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Space is the defining strategic frontier of the 21st century. America’s space leadership depends on harnessing the private sector to create wealth and focusing the public sector on limited yet critical security and scientific objectives. While achieving supremacy in cislunar space (the region between the Earth and Moon, including the Moon’s surface) must be our immediate aim, it lacks the strategic coherence to sustain American leadership across decades. We need long-term goals to define success and clarify tradeoffs. A manned mission to Mars can do both.

China and Russia, our near-peer competitors in space, pose serious challenges. Beijing openly pursues dominance in the Earth-Moon system while accelerating toward Mars, with an ambitious sample return mission scheduled for 2028. Russia maintains formidable military capabilities in space, alongside proven Mars science achievements.

If our authoritarian rivals prevail, the world’s free nations may find their ability to access and use space significantly curtailed.

This is why the United States needs a unifying long-term vision that focuses and directs near-term commercial, military, and scientific objectives. We must also research and develop technologies for sustained living in space. A smart Mars strategy provides the needed framework, creating the technological roadmap and institutional durability to win the cislunar competition and position America for permanent space premiership.

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss the critical minerals agreement struck between the Australian and American governments, Andrew Leigh’s new anti-price gouging legislation, and why Aussies have been lining up for gold.

Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available now via the Australia Institute website.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 23 October 2025.

Host: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute // @grogsgamut

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

Show notes:

Australia’s surprise unemployment spike suggests an economy not overheating but in need of stimulus by Greg Jericho, Guardian Australia (October 2025)

The shocking murder of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University puts an exclamation point on the degraded state of reasoned debate in America.

Like many in the last month, I’ve found myself doing a deep dive into Kirk’s YouTube channel, watching debate after debate. You learn something from watching them in full: Kirk was willing to talk to anybody, and he always brought liberals to the front of the line. He was pugnacious at times, but always civil. It was his interlocutors who would sometimes resort to ad hominem attacks, and their arguments often collapsed as they met a steady stream of his questions and retorts. Time after time, these students lost the debate with Kirk because they simply didn’t know enough.

What causes a person to stake out a position with such confidence before mastering the evidence to support it? For many of the students who challenged Kirk, the answer is action civics. This is a pedagogical theory that teaches that the highest form of civic participation is protest rather than discussion. Its result is thoughtless grandstanding or worse. The antidote to this state of affairs is classical education rightly understood.

Applications received on a rolling basis until November 16


More “Announcement
Hastie Fellowship in Law and the Social Sciences at the University of Wisconsin Law School”

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.

Troll King | The Roundtable Ep. 290

The latest round of “No Kings!” rallies, reportedly attended by 7 million—average attendee, per Axios, mid-40s and female—took to the streets this weekend in protest of…what monarchy, exactly? This week, three kings—Ryan, Matt, and Spencer—discuss progressive populism, John Bolton’s indictment for alleged mishandling of classified intelligence, and Zohran Mamdani’s likely victory despite a weak performance in New York’s mayoral debate. Plus: more cultural recommendations!

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

The descent into a new, mutated and technology-focused form of American fascism is already here. Those who have kept track of the rise of the Thielverse, which includes figures such as Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and JD Vance, have understood that an agenda to usher in a unique form of authoritarianism has been slowly introduced into the mainstream political atmosphere.

Whitney Webb, investigative journalist and author of One Nation Under Blackmail, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to document the rise of this cabal into the most powerful positions of the American government.

The university had net assets of more than $1.8 billion at the end of 2024. That is an increase of more than $150 million from the previous year.

This strong increase in the value of its assets is due in part to the strong surplus of $61.3 million shown in the audited accounts.

“The University of Newcastle is not experiencing any form of financial crisis,” said Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO of The Australia Institute.

“To suggest that there is something ‘unsustainable’ about the financial performance of an organisation whose net assets have grown by nearly $600 million and whose retained earnings have grown by more than $400 million over the past 10 years is just silly.

“It is important to realise that claims the university ran an ‘underlying deficit’ last year are not based on the university’s audited results.

“The so-called ‘adjusted operating result’ is calculated by management by removing some forms of revenue described as ‘one-off’, but there is no similar effort to remove one-off items of expenditure.

The Manosphere. This online, man-made safe space serves as a kind of glasshouse of masculine performance, there for observers to imitate or revile. However one might measure the relative percentages of truth and lies on offer in the Manosphere, however one might separate the true masculinity on offer there from the Manosphere’s many vain effeminacies masquerading as virile strength, one thing is clear: men are in the middle of an identity crisis.

We could leave aside the various instances of that crisis that emanate from the sexual Left, by which I mean the LGBTQ emporium of options for how one might live out one’s manhood. But why should we? Left, Right, and Center—we can’t agree on what it means to be truly manly. A central cause of the present crisis is that America’s men have almost a complete lack of experience with single-sex education before college.

On this crossover episode of Follow the Money and After America, Dr Emma Shortis and Ebony Bennett discuss why Australia is still unlikely to receive any Virginia-class submarines, why the “shared values” that supposedly underpin the Australia-US alliance are looking increasingly shaky, and Trump’s bizarre AI video showing himself dropping excrement on protesters.

You can sign our petition calling on the Australian Government to launch a parliamentary inquiry into AUKUS.

After America: Australia and the new world order by Emma Shortis is available via Australia Institute Press.

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

Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebonybennett

Show notes:

Salmon farming is the primary threat to the endangered Maugean skate in its only home, Macquarie Harbour, part of Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area.

The latest report from the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies states the population of the skate is still dangerously low, while juveniles are in an even more precarious situation. There is no guarantee these will survive to reproductive maturity.

The government has admitted salmon farming is the primary threat and that the skate remains at high risk of extinction, but is refusing to follow its own advice, which is to “eliminate or significantly reduce” fish farms to avoid the “almost certain” and “catastrophic” impact of this industry.

Meanwhile, the Tasmanian government is currently preparing Terms of Reference for a review of the salmon industry in Tasmania, but there has been no public consultation to date.

“For the Australian government to say the species appears to be recovering is incorrect, and to say that when its own advice says it’s not possible to make such conclusions, is misleading.” said Eloise Carr, Director of The Australia Institute Tasmania.

“The Australian government is failing to meet its obligations to protect World Heritage.

“The government is ignoring its own department’s advice in its attempts to reassure UNESCO that enough is being done to address the destruction of World Heritage caused by the salmon industry. This is simply not the case.

This federal NDP leadership race presides over a caucus of just 7 MPs in Parliament and no party status. But this is not a unique situation for the Canadian left-wing in the House of Commons. Nor does it mean that the working-class can’t influence public policy in Canada. With Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government still 5 seats short of a majority government, working-class Canadians should start asking NDP leadership candidates how they would wield this balance of power as they make their first public appeals at the Canadian Labour Congress’ October 22^nd leaders’ forum in Ottawa. They can look to one hundred years of progressive influence that social democratic Parliamentarians have had in Canada for answers.

Before the NDP and its predecessor party, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, an ad-hoc “Ginger Group” of fifteen MPs was formed in 1924. While belonging to left-wing party factions or sitting as independents, the Ginger Group used their small, but outsized, influence to push for progressive policies during the majority government of Prime Minister McKenzie King, such as the establishment of Canada’s first publicly funded pensions in 1926.

The selection committee for the Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) Richard Higgott Journal Article Prize is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2025 prize, as voted on by AIPEN members.

The prize will be awarded to the best article published in 2024 (online early or in print) in international political economy (IPE) by an Australia-based scholar.

The prize defines IPE in a pluralist sense to include the political economy of security, geography, literature, sociology, anthropology, post-coloniality, gender, finance, trade, regional studies, development and economic theory, in ways that can span concerns for in/security, poverty, inequality, sustainability, exploitation, deprivation and discrimination.

The overall prize winner will be decided from the shortlist by the selection committee, which this year consists of Ainsley Elbra (USyd), Claire Parfitt (USyd), Tim DiMuzio (UoW), Annabel Dulhunty (ANU), and Wenting He (ANU). The winner will be announced in November 2025.

The 2025 shortlist for The Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) Richard Higgott Journal Article Prize is as follows: