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On this episode of Follow the Money, Richard Denniss and Ebony Bennett discuss the lack of accountability in Australia’s universities, why some institutions’ claims of financial crises aren’t supported by their auditors, and what Australians think about the state of the sector.

Aiming Higher: Universities and Australia’s future by Professor George Williams is available now via Australia Institute Press.

Guest: Richard Denniss, co-CEO, the Australia Institute // @richarddenniss

Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebonybennett

Show notes:

Australians believe universities are too expensive and not doing their job: polling, the Australia Institute (November 2025)

There is no financial crisis at the University of Newcastle: new analysis, the Australia Institute (October 2025)

Polling also found only 3% of Australians think making a profit should be a primary purpose of universities – however more than half believe that it currently is a primary purpose.

Meanwhile, fewer than half of Australians believe educating students is currently a primary purpose of universities, despite 80% thinking it should be.

Key findings:

• Three out of four Australians (77%) think university degrees should cost $10,000 or less per year.
• About three in five Australians (58%) think university degrees should cost $5,000 or less per year.
• Less than one in 20 (3%) of Australians think that making a profit should be a primary purpose of universities, yet more than half (54%) believe that it currently is a primary purpose.
• Four in five (80%) Australians think that educating students should be a primary purpose of universities, yet 44% believe it is currently a primary purpose of universities.

“University fees are totally out of step with community expectations. Despite about three in five Australians believing degrees should cost $5,000 or less a year, most university degrees are more expensive than this. Highly popular degrees such as arts, commerce, and law now cost about $17,000 per year,” said Jack Thrower, Senior Economist at The Australia Institute.

“High university fees are leading to mounting student debts, which are taking ever longer to pay off.

In Cultivating Socialism: Venezuela, ALBA, and the Politics of Food Sovereignty, Rowan Lubbock offers a compelling multiscalar analysis of the pursuit of food sovereignty. His account of the Boliviarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and the central role of the Venezuelan state invites us to revisit the promise of regional integration as part of a socialist project of continental proportions. Cultivating Socialism highlights ALBA’s revolutionary challenge to US hegemony in Latin America and to the region’s historical dependency on commodity exports and outward-oriented growth. To do so, Lubbock – and the Venezuelan state – look to their neighbours and citizens to think about other sites and scales of transformation. There, he provides a Marxian and Poulantzasian reading not only of sovereignty but also of the subject of food sovereignty, seeing its achievement as ‘a democratic road to socialism’.

“I, Wisdom, dwell with prudence (phronēsis), and I find knowledge and discretion. By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just.” – Proverbs 8:12–14 (ESV)

“Practical wisdom (phronēsis) is a true and reasoned state of capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man.” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VI.5–13

As Thucydides observed, the causes that drive nations to war—fear, honor, and interest—remain constant. A prudent foreign policy recognizes the powerful pull of these passions without surrendering to them.

Leo Strauss is often accused of inspiring not only neoconservatism, a movement bereft of such wisdom, but specifically the vigorous interventionism championed by the most vociferous voices within its ranks. On the surface, the Platonic rationalism that searches for the discoverable “just city” seems to infer the duty to impose such a schema onto others, willing or not. In direct contrast, the “Realism and Restraint” school is often linked with ideologies of amorality or isolationism. “Just leave me alone and let me grill.”

Both of these caricatures are foolish simplifications. In reality, both approaches share a moral foundation rooted in prudence (phronēsis), the classical virtue of doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons.

Prime Minister Mark Carney is about to break a campaign promise made just a few months ago that will hurt Canadians in the middle of Donald Trump’s trade war. During the federal election, the Liberal Party platform in April clearly stated its commitment to “capping, not cutting, public service employment.” Fast forward to Carney’s first budget, and the federal government is ready to slash public service jobs at a rate not seen in decades when we should be reinforcing its ranks to tackle this economic crisis.

For Canada’s public servants, this is not new. Public servants are used to being scapegoated as the source of government overspending or used as a bargaining chip to appease fiscal hawks. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals resorted to arbitrary cuts to the public service to win back public support as it waxed and waned, but then outsourced services to overpriced contractors that often could not deliver.

This guest blog was written by our Trustee Dianne Danquah as part of Trustees Week, which celebrates the contributions of volunteers like Dianne. Even before joining in June, Dianne made huge contributions through being a youth advocate. I became a trustee at the Equality Trust earlier this year because I believe everyone deserves to live […]

The post Trustee Week – “Everyone Deserves A Beautiful Life” appeared first on Equality Trust.

Matteo Crosignani, Thomas Eisenbach, and Fulvia Fringuellotti

As in previous years, we provide in this post an update on the vulnerability of the U.S. banking system based on four analytical models that capture different aspects of this vulnerability. We use data through 2025:Q2 for our analysis, and also discuss how the vulnerability measures have changed since our last update one year ago.

There are now more than 4 million guns legally owned in Australia, more than before the Port Arthur tragedy in 1996.

Worse still, significant numbers of legally-owned guns are stolen each year, according to research published by the Australia Institute.

According to police statistics in each state and the ACT, more than 9000 firearms were stolen from 2020 to 2024.

That works out at more than 2000 guns a year on average, or one every four hours.

Over the past two decades, at least 44,631 guns were stolen, a substantial supply of weapons into the hands of criminals.

Gaps in the data and a lack of information on unregistered firearms mean that the full number of firearms stolen in that time must be even larger.

Data on firearm theft is not consistent, with different information provided depending on the state.

For example, Victoria and South Australia provide information on the types of firearms stolen.

Tasmania has numbers for both firearms stolen and incidents of firearms theft, showing on average three guns are stolen per robbery.

It also shows the RBA cares more about inflation than jobs.

“Unsurprisingly the Reserve Bank has chosen to keep rates steady at 3.6% This reflects that yet again the RBA care more about inflation than maintaining full employment,” said Greg Jericho, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute.

“In the past month unemployment continued its steady rise to 4.5%, while the inflation had a surprisingly sharp increase due mostly to the end of state-based energy rebates.

“In response the RBA has shown it is less worried about ongoing rising unemployment than reacting to a surprising blip in inflation.

“The most recent household spending figures released yesterday showed households are slowing their spending and shifting towards spending on necessities.

“In order to keep unemployment from rising further that RBA must care as much about the full employment part of its dual mandate as it does inflation.”

The post Rate hold shows RBA cares more about inflation than jobs appeared first on The Australia Institute.