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

Text originally published July 9, 2025.

The decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) this week, confirming that states have binding legal obligations under international law to prevent climate harm and protect present and future generations, should be a wake-up call for the Australian government. No longer can it argue that Australia’s emissions exported to other nations can be ignored. But new analysis reveals that the extraction of fossil fuels for exports is also making up a growing share of Australia’s domestic emissions.

As the Australian Government prepares to announce a new 2035 climate target under the Paris Agreement, pressure is mounting to show increased ambition. An easy, and often overlooked, place to find real emissions reductions is the domestic footprint of our fossil fuel exports.

Analysis of Australia’s emissions inventory combined with data from the ABS suggests that the process of extracting and shipping all the coal and gas Australia exports is responsible for close to 18% of Australia’s total emissions. That means that if Australia did not export such huge quantities of coal and gas then total emissions in Australia in 2023 could have been 18% lower.

Emissions in Australia from exporting coal and gas have grown rapidly since 2010, doubling its estimated share of total emissions from 7% in 2010. The strong growth was mainly caused by the rapid expansion in LNG exports over the same period, particularly since 2015.

Today I testified at a hearing in Trenton, New Jersey to the State Assembly and local government committee to oppose the adoption of Bill A3558 in New Jersey. The bill would accept the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which conflates criticism of the state of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism. The IHRA definition has been recognized by 35 states in the U.S., and New Jersey may soon become the 36th.

Posted here is the video with slight audio touch-ups, video editing and captions.

The GST is failing. It was meant to give the states their own independent source of revenue and in the process make them less financially dependent on the federal government.

The problem is that GST revenue is growing slower than the economy and so it has not kept up with the growing costs of providing hospitals, schools, roads and all the other vital services that the states provide.

Australia Institute research has shown that if GST revenue had kept up with economic growth it would have collected an additional $231 billion since it was enacted and $22 billion in 2023-24 alone.

Having an income that grows slower than prices is something that many households have recently experienced. And just like households, the states have found their budgets under increasing pressure.

Early on, states were able to make cutbacks to make ends meet, but over the last 25 years we have seen their collective budgets move from surplus to deficit. At the same time all the cost-cutting has degraded the services they provide.

This has been a lose-lose for Australians.

Some have called for the GST to be increased or broadened to raise more revenue. But that will slug the poor more than the wealthy because the GST is what economists call a regressive tax. But there are other solutions. We could broaden the GST without disproportionately impacting the poor by being selective on what we broaden it to.

Americans are different from the rest of the world. Everyone knows it, but not everyone knows why. Some say it’s our Constitution, or our political traditions, or our vast landmass. But that’s not the whole story.

Above all else, what sets America apart from the rest of the world is our people—a people possessed by the same proud, defiant spirit as a 13-year-old Andrew Jackson. After being captured after the skirmish at Hanging Rock, the young Jackson refused to shine the shoes of his British captors, preferring to accept a scar across his face from an officer’s saber rather than kneeling before the foreign occupiers.

America is a nation of pioneers, explorers, and inventors. Unlike our European counterparts, we were not born gradually, over the course of millennia—we are a people who willed ourselves into existence, coming to know ourselves through a centuries-long struggle to forge a civilization in the wilderness.

We are a settler nation—dynamic, restless, reaching into infinite space. Since the first pilgrim ships arrived on our shores, we Americans have been possessed by an insatiable urge to create, to build, and to discover—to step forward into the dark unknown. Our people have flown across oceans, tunneled through mountains, defeated empires, raised up skyscrapers, and transcended our frontiersmen ancestors by expanding outwards into outer space itself. We did this all while maintaining the capacity to rule ourselves.

“Gas consumption is projected to decline to 2040 as electrification increases across the economy and renewables and storage take an increasing share of electricity generation”, wrote the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water (DCCEEW).

This doesn’t sit well with the Prime Minister’s recent claims that more gas is needed for “firming” renewable energy. Figures from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)’s 2024 Integrated System Plan (ISP) show just how little gas is likely to be required in Australia’s electricity system.

With property investor tax breaks costing billions every year, making housing more expensive and hindering productivity, Everybody’s Home is urging the government’s economic reform roundtable to make housing tax reform a top priority.

The national housing campaign’s submission to the roundtable, closing today, highlights the urgent need to reform negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount to boost productivity and repair the federal budget.

Investor tax concessions are expected to cost the budget more than $180 billion over the next decade while disproportionately benefiting high-income earners and driving up housing prices.

Everybody’s Home urges the roundtable to consider:

1. Abolishing negative gearing and phasing out the capital gains tax discount
2. Funding a sustained pipeline of public and community housing.

It comes amid growing calls from politicians, economists, and think tanks for the government to reform the capital gains tax discount on housing.

Everybody’s Home spokesperson Maiy Azizie said: “It doesn’t make sense that we are losing billions of dollars every year through tax concessions that most benefit high-income earners, while everybody else is being pushed out of the housing market. Tax breaks for investors are widening the wealth inequality gap and pushing up the cost of housing for everybody else.