Over the next decade, artificial intelligence will revolutionize K-12 education. The advent of large language models means every student with internet access may soon have an AI tutor providing one-on-one instruction, homework help, and counseling. Every teacher will have an AI teaching assistant to plan lessons, generate assignments, and grade papers. Administrators will use AI to complete paperwork, track student outcomes, and deliver staff training. In short, AI may soon be integrated into every aspect of schooling.
Lutruwita / Tasmania’s environment is in trouble. From marine heatwaves, toxic algal blooms and over a million dead fish last summer, to the rapid loss of native vegetation and the increase in animals and plants threatened with extinction, Tasmanians are suffering considerable environmental losses. The 2024 State of Environment Report confirmed this with a majority of indicators classified as getting worse.
We call on you to do your job and end Lutruwita / Tasmania’s environmental and economic decline by protecting and investing in nature, the living system that sustains the state’s prosperity, resilience and way of life.
The well-being and prosperity of all Tasmanians relies on a healthy environment. We call on the next government to make a real change and commit to protecting Lutruwita / Tasmania’s environment from further harm, real action on climate change, and to respect the rights of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people to care for their Country through land returns and Treaty.
Liberal and Labor parties are taking the environment for granted, ignoring signs of ecological collapse, wielding the term ‘environmental activism’ as an insult, and outlawing peaceful protest. But they are no longer able to govern in majority and must find new ways to work collaboratively in power-sharing government, in the best interest of Tasmanians and the environment we all rely on.
We the undersigned, call on whoever forms Tasmania’s next government act on the following key asks:
This role is so important that our status as “consumers” has been elevated as the dominant identity in our society, trumping others such as “patient”, “student”, “citizen” or “voter”. This evolution in language has been well-documented and reflects the deep ideological change of public services from a collective right to a market transaction.
If we are to believe the rhetoric from government and the private sector, this is a positive development. Because consumers have power. Our money, our attention spans, our time and our sense of identity are constantly courted. Our spending habits and our reviews can apparently make or break a business.
Accordingly, our rights as consumers are enshrined in law and upheld in regulation. In Australia, if the goods and services we procure don’t work as advertised, we are entitled to a refund or a replacement. We are told we are protected from misleading and unfair practices.
Recently, after what could be described as two separate but equally bruising admissions to a Canberra hospital, I was invited to provide feedback about my experience to the Canberra Health Services’ “Consumer Feedback and Engagement” team.
Like the rest of the world, productivity has been sluggish since the COVID pandemic, but that is largely due to businesses failing to adequately invest in machinery, equipment, technology and skills, at a time when many are recording record profits.
The research also reveals that disappointing productivity is not the cause of the problems facing Australian households, like falling real wages, high prices, high interest rates and the unaffordability of housing.
Key findings:
If real wages had grown at the same rate of productivity since 2000, average wages would be 18% – or $350 per week – higher.
Australian businesses now invest less than half as much in research and development as those in other OECD countries.
Higher productivity does not automatically “trickle down” to workers in terms of improved wages or living standards.
Productivity benefits are trending toward high-paid executives, shareholders and profits, rather than workers.
Business claims that productivity can be improved by wage cuts, tax cuts, deregulation or reduced unionisation are false.
The idea that workers should “tighten their belts and make do with less” to improve productivity is a lie.
“Productivity has become an excuse for big, profitable businesses to do whatever they like,” said Greg Jericho, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute‘s Centre for Future Work.
Regular readers would know the question we have been asking is “what will Labor do with power?”. Now we have the answer.
The least possible.
Yes, to be fair it has only been a week in this Parliament and we are yet to see what the Albanese government’s version of “ambitious” ultimately ends up looking like, but we have been given the direction.
The very first bill the government introduced was legislation that will reduce HECS/HELP debt by 20 per cent. That is, as Ross Gittens of The Sydney Morning Herald pointed out, the very least they could do.
The bill helps those with university debt now, but does nothing to address the cost of going to university. It does nothing to correct the failure of the Morrison government Job-Ready Graduates program, which has seen minimal students choose to swap fields, but in some cases led the cost of university degrees to increase by 117 per cent.
Labor has been in power for more than three years. This is not a new problem and it has delivered what it said it would at the election – the least it could do.
This same week, Penny Wong signed a statement with 23 other countries and the UN calling for an immediate end to the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
The language used in the statement was much less active, but it is the strongest to date. It is also, the very least Australia could do.
Conservative politicians have complained so bitterly about a lack of viewpoint diversity in American universities that many have wondered whether they’re overreacting to a non-problem. They’re not. During a recent work trip to Dublin, I was reminded of what a homogeneous—and dangerous—progressive echo chamber the modern academy has become. At the tail end of a rather full day, I was taking in some traditional music at the Cobblestone Pub.
I grabbed the only free seat at the bar and was shocked to find that the woman sitting next to me was pursuing a Ph.D. in literature at the University of Texas at Austin, the very same program from which I graduated almost a decade ago.
What ensued was one of the most disturbing conversations I have ever had. I refuse to identify this woman, because the life of a graduate student is hard enough without having to deal with personal condemnation for what in truth is just one instance of a vast, systemic problem. Let’s just call her Jane.
Repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results. The I-5 Rose Quarter project is over budget at $2.1 billion, just lost more than $400 million in federal funding, and failed to get any additional funding from the recently adjourned Oregon Legislature. And the Governor says she’s only going to ask for money for basic maintenance functions at the state transportation department. Nonetheless, the Oregon Transportation Commission voted to continue the project, even though, as the Commission Chair noted, “With that said, everyone in this room needs to understand that beyond that, there is no money… We are not saying that we are going to move forward with a complete Rose Quarter.”
As City Observatory’s Joe Cortright testified to the Commission prior to the vote, proceeding with the project without funding in hand is a recipe for worsening the department’s already perilous financial state.
Editor’s note: On July 24, 2025, the Oregon Transportation Commission voted to continue work on the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway project, even in the face of a more than $1.5 billion funding gap, the combined result of continuing cost overruns, Congressional revocation of a $400 million federal grant, and the Oregon Legislature’s decision not to provide additional funding for ODOT in the 2025 session. Even as the agency lays of hundreds of employees, it is proceeding with ground breaking for a project which it can’t pay for.
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
‘Making the Good Society’ is a video series from the Broadbent Institute and Perspectives Journal that asks progressive leaders and thinkers about their vision for a good society that is humane, just, and democratic.
Sharlene Henry is co-chair of the York South-Weston Tenant Union in Toronto and a longtime member of Unifor Local 1285. Speaking at the 2025 Progress Summit, she shares how her experiences as a union member and tenant organizer have gone hand-in-hand—and how the skills of the picket line carry over into the fight for housing justice. With half the tenants in her building belonging to unions, she shows that housing justice is a workers’ issue—and a winning one when movements come together.
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.
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:
Abolishing negative gearing and phasing out the capital gains tax discount
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.
On this episode of Dollars & Sense, replacement Matt (Greg Jericho) and Elinor debunk some long-standing myths about the Australian economy, discuss cuts to HECS and examine the latest in Trump’s beef beef.
Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available for pre-order now via the Australia Institute website.
This discussion was recorded on Thursday 24 July 2025.
Host: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute and Centre for Future Work // @grogsgamut
Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek
Projections released by the Albanese Government show Australia’s gas consumption is in long-term decline — undermining claims by the Prime Minister that more gas is needed to support the renewable energy transition.
Analysis by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) confirms that Australia’s gas use peaked years ago and will continue falling as electrification and renewables rise.
“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,” the report said.
Modelling from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) backs this up.
In its 2024 Integrated System Plan, AEMO shows that gas will never again reach past generation peaks and will play only a minor, occasional role in electricity generation in the decades ahead.
Despite this, more than 1,000 new petajoules of gas are scheduled to come online by 2027 — not to support domestic energy needs, but for export.
“Australia is projected to continue exporting significantly more gas than we consume,” said Ketan Joshi, Senior Research Associate at The Australia Institute.
“Gas use in Australia has peaked.
“It is pretty simple: Australia does not need to be expanding its fossil gas production, least of all to run fossil gas power stations.
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.
Too Little, Too Late Show | The Roundtable Ep. 277
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.
The court found the Independent Planning Commission failed to take into account the impact of all the carbon pollution associated with the project, including pollution from the exported emissions when the coal is sold and burned overseas.
Mach Energy’s Mount Pleasant coal mine expansion near Muswellbrook is one of the most polluting coal projects that was seeking approval in Australia.
The project is so big it covers an area which would almost cover the entire electorates of Sydney and Grayndler.
The decision comes after a challenge from the Denman, Aberdeen, Muswellbrook, Scone Healthy Environment Group.
While this is a welcome result, the NSW Land and Environment Court will have to consider whether conditions can be imposed that would validate the approval, or whether the project must return to the planning commission.
“There are two other coal mines that were granted extension by the federal government in the Hunter Valley,” said Richard Denniss, Executive Director of The Australia Institute.
“While it is welcome news that one may not go ahead, these approvals are inconsistent with Australia’s climate goals and reinforces the country’s reputation as one of the world’s major fossil fuel exporters.
“To approve huge new coal mines while bidding to host COP31 is a slap in the face to our Pacific neighbors, who have clearly and repeatedly requested that Australia stop expanding fossil fuel production.
Australians have elected power-sharing parliaments in New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania – and a single party almost never has a majority in the federal Senate. On this episode of Follow the Money, Leanne Minshull and Eloise Carr join Ebony Bennett to discuss why collaborative parliaments are popular and how our elected officials can make them work.
The radical Left’s indifference to human life in the wake of the Texas floods is shocking. It exposes not just a troubling lack of civil discourse among the next generation of its leaders—but progressives’ long-romanticized destruction of their political foes.
Unhinged reactions to the victims of the Guadalupe River tragedy—with some even expressing satisfaction that potential MAGA supporters died—do not simply reveal the twisted views of a few leftist outliers: they expose the core principle that animates the entire movement. The radical Left increasingly sees political violence as a legitimate option in light of the Democrats’ inability to stop President Trump’s agenda.
The gutting of public funding for higher education in the United States has led to the takeover of universities by private donors, many of whom are Zionist entities and billionaires. As a result, universities have become, as guest Dr. Maura Finkelstein calls them, “banks and real estate development companies that offer classes.”
When CBS announced it would cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Donald Trump “truthed” as follows: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings.” Summoning a gilt cartoon frame called the “eloquence cam,” Colbert replied: “Go f**k yourself.”
His fellow talk show host, Jon Stewart, addressed CBS directly with the help of a backup gospel choir: “Go f**k yourself! (Go f**k yourself!) Go f**k yourself!” and so on.
One begins to detect a theme. Powerful as it is to watch two men in their 60s repeatedly shriek a single obscenity at an ever-thinning crowd, maybe Trump had a point?
That all changed in 2015 when a few corporations started exporting vast amounts of liquefied natural gas, exposing Australians to high global gas prices. The result was a tripling of wholesale gas prices in the country, and a huge transfer of wealth from Australian households and businesses to the handful of gas corporations to which we had given control of our resources.
The gas corporations convinced our governments that if they were allowed to develop the vast onshore reserves in the state of Queensland for export, we would experience enormous economic benefits, while gas prices would remain low.
None of it was true. Instead, large areas of our beautiful country have been transformed into industrial gas fields and we now have expensive gas, rolling gas shortage fears and few economic benefits.
It appears Canada may be making the same mistake.
Prior to 2015, the wholesale price of gas in the country was under $4 a gigajoule (all figures in Australian dollars unless otherwise noted). Gas producers couldn’t ramp up prices because of the laws of supply and demand; we had an ample supply of low-cost gas for the limited domestic market.
But the opening of gas export terminals meant the Australian market was now a small part of the huge global market, where gas prices were three times higher than at home. Gas exporters were able to force Australians to compete with Asian customers who were prepared to pay much more than the long-term price in Australia.
It has been a little over 10 years since Donald Trump, with characteristic flair, descended the escalators at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for the presidency of the United States.
Today, we can say in the words of Henry Olsen, the always astute political analyst, that “Trumpism is here to stay,” and that “there will be no conservative return to a pre-Trump consensus.” Advocates of such a return claim to represent republican rectitude and fidelity to constitutional norms now under threat from a supposedly reckless and demagogic populism.
In truth, however, whatever the virtues of the old consensus, its adherents were far from perfect or imitable in important respects. They were slow to resist “the culture of repudiation” (in Roger Scruton’s arresting phrase) that had colonized the educational and entertainment worlds, as well as the commanding heights of civil society, including large swaths of the business sector. In recent decades, these quarters hectored Americans and instructed them to hate themselves. Much of our elite class obsessed about race and gender in ways that undermined self-respect and propagandized groups based on accidents of birth to give themselves over to anger and despair.
