The Murujuga Rock Art is a unique 40,000-year-old collection of rock engravings on the Dampier Archipelago in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
These irreplaceable petroglyphs are twice as old as France’s Lascaux cave paintings and eight times older than the pyramids.
Murujuga is nationally heritage-listed and could soon be recognised by UNESCO for its world heritage value.
But it is facing destruction from acid rain caused by nearby gas processing. Gas processing that does not need to happen at Murujuga.
The new Australian Environment Minister Murray Watt, however, decided to approve a 50-year extension to Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project. This could have devastating consequences for the rock art.
A video report presented by Stephen Long, Senior Fellow, and Contributing Editor at the Australia Institute on Ngarluma land.
Cinematography and Editing by Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer at the Australia Institute
They exceed those voting for the Liberal and National Coalition – which is, at least theoretically, the “alternative government”.
At 33.6 per cent of the vote, independent and minor party voters are almost as numerous as the 34.6 per cent who cast their first preference for the Labor government.
Of course, independent and minor party candidates represent a variety of ideologies, approaches and personalities – although, as the last fortnight has demonstrated, the same is true for major party candidates.
The Australian electoral system allows every voter to express their preferences, without reducing the effectiveness of their vote.
Some Greens voters prefer an independent to the Labor candidate; others prefer Labor. Some Liberal voters would settle for a non-Labor candidate such as a Green or independent; others will plump for Labor if the Liberal doesn’t make it to the final two.
This system, called full preferential voting, is why you must number every box on your ballot paper. You must express a preference between every candidate running to be your local member.
It means that in most cases you do not need to worry about voting “tactically” – your vote will still help decide between the final two candidates.
The trade-off is that counting votes takes a bit longer than it does in the US or Britain, where they use “first past the post” voting.
It was the 30th of December, and I was driving the Natchez Trace Parkway, looking for Bobbie Gentry.
I didn’t want to find her. I only wanted to know she was out there, eluding everyone.
I wanted her to outwit every man who did her wrong. Many are dead: Bobbie Gentry is in her 80s. She hasn’t appeared on stage since 1981, when, after a series of music industry disputes, she left public life behind with a steadfastness unrivaled.
I was not the first to explore Chickasaw County, Mississippi and other Gentry haunts, hoping for a glimpse of the singer. For over forty years, no stranger has tracked her down. Gentry wanted to disappear and she got her way. She is rumored to be happy. I am likely angrier about the treatment of Bobbie Gentry than Bobbie Gentry is.
It’s only fair when a trailblazing woman gets burned that younger women pick up the torch.
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There seems to be an endless supply of news articles on this topic, ranging from concerned tutting to full-blown doomsaying and accusations of class war. Almost all this coverage misses the mark; these changes, while modest, are an important first step in reforming Australia’s broken and unequal superannuation system.
So, what’s changing?
Currently, most people get a tax concession on their superannuation earnings (the money made by your super investments). Rather than being taxed at your marginal tax rate, the money made from your super investments is only taxed at 15 per cent. That is a lot less than the top income tax rate of 45 per cent (plus the Medicare levy).
But the government is proposing to raise the tax on superannuation balances of over $3 million. These people will pay an additional 15 per cent on earnings.
Importantly though, it is only on the amount above $3 million. For instance, if you have $4 million in super, you will only pay additional tax on a quarter of your earnings.
The tax is projected to raise $2.3 billion in its first full year, and $40 billion over a decade.
If $3 million in super sounds like a lot of money; that’s because it is. Very few of us have anywhere near that amount of super. According to Treasury, the tax will initially affect 80,000 people or one in 200 (0.5 per cent) super account holders. For comparison, according to the most recent Tax Office data, less than half of people in their 60s have more than $250,000 in super.
Because, after blowing up the show on Tuesday with his own Groucho Marx “principles” (“those are my principles, and if you don’t like them, well, I have others”), David Littleproud has announced that the Coalition’s divorce is on hold.
In modern parlance, the Coalition has been reduced to a situationship.
Liberal leader Sussan Ley had been due to announce her shadow ministry on Thursday, while Littleproud was to announce the spokespeople for his little party. Both put their announcements on hold after deciding to re-enter negotiations for the new Coalition agreement.
Ask anyone inside the Nationals what happened and you’ll get different versions. They all agree that there was a meeting to decide portfolio spokespeople. That suddenly the spokespeople were told to hold their fire. That party heavyweights, current and former, had spent 48 hours pressing for calmer heads to prevail. That doubts began to creep in immediately when it became clear the response to the party room decision was not one of back, but forehead, slapping.
Party elders immediately began urging Littleproud and those pushing the split, including Victorian senator Bridget McKenzie, to reconsider. The panic button was hit as it became clear the shadow ministry was about to be announced.
“The moment Sussan announced her cabinet, it would be over for us,” one Nationals MP said.
On this episode, Paul Barclay talks with Alex Sloan about the importance of independent public broadcasters, why they need to be well-funded in an increasingly privately-owned media landscape, and how they are the barometer of a strong democracy.
This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 19 March 2025, and things may have changed since the recording.
Home ownership is declining across the West. In America, the rate continues to fall, down 3.5 percentage points since its peak. Australia is down 3 points, Great Britain is down nearly 7 points since, and so on.
These might look like only small drops, but they’re part of a worsening trend. In America, people under 35 have seen the largest decline in home ownership of any cohort, with their real rates falling by 12 points since 1990. Not long ago, the average age of a first-time buyer was around 30. Today it is almost 40 years old. The housing crisis, in other words, is disproportionately a younger person’s crisis.
IBR is once again delaying releasing a new cost estimate for the Interstate Bridge Project. It’s an ominous sign that the cost is going to be much, much higher.
IBR leaders have known since January of 2024 that costs were going to be even higher–but repeatedly they’ve delayed releasing a new estimate.
In April, IBR project director Greg Johnson announced that there would be yet another delay, until at least September 2025– in telling the Oregon and Washington Legislatures and the public how much the IBR project will cost.
The IBR cost estimate, which jumped from a maximum of $4.8 billion in 2020 to as much as $7.5 billion in 2022, has grown increasingly stale.
Expect the total cost of the project to exceed $9 billion.
Meanwhile, Washington state has upped the amount of debt it can issue for the project to $2.5 billion, and the federal government now seems hostile to making an hoped for contribution of $1 billion for light rail transit.
A Chronology of delayed cost estimates for the IBR
In January, 2024, the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project acknowledged that costs were rising, and that a new estimate would be done in about six months. IBR Director Greg Johnson says “costs are going up. We are going to be reissuing an overall program estimate probably later this summer.”
On this episode of After America, Matt Duss joins Emma Shortis to sort the signal from the noise in the Trump administration’s foreign policy. They discuss Trump’s approach to the Middle East, its negotiations with Iran, and the continued influence of China hawks in his Cabinet.
This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 28 May 2025 and things may have changed since recording.
Order After America: Australia and the new world order or become a foundation subscriber to Vantage Point at australiainstitute.org.au/store.
Our independence is our strength – and only you can make that possible. By donating to the Australia Institute’s End of Financial Year appeal today, you’ll help fund the research changing Australia for the better.
Guest: Matt Duss, Executive Vice President, Center for International Policy // @mattduss
Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis
Like Capital one hundred years before it, Mario Tronti’s Operai e capitale has served as a bible for generations of militants. From Silvia Federici and Toni Negri’s iterations on the theme of operaismo to John Holloway making the primordial ‘scream of negation’ his own, and Harry Cleaver’s authorship of the extraordinarily useful, Reading Capital Politically, the line continues into the present. “Within and Against” is everywhere if one knows how to look.
Hello readers. As discussed at the beginning of this week, there are a lot of exciting things coming out of Notes on the Crises quite soon. At least a couple of them are coming this coming week. In the meantime however, I thought it was a good time to start running premium pieces from the Notes on the Crises archive on the weekends that newer readers might not be familiar with. This piece, published almost exactly four years ago, is an important one that I think has stood the test of time. Of course, we now know that the major players in Bitcoin are seeking to sustain it with the support of public money- a major inversion of Bitcoin's original raison d'être. I wrote about that in my piece near the end of February "A Scam Built Atop an Accounting Gimmick Wrapped in Bullshit: Why Visiting Fort Knox Is Not About Selling Gold but is About Buying Bitcoin".
Still Unaccountable: Oregon’s highway department has a cost overrun problem, so naturally they hired consultants to fix it. The twist? Those same consultants have their own impressive track record of blowing budgets and breaking rules.
The new “roadmap for accountability” comes courtesy of AtkinsRéalis-Horrocks, whose principals Shane Marshall and Joshua Laipply recently departed Utah and Colorado DOTs (respectively)—both agencies with spectacular cost problems during their tenures. Marshall oversaw Utah’s I-15 expansion, which doubled from $1.7 billion to $3.7 billion after legislative approval. Laipply’s Colorado DOT spent twice the national average on consultants and violated state contracting laws.
In the first months of 2025, Donald Trump played a game of Russian roulette with the American economy and survived. Although the president had never hidden his enthusiasm for tariffs, the way he went about implementing them on taking office sowed confusion. Targeting not just geostrategic competitors like China but also allies like Canada and Britain, issuing demands that economists struggled to explain, reversing world-shaping policies from one hour to the next, and doing all of this on doubtful constitutional authority, sent markets into a tailspin.
And just when the president had been enjoying a honeymoon. In the last days of January, a majority of Americans had declared themselves—for the first time—Trumpians. They were particularly optimistic about his economic plans. But their enthusiasm diminished as the rumble of artillery from the trade war grew louder. By mid-April, fewer than 40% backed the president’s policy, and Trump was less popular than he had been at the same point in his first term.
In January, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded a policy enacted by the Obama Administration, and expanded by the Biden Administration, that barred immigration law enforcement from making arrests in “sensitive” areas, namely churches and schools. According to Biden DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, this had become “fundamental” agency practice, which is something like so-called “super precedent”—that is, rules that progressives prefer.
“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” declared President Trump’s DHS. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement and instead trusts them to use common sense.” To most Americans this seems like common sense. If fugitives are exploiting lenient policies to avoid arrest and deportation, then those policies need adjusting.
Three years have passed since I contemplated writing this story. I kept changing my mind. What’s the point of a story in which nothing happens, and no answer is found?
Then again: does anything sum up the middle of 2022 better than that?
In November 2016, the weekend before the election, I took my children to southern Illinois on what I came to call “the last good day.” They were five and nine. We drove three hours and back from St. Louis to show them the southlands of our neighboring state. We visited Shawnee National Forest, home to the Garden of the Gods: giant towers of rock where even small children can climb on cliffs of arboreal splendor.
It was a perfect day, a free day, the kind you keep in your mind to revisit in darker times. After we climbed the rocks, we took the kids to the Ohio River. I have photos of them skipping stones near an old bandit cave, clapping in joy as they skimmed the surface, unaware of the future behind them.
“I want to go back,” I told my husband in 2022. “I want another perfect day.”
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.
On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Matt Grudnoff joins Elinor to discuss how the Government could help first home-buyers by restricting the ability of investors to borrow, what the fuss is about ‘unrealised gains’, and why the Government’s proposed superannuation tax changes are “a good first step.”
This discussion was recorded on Thursday 29 May 2025 and things may have changed since recording.
Order After America: Australia and the new world order or become a foundation subscriber to Vantage Point at australiainstitute.org.au/store.
Our independence is our strength – and only you can make that possible. By donating to the Australia Institute’s End of Financial Year appeal today, you’ll help fund the research changing Australia for the better.
Host: Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist, the Australia Institute // @mattgrudnoff
Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek
The narratives surrounding Israel and their genocidal campaign against the Palestinians took decades to create and embed into the West’s psyche. The Holocaust, decades after its end, became a central part of the Jewish and Israeli identity. Enemies of the Israeli state were conflated with Nazis. The physical location of Israel became essential to Christian evangelicals who believe the second coming of Jesus Christ was to take place there.
News broke a few weeks ago that President Trump would seek to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in his next budget proposal, along with several other federal cultural agencies. Hours later, it was also widely reported that some of our current grants were being withdrawn and canceled with immediate effect.
These announcements have caused fear, anger, and bewilderment inside our agency. I find myself (as the historian for the NEA) in the unique position of explaining to my fellow employees how matters have reached this dire pass.
When I arrived at this agency in 2004, in the first years of the George W. Bush Administration, the staff was mostly composed of Democratic Party supporters. But they were also cognizant of the near-death experience that the NEA suffered during the so-called “culture wars” (which stretched from 1989-1998), when the agency was widely lambasted for providing sub-grants that were used for exhibitions which included Andres Serrano’s blasphemous work “Piss Christ,” as well as Robert Mapplethorpe’s sado-masochist and homosexual pornography.
The result of that foolish grantmaking was the restructuring of the NEA so that from then on 40% of our total budget was automatically awarded to state arts agencies, while an independent council was created to oversee the entire grants authorization process as a watchdog appointed by the executive branch.
With a huge majority and a climate-friendly Senate, this government is in an optimal position to stop the expansion of gas and coal and to plan a phase-out.
“This term of parliament will not be about politics, it will be about Labor’s priorities,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute.
“The government can use its historic majority to prioritise expanding the export gas industry, or it can take real action on climate, protect the country and its people.
I've been busy over the past couple of weeks helping Indivisible Santa Fe (ISF) restructure, redesign its website, and generally scale up in response to the influx of new members that has built ever since Trump's inauguration. ISF isn't done growing, not by a long shot. We are using our No Kings Day protest as an occasion to recruit new participants. I urge everybody to join their local Indivisible group. You can learn about the Indivisible National here. You can find your local No Kings event here. I'm also writing regularly for the ISF blog and newsletter. I won't always crosspost but what I wrote there yesterday is a good introduction to what I'm writing about here on Heidi Says today.
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This is a long post. I've split it into two, related parts. Each can certainly be read on its own.
On this episode of Follow the Money, Greg Jericho, Chief Economist at the Australia Institute, joins Glenn Connley to discuss the government’s modest proposal to change the superannuation tax concessions and the bizarre backlash to the policy.
This discussion was recorded on Tuesday 28 May 2025 and things may have changed.
Order After America: Australia and the new world order or become a foundation subscriber to our Vantage Point series and save 25% on the Australia Institute website.
Guest: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute // @grogsgamut
Host: Glenn Connley, Senior Media Advisor, the Australia Institute // @glennconnley
Everybody’s Home looks forward to working constructively with the new Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness Andrew Bragg, and urges the Opposition to ditch discredited policies in favour of real solutions.
The national housing campaign is asking the Coalition to back serious solutions to Australia’s housing crisis and make affordability a top priority.
Everybody’s Home is calling on the shadow ministry to back:
A major expansion of social housing with an aim to deliver 940,000 new homes in the next two decades
A phase out of unfair tax handouts to property investors
National protections for renters
A boost to income support to keep people housed and out of poverty.
Everybody’s Home spokesperson Maiy Azize said: “Voters made it clear at this election that they expect the government to step up and help people by building homes that people can afford, not pushing failed ideas that will leave them worse-off in the long-run.
“We look forward to engaging constructively with the Opposition’s spokesperson for housing and homelessness, Senator Andrew Bragg. This is an opportunity for the Opposition to respond to what voters really want: real action on housing that makes homes affordable and secure.
125 billion worth of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has been shipped out of Gladstone, but 9 out of 10 companies involved in Queensland gas exports have paid zero company tax in this time, according to the latest data from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
Despite the huge volume of gas being extracted, domestic gas prices have increased significantly, pushed up by excessive gas exports.
Key points:
$125 billion in LNG has been sold out of Queensland over the last ten years, by companies that reported $330 billion in total Australian revenue to the ATO.
The only company involved in Queensland LNG exports to have paid tax in the last ten years is Australia’s Origin Energy, which paid a total of $966 million, not all of which relates to LNG.
None of the foreign-owned companies involved have paid company tax on Queensland LNG exports.
“The gas industry’s annual conference is in Brisbane this week and they will be at pains to avoid talking about tax,” said Greg Jericho, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute.
“None of the foreign-owned giant gas corporations like ConocoPhillips or Total, that export gas out of Queensland, have paid a cent in company tax.
“The burning of gas and other fossil fuels is driving disasters like the floods in NSW.
“Gas companies are cashing in while Australian communities are picking up the costs.
