Almost seven in ten people who rent privately worry about asking for repairs in case they face a rent increase, according to research by the ACOSS/UNSW Sydney-led Poverty and Inequality Partnership, National Shelter and the National Association of Renter Organisations (NARO).
The study, which surveyed 1,019 people who rent in the private sector across Australia, also found a third of renters would be unable to afford their rent if it went up by 5%.
The report, titled Rights at risk: Rising rents and repercussions, found half of renters (50%) live in homes that need repairs and one in 10 need urgent repairs (10%).
Media Report 2025.06.22
— Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne —'They Cooked Up Their Own Intelligence' Chris Hedges on Israel’s war on Iran | The Listening Post
— —The Dictatorship is Here. The Constitutional Crisis is Now.
— —For many of us, day to day life in the United States proceeds as it would under a usual American federal government. We may be more distressed by the news than usual, we may be organizing or attending rallies and meetings, but still we go to work, hike or bike, meet up with friends for coffee or a drink. The ability to more or less continue our daily routines makes it easy to lose sight of the fact that we live in a country whose head of state has gone full-on authoritarian.
The dictatorship is here. The constitutional crisis is now.
Trump does as he pleases. He does not even bother to seek the Congressional approval that he might well be able to get given that his fellow Republican Fascists control the federal legislature. While most federal district courts have been doing all they can to rein him in, he has been able to use a combination of appeals and noncompliance to disregard many of their orders. While the Supreme Court has not rushed to endorse his every move, neither has it acted decisively to restrain him nor to demand he and his Cabinet obey lower courts.
What Trump pleases is to use force and federal prosecutorial power to attack, physically and legally, the progressive and Democratic blocs in the United States. Wretched as it is that he has turned his ICE goon squad on immigrants and detained and deported them without due process, his use of DOJ, DHS, the FBI, ICE, the National Guard, and the U.S. military has gone much further.
Chris Hedges: War With Iran
— —
Media Report 2025.06.21
— Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne —Media Report 2025.06.18
— Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne —'WE WOULD LOSE' War with Iran (w/ Col. Lawrence Wilkerson)
— —Given the news of the US launching strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities today, we're sharing Col. Lawrence Wilkerson's warning of what a war with Iran could mean for the West from last year.
Rule of Idiots - Read by Eunice Wong
— —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
Text originally published May 26, 2025
Donald Trump: Hombre
— Organisation: The Claremont Institute —A decade of the Trump phenomenon is a noteworthy milestone, worthy of commemoration and reflection. Yet in terms of this unusual bifurcated presidency, the high political drama has only just resumed after a four-year intermission. At Independence Day, Trump won’t even be six months into his four-year term. The real work is only beginning.
Not every citizen is bound to help the president succeed, but all must at least give him a chance to do so. Even those who don’t support Trump should recall Leo Strauss’s sound advice to expect less from politics and more from ourselves. Trump is trying to save republican self-government. Yet, since Americans fundamentally disagree on what a free society means, that depends just as much on us as it does on him—which is part of the challenge.
The Left attacks Trump for being a king, disregarding their undemocratic attempt to replace the doddering figurehead of Joe Biden with Queen Kamala, whose claim to the throne was that she is a black woman. The Right expects Trump to act with monarchical efficacy, forgetting that they elected him to regain control over the bureaucracy. This can’t be done in a day. Czar Alexander II took six years, acting by fiat, to free the serfs. Freeing citizens is even harder.
Iran, Israel, USA and World War 3 | Chris Hedges | UNAPOLOGETIC
— —Hedges reflects on his years reporting from war zones, the cynical nihilism driving Netanyahu’s assault, and how Israel’s genocide in Gaza has become a “spectacle” that has irreparably broken trust between North and South.
Are Israel’s and the Pentagon’s stated shifting priorities real, or a façade to continue diminishing societal infrastructure in the region? Will the complicity of Arab states in the genocide lead to blowback? Is regime change the goal, or is this just an excuse?
UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim
Maryland’s Quick-Build Projects Are a Model for Every State DOT
— Organisation: Strong Towns —
The New York Fed DSGE Model Forecast—June 2025
— Organisation: Federal Reserve Bank of New York — Publication: Liberty Street Economics —The Week Observed, June 20, 2025\
— Publication: City Observatory —What City Observatory Did This Week
HB 2025:Â The Oregon Legislature’s “transportation package” simply doesn’t add up:Â The bill promises more than $5 billion in mega-projects but provides vastly less revenue.
It doesn’t add up:Â You can’t be accountable, unless you actually do “accounting.”
HB 2025, the transportation package in the Oregon Legislature purports to address ODOT’s massive financial problems, but only makes them worse
The bill provides only a fraction of the money needed to actually pay for promised mega-projects. HB 2025 provides just $1.75 to $1.95 billion in resources for five listed projects that together need about $3.5 billion–and likely more.
HB 2025 also provides nothing to cover entirely certain and predictable cost overruns on the largest highway project in the state, the Interstate Bridge Replacement, which is likely to end up costing $9 billion–when long delayed cost estimates are finally released. The bill also provides nothing for the $1.1 billion Hood River Bridge. Adding these projects would push the mega-project hole to $5 billion; far greater than the funds allocated in HB 2025.
Media Report 2025.06.17
— Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne —You’re invited: Campaign Strategy Day 5th July
— Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne —Time to end university greenwashing: The Australia Institute
— Organisation: The Australia Institute —The role of Monash University in greenwashing the activities of Woodside and other fossil fuel companies has been revealed by journalist Royce Kurmelovs in climate-focused publication Drilled and Crikey.
Kurmelovs’ report reinforces Australia Institute research highlighting the crisis of integrity in the governance of Australia’s universities.
Upcoming Australia Institute research will further outline Monash and other universities’ links to the fossil fuel industry.
“It’s past time for Australia’s universities to stop greenwashing companies like Woodside,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute.
“Monash not only names buildings and hosts conferences for Woodside, it has multiple Woodside-funded scholarships and partners with Woodside in research grants.
“While scholarships provide financial support to individual students, this funding pales in comparison to the profits of Woodside.
“The $99,000 Woodside Monash Energy Partnership Research Scholarship represents just 0.00002% of Woodside’s 2024 profit of $5.6 billion, and just 0.0003% of Monash University Group’s $308 million consolidated net result in 2024.
“It gets worse. Monash has four projects funded by the Australian Coal Association Research Program, which aims to prolong the coal industry. Those grants are worth under $1 million.
“This is how cheaply the integrity of our universities is bought by malevolent companies like Woodside.
The rich are getting richer
— Organisation: The Australia Institute —On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss Australia’s growing wealth gap, what Australians think about the government’s proposed superannuation tax changes, and what the escalating conflict in the Middle East means for the global economy.
This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 18 June 2025 and things may have changed since recording.
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:Â Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute and Centre for Future Work // @grogsgamut
Host:Â Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek
Show notes:
Wealthy Australians are worried we might realise how rigged the system is in their favour by Greg Jericho, Guardian Australia (June 2025)
Why Social Interaction Should Influence City Planning, With Dr. Patricia Tice
— Organisation: Strong Towns —
Hannah Fairbrother
— Organisation: The Equality Trust —Hannah is a Senior Lecturer in Public Health at the University of Sheffield, where her research critically examines socially patterned inequities in health and wellbeing, with a particular focus on children, young people, and families. She is driven by a commitment to understanding and addressing the environmental, social, and political factors that influence health. This […]
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Milla Lupton
— Organisation: The Equality Trust —Milla is Head of Maths at the London Screen Academy, a film and TV sixth form college dedicated to increasing diversity and access to opportunity in the creative industries. Having trained through Teach First, she entered the teaching profession with a hope to tackle education inequalities in the classroom, and continues this work as a […]
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Dianne Danquah
— Organisation: The Equality Trust —Every human deserves a good life and I am dedicated to fighting for this. At University, I studied Sociology with a specialism in Race and Global Politics, which refined by critical analysis skills. Society is increasingly suffocating for marginalised groups, while those in power hoard resources. Things need to change today. I currently work in […]
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Rosie Murphy
— Organisation: The Equality Trust —Rosie Murphy is a midwife with expertise in tackling inequalities of care in NHS maternity services and across the wider NHS system. Rosie graduated as a midwife from Leeds University in 2009 and her first midwifery posts were in London. It was the contrast in population needs and service provision that first highlighted to her […]
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Jacob Smith
— Organisation: The Equality Trust —Jacob Smith is a housing-finance specialist at Bristol City Council, where he uses data to keep rents fair and strengthen social housing. As Treasurer of his local party he manages budgets that power grassroots campaigns and brings evidence on wealth inequality to doorsteps and community halls. A regular speaker on the human cost of austerity, […]
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Riots, Riots Everywhere
— Organisation: The Claremont Institute —To many Americans, the riots in Los Angeles look like another chapter in the history of the country’s race riots, going from the “long, hot summer of 1967” to the George Floyd riots of 2020. But the 2025 L.A. riots are different. The figure who helps us see that is Vice President Dan Quayle, the man who covered up the true causes of another infamous series of riots in Los Angeles.
In the spring of 1992, riots began after the verdict was announced in the Rodney King case. When the LAPD lost control of the streets, President George H.W. Bush declared a state of emergency and sent in the National Guard. Shortly thereafter, in a speech that became famous for Quayle criticizing the TV character Murphy Brown, the vice president provided an ingenious reframing of the disturbances. He used the riots to pronounce the central credo of his era:
From the perspective of many Japanese, the ethnic diversity of our culture is a weakness compared to their homogeneous society. I beg to differ with my host. I explained that our diversity is our strength and I explained that the immigrants who come to our shores have made and continue to make vast contributions to our culture and to our economy.
Scandal-plagued and unaccountable – Australian universities slide down world rankings
— Organisation: The Australia Institute —Australia’s scandal-plagued university sector has today suffered another significant blow, with many slipping further down the QS World University Rankings.
The rankings of 70% of Australian universities have fallen, following revelations about a lack of accountability and scrutiny, poor financial management, exorbitant Vice-Chancellor salaries and lavish spending on consultants and corporate travel.
The Australia Institute has suggested an extensive list of reforms to fix the sector, including:
War Deja Vu
— —
I Spent No Kings Day in a Cave
— —There is a salamander so rare, you can find it only in the Ozarks. It is born wide-eyed and willing, eager to explore its surroundings: blue streams, green forests.
One day, the salamander wanders into a crack in the earth. This is the most fateful decision it will make. The world darkens, but the salamander keeps going: down, down, down, until no light remains. Over time, its skin begins to mutate. A film grows over its eyelids and fuses them shut.
The salamander is now blind. But it does not know. It will live, and die, in the eternal darkness of a subterranean cave.
I spent No Kings Day in a cave because I wanted to see the salamander. But I also wanted to ensure no film comes to cover my own eyes. A cave 250 feet underground has no cell service and no surveillance. It has no AI or GPS. Lone light shines from lanterns held by humans. They reveal a labyrinthine land of stone, not dead but slow growing. I go to caves to reset my senses. They show me the peace I am missing.
On the drive to the Ozarks, I saw a photo on social media. A protester held a handmade sign with a warning I wrote years ago: “THIS IS A TRANSNATIONAL CRIME SYNDICATE MASQUERADING AS A GOVERNMENT.”
Sam Williams
— Organisation: The Equality Trust —Sam is a research and evaluation expert with experience in the charity sector. Currently working within the Insights team at Youth Music, he collects and analyses data from the grassroots music network. These findings are used to evaluate impact and reinforce evidence-led decision making, with the aim of supporting marginalised young people to make and […]
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Samia Khatun
— Organisation: The Equality Trust —Samia Khatun is an INGO, Social Justice and Global Health professional with extensive senior leadership, organisational governance and executive management experience. She currently works as Head of Programmes at King’s Global Health Partnerships where she is responsible for the overall strategic direction and management of its programmes, partnerships and operations which includes the London based […]
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Aliyah Green
— Organisation: The Equality Trust —Aliyah Green is a racial and environmental justice facilitator, interested in justice movements and anti-oppression work generally. With a focus on empowering young people, Aliyah supports the development of their campaigning skills and delivers political education programs designed to inspire and equip participants with the knowledge and skills needed to make systemic change. She is […]
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Chris Oswald
— Organisation: The Equality Trust —Prior to qualifying in Community Development Chris worked with homeless people and did youth work. Since 1990 Chris has focussed on equality working in and running Race Equality Councils and setting up and running health advocacy projects. Chris joined the Commission for Racial Equality in 2002 before moving to the Disability Rights Commission where he […]
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Rosanne Fienga
— Organisation: The Equality Trust —I am a civil servant living in London since 2017, with a focus on climate and people. I am Franco-American, but have recently become a UK citizen, and very keen to partake in making this country and more equal and inclusive place. I have been lucky to mentor many colleagues, improve D&I in the civil […]
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The Gas Man Cometh
— Organisation: The Australia Institute —The Wrap with Amy Remeikis
One of the problems with hope is that it’s often left to fend for itself. People might work to maintain their hope that things will get better, but hope without action is essentially just delusion.
When hopes are dashed, the flip side is usually despair.
Which makes sense – you don’t have to do anything to despair. You just kind of slide into it.
It’s easy to hope. It’s just as easy to despair. Neither truly require you do anything except throw your hands up in the air and hope that someone will do something. And if that person who does the thing, does the wrong thing, well then you can despair. You had hope, it was dashed. Now you can be bitter. Despair. Because obviously you can’t do something. Right?
Recently I underwent surgery and when I came to, sore and hazed, my mind feeling as though it was coated in molasses, muscle memory had me reaching for my phone. I saw two things. Anthony Albanese again refusing to sanction Israel, despite rightly acknowledging Israel’s on-going blockade of aid to Gaza as an “outrage” and Labor approving the North West Shelf extension.
I did not feel despair. I felt rage. Not because I didn’t see it coming, but because we know they know better.
Silly Housing Statistics 3: The CPI – Official silliness, or just misunderstood and misused data?
— —Despite being the official measure of price changes, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is not useful for tracking changes in housing costs or rent increases. It does not include land prices or mortgage payments, and significantly underestimates rent increases.
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Silly Housing Statistics 2: I am Priced Out of a renting a beachside house
— —"Priced Out", the Everybody's Home Coalition report on rental affordability is based in part on a flawed comparison of low incomes and median rents. This is a silly housing statistic which risks undermining the important advocacy of the report and the campaign.
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Silly Housing Statistics: Is it more expensive to rent in Adelaide than in Melbourne?
— —Media reports that Adelaide rents have surpassed those in Melbourne are based on silly statistics, but the reasons why they are silly reveal a lot about how we (mis)understand (and misuse) basic housing data on rents, rent prices and asking rents.
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The Political Economy of Lucy Jordan
— —Marianne Faithfull's classic song, The Ballad of Lucy Jordan, has been critiqued for its attack on the role of a housewife. Yet what is more remarkable is that such critiques have little place in a modern economy - and the question is why? A victory for feminism, or of neoliberalism?
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The Vegemite Curve: A curve becomes an index becomes a policy
— —For Anti-Poverty Week 2024, I invented "the Vegemite Curve", a graph plotting unit prices of an iconic Australian brand to demonstrate a poverty premium and how it costs more to be poor.
The post The Vegemite Curve: A curve becomes an index becomes a policy appeared first on Greg Ogle's After Dinner Political Economy.
Social Services and Energy Distribution: The Treatment of Surpluses and Profits in Pseudo Markets
— —Profits and operational surpluses are treated very differently in these two government-created "markets", with the result that NFP social service providers have limited ability to invest in organisational development and struggle with sustainability.
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State Tax Reform: A South Australian Perspective
— —The most recent SA state budget shows interest payments increasing as a proportion of government expenditure, creating an opportunity cost for other expenditure possibilities. This should create an argument for tax reform to increase the revenue base, but the historic record for change is not good.
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If Culture Is Not An Industry, What About Social Service?
— —Justin O’Connor’s book, Culture Is Not An Industry, critiques the arts sector embrace of the description of itself as a “creative industry”. Yet the not-for-profit social service sector has similarly embraced broader economic-industry descriptors, so O’Connor’s critique is relevant there too – albeit in a different context. In particular, the foundational economy approach in O’Connor’s book raises questions about anti-poverty advocacy.
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Campaigning for Concessions: Reflections on Success and the Bigger Picture
— —The 2024-25 SA State Budget significantly increased government concessions payments. This result shows the importance of campaigning for change.
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Energy Bill Relief and the Inflation Dragon: A Fairy Tale?
— —Fears of inflation, coupled with political imperatives to provide relief to households, leads governments to argue that particular budgetary expenditures, such as the Energy Bill Relief rebate are not inflationary (as they bring the CPI down). That would be magical, but this fairytale mistakes the measure (CPI) for the thing (inflation), as can be seen by tracing the actual impact of the rebate at the household and macroeconomic level.
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No Power Greater: A History of Union Action in Australia, with Dr Liam Byrne
— Organisation: Per Capita —How Australian unions shaped modern Australian society
Unions are making a comeback. Labour disputes around the world have hit the headlines as unions take action to challenge inequality. But while media coverage has increased, understanding of unions has not. In this lively history of Australian unionism Liam Byrne seeks to illuminate what unionism means, exploring why successive generations of working people organised unions and nurtured them for future generations.
Foregrounding the pioneering efforts of women workers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers, culturally and linguistically diverse workers, and LGBTIQA+ workers as central to the union story today, Byrne uses case studies of worker action and struggle to better understand the lived reality of unionism, its challenges, and its contribution to Australian life.
No Power Greater is the compelling story of the acts of rebellion and solidarity that have shaped Australia’s past and shows that unions are far from history.
Liam spoke at Per Capita’s John Cain lunch in June 2025. Watch the recording here: