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This is the second installment in the Notes on the Crises series on the IRS. While the first essay traced how the agency has become a political target and potential tool of authoritarianism, this piece investigates how DOGE’s so-called tech modernization efforts may further entrench those risks. 

Anisha Steephen (they/them) is a nationally recognized expert in domestic economic policy and mission-driven investing, with over 15 years of experience advancing public policies that address structural inequality. Anisha served as the first Senior Policy Advisor for Racial Equity at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.  Anisha can be found on bluesky ‪@asteephen.bsky.social‬.

When: 5 August, 1:00-2:30 pm

Where: Room 341, Social Sciences Building (A02), University of Sydney

Speaker: Dr Ilias Alami

In its campaign to shake up higher education, the Trump Administration has taken unprecedented steps to repel foreign college students. These include banning Harvard University from enrolling foreign nationals, ordering American embassies and consulates to pause all student visa interviews, and revoking visas of students from China. While the administration has since walked back some of these measures, the problem of foreign students demands sober reflection.

Matteo Crosignani and Martin Hiti

The Federal Reserve’s mission and regional structure ask that it always work to better understand local and regional economic activity. This requires gauging the economic impact of localized events, including natural disasters. Despite the economic significance of natural disasters—flowing often from their human toll—there are currently no publicly available data on the damages they cause in the United States at the county level.

By Manuel Aguilera

By Manuel Aguilera

This title borrows a phrase from Ruth Puttick, Principal Research Fellow at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), during the panel “Building Dynamic Capabilities: How Do Cities Adapt to Tackle Grand Challenges?” The session was chaired by Dan Hill, Director of Melbourne School of Design, and featured Mariana Mazzucato, Founding Director of UCL IIPP, James Anderson, Head of Government Innovation Programs at Bloomberg Philanthropies, Ruth Puttick, Senior Research Fellow at UCL IIPP, and Bridgette Morris, Innovation and Customer Insights Manager for the City of Cape Town. Held as part of the 2025 IIPP Forum, the panel explored why promising ideas often stall inside city governments and what it really takes to make progress last. This blog follows up on that conversation.

Ever since the Republican Party failed to repeal and replace Obamacare during President Trump’s first term, healthcare reform has slipped off the GOP’s agenda. However, Obamacare’s problems continue to fester, with Americans in the individual health insurance market facing high costs and restricted choices. If the GOP intends to deliver on its pledge to help middle-class families—and especially the young voters who swung to Trump—it must finally honor its broken promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. In doing so, the GOP could look to countries like Australia, Chile, and Germany on how to restructure the individual market.

By Manuel Aguilera

Climate change has made it impossible to treat development as business as usual. Extreme weather, food insecurity, mass displacement, and the loss of biodiversity are exposing just how outdated our economic governance models have become. But while governments have shown they can mobilize trillions in times of war or financial collapse, this boldness is still absent when it comes to inequality, hunger, and climate resilience.

In this context, the climate crisis can no longer be seen as an environmental issue, but a governance challenge. And the aid system, still anchored in a donor-driven assistance paradigm, is being called into question.

This, by me, is just out in Slate:

Supreme Court Rules Some Americans Have a Constitutional Right to Insist on Theocracy

Alito had to contort the meaning of canonical Supreme Court doctrine so that he could either ignore established precedent or turn it on its head.

SlateHeidi Li Feldman

By Manuel Aguilera

This blog is a follow-up to the panel discussion From Digital Feudalism to Digital Sovereignty, part of UCL IIPP’s Rethinking the State Forum 2025. The session, chaired by Rainer Kattel, Co-Deputy Director and Professor of Innovation and Public Governance at UCL IIPP, featured Francesca Bria, Honorary Professor at UCL/IIPP, member of the High-Level Roundtable for the New European Bauhaus, and co-author of EuroStack 2025; Mike Bracken, visiting Professor at UCL/IIPP, founding partner at Public Digital and former Executive Director of the UK Government Digital Service; Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at UCL and Founding Director of IIPP; and Cecilia Rikap, Associate Professor in Economics and Head of Research at UCL/IIPP. The recording can be watched above.

By Manuel Aguilera

“Don’t even bother talking about efficiency unless you know what it’s for”. With this provocation, Mariana Mazzucato opened the panel “Beyond the Chainsaw: Rethinking Efficiency in Government” at IIPP’s Rethinking the State Forum 2025. The conversation, moderated by Josh Entsminger, PhD student at UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, featured Yamini Aiyar, former CEO of the Centre for Policy Research; Rohit Chopra, former Director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Elizabeth Linos, Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor of Public Policy and Management; Damon Silvers, Visiting Professor at UCL IIPP; and Mazzucato herself, Professor and Founding Director at UCL IIPP.

Over the course of ninety minutes, the panel unpacked what efficiency has come to mean in public administration and how, far from being a neutral virtue, it has become a weapon.

Pornography has never been more free—free in a double sense because nearly anyone in the world can access pornography at little to no cost, and there are seemingly no limits to what can be pornographized. Given the pervasiveness of pornography in the world today, and its real impact on our political and personal lives, last month our Materialist Feminist Reading Group read Andrea Dworkin’s recently re-issued book  Pornography: Men Possessing Women. At the end of the session, we considered the question: what ought to be the Left’s position on pornography? Or, as Dworkin provocatively puts it: can the Left have its whores and its politics too?

On this episode of After America, Professor James Laurenceson, Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute, joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the Trump administration’s confused approach to China and how Australia is navigating these complex relationships.

This discussion was recorded on Friday 13 June 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

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

Join Dr Emma Shortis and Dr Richard Denniss in conversation about After America: Australia and the new world order at the University of Melbourne at 6pm AEST, Wednesday 16 July.

Guest: James Laurenceson, Professor and Director, Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney // @j_laurenceson

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

Show notes:

On this episode, Sunita Narain joins Paul Barclay to discuss the need for inclusive and equitable growth in tackling climate change, pollution and congestion in Delhi, renewable energy in India and how climate change and climate justice will affect global migration.

This discussion was recorded on Tuesday, 18 February 2025, and things may have changed since the recording.

Order What’s the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website.

Guest: Sunita Narain, Environmentalist Writer and Director general, the Centre of Science and Environment // @sunitanar

Host: Paul Barclay, Walkley Award winning journalist and broadcaster // @PaulBarclay

Show notes:

Our crisis of integrity looms in the Pacific by Elizabeth Morison, The Canberra Times (December 2024)

The National Climate Disaster Fund: Our Pacific neighbours, an Australia Institute initiative

At the 2025 federal election, the Albanese Labor Government won over 55% of the two-party preferred vote. The two-party preferred vote, called 2PP, measures whether Australians preferred their Labor candidate or their Liberal–National Coalition candidate. 55% of the 2PP is the party’s best result since 1943.

This high 2PP vote disguises a relatively low first-preference vote of 35% for Labor. That is, only about one in three voters put “1” next to their Labor candidate.

The Labor Party has never received so many preferences. 20% of Australians preferred Labor to the Coalition but did not put Labor first. That 20% plus the 35% who gave Labor their first preference results in 55% 2PP for Labor. The result is a Labor landslide, despite a relatively low first-preference vote.

The Liberal–National Coalition also depended on preferences to an unusually large degree. Even so, it had a historically low vote, whether you measure it in first-preference or 2PP terms.

The post Major parties have never relied more on preferences appeared first on The Australia Institute.