In tiny, idyllic Tuvalu, there are no climate deniers. It’s impossible to deny what’s happening before your very eyes.
Sea water is pushing up through the land, destroying traditional crops and making the water unfit to drink. High tides are inundating the country, flooding the main island’s only airport, cutting Tuvalu off from the world.
“Tuvalu is ground zero for the global climate crisis,” said Stephen Long, filmmaker and Senior Fellow and Contributing Editor at The Australia Institute.
“No nation is more vulnerable than this small Pacific country.”
Save Tuvalu, Save The World looks at climate change through the eyes of those experiencing the consequences of climate change in their everyday lives, including young climate campaigner Gitty Yee, who visited Australia last week for three sold-out preview screenings of the documentary.
“I see myself as a climate warrior,” Gitty says.
“I fight for my country, and I fight for what we believe in. I fight for our right to live, our right to prosper, for our future generations.”
A friend asked a question about whether there is research on whether some people are more receptive to some communication styles and more resistant to others.
And there short answer is: a lot. There are scholars working on that question in advertising, political communication, health communication, political psychology, social psychology, argumentation, cognitive psychology, logic, interpersonal communication. Hell, Aristotle makes claims about what styles are more appropriate for various audiences (and rhetors).
Roughly a year before President Trump was inaugurated for the second time, I joined a group of 230 veterans in signing the Declaration of Military Accountability. It seeks justice for the violation of military members’ rights of conscience during the COVID era and calls for steps to be taken to make amends for abuses of command authority. Having lived through the terror of weaponized institutions being directed at us and our loved ones, those of us who are calling for a return to constitutional rule in the Armed Forces have no interest in an inquisition. It is not a technique we wish to make part of the American tradition. But systems of law remain trustworthy only when they uphold and administer justice.
There are three basic camps among top military management that enforced the Pentagon’s illegal shot mandate.
The Concerned Institutionalists had reservations about the legality and ethics of the Department of War’s COVID policies and enforced them with mercy and flexibility for those under their charge. They recognized that shot, mask, and testing mandates were morally suspect and tempered enforcement with sympathy. Though these supervisory officials personally adhered to immoral policies, they avoided acting in punitive ways toward subordinates who had moral and ethical concerns.
The Australia Institute board is pleased to announce Leanne Minshull has been named as co-Chief Executive Officer.
Leanne will be working in the role alongside Dr Richard Denniss, who will also serve as co-Chief Executive Officer.
Formerly the Institute’s Strategy Director, Leanne has built an extensive network across political, advocacy, and business communities, working as a senior strategist in social, environmental, not-for-profit, and political sectors.
Quotes attributable to Australia Institute Board Chair, Dr John McKinnon:
“The board is thrilled to have such capable and experienced leaders within the Institute, and under the leadership of Richard and Leanne we can ensure we remain effective as we continue to grow.
“The Australia Institute is nation’s most consequential think tank, and with more than 50 staff working on multiple projects and initiatives, we are one of the country’s most high-impact organisations.
“We look forward to the next chapter in the Institute’s development and our growing role in helping shape the future of the nation.”
Quotes attributable to Australia Institute co-Chief Executive Officer, Richard Denniss:
“I am thrilled Leanne has agreed to take on the role of co-CEO.
“Leanne brings a wealth of experience to the organisation, through decades of working to make Australia a fairer place across politics, policy, and advocacy.
The list has been compiled by Dr Frank Yuan, Postdoctoral Fellow at The Australia Institute, who insists China is far less mysterious and scary than most Australians might think.
In fact, he says, beyond daily news references to China’s economic and military power, there are countless stories of successful Chinese business tycoons, entertainers, journalists, academics and government officials – many with deep connections to the west.
There’s the tech mogul who flew too close to the sun, the “wolf warrior” journalist who once described Australia as “chewed gum stuck on China’s boot” and the global pop star who could teach Taylor Swift a thing or two.
The paper – Today’s China in Seven Life Stories – urges Australian to get to know the woman behind the face on the label of their favourite chili sauce, the energy tsar helping transform China into a renewable energy superpower and the theoretician who’s shaped China’s foreign outlook under three Presidents.
“China is a surprisingly cosmopolitan society. It is full of countless rags-to-riches stories as part of the astounding economic development it has experienced since the 1980s,” said Dr Frank Yuan.
“Many Chinese elites have not only visited western countries, but even educational or professional connections with them. Increasingly, popular culture in China is also becoming part of the globalised pop culture.
On this episode of Follow the Money, Dr Emma Shortis and Glenn Connley discuss Anthony Albanese’s major diplomatic tour, the US Defense Secretary’s concerning warning to his top brass, and why the Trump-Netanyahu peace plan seems “doomed to fail”.
You can sign our petition calling on the Australian Government to launch a parliamentary inquiry into AUKUS.
I slunk into the house, body bloodied and T-shirt torn, failing to go unnoticed. My son looked up from his video game of bedraggled freaks. The real deal had arrived.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” I muttered, peeling a bandage from my arm. Deep cut shaped like a scythe or a smile, two dark blue steady growing bruises above.
“Bruh Mama,” my son said with concern.
Bruh Mama is my name. It is a Gen Z honorific, like Friar Tuck.
“That’s not nothing. What’d you do?”
“Went to the lake.”
“What happened at the lake?”
“You don’t want to know,” I said. “You’ll lose all respect for me.”
“Um…” he said, firing teenage ellipses like bullets, and I said, “Hey!”
“Respect, Bruh Mama,” my son said solemnly. “I respect you.” Grains of sand fell from my hair like little lost pieces of dignity.
“OK, I’ll tell you,” I said. “A giant flying carp hit me in the face and knocked me half out of my kayak into a fallen tree which trapped me with branches like claws and as soon as I broke loose, the goddamn carp flew back and smacked me again.”
In June 2025, the Public Sector Capabilities Index team at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), travelled to Finland to learn more about Finnish city government capability building. In this blog, we explore some of the ways in which these city governments build coalitions with external actors and offer some key lessons for other cities to build and sustain these partnerships.
Challenges facing cities
The multiplicity of challenges facing urban areas in Finland are no different than those in other parts of the world: climate pressures, housing affordability, inequality. With the prevalence of these challenges increasing, so too is the importance placed on city governments to effectively address them. Finnish city governments are proactively building coalitions and partnerships to tackle them.
Andrew Beck’s “Assimilation and Its Discontents” helps us understand why assimilation is an urgent concern. Anthropologists and historians make it clear that human beings, from bands of hunter-gatherers to modern nation-states, have always lived in sociopolitical groups that were distinct from one another. This enduring, fundamental reality elevates the importance of determining each group’s far edge. Who’s in and who’s out? And by what standard do we make this distinction?
The United States of America has been not only one of the most heterogeneous social orders in human history, but also one of the most successfully heterogeneous. Even in America, however, there is a limit beyond which heterogeneity renders a nation incoherent in both senses of the term: it doesn’t make sense; and it can no longer hold together as a single sociopolitical entity wherein Americans feel they have important ties and obligations to one another for no reason other than a shared national identity. To exceed that limit, Beck warns, invites the collapse of our nation into “fractious, tribal chaos.”
Media Release Number 2025-28: The Reserve Bank of Australia has today released a summary of findings from the latest triennial survey of turnover in foreign exchange (FX) and over-the-counter (OTC) interest rate derivatives markets that was conducted in the Australian market in April 2025.
Over the past few decades, countless “rules” or “laws” have been coined to describe the murmurations of internet behavior. One of the most enduring of these is Godwin’s Law, which holds that as an online discussion continues, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler or the Nazis approaches one. This “law” is as much a joke as a thesis, but the universality of the reductio ad Hitlerum suggests something fundamental to public thought.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, they played the role of Hitler. Ukraine, too, needed to be de-Nazified. On October 7, Hamas recreated the Holocaust. Now Israel is smeared as a génocidaire. Gun control, porn bans, or HOA bylaws—it’s all fascist. Be they strict teachers or world leaders, everyone is someone’s führer. For Alec Ryrie, this rhetorical cliche is proof that the West has chosen Adolf Hitler as its primary moral reference point, replacing Jesus Christ.
This claim was argued in 2021 by another British historian, Tom Holland: “Today, when we ask ourselves ‘what would Hitler have done?’, and do the opposite…our forebearers…wondered ‘what would Jesus have done,’ and sought to do the same.” Ryrie agrees: “Crosses and crucifixes have lost most of their power in our culture. It is possible to play with them, even joke about them, and no one really minds. Not so with swastikas.” Renaud Camus has described Hitler’s role as a moral symbol as his “second career.”
In the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, sea water is being pushed up through the land, destroying traditional crops and making water unfit to drink. Tuvalu’s low-lying islands and atolls could become unliveable within decades, and without urgent action, it is a fate that could be shared by other Pacific nations, and Indigenous people in the Torres Strait islands.
A new documentary highlighting the devastating impact of climate change on the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu has been previewed in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. Save Tuvalu, Save the World is presented by Walkley Award-winning journalist and former ABC Four Corners reporter Stephen Long, and tells the story of a country on the frontline of rising seas.
The screenings drew strong interest from audiences keen to better understand the human consequences of global warming. Each event featured a Q&A session with Long and climate campaigner and Tuvalu resident Gitty K Yee, who shared personal insights into the challenges Tuvaluans face. In Sydney, the discussion also included City of Sydney Councillor Jess Miller, adding a local perspective on climate action.
Greg Jericho, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute, describes the decision as “very cruel”, ensuring more pain for those struggling with high mortgage repayments and more job losses.
He says all the key economic data supported another interest rate cut, which would have given them much-needed relief after three years of pain.
“The Reserve Bank has once again chosen to be content with rising unemployment,” said Greg Jericho, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute.
“While there have been some signs of improved household spending, the major reason for the increase has been the recent interest rate cuts, rather than an underlying strength in the economy.
“The last recent GDP figures showed the economy still growing at barely half the long-term average, while unemployment has been rising steadily for all of this year.
“The opportunity to lock in unemployment at 4% is fast disappearing due to the Reserve Bank believing there needs to be more people unemployed in order to keep inflation below 3%.
“For those Australians forced to live in poverty on Jobseeker, this is a very cruel decision.”
Are you a worker? Yes. Are you a consumer shopper? Yes. Are you a taxpayer? Yes. Voter? Well, sometimes. Are you a parent? Yes. Are you a veteran? Sometimes. Well, how can you say you’re a nobody? You know things about those roles. You’ve experienced them. You’ve been frustrated. If you lie to yourself to be a nobody, you’re going to be treated like a nobody. You’re going to be treated like someone who doesn’t count, someone who doesn’t matter, somebody who can be disrespected, someone who can be ripped off, somebody who could be underinsured, somebody who can be suppressed.
What’s On around Naarm/Melbourne & Regional Victoria: Sep 29-Oct 05, 2025 With thanks to the dedicated activists at Friends of the Earth Melbourne! . . See also these Palestine events listings from around the country: 9778
Rowan Lubbock’s Cultivating Socialism: Venezuela, ALBA and the Politics of Food Sovereigntyis an important book for understanding the agrarian dimensions of Venezuela’s socialist experiment and the ALBA regional integration project at both the theoretical and empirical levels. The rise of Food Sovereignty as a central organising demand for agrarian movements in Latin America in recent years raises several questions: who is sovereign?sovereignty over what? from what? To address these questions, Lubbock develops a class-relational conceptual framework for understanding modern sovereignty as an ‘historically specific combination of rights and territory – or the right to exploit labour and the territorial organization of social production’ (p. 9). From this, the struggles within food sovereignty are conceived as projects seeking ‘self-directed labour and cooperative territorial organization’ (p. 9). This enables Lubbock to analyse the difficulties faced by diverse agrarian movements in very different local and national circumstances as ‘the strategic necessity of confronting the duality of modern sovereignty – condensed within spaces of capitalist production and the capitalist state itself’.
If you believe the markets, there won’t be an interest rate cut after this week’s Reserve Bank meeting.
You’re likely to hear a bunch of reasons but missing from them is the most important one: The RBA has no confidence in what inflation is going to do and it is continually worried that it is about to shoot up.
In the past, the RBA has been confident in its inflation predictions. It needed to be.
The impact of interest rates on the economy takes time and you need to set them for where you think inflation is going to be in six to 12 months, not where they have been in the past.
But in the past decade, the central bank has made some spectacular mistakes about movements in inflation. The biggest was former Governor Philip Lowe saying interest rates wouldn’t rise until at least 2024.
He then had to rapidly increase them in 2022.
To be fair to Lowe, he did have some caveats on that prediction. But the public, including the media, largely took it as a promise.
The RBA was also caught out before the pandemic, keeping interest rates too high because it thought inflation was about to increase. It never did and the subsequent Reserve Bank review criticised it for that inaction.
Both of these episodes highlight that the RBA has misunderstood the main drivers of inflation.
This seems to have shaken it, and instead of looking forward with confidence, it is looking behind in fear.
On this episode of After America, Charlie Lewis joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the apparent obsession of Anthony Albanese’s opponents with that bilateral meeting, the transformation of the Republican Party under Trump, and how Australia’s political landscape is being influenced by MAGA.
This episode was recorded on Thursday 25 September.
Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available now via the Australia Institute website.
Guest: Charlie Lewis, reporter-at-large, Crikey // @theshufflediary
Host: Emma Shortis, Director of International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis
When 20-year-old loner Thomas Matthew Crooks ascended a sloped roof in Butler County, Pennsylvania, and opened fire, he unleashed a torrent of cliches. Commentators and public figures avoided the term “assassination attempt,” even if the AR-15 was trained on the head of a then-former president—instead, they condemned “political violence.”
“There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy,” former president Barack Obama said. One year later, he added the word “despicable” to his condemnation of the assassin who killed Charlie Kirk. That was an upgrade from two weeks prior, when he described the shooting at Annunciation Catholic School by a transgender individual as merely “unnecessary.”
Anyone fluent in post-9/11 rhetoric knows that political violence is the domain of terrorists and lone wolf ideologues, whose manifestos will soon be unearthed by federal investigators, deciphered by the high priests of our therapeutic age, and debated by partisans on cable TV. The attempt to reduce it to the mere atomized individual, however, is a modern novelty. From the American Revolution to the Civil War, from the 1863 draft riots to the 1968 MLK riots, from the spring of Rodney King to the summer of George Floyd, there is a long history of Americans resorting to violence to achieve political ends by way of the mob.
On 17 September 2025, the RBA decided to vary the Access Regime for the ATM System (the Access Regime) with effect on 1 October 2025. The purpose of the variation is to accommodate the replacement of the associated industry-administered ATM Access Code with a new ATM Access Standard. The amendments to the Access Regime are minor and do not change its substantive requirements.
PM open to Blair running Gaza plan The Age (& SMH) | Matthew Knott | 28 September 2025 https://edition.theage.com.au/shortcode/THE965/edition/f5b545a8-5fae-d751-727c-f2015aa149b7?page=baa4d839-470e-7674-6dd0-98bce8bd292a& London: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has expressed openness to former British prime minister Tony Blair running a post-war authority in Gaza, as he rejected the anti-immigration politics of insurgent British right-wing populist leader Nigel Farage. Albanese […]
About a decade ago, a person I knew very well who had been very helpful to me in my campaigns when I was in the Senate said she had met a very impressive young man. He was going to start a group to go on college campuses and try to convince young Americans that ours is the greatest country in the history of the world, and that Marxism is bad.
And I remember thinking back then, I was a little skeptical. I said, “College campuses? You’re going to do that? Why don’t you start somewhere easier, like, for example, Communist Cuba?”
But my skepticism was proven wrong in place after place.
Over the last decade and a half, we’ve seen a renaissance. Understand where we were at that time in our history. Understand where we are still today in many places, where young Americans are actively told that everything they were taught—that all the foundations that made our society and our civilization so grand—was wrong. That they are all evil, that marriage is oppressive, that children are a burden, that America is a source of evil, not of good, in the world.
As I’ve said many times, as soon as a public, media, or person frames our complicated world of policy options as either a binary or continuum of two sides, then it’s all about in- and out-groups, and our shared world of policy disagreements isn’t the kind of disagreement that can help communities come to pragmatic solutions. It’s some degree of demagoguery. Maybe it’s a horse race, maybe it’s a full-throated call for political or physical extermination. But it’s never useful for effective deliberation, about anything. Because there are never just two sides about any policy.
One of the least understood but most consequential aspects of American government is the United States Federal Reserve System. Bankers, investors, and even the president sit with bated breath, waiting to see how the Fed will manage interest rates.
The Fed is so important to the world economy that the president sometimes may feel the need to voice his administration’s position and hope the chair of the Federal Reserve will acquiesce to his wishes. Sometimes, however, he may point out issues with the chair’s performance, puncturing the claim of central bank independence. President Trump recently accused Fed Chair Jerome Powell of being too late with interest rate cuts, “except when it came to the Election period when he lowered [interest rates] in order to help Sleepy Joe Biden, later Kamala, get elected.”
This week, we published important research that looked at terrible flaws in the GST that are costing Australians billions of dollars in important government services, like health, education, housing, and infrastructure.
When the GST was introduced, it was promised to be a growth tax that would help make the states and territories financially independent. But growth in the GST has not kept up with the rest of the economy. The slow growing GST means less revenue flowing to the states and territories, forcing cost cutting to essential public services.
This slow growth is expected to continue, costing the states and territories $26 billion this financial year and a staggering $122 billion over the next four years.
Short-changing the states and territories is having real impacts on the vital government services they provide. Shortfalls in funding of health, education, and other vital public services are commonplace across Australia.
The slow growth in the GST is caused by rising inequality, which is driving less spending on things that are subject to the GST. For example, the housing affordability crisis means people are spending more on rent and mortgage repayments, which means they have less money to spend on things that are subject to the GST.
Everyone is speculating about what drove a young man to assassinate Charlie Kirk. But for academics like us, the more pressing lesson lies not in the mind of the killer, but in the conditions that elevated Kirk to such notoriety.
Kirk’s voice echoed against the awkward silence of scholars who are afraid to speak out against ideas they know are wrong. On many campuses today, a dominant cohort of faculty and administrators openly promote progressive and liberal positions in policy, curriculum, and student life, while those with traditional or conservative views hold their tongues, fearing social backlash or professional reprisals. Among students, the same imbalance prevails: liberal voices are amplified while conservative and nonconforming perspectives struggle to be heard.
Such reticence from the dissenting few amplified the shock felt by the majority of students each time Kirk appeared on campuses to openly challenge what he saw as comfortable orthodoxy. Liberals and progressives were not prepared to receive any pushback to their assumptions about equity versus equality, Critical Race Theory, gender identity, cosmopolitanism, or the expansion of state power into private life.
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.
The Kirk Awakening | The Roundtable Ep. 286
Special guest Ryder Selmi, longtime friend of Charlie Kirk and Strategy Director at Beck & Stone, joins the hosts this week to recount his experience attending Charlie Kirk’s memorial service on Monday. There, Erika Kirk forgave her husband’s assassin in a moment of prayer, joined by Trump and more than 200,000 attendees at an Arizona stadium—a moment emblematic of Charlie’s faith and his movement. Reactions from the Left elite have ranged from bewilderment to spite, epitomized by Jimmy Kimmel’s distasteful attempt to pin the assassination on MAGA. The late-night host was then briefly pulled from air, now made a “martyr” by Hollywood to distract from their offenses. Plus: media recommendations!
On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss Jim Chalmers vs red tape, what the latest inflation data could mean for the November rates decision, and how governments could ensure GST revenues keep up with economic growth.
Tickets for our Revenue Summit at Parliament House in Canberra, featuring Hon Steven Miles MP, Senator Larissa Waters, Senator David Pocock, Dr Kate Chaney MP, Greg Jericho and more – are available now. You can buy second release tickets for just $109 via our website.
Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available now via the Australia Institute website.
This discussion was recorded on Thursday 25 September 2025.
Host: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute // @grogsgamut
Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek
Today, at the United Nations, the governments of Colombia and Vanuatu are publicly announcing a plan to host the First International Conference for the Phase-Out of Fossil Fuels in April, 2026.
Australia Institute research has, for many years, proved that the best way to limit the devastating impact of climate change is to phase out the burning of fossil fuels.
The Australia Institute welcomes this long-overdue news.
“Many UN treaties began from countries working outside the formal process, building momentum until the formal processes finally, sometime begrudgingly, adopted them,” said Leanne Minshull, co-Executive Director at The Australia Institute.
“My hope is that this announcement, this week is the beginning of the end for Australia’s – and the world’s – fossil fuel industries.
“Australia has an opportunity to show genuine climate leadership, and support Vanuatu and Colombia’s process for a global phase out of fossil fuels. Missing this opportunity would expose our bid to host COP31 in late 2026 as an exercise in greenwashing rather than real action.
“The Australia Institute has been working to phase out fossil fuels for decades. We launched our No New Coal Mines work at the 2015 Paris COP meeting, supported by then-President of Kiribati, Anote Tong.”
In thepost below, the last one that I am publishing on Substack, I am explaining why I left my academic career, left the United States, left Substack – and need your support now, as I am launching my career as a full-time writer. Come join me over at Democracy Americana’s new home on Steady:
If you were already subscribed to Democracy Americana, I have automatically transferred you over to Steady and you should already have this post in your email inbox. For a short transition period, I will also transfer new subscribers on here over to our new home. If you have any problems, please don’t hesitate to contact me at newsletter@democracyamericana.com and I promise we will get it sorted out.
This is a similar line to the one often used by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, suggesting Australia needs more gas to underpin the nation’s electricity supply.
Australia Institute research, using the government’s and the gas companies’ own data, proves this is simply not true.
Australia has so much gas that it exports most of it, royalty-free, overseas. Even then, there is enough uncontracted gas to comfortably supply all of Australia’s domestic and manufacturing needs.
The analysis shows that so-called shortages are the result of too much gas being exported, not a shortage of gas coming from underground.
There’s also significant data to show that batteries are a lower-cost alternative to gas for firming renewables.
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
The Discipline of Political Economy at the University of Sydney is advertising a continuing education focused position, to be appointed at either Lecturer or Senior Lecturer level. This position is part of the University of Sydney Horizon Educators program.
The position is based in the School of Social and Political Sciences (SSPS) and will make a significant contribution to the Discipline of Political Economy’s pluralist, heterodox and interdisciplinary program of political economy teaching and learning at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The appointee will also conduct research in their area of study and/or in pedagogical practice, design and evaluation, and contribute to educational and other leadership and governance priorities in SSPS. Applicants with capabilities in teaching foundational political economy, international political economy and interdisciplinary units of study are particularly encouraged to apply.
