Category: The Conversation

ShutterstockThis week News Corp Australia announced the end of the print editions of 112 suburban and regional mastheads – about one-fifth of all of Australia’s local newspapers. Of those, 36 will close and 76 become purely online publications. Getting the chop entirely are small regional newspapers such

Scott Morrison has won support for a major restructure of federal-state architecture which scraps the Council of Australian Governments, enshrines the “national cabinet” permanently, and pares down a plethora of ancillary ministerial bodies. The Prime Minister is shaping the ongoing national cabinet around his government’s central priority of jobs, and

US President Donald Trump, who tweeted more than 11,000 times in the first two years of his presidency, is very upset with Twitter. Earlier this week Trump tweeted complaints about mail-in ballots, alleging voter fraud – a familiar Trump falsehood. Twitter attached a label to two of his tweets with

In a near-complete capitulation, the government will refund every alleged overpayment it has collected from welfare recipients under the discredited “robodebt” system of income averaging. Unveiling the automated system in mid-2016 then treasurer Scott Morrison and social services minister Christian Porter promised more “accurate and appropriate income testing”. They

National Archives of AustraliaThe High Court has ruled that Sir John Kerr’s correspondence with the queen comprises “Commonwealth records”. This means access to them is now in Australian hands and can no longer be vetoed by the private secretary to the queen. This correspondence, which includes Kerr’s

Lucy Nicholson/ReutersAustralia’s latest greenhouse gas figures released today show national emissions fell slightly last year. This was by no means an economy-wide effort – solar and wind energy did most of the heavy lifting. Emissions fell 0.9% last year compared to 2018. The rapid deployment of solar and

LINEAR CLINICAL RESEARCH/PR handoutWith research laboratories around the world racing to develop a coronavirus vaccine, a unique challenge has emerged: how to balance intellectual property rights with serving the public good. Questions of patent protection and access to those patents has prompted an international group of scientists and

Michelle Grattan talks with Professor Caroline Fisher (remotely) about the week in politics, including the treasury’s miscalculation on JobKeeper, the prime minister’s promise to “make the boat go faster”, and the limitations of the coronavirus debate in Eden-Monaro. Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or

As Australia slowly emerges from isolation, the nation’s economy is reopening, and even looking rather better than expected. But Australia still faces grim months ahead as unemployment numbers grow and the true extent of business survival rates emerge. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg described the economic data as sobering when he

The coronavirus pandemic has sped up changes that were already happening across society, from remote learning and work to e-health, supply chains and logistics, policing, welfare and beyond. Big tech companies have not hesitated to make the most of the crisis. In New York for example, former Google chief executive

www.shutterstock.comTwenty-year-old Sydney woman Renae Marsden died by suicide after she was the victim of an elaborate catfishing scam. A recent coronial investigation into her 2013 death found no offence had been committed by the perpetrator, revealing the difficulties of dealing with this new and emerging phenomenon. While we

ShutterstockA paper published in The Lancet has cast fresh controversy on the use of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for COVID-19. The study’s authors reported they were “unable to confirm a benefit” of using the drug, while also finding COVID-19 patients in hospital treated