

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.

Image: AAP/Rebecca Le May

Keep reading

— Louise Morris is an Advocate at The Australia Institute.

The Big Stories

The PM requests modelling on a potential new gas tax

In breaking news on Friday 20 March, the prime minister’s department has asked for modelling on a potential new gas tax.

New Australia Institute research shows that, if a 25% gas export tax was introduced in 2022, it would have raised more than $63 billion by now.