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This is to announce that the Past & Present Reading Group will be meeting to discuss, on a weekly basis and starting in June, our next text which is:

Heidi Gerstenberger, Market and Violence: The Functioning of Capitalism in History. Haymarket, 2023.

We are just finishing our 33rd book book in the group, which is Mario Tronti, Workers and Capital (Verso, 2019) and a commentary on that book will be available soon.

Following on from that, the P&P Reading Group will commence Gerstenberger’s Market and Violence on Thursday 12 June @5:00pm (AEST) on Zoom and each Thursday week thereafter at the same time. The group convenor Adam Morton can be contacted for further details on the Zoom link, subject to limited available numbers.

As with all the volumes we read, please click on the book titles below for more details:

Professor James Hankins has written a sincere but largely misguided piece advocating for what amounts to a national guest worker program with a delayed pathway to citizenship. He proposes, with appropriate modesty, that “The advantages of this [immigration] proposal may not seem obvious at first sight to Republicans.” Let me, with all due humility, suggest that the alleged advantages are not obvious because they are not there. While Hankins’s program has a slightly different taste, it is basically the same old amnesty wine in a new bottle.

His core problem is viewing immigration policy as one issue among many in which any proposed solution should ultimately be subject to a popularity contest. In reality, immigration is an existential issue, and the way we approach it defines what kind of community we will be.

On this episode of After America, Daniel James, award-winning journalist and host of the 7am podcast, joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the potential blowback against Trump’s tariffs at the midterms and whether the next federal government might introduce a little more transparency into Australia’s foreign and defence policy-making processes.

This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 9 April 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

Order ‘After America: Australia and the new world order’ or become a foundation subscriber to Vantage Point at australiainstitute.org.au/store.

Guest: Daniel James, award-winning writer, broadcaster and co-host of 7am // @mrdtjames

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

Show notes:

Polling – President Trump, security and the US–Australian alliance, the Australia Institute (March 2025)

Introduction

What are flash mobs? Here is a curated collection of resources about what they are, how to do a flash mob, and examples from around the world.

What are Flash Mobs?

A spontaneous, contagious, and often celebratory protest that often uses social media or word of mouth to gather people on short notice in a particular place at a particular time. – Beautiful Trouble

A group of people summoned (as by email or text message) to a designated location at a specified time to perform an indicated action before dispersing. – Merriam Webster Dictionary

Flash Mob refers to any online-coordinated event in which an ad-hoc group of participants meet up at a central location for various purposes. While certain flash mobs may convey a political or commercial message, they are usually organized for the spontaneous amusement of the participants and bewilderment of bystanders. – Know Your Meme

Labor’s announcement that a returned Albanese government would build 100,000 houses for first home buyers is hardly radical. Who’d have thought that actually building houses for people to live in might work? It would.

The Prime Minister’s other housing announcement – to allow people to buy a home with a deposit of just 5%, to avoid mortgage insurance – would give more buyers the chance to bid against each other and push prices up.

The Liberal policy, to allow first home buyers of new homes to claim the interest as a tax deduction, would do the same. Enabling them to dip into their super would make things worse and risk making them poor in retirement.

Neither Anthony Albanese nor Peter Dutton mentioned the two obvious reforms that would help to solve the housing crisis: scrapping or reducing negative gearing and removing the capital gains tax discount for investors.

“We welcome the government’s plan to build 100,000 homes,” said Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist at The Australia Institute.

“The Australia Institute has long argued the best way for the government to improve housing affordability is to build and own more homes for people to live in – much as it does for Defence Housing Australia.

“This plan is not radical and should become standard for all governments.

“But the plan to guarantee a 5% deposit for first-home buyers will put pressure on prices.

Introduction  | مقدمة

Here is a collection of resources about community organising in the Arab World. These resources are from an organisation called Ahel.

Ahel works across the Arab region to support people leading collective action for justice, freedom, and equality to build their people power.

Using a values-based community organizing approach, Ahel coaches campaigns, trains leaders in organizing and participatory leadership, and connects changemakers who share a commitment to dignity and justice.

Ahel produces Arabic-language knowledge on community organizing and documents campaign journeys and successes—sharing real stories of how people power drives change.

Ahel’s methodology is based on Marshall Ganz’s work in value based community organizing adapted and expanded for the context of the Arab speaking region.

The concept of productivity, including those for labour, capital and multi-factor productivity (MFP) are central to economic discussion about national economic performance, government policy and income distribution. There is common agreement that productivity growth has been, and remains, central to the long-run improvement in living standards. However, the orthodox or neoclassical, conceptual foundation of productivity, which informs both the work of the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates of productivity growth, media analysis and economic policy is rarely subjected to critical analysis.

The issue of productivity, its measurement and the problems with these measures is a very large one. To assist important economic policy debates that revolve around the concept of productivity, David Richardson (The Australia Institute) and I have written this very short briefing paper, which is being published today on Progress in Political Economy (PPE). The paper sets out just a few of the long-standing questions that have been raised over many decades about the conceptual and empirical robustness of the concept and its role informing public policy.

The main findings include:

The LNP came first on 38%, Labor second with 27%, and the Greens third also with 27% – just 11 votes behind Labor.

A surprising trend emerged: when right-wing minor party candidates were eliminated their preferences favoured the Greens over Labor.

Preferences from United Australia and One Nation voters, as well as Animal Justice voters, propelled Greens candidate Stephen Bates ahead of Labor, at which point Labor preferences won the seat for Bates at the expense of sitting LNP MP Trevor Evans.

Elsewhere in Queensland, in the seat of Groom, independent Suzie Holt went from fourth place with 8% of the vote to finish second with 43% on preferences.

This improbable result occurred because she was favoured above the Liberal National candidate by voters across the political spectrum: Greens, One Nation and Labor voters.

These unexpected results are a reminder that you, the voter, decide your preferences, not the political parties – and those preferences could decide an election.

The post Election entrée: Surprising preference flows appeared first on The Australia Institute.

For those just tuning in: I wrote a piece a day for the first three days of this week on what we should probably now term the “Trump Tariff Financial Crisis”. I am coming to you Sunday because, yes, I am a human and took much of the rest of the week off. I even slept at night! Three times in a row! Vanity Fair’s profile of Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway a very bad sign, and very resonant to my experience this week: “No! Sleep! For Bloomberg! How the Media Giant’s Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway Survived a Manic Week”. Well, I did take about 16 hours to write this piece, but I did it at a slower pace with lots of breaks. 

Australia doesn’t have a gas shortage, Australia has a gas export problem; and putting a levy on gas exports will help fix the problem.

Unfortunately, Dutton’s wrong on almost everything else.

Gas is driving up the cost of living. After Australia started exporting gas, wholesale gas prices in Australia tripled.

You now pay global prices for Australian gas. For over a decade the gas industry has been pushing the lie that Australia has a gas shortage, but the problem is we export around 80 per cent of our gas.

No matter what crap the gas industry tries to feed you – Dutton has correctly identified Australia has a gas export problem.

For the first time in over a decade, all sides of politics in Australia agree that we’re exporting too much gas, including the Labor government, the Liberals and Nationals, the Greens and most of the independents who sit on the crossbench.

It’s a remarkable political consensus. Politicians now have the opportunity, in the middle of a cost-of-living election, to finally put a stop Australians getting ripped off by the gas industry. It would be a win for the economy, a win for your back pocket and a vote winner for politicians.

To fix Australia’s gas export problem, the Coalition is proposing to tax gas exports to ensure our gas flows first to Australian businesses and households.

Everybody’s Home has called on the major parties to present more ambitious housing policies to Australians ahead of the election, warning that today’s announcements fall short of what is needed to end the country’s deepening crisis.

The Coalition is expected to propose a policy that would allow first home buyers of newly built properties to deduct their mortgage interest payments from their taxable income.

Meanwhile, Labor is proposing to allow all first home buyers to purchase a home with a five per cent deposit to avoid lenders mortgage insurance and will commit $10 billion to build 100,000 new homes for them.

Everybody’s Home spokesperson Maiy Azize said: “The promises made by the major parties today fall well short of what’s needed to address the housing crisis — in fact, some elements could make it even worse.

“The Coalition’s proposal to allow mortgage payments to be tax deductible for first home buyers is a form of negative gearing for non-investors, a move that will give more help to people on high incomes and could push home prices even higher. To make housing more affordable, we need to get rid of tax breaks when it comes to property, not create more.

“Labor’s home deposit support for first-home buyers will also add to demand. Building 100,000 homes is a good step, but they aren’t guaranteed to be affordable. Australia doesn’t just need new homes, we need homes that people can actually afford. 

The following is an excerpt from my new book, The Last American Road Trip. You can order it here and get a signed copy here.

***

On the first day of our Route 66 trip, the media announced that Donald Trump would be indicted that week. I did not believe them because I had heard this claim every year since 2016 and throughout my 1980s and 1990s childhood, when reporters were more straightforward about his ties to organized crime. Trump had been under federal investigation since before I was born.

The year 2023 marked a half century of the Department of Justice opening an inquiry and then doing little about it. With every year his impunity grew, and with it his cruelty. He pushes and pushes, as if frustrated with the ability of the United States to contain its worst instincts, which are embodied in himself. He pushes and pushes, as if testing whether people are as weak and hypocritical as they seem, and no one in power pushes back, which means he is probably right. Trump ended the week he was supposed to be indicted by holding a fascist campaign rally in Waco, Texas.

Foreword: This presentation was delivered on 4/12/25 at the 2025 Conference on College Composition and Communication.