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On this episode of After America, Dr Emma Shortis and Angus Blackman take a step back to reflect on what’s happened since Trump was inaugurated in January.

Tl;dr: it’s all pretty grim.

This discussion was recorded on Monday 21 July 2025.

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

Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available for pre-order now via the Australia Institute website.

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

Host: Angus Blackman, Producer, the Australia Institute // @AngusRB

Show notes:

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, one-third of Australian adults use poker machines at least once a year. Excluding Western Australia, where pokies are banned outside of Perth Casino, that equates to 6.6 million people who, between them, lose around $13 billion a year, at an average of more than $1,950 each.

Based on an updated version of the most detailed study of gambling in Australia, the amount an average gambler can afford to lose on poker machines is $301 per year, known as their “low-risk gambling limit”.

For every dollar a gambler loses over that low-risk limit, the risk increases.

Losing more means people who use the pokies have less to spend on other recreational or social activities. But for those who gamble much more, the losses can be devastating.

“Poker machines are making a killing from problem gamblers,” said Skye Predavec, Anne Kantor Fellow at The Australia Institute and author of the analysis.

“If the vast majority of poker machine profits come from risky gambling rather than those who gamble responsibly, it’s time politicians treated the industry in line with the harm it causes.

“The data does not lie. There are Australians who are losing vast sums of money on poker machines who cannot afford to.

By Rainer Kattel

The UK government published last week the Public Design Evidence Review (PDER), an ambitious attempt to answer a deceptively simple question: How do we create better public policies and services that consistently achieve their intended outcomes? One of the answers, the report argues, lies in public design — a term the report introduces.

From the creation of the Government Digital Service (GDS) to the innovative work of the Cabinet Office’s Policy Lab, the UK has seen compelling proofs of concept that design can help governments not only deliver services better but also imagine and shape them differently. Yet, to move from isolated success stories to widespread impact, public design needs to scale — especially upstream, in the early stages of policymaking. That’s what the PDER set out to explore.

Australia has some of the highest rates of gambling in the world, with a third of Australian adults using poker machines at least once a year. But it’s a past-time that could be riskier than you think: At least $10 billion of the $13 billion that Aussies lose on pokies each year comes from exceeding recommended risk limits.

In 2018, consulting firm ACIL Allen produced the Fourth Social and Economic Impact Study of Gambling in Tasmania. It included a detailed survey of gamblers, including problem gamblers, which was used to calculate a “low-risk gambling limit” for Tasmanians.

The study compared low-risk gambling limits to low-risk drinking guidelines, both designed to allow people to make informed decisions about risk and the potential harms of certain behaviour.

According to the study, the limit for low-risk gambling is $240 per person per year for poker machines, and $510 per year for all gambling. Those who exceeded these spending limits were found to have almost five times the risk of experiencing gambling harm.

As politicians return to Canberra for the first sitting week of the new term, Everybody’s Home said the Albanese government has a chance to deliver a lasting legacy on housing or risk being remembered for letting it slip away.

The national housing campaign warns the housing crisis will get much worse if the government fails to deliver the investment and action needed to make homes more affordable for more Australians.

The call comes as Everybody’s Home’s new report, Out of Reach, shows that once-affordable cities are now suffering from some of the worst rental pressures in the country.

With rents surging 57% across capital cities over the past decade, and social housing declining to around 4% of all homes, the housing crisis has reached unprecedented levels that demand urgent government action.

As parliament starts for this new term, Everybody’s Home is calling on the government to:

The FBI has launched a criminal investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey for perjury and potentially other crimes related to the Trump-Russia hoax. This comes shortly after a CIA tradecraft review revealed their manipulation of a December 30, 2016, Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that Russian President Vladimir Putin favored Donald Trump in the 2016 election. And on Friday, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard reported that former President Barack Obama, former DNI James Clapper, Brennan, and others participated in the deception.

“The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government. Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the President from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people…. As such, I am providing all documents to the Department of Justice to deliver the accountability that President Trump, his family, and the American people deserve,” Gabbard said on Friday.

In the words of Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright, the chickens may be coming home to roost.

Recent polling commissioned by The Australia Institute shows more Tasmanians agree than disagree that the major parties should seek to form a power-sharing government with Greens and Independents if they cannot form government in their own right.

The Australia Institute studied 25 power-sharing governments, and the results showed that most see out a full term, and can help enforce ministerial responsibility.

“This election returned another power-sharing parliament for Tasmania,” said Eloise Carr, Director, The Australia Institute Tasmania.

“One thing this election result should do is dispel the notion that power-sharing governments are punished by the Tasmanian electorate.

“The Rockliff government has faced its second election as a minority government and is arguably in a better position now.

“The narratives that the Liberals and Labor have been pushing do not hold up. Polling – and now this election result – show that voters of the major parties prefer power-sharing governments.

“Indeed, more than twice as many Labor voters support Labor forming government with the Greens and Independent crossbench members as oppose.”

Yet when the United Nations hosts its annual climate conference of the parties (known as COP) to reduce emissions, it’s usually swamped by fossil fuel lobbyists.

The Albanese government is bidding to host next year’s COP31 climate summit in Adelaide, alongside Pacific Island Nations. Turkey is also bidding to host the COP and is Australia’s main rival for the bid. The decision could be announced any day now.

One thing is certain: if fossil fuel corporations and their lobbyists get access to COP31, they’ll do their best to sabotage any chance of achieving ambitious climate action.

That’s why The Australia Institute has called on the Albanese government to ban fossil fuel corporations and their lobbyists from COP31.

Banning fossil fuel corporations and their lobbyists from COP31 could give Australia an edge in winning the bid over Turkey by demonstrating our genuine commitment to tackling the source of the problem.

Let’s be clear – coal, oil and gas companies are causing the climate crisis.

The United Nations, the world’s scientists and the International Energy Agency have all made it crystal clear that to avert the worst consequences of global heating, the world must swiftly phase out fossil fuels.

These companies have no place at UN climate talks.

Every year, well-meaning donors pour hundreds of millions of dollars into America’s most prestigious universities. They do so out of sentiment, prestige, or the vague hope that their alma mater will preserve the civilization it once championed. But in 2025, this is delusion. The modern university—especially the Ivy League—is a machine built to erase the memory of the old world, not preserve it. Donors aren’t saving the institutions they love: they’re financing their own irrelevance.

To understand what was lost, one need only look back to the Ivy League of the 1940s, an era in which fraternal culture was not simply an appendage of undergraduate life, but a central organ of elite formation in America.

In those years, the great colleges—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia—still retained the trappings of their founding: small, WASP-dominated, semi-clerical institutions filled with the Yankee elite. But the real crucibles of influence were not the classrooms. They were the clubs, the societies, and the houses.

The great final clubs of Harvard, the eating clubs of Princeton, the secret societies of Yale—these were more than social diversions. They were incubators of elite consensus. Membership in such circles conferred a kind of spiritual citizenship in the American governing class. Men were trained to speak in a certain tone, carry themselves in a certain way, and, above all, recognize one another across institutions and borders. It was a culture that, for better or worse, assumed the right to rule.

The Wrap with Amy Remeikis

In just a few short days the 48th Parliament will sit for the first time and we will start to see the answer to the question we have been asking become clear; what will Labor do with power?

In many ways, we already have the answer, at least when it comes to climate.  The second term Albanese government wasted no time in approving the carbon bomb that is the Woodside North West Shelf extension and is tripling down on the delusion that more fossil fuel gas fields need to be opened up to service not just the domestic market, but to ensure the success of the Future Made in Australia manufacturing push.

Albanese made headlines in March by slipping in the line ‘delulul with no solulu’ during question time, as a tongue-in-cheek shout out to the hosts of the Happy Hour podcast, but it could also sum up Labor’s attitude to gas.

That was made clear in the Jubilee Australia Research Centre report: How to Build a Gas Empire, which was released this week and all but ignored by Australia’s mainstream media outlets.

The report, co-published with the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Fossil Free Japan Coalition lays out exactly how hollow many of the claims Australia is told about its gas industry are.

Japan and Korea have contributed $20.5bn USD of public finance into Australian LNG projects between 2008 and 2024.

The Oregon Department of Transportation finds itself in serious financial trouble, aggravated by an increasing dependence on borrowing.

In the last two fiscal years, the agency has added about $700 million in new debt, chiefly to finance freeway widening mega-project (and their hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns).

In the past two weeks, the Oregon Department of Transportation has heaped blame on the Legislature for failing to vote to approve a major increase in gas taxes, vehicle registration costs and other fees.  It is in the process of laying off hundreds of employees, because of the financial shortfall.  But as we’ve seen at City Observatory, ODOT’s revenues haven’t actually decreased, and much of the problem is related to expensive megaprojects and their cost overruns.  All of this has been amplified by the agency’s decision to take on greater amounts of debt, which reduces funds available to pay current staff and support operations.

Moving from pay as you go to debt financing

Reflections on IIPP’s Applied Learning Programme from the Rethinking the State Forum 2025 by Bridget Gildea, Simangaliso Mpofu, Barbara Chesi and Manuel Acosta Maldonado.

At the recent Rethinking the State Forum, the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) brought together international collaborators, public sector practitioners, and learning partners for a lively, practice-led session on applied learning in government. Hosted by IIPP’s Applied Learning team, the design sprint focused on how governments around the world are using applied learning as a tool for institutional change and what that means for the UK context.

The conversation began with a simple but important question posed by Bridget Gildea, IIPP’s Applied Learning Lead: ‘What can we learn from our global partners in their experience of this work so far, and how can we bring those lessons home?’

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Matt and Elinor discuss the Prime Minister’s China trip, why spending more on defence doesn’t necessarily make us safer, and the unusual situation whereby our biggest bank thinks we should tax wealth better.

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

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 17 July 2025.

Host: Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist, the Australia Institute // @mattgrudnoff

Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek

Show notes:

Australia already spends a huge amount on defence by Matt Grudnoff, the Australia Institute (April 2025)

Though he has the pedigree, Elbridge Colby is not a man for the cocktail circuit. As the principal author of the 2018 National Defense Strategy and the widely read book The Strategy of Denial, he could easily have settled into elite foreign policy circles. But he does not flatter diplomats, nor does he shield allies from hard truths, which in Washington inevitably provokes friction. In a recent Politico “exposé,” a chorus of disgruntled former officials bemoans the under secretary of defense for policy’s alleged impoliteness and strategic indelicacy. His crime? Speaking too bluntly. Acting too decisively.

But behind the theatrics of bureaucratic grievance is the truth that Colby is precisely the kind of strategist our moment demands. His critics may fixate on style, but the real discomfort he inspires stems from substance. Many of the former officials I’ve encountered aren’t scandalized because Colby is failing—they’re unsettled because he is, unlike many before him, trying to execute the platform Americans voted for.

Colby is being pilloried by the Washington establishment for being effective. He has advanced the logic of strategic prioritization with a seriousness that rankles them and unsettles allies long accustomed to American indulgence. The problem, it turns out, is that he is right, and unapologetic about it.

1/ Giving business billions of dollars in tax cuts means starving schools, hospitals and other services.

Giving business billions of dollars in tax cuts means billions of dollars less for services like schools and hospitals.

If Australia cut company tax from 30% to 25% this would give business about $20 billion in its first year, or $83 billion over four years. This would cost the budget at least $57 billion over four years, accounting for reduced franking credits (which are effectively a tax refund for company tax paid).

2/ Vital public services and infrastructure will be the first to go.

The United Nations has pointed out that after corporate taxed were cuts in America, welfare benefits and access to health insurance were slashed. The ‘financial windfalls’ for the very rich were funded by cutting public services.

3/ The big four banks would get billions of dollars. Really.

Australia’s big four banks are some of the most profitable banks in the world, and they have been making record profits.

‘Making the Good Society’ is a new 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.

Matthias Ecke, a German Social Democrat and Member of the European Parliament, knows what it takes to counter extremism and defend democratic rights. His advocacy is deeply personal: while campaigning in Dresden in May 2024, he was violently attacked by far-right extremists, an incident German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned as a “threat to democracy.” Despite this, he refuses to back down, continuing to push for a society based on justice and equality.

Whether you’re for or against the stadium, it looms as a huge strain on a Tasmanian budget which is already deep in the red.

But the cost of the stadium is small when compared to the amount of money Tasmanians have been missing out on due to shrinking GST revenue.

The GST was set up as the states’ own revenue source … a source which would grow with the economy.

It was pitched as a way of helping to solve states’ financial problems.

But the GST hasn’t been the growth tax that Australia’s states and territories were promised.

Recently released Australia Institute research shows that if the GST had kept up with growth in the economy, it would have collected an extra $22bn last year.

Tasmania’s share of that would have been $877m.

Let’s put $877m into context. The most recent estimate for the cost of the proposed stadium is almost $1bn, with the Tasmanian government picking up the tab for the lion’s share of that – $675m, which would include about $300m of borrowing.

So, an extra $877m wouldn’t just pay for a stadium; it would pay for a stadium every year.

Of course, Tasmanians might not want all that money spent on a stadium. There are plenty of other areas in desperate need of funding, like hospitals, schools, roads, and public housing, to name a few. The cost of all of these has also raced ahead of the growth in GST revenue.

So, why hasn’t the GST kept up with the rest of the economy?