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On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss the shocking number of Australians dying on Jobseeker, the government’s immigration policy announcements, and why inequality is a political choice. Then, a bittersweet Dollars & Sense announcement.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 17 September 2026.

More Fool Me: How the gas industry tricked Australia by Richard Denniss, the latest Vantage Point essay from Australia Institute Press, is available now.

Use the code ‘FOOLME’ on a four-edition Vantage Point subscription to receive a free copy of Richard’s book, Econobabble.

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

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

Show notes:

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the “monster” begins as a creature whose maker abdicates his catechetical responsibility. Victor Frankenstein spends nearly two years learning how to give life to an inanimate body. But at the moment of success, when the creature finally opens his eyes, Victor is overcome with disgust and abandons him without teaching him a word.

Spoiler: the creature receives an education anyway. He leaves Victor’s apartment functionally newborn and learns about his environment through direct experiences with hunger, pain, fear, and the elements. The monster eventually takes refuge in a hovel joined to the De Lacey family’s cottage, where he witnesses examples of familial virtue. He learns history and social order from Volney’s Ruins of Empires and draws on Plutarch, Goethe, and Milton to form his understanding of himself, society, and God. The creature’s education is accidental and ungoverned: no one chooses his curriculum, corrects his errors, or even knows he is listening.

The American Mind’s 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.

Uncovered: Administrative State Abuses of Military Contracts | The American Mind Podcast

In this special episode, Will Thibeau, director of the Claremont Institute’s American Military Project, sits down with Claremont president Ryan P. Williams to discuss his recent report on the 8(a) Program, its unique weaponization in the Woke Era, and how the military under Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is combatting the rampant abuses. Plus: What can America’s industrial base learn from the Iran and Ukraine wars?

The post Uncovered: Administrative State Abuses of Military Contracts | The American Mind Podcast appeared first on The American Mind.

16 Sept 2026 – One hundred women’s organisations, LGBTIQ+ groups, unions, disability groups and mental health advocates have united to oppose proposals to redefine ‘sex’ under Australia’s anti-discrimination laws, warning that doing so would put longstanding protections for trans and intersex people, as well as women, at risk. 

The letter comes a day after a Coalition Bill seeking to rewrite the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) was voted down in the Senate for the second time.

Similar attempts to amend the Act have also been made by a Nationals MP and One Nation. 

The open letter was signed by organisations including the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS), Australian Multicultural Women's Alliance (AMWA), Victorian Trades Hall Council, Australian Services Union, Fair Agenda, ACON, National Foundation for Australian Women, Women With Disabilities Australia, Equality Australia, Women's Electoral Lobby and Women's Legal Services Australia.

Sent to all federal MPs, the letter urges them to reject any changes that would redefine “sex” in the SDA or remove gender identity as a protected attribute, warning that such changes would undermine essenital protections against discrimination.

On this episode of Follow the Money, Dr Luke Slawomirski and Matt Grudnoff join Ebony Bennett to discuss the soaring cost of specialists, why pushing people towards the private health system doesn’t take pressure off public hospitals, the government’s proposed changes to private health rebates, and how to ensure Australia doesn’t backslide towards US-style health care.

This episode was recorded on Tuesday 15 September.

Correction: During the discussion on Australian specialist costs, Luke mistakenly said that average costs in the Australian Capital Territory are six times higher than Tasmania. They are actually four times higher.

More Fool Me: How the gas industry tricked Australia by Richard Denniss, the latest edition in the Vantage Point series, is available now.

Use the code ‘FOOLME’ on a four-edition Vantage Point subscription to receive a free copy of Richard’s book, Econobabble.

Guest: Luke Slawomirski, Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow, the Australia Institute // @lukeslawomirski

While the movement for Alberta separatism may be framed as a straightforward push for independence, the concerns driving it raise a more nuanced question – do Albertans truly want to leave Canada, or are there real issues of democracy, influence, and autonomy over policies that decide the province’s future? Despite the loud rhetoric calling for independence, recent polling has suggested that support for independence remains a minority position. In February 2026, the Angus Reid Institute found that 30% of Albertans would vote to leave Canada in a referendum, compared with 65 % who would vote to remain. A March 2026 Leger survey similarly found only 17% supported independence, though 58% of Albertans were concerned about the growing momentum of this movement.

Weak support for separatism should not be dismissed. Pollara’s Alberta Spotlight tracking put separatist support at 27% in April 2026, its highest level in five years of its own tracking. While still a minority view, separatism has increasingly become a way for Albertans to express dissatisfaction with Canadian politics.

In his 1807 poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, William Wordsworth wrote about the time he touched grass.

Out on a lonesome stroll, Wordworth’s spirits were lifted by the sight of thousands of “dancing daffodils” near a sparkling lake. The flowers were so striking that they birthed in him a new serenity. “The inward eye is the bliss of solitude,” he proclaimed, marveling that quiet contemplation could return him to fleeting joy.

Whatever came, Wordsworth would have his inward eye. He wrote an ode to memory.

Today our memories are stolen by oligarchs. They drain our lakes of daffodils to build data centers for storing them. You can never have true solitude in a surveillance state. You cannot wander lonely in The Cloud: you are always watched but never seen.

Technofascists want to shut the inward eye. They’ll close it like an eyelid on a corpse: a gambit, a formality. They want it shut for all eternity. Eternity is no big thing: the future is an asset they hoarded long ago. Loneliness is all that oligarchs will give you for free. Loneliness without solitude: the ultimate totalitarian win.

The selection committee for the Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) Richard Higgott Journal Article Prize is pleased to announce the articles nominated by AIPEN members for the longlist for the 2026 prize.

The prize will be awarded to the best article published in 2025 (online early or in print) in international political economy (IPE) by Australia-based academic(s). 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 by the selection committee, which is comprised of AIPEN members and this year includes Ainsley Elbra, Anja Bless, Elliot Dolan-Evans, Tim DiMuzio, and me. Before that decision can be made, we now invite AIPEN members to vote on the longlist to establish the final shortlist of four articles for deliberation.

Voting is being conducted online through ElectionBuddy and is open to all members of the AIPEN e-list. Voting is open from 9am on Monday 21 September (AEST) and closes 5pm on Friday 9 October (AEDT).

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With this piece, we accomplish our first “lap” through the tripartite structure of this series. This is how I plan to write the entire series, with maybe some small deviations. I am trying to build up from basic foundations, which going one category at a time wouldn’t accomplish. It wouldn’t make sense, for example, to get to credit derivatives before even having a basic discussion of what a limited liability corporation is. As readers can probably tell, I’m quite excited about this approach to building up from the basics. Gradually increasing the complexity of the instruments, criteria and the organizational forms seems to me to be quite an intuitive way from going from confusion over the basics of finance to becoming conversant in mortgage backed securities and beyond.

On August 21, 2024, I rolled into the Indiana Dunes at the end of an 825-mile bicycle ride from Washington, D.C.—a ride that raised over $100,000 for I AM ALS, founded by former Obama White House counsel Brian Wallach. Two days before my arrival, Wallach was just a few miles away in Chicago, addressing the Democratic National Convention (DNC) alongside his wife, Sandra.

Also inside that convention hall was one of the party’s most prolific progressive fundraisers, a woman named Evan Barker. Her recent loud break with the Democratic Party, overnight as it looked, had been a long time coming. She walked out during Oprah Winfrey’s speech, recorded a video on the convention floor, and posted it to TikTok, garnering millions of views. After the 2024 election, she wrote an essay for The Free Press admitting she’d voted for Donald Trump.