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President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency is perhaps the most welcome wake-up call for the federal government—and its obscene spending habits—in decades. It is refreshing to see many overpaid, underworked, often-vacationing federal employees fretting about whether their cushy jobs will disappear, and to see at least one branch of the federal government working to rein in our massive deficit spending. All of this is long overdue.

Yet it remains to be seen whether DOGE will help jump-start a serious and sustained effort to restore fiscal sanity, or whether its high-profile efforts will wrongly convince Americans that enough has been done, and that we can stop worrying that the federal government is bankrupting the country. If the former happens, it will be an extraordinary and much-needed development; if the latter, it will provide further evidence that, as Lincoln warned us nearly two centuries ago, if our republic is to be destroyed, it will be destroyed from within.

There are already signs that DOGE might not be able to deliver as much as originally promised. 

Introduction

Does your organisation have an organising program? Here is a template for developing and/or reviewing your organising program.

This template is modified from the Organising Models Mapping Project survey. View the articles from this research project on The Commons Social Change Library.

Feel free to modify this template for your organisation’s use by picking out the sections that are most relevant.

Please note that the Organising Models Mapping Project researched approaches to organising in Australia and Aotearoa/NZ. The situation may be different in your country or community. If you have other frameworks, tools or articles to share on The Commons, we welcome your input. 

Thanks to Beth Koch (formerly Australian Conservation Foundation), Anita Tang (Australian Progress) and Dr Robin Gulliver for their work on this project. 

If you have any questions contact Holly Hammond: holly@commonslibrary.org 

In Australia’s Westminster system, governments depend on MPs for support – and MPs can be replaced part-way through the term or change their minds about who to support.

Since Federation, the governing party changed eight times due to non-electoral events, most recently in 1975 with the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government.

While in 1975 it was the Governor-General who forced a change, the other seven were caused by MPs changing their minds about who to support or governments failing to get their agenda passed through the parliament.

A government can also lose its parliamentary majority outside of a general election but hold on to power.

In 2018, when Malcolm Turnbull quit Parliament and independent Kerryn Phelps won his seat, the Morrison Government fell into minority. The government survived, although legislation to allow for medical evacuation of sick refugees and asylum seekers became law despite the government’s opposition.

At the state level, since 1992 there have been three times when crossbenchers have forced a change in premiers or ministers, without bringing down the rest of the government – most recently in Tasmania last year.

Crossbenchers can demand the old convention of ministerial responsibility is upheld without threatening the survival of the government as a whole.

The housing crisis continues to grip Australia and it’s a central part of this election campaign. Unfortunately, while both major parties have made housing policies key parts of their election platforms their policies mostly tinker around the edges and fail in four key ways.

Dutton’s nuclear push will cost renewable jobs

As Australia’s federal election campaign has finally begun, opposition leader Peter Dutton’s proposal to spend hundreds of billions in public money to build seven nuclear power plants across the country has been carefully scrutinized.

The technological unfeasibility, staggering cost, and scant detail of the Coalition’s nuclear proposal have brought criticism from federal and state governments, the CSIRO, the Climate Council, the Electrical Trade Union (ETU), the Climate Change Authority, the Australia Institute, and independent energy experts.

Economist Richard Denniss joined ABC’s Q+A to dig into the election promises and explain how we can actually help people who are struggling in Australia.

Will the major parties housing policies actually help?

With calls for more spending to help those struggling the most, what are Australia’s options to collect more revenue?

“Australia is the third biggest fossil fuel exporter in the world. “Norway, which is also a big fossil fuel exporter, they tax their fossil fuel industry and give their kids free university education. “In Australia, we subsidise the fossil fuel industry.”

“We can either collect more tax from the big businesses that can afford to pay it, or we can say, Sorry, Marge, you’ve had it too good.”

The post Busting myths on Q+A | Richard Denniss highlights appeared first on The Australia Institute.

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)

In the wreckage of World War II, there was no question who had won. Europe lay physically and morally bankrupt—its cities shattered, its institutions hollowed out, and its spiritual confidence extinguished in the fires of fascism and the humiliations of collaboration. America, in contrast, emerged not only militarily triumphant, but also civilizationally intact. It stood at the apex of industrial productivity, financial power, and—most crucially—a sense of providential mission. The nation had saved the world again from barbarism, and now it would rebuild it.

The instrument of this rebuilding was not martial coercion but what was euphemistically called the European Recovery Program. The Marshall Plan, as it came to be known, was a masterstroke of economic strategy. But it was more than that—it was a civilizational covenant. Through grants and loans, technology transfers, and institutional design, the United States reseeded the very soil of European life with the means of moral and material reconstruction. The goal was not merely to avert famine or restore infrastructure, but to reorient Europe toward the West—toward a shared vision of liberty, dignity, and law grounded in the remnants of a Christian moral order.

Western Europe rose from the ashes, and for a time, it seemed to regain its footing. From the founding of NATO to the forging of the European Economic Community, the transatlantic alliance was not merely a political convenience, but an expression of civilizational unity.

Matthew Higgins and Thomas Klitgaard

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