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.
Medea Benjamin and CODEPINK, the organization she cofounded, are synonymous with accosting power in the United States. Their fearless confrontations with the nation’s most prominent and powerful politicians in the halls of Congress, often seen through viral videos, are a stark embodiment of the First Amendment. Despite over 20 years of activism and consistent critique of America’s representatives over their subservience to the military industrial complex and other big money interests, their ability to have these conversations is beginning to dwindle.
In a world where a Supreme Court nominee can’t safely say what a woman is, perhaps we should be unfazed by a U.S. senator who insists that the concept of God-given natural rights is really crypto-Iranian theocracy. In the week leading up to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, that is exactly what Virginia Senator Tim Kaine claimed.
The Left has long recoiled from natural rights, which rest on a truth (gasp) about human nature (deeper gasp). They axiomatically hold that all rights are just privileges bestowed by the state and that there is no truth, only persuasive assertions that serve the Left’s power.
Senator Kaine therefore rejects the truth about human nature on which the American republic is founded: that all people—no matter their differences in ability or circumstances—have natural rights. That in the possession and exercise of these rights we are indeed equal. And that the source of these rights is God, not the state nor the common acquiescence of the community.
On this episode of Follow the Money, Australia Institute Executive Director Richard Denniss joins Ebony Bennett to discuss the National Climate Risk Assessment, the Government’s new emissions reduction targets, and its disastrous decision to approve the North West Shelf gas expansion.
Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available now via the Australia Institute website.
Guest: Richard Denniss, Executive Director, the Australia Institute // @richarddenniss
Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebonybennett
The developments in the legal fight between the Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and the second Trump administration have evolved quite rapidly over the past three weeks. It's past time to examine where we’ve been, where we stand as of this writing and what it all means.
First, I want to get the less significant issue out of the way. From the beginning of this episode I’ve treated the allegations of “mortgage fraud” against Lisa Cook to be a lazy pretext. I, of course, did not believe these allegations at any point. However, what was more important than the truth or falsity of the allegations was the clear motivations of the Trump administration itself. Nevertheless, over the last few weeks we have gotten confirmation that the charges are unfounded.
In April 2022, I re-enlisted in the Air National Guard after a 12-year break in service. Having first taken the oath of enlistment at age 17 with the Air Force Reserve, I approached it this time with a deeper appreciation for its weight: to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Three years have passed since that moment, and recent events have revealed something troubling: many service members either misunderstand this oath or treat it as a hollow formality. Following the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk, I have witnessed service members praise that act of cowardice and terrorism. But our oath is no mere ceremony. It must be the foundation of our duty, our professionalism, and our warrior ethos.
Military service members who glorify the killing of innocent Americans must be removed from our ranks.
The U.S. Department of State is too bureaucratic, insular, and disconnected from the American people to meet today’s global challenges. For those reasons, Secretary Rubio announced a reduction in force and a broader reorganization of the department in July. These reforms should inspire hope in those wishing to enter a career in diplomacy and international relations. Above all, they need to be worthy of the American people’s trust and confidence. One hopes this is just the beginning of reforms that will create a State Department that is prepared for conflict around the world, agile in crisis, deliberate in strategy, and effective in delivering results for the American people.
Secretary Rubio’s reforms reflect the spirit of Harry S. Truman, namesake of the State Department’s headquarters. The last U.S. president without a college degree, Truman was born in the rural Missouri Ozarks in the small town of Lamar and raised outside Kansas City, Missouri. From humble beginnings, he learned the value of grit, service, and earning one’s keep—a reflection of Midwestern values.
What’s On around Naarm/Melbourne & Regional Victoria: Sep 22-28, 2025 With thanks to the dedicated activists at Friends of the Earth Melbourne! . . See also these Palestine events listings from around the country: 9767
Hunter S Thompson once wrote of San Francisco in the 1960s, ‘with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.’ His sentiment of faded hope also captures the view of many of us who initially found reasons for optimism in the project of 21st century socialism that began to be constructed in Venezuela at the beginning of the millennium, initially under Hugo Chávez.
I have one short story to tell you about Charlie Kirk—my friend.
He became a friend of mine because I interrogated him one time. Nineteen-year-olds are my specialty. I asked him some questions he couldn’t answer. And he was already becoming famous. And I noticed his reaction: he said, “What should I do?”
And I said,
Well, you have to suffer. If you want to grow, you have to suffer. It’s hard to learn—into the night, crack of dawn in the morning. Start with the Bible. Read the classics. Study the founding of America. In those places you will find that there’s a ladder that reaches up toward God. And at the bottom of it are the ordinary good things that are around us everywhere. If we can call them by their names—they have being, and the beings of the good things are figments of God. You will find that article in Aristotle. You will find it in the Bible. You will find it in Madison and Jefferson.
“How do I learn that?” he said, and I said, “You have to suffer. You have to study. You have to think.”
I thought I’d never hear from him again.
Within a month, he got ahold of my cell phone number, and he texted me a copy of a certificate of completion of a Hillsdale College online course. He would go on to do that 31 times.
The brouhaha over Donald Trump’s latest attack on a journalist for doing journalism (this time the excellent John Lyons) rather overshadowed it, but Anthony Albanese’s trip to Papua New Guinea made one thing undeniably clear.
The Pacific has lost patience with Australia.
This is not new, nor particularly earth-shattering as analysis. But it does pose larger questions for Australia moving forward, as the old ways of doing business with our regional neighbours no longer cut it.
One reason Australia has always been so clumsy in its dealings with the Pacific is that it only ever views the Pacific in terms of defence. What can the Pacific do for Australia? Who doesn’t Australia want on its doorstep? What does Australia have to do to ensure the defence of the region?
Defence, of course, has its place. But the Pacific is a diaspora of cultures and people who do not exist to serve as pawns in Australia’s defence strategies with the United States. And yet, in our dealings with the Pacific, that is always the frame.
Papua New Guinea not signing an agreement Albanese visited the nation to sign, on the back of Vanuatu also withholding its agreement on a separate deal makes very, very clear the Pacific has run out of patience with us.
On this episode of After America, Allan Behm joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the MAGA movement’s weaponisation of Charlie Kirk’s murder, why no Trump meeting might be the best outcome for Anthony Albanese, formal recognition of Palestine, and Australia’s disastrous fortnight of Pacific diplomacy.
This episode was recorded on Monday 22 September.
‘Save Tuvalu, Save the World’ is our September Politics in the Pub – join us at 6.30pm on Wednesday 24 September live in Canberra or via the livestream.
Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available now via the Australia Institute website.
Guest: Allan Behm, Special Advisor in International Affairs, the Australia Institute
Host: Emma Shortis, Director of International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil.” – Isaiah 5:20
On September 17, America celebrated its 238th Constitution Day—the day the framers of the Constitution signed the document destined to become “the supreme law of the land.” Today, September 22, we honor the 249th anniversary of the death of the young American hero Nathan Hale, who gave his life for his country in the early months of the American Revolution. These anniversaries have an especially poignant connection this year in light of the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, another young American hero who, like Nathan Hale, will be an inspiration to generations of Americans to come.
From all I have seen and heard, Charlie bore the same attitude that 21-year-old Nathan Hale made famous as he faced death at the hands of his British captors and said, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” America will always need its Nathan Hales and its Charlie Kirks—heroes willing to give “the last full measure of devotion” for their country’s cause. We can’t get on without them.
Though not every citizen will rise to the level of Hale or Kirk, we are equally held to high standards of citizenship, as seen in the oath of naturalization that every immigrant to the United States must take to become a citizen:
I spent September 9 in a cave. It wasn’t planned: I had been promised a waterfall. But there was a long drought, and the streams dried up, leaving a cavern of color and a series of interlocking caves. Cliffs soared above and holes gaped below, beckoning me to explore.
I waded through wildflowers and entered the largest lair, calling to my husband that I was alright, and crawled as far as I could go. The view from the cave was clearer than the view from the cliffs. In the dark, every detail of the outside world shines brighter. In the dark, I move slow and gradual, contorting myself to its crevices, observing everything and pursuing nothing. I took pictures because we had stopped at this park on a whim, and it was not supposed to look this way. I had gotten lucky, and I wanted proof that there was such a thing as good luck.
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