Incoming Feed Items

How?

First, a bit of history.

Until 2020, Western Australians didn’t experience the energy price pain of their east coast cousins because all its domestic gas reserves were reserved for the domestic market. Up until then, all the gas WA exported came from offshore reserves, mostly in Commonwealth waters. That changed four years ago, when the WA Labor government allowed the export of onshore gas.

Why did the WA Labor government change the policy?

Good question.  Woodside started running out of offshore gas for its giant North West Shelf export terminal, and decided to turn to the domestic reserves to keep feeding it. But it needed some help.

Enter media magnate and fossil fuel investor Kerry Stokes and his company Beach Energy.  Beach Energy owned the licence for some of WA’s onshore gas reserves and wanted to export that domestic gas because gas sold on the international market fetches higher prices than it does domestically.

Beach Energy made a deal with Woodside to export its domestic gas.  And then it used its considerable influence to lobby the Western Australian government to let them do it.  In August 2020, while most attention was on the pandemic and the border closures, then-premier Mark McGowen announced Woodside could export WA’s domestic gas for five years – and a lot of it … the equivalent of around a quarter of the total gas used in WA!

So, what is the problem?

Woodside now wants to extend the deal for another 50 years.  And that’s terrible news for Western Australians.

Assigned Media’s reporters were on the scene early, reporting on the Supreme Court case that may decide the fate of transgender healthcare.

He’s back, and by the time you finish this article, you’ll wish he wasn’t.

Outside supporters of trans rights showed their fighting spirit. While inside, questions about detransition signaled court’s openness to gender affirming care bans.

Mary Amiti, Matthieu Gomez, Sang Hoon Kong, and David E. Weinstein

Digital Rights Watch has been involved in many Senate committee consultations since our founding in 2016. Never before have we witnessed such a shocking display of misusing the committee inquiry process as a sham consultation for the purposes of “box-ticking” community engagement.

We are dismayed to see the government prioritise the theatre of policy-making in the lead-up to a federal election over meaningful legislation over the long-term. It is particularly egregious to expect a Senate committee inquiry to provide adequate analysis with such short timescales as in the terms of reference. We do not have any confidence that this inquiry can return anything of use in the time available other than to insist upon a longer period of consultation and analysis for this important policy issue.

It is a gross disservice to the children of Australia and the Senate to use this committee inquiry to distract from the evidence that the government has failed to do adequate policy development in this area, yet is determined to push through this amendment despite expert advice from many relevant fields.

We apologise to the committee for exceeding the desired length of submission, but we have simply not had the time to make this one shorter.

You can read our submission in full below:

Draft Consolidated Industry Codes of Practice for the Online Industry (Class 1C and Class 2 Material) under the Online Safety Act 2021

We recognise there are genuine challenges regarding the safety of vulnerable groups, including children, as well as the distribution of unlawful material online. We also recognise the legitimate interest of the Australian government to promote safer online services to individuals across Australia.

As a leading Australian organisation working to protect our collective digital rights, DRW is primarily concerned with ensuring an appropriate balance is struck with regard to the impact upon individuals’ and communities’ rights, including any adverse impacts it may have on privacy, digital security, and freedom of speech and expression.

As always, we emphasise that privacy and digital security are essential to uphold safety. Questions of legitimacy, proportionality, and reasonableness also must be carefully considered in any rights-balancing activity when determining online safety policy interventions. Digital Rights Watch is contributing to this consultation in the spirit of seeking to ensure that Australia’s approach to online safety does not end up disproportionately undermining safety in the quest to enhance it.

You can real our full submission below:

On this episode of Follow the Money, Australia Institute Chief Political Analyst Amy Remeikis joins Ebony Bennett to discuss the slings and arrows of the political year, why Australia doesn’t use its power on the international stage, and how next year’s federal election campaign is shaping up.

This discussion was recorded on Tuesday 3 December 2024 and things may have changed since recording.

Order What’s the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website.

Guest: Amy Remeikis, Chief Political Analyst // @amyremeikis

Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebonybennett

Show notes:

Paul Fletcher – Why Majority Government is in the National Interest, and the Teals are not, The Sydney Institute (December 2024)

Theme music: Pulse and Thrum; additional music by Blue Dot Sessions

There are lots of ways to protect workers in Tasmania, but there is only one way to protect the critically endangered Maugean skate. The skate has been around since the time of the dinosaurs. It has just one home – Macquarie Harbour. It’s globally unique – the only known brackish water skate in the world. It’s recognised internationally as one of the natural values of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Minister Plibersek says she will listen to the science and follow the law. Australian government scientists are unequivocal that salmon farming is the key threat to the skate’s survival. Top Australian independent scientists have confirmed this. Scientists have also told us how to save the skate: stop salmon farming.

“Is anyone other than the AWU seriously suggesting we should not listen to science and not follow the law?” said Eloise Carr, Director, Australia Institute Tasmania.

“But, of course, if they want to do what the AWU says – as the elected government – that’s obviously their choice to make.

“Democracy is about choices. We used to hunt whales, log the Daintree and mine asbestos and all those industries created some jobs.

“There are lots of places where salmon can be grown but only one place in the world where the Maugean skate can live. If we chose a bit more salmon over the last of the dinosaur fish, then it speaks volumes about our priories.”

Kristian Blickle and Eric Gao

Robust banks are a cornerstone of a healthy financial system. To ensure their stability, it is desirable for banks to hold a diverse portfolio of loans originating from various borrowers and sectors so that idiosyncratic shocks to any one borrower or fluctuations in a particular sector would be unlikely to cause the entire bank to go under. With this long-held wisdom in mind, how diversified are banks in reality?

What you need to know and what the mainstream media may not tell you about the case.

Introduction

The Commons Social Change Library gathers the collective wisdom of people engaged in social change and makes it available on one easy to use website. All of our educational resources are free of charge and available to everyone with internet access.

The Commons was a Community Partner for FWD+Organise 2024.

FWD+Organise 2024 was a conference that gathered community organisers and digital campaigners for two days of intensive learning at the Abbotsford Convent (Naarm/Melbourne, Australia) in December 2024. It was hosted by Australian Progress.

The Albanese government wants to pass major changes to national electoral laws with the help of the opposition.

On the cards are tens of millions in taxpayer funding for the major parties, donation caps, and limits on campaign spending – though the rules are much stricter for independent challengers than for major party MPs. They are the biggest changes to Australian democracy in decades – and Australians saw the legislation only last Monday.

The Albanese government is also rushing a social media age ban. It did graciously allow a parliamentary inquiry for this one. Don’t bother writing something – it gave only 24 hours for submissions, and “would appreciate” nothing more than two pages long.

But South Australia takes the cake for pushing new laws through before anyone has time to react.

Two weeks ago, Premier Peter Malinauskas announced Labor, Liberal, Greens and One Nation parliamentarians all supported his legislation to massively increase the amount of public money going to political parties and MPs while simultaneously banning most political donations. The bill will deliver political parties millions of dollars in extra funding while putting limits on newcomers’ fundraising.

Only once the bill was introduced to the Legislative Council did cracks appear; it was described as “rushed”, “a bit of a leap of faith”, an “election vanity project” and compared to the movie Sophie’s choice.

Introduction

Disinformation thrives on stereotypes, scapegoating and soundbites. Direct conversations with people that go deeper into experiences and feelings have been found to be effective at reducing stigma and discrimination, shifting opinions and actions. 

Deep Canvassing

“Deep canvassing is a voter contact model where canvassers prioritize two things: 

1. Non-judgmentally inviting a voter to open up about their real, conflicted feelings on an issue. 
2. Sharing vulnerably about their own life, and asking curious questions about the voter’s life (especially the experiences that have shaped how they each feel about the issue).

In other words, deep canvassing is about working to create mutual understanding grounded in lived experience, instead of in debate or talking points. When we take this approach,  people’s experience leads them away from prejudice, stigma, or fear, and towards empathy and a willingness to consider progressive solutions.” The New Conversation Initiative

One-to-one conversations have been a key tool of community organising for many years. Deep canvassing builds on the approach by focusing on conflicted feelings and encouraging taking the perspective of others.

Today the Business Council of Australia released its “Regulation Rumble 2024 report” which ranked Victoria as the worst state to do business. And yet when we examine the actual business investment figures from the Bureau of Statistics, it is clear private business investment in Victoria is actually growing more strongly in that state than almost anywhere else in Australia.

The discrepancy between what the BCA argues and what the data says is due to the reasons behind the BCA’s report. Notionally the report is designed to rank the states in order of places to do business. In reality, it is designed to pressure state governments to reduce taxes and regulations in order to increase the profits of companies.

This is made clear by the criteria – the BCA noted that it “examined planning systems, payroll taxes, property taxes and charges, retail trading hours, workers compensation premiums and licences to do business”. That is, anything that costs businesses is bad regardless of the impact it might have on the community through perhaps better services funded by state revenue.  It concluded that South Australia was the best place to do business and that “this was largely driven by it having lower payroll taxes, lower property charges and less voluminous business licensing.”

The BCA has a very clever media strategy, and its report got wide coverage.

On this episode of After America, Zoe Daniel MP, Independent Member for Goldstein and former foreign correspondent, joins Dr Emma Shortis to talk about the incoming Trump administration, Australia’s relationships with the United States and China, and the role of independent politicians in Australian defence and foreign policy-making.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 28 November and things may have changed since recording.

Order What’s the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website.

Guest: The Hon Zoe Daniel MP, Independent Member for Goldstein // @zoedaniel

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

Show notes:

Greetings from Trumpland: How an unprecedented presidency changed everything by Zoe Daniel and Roscoe Whalan (March 2021)

Theme music: Blue Dot Sessions

After attacks on the trans community in the wake of the election, Riki Wilchins takes a look at the actual data.

Our latest article, entitled ‘The Dialectical Matrix of Class, Gender, Race’ published in Environment and Planning F, goes beyond intersectional studies on the themes of class, gender, and race to assert Marxist dialectics in the analysis of capitalist, patriarchal, and racial forms of oppression. Understanding the ways in which these forms are internally related is of utmost importance, considering heightened global tensions within the polycrisis reflected in the conditions characteristic of genocide in Gaza; or the wider global femicide; or the intensifying crisis of global capitalism.

Building on a previous article in Environment and Planning A, our more recent article assesses wider contributions within and between Marxism Feminism and Black Marxism to elevate consideration of the structural relationships between gender oppression, racial discrimination, and capitalism.

Introduction

A collection of guides and toolkits for civil society organisations on how to counter disinformation collated by the Commons Librarians.

“This organisation is making a profound contribution to public policy in our country.”
The Hon Clare O’Neil MP, Minister for Housing and Homelessness

Read our 2024 Impact Report here

Per Capita’s research and relentless advocacy over many years has secured many progressive policy changes this year across tax, gender equality, industry policy, education, housing, responsible technology and progressive economics:

Stage 3 tax cuts
The government changed these to be fairer in January after our years of advocacy.

Super on parental leave
Superannuation will now be paid on government-funded parental leave. We have been calling for this since 2017.

Future Made in Australia
The government’s proposed industry policy closely aligns with recommendations from our Centre for New Industry around decarbonising and diversifying Australia’s industry.

Paid student placements
Social work students will now be paid for their mandatory 1000 placement hours following our report and advocacy.

At the moment numerous media outlets are attempting to make the case that the Victorian government’s finances are in a parlous state.  The Financial Review for example has editorialised “Allan and Pallas in denial about Victoria’s state of decline”, while The Age stated as though it was an uncontested fact that “The state’s finances are heading towards a cliff.”

The media like to point to Victoria’s debt and deficit but they do so by including government fixed capital investment in the deficit. This might seem to the layperson as perfectly reasonable, but it is not how accounting works in the private sector and it presents a distorted picture of the state of the budget.

Including capital investment in a similar manner would, for example, see BHP’s 2024 profit drop from its declared US$20.7 billion to a marginal US$0.2 billion. Many other profitable companies would be in deficit were their budgets measured in the same way that now has the media suggesting the Victorian state finances are in deep trouble.

In 2022-23 (the latest year of ABS data), Victoria’s general government sector actually made a profit (net cash flow from operating activities) of $4.0 billion. Victoria’s budget papers also show a $1.4 billion surplus from operating activities in 2023-24.

The Vulnerability to Extreme Heat report identifies locations across Australia which have a high likelihood of experiencing extreme heat and a high concentration of people who are vulnerable because of illness, age and/or income level.

It finds that wealthy, coastal areas of major cities are generally less vulnerable to extreme heat than inland suburbs, and that rural areas are generally more vulnerable than urban areas.

Extreme heat is the number one cause of weather-related illness and death in all parts of Australia, except Tasmania, and Australians on low incomes who are older and/or have a long-term health issue are more vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat.

Doctors for the Environment Australia say the research is a vital tool which will help governments to save lives.

Tasmanian parliamentary pay frozen

Tasmanian MPs’ rate of pay has been frozen since 2018. Before then the base salary of Tasmanian members of parliament increased annually. It was last increased in July 2018 to $140,185 per year.

Figure 1: Members of parliament base rate of pay 1996-97 to 2023-24

A comic based on trans news stories from the month of November 2024.

by Piper Bly

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss Trump’s wild new tariff announcement and the end of the standoff between Labor and the Greens over housing.

This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 27 November 2024 and things may have changed since recording.

Pre-order What’s the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website.

Host: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute and Centre for Future Work // @grogsgamut

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

Show notes:

‘Welcome to Trump’s trade war – where no one wins because everyone just pays more for things’ by Greg Jericho, Guardian Australia (November 2024)

Theme music: Blue Dot Sessions

Bathrooms, bathrooms, bathrooms! Where’s a girl to go piss when all the guys in suits are so pissed at me?

For years politicians have been rolling out policies they claim will make housing more affordable. And for years housing affordability has continued to get worse. Housing needs to become cheaper and instead it is becoming more expensive.

You might expect that our politicians would be concerned by the fact that all their policies fail. Instead, the government rammed two new housing affordability bills through the parliament yesterday which are more of the same.

The best you can say about the government’s two new policies is that they will have no impact on the housing market.

The list of policies that both sides of politics have claimed will fix the problem is long. First home buyer grants, government support for social and affordable housing, first home buyers accessing super to buy a home, plus many, many more.

All the while anger is growing as house prices keep rising.

There are two things you can do to make something cheaper. You can increase supply or decrease demand. Or both. If there is a bumper crop of apples (more supply), then the price of apples goes down. When fewer people wanted to buy DVDs (less demand) the price of DVDs went down.

The first problem is many of these policies don’t increase supply or decrease demand. In fact, some of them do the opposite.

The various first-home-buyer grants gave first-home buyers more money to buy a house (increase demand). They all show up the auction and bid up the price of homes making them more expensive.

Endangered Maugean skate and its only home, Macquarie Harbour, are matters of national environmental significance and protected under national environmental law. One third of the harbour is World Heritage and Maugean skate, an endangered stingray-like animal, are one of the natural values of Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Scientific evidence shows salmon farming operations are the primary risk and ‘almost certain’ to be ‘catastrophic’ to the skate.

The Australia Institute commissioned polling by Dynata, which surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,009 Australians between 13 and 15 November 2024 about their attitudes towards fish farming in Macquarie Harbour where it is putting the endangered Maugean skate at risk of extinction. The margin of error is ±3%.

Thousands of voters have signed a petition, launched by The Australia Institute, demanding a public inquiry into the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Bill.

The changes would significantly benefit Labor and the Coalition, giving them a huge financial advantage over independents and minor party candidates seeking a seat in the Australian Parliament.

The Australia Institute petition, launched just over a week ago, states:

Trust in our democracy is embedded in strong electoral laws and processes.

The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Bill risks undermining this trust by being unfair, rushed, and shrouded in secrecy.

We call on you to immediately establish a parliamentary inquiry, with public hearings, to assess the proposed changes to Australia’s electoral laws.

This must happen before major changes to Australian electoral law are put to Parliament for a vote.

The petition has attracted more than 18,000 signatures.

In the past, even small changes to our electoral system have been scrutinised by a parliamentary committee. Petitioners agree that should happen before these proposed changes are passed.

“The integrity of Australian elections is too important for the Albanese government’s proposed changes to be rushed through without scrutiny, including a thorough parliamentary inquiry,” said Bill Browne, Director of the Australia Institute’s Democracy & Accountability Program.

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

The years of war and terror imposed upon the Middle East have left its people, as Jordan Elgrably tells host Chris Hedges, “tired of saying that [they’re] human too.” In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Elgrably discusses the stories that remind English-speaking Western readers of the humanity behind those from this often misunderstood and misrepresented region.

Discount Biff Tannen and evil buffoon Donald Trump may issue a second, even worse ban on transgender Americans serving their country.