Join us for Conversation at the Crossroads’ 2025 Annual Oration: Ink Against Empire: From Courtroom to Newsroom – Why Human Rights Can’t Survive Without a Free Press Featuring Antoinette Lattouf and Gabriel Shipton. Fri 14 Nov | Treacy Centre, Melbourne & online | #Auspol #FreePress

Though Labor is likely to remain in government for at least one more term, it is still struggling to move beyond rhetoric and appears far from having a coherent strategy to counter the surge of the far-right. #auspol #Multiculturalism #Socialcohesion

While policymakers and the public focus on environmental law reform in Canberra, the lack of scrutiny of state-level decisions is creating a major blind spot. #Environment #Lawreform #auspol

Now is the right time for Australian politicians, policymakers and academic theorists to come together, learn and set new directions for policy. #auspol #Economics #Analyticaltools

Let the words we’ve spoken together, the dreams we’ve dreamt together, become the agenda we deliver together. New York, this power, it’s yours. This city belongs to you. #auspol #ZohranMamdani #NewYork #Mayor

Conversation at the Crossroads will be an opportunity to address issues of critical significance: freedom of speech, the role of the media, human rights and solidarity with the oppressed. #auspol #Media #Humanrights #Freedom

The unfortunate, indeed, disastrous result, of the combination of press disregard for responsible debate and public distrust is that politicians have learnt the tricks of the trade and have successfully diluted the community’s political experience. #auspol #theDismissal #Whitlam #Media

Our journalists can still tell sharp, critical, honest stories – but they might want to break free of the editorial obsession with casting China as the eternal antagonist. #auspol #China #News Corp #Racism

The outcome to this matter that saw a mother in custody for two months on three serious charges that were all dropped? A non-conviction order: no (further) penalty for the defendant – but surely pause for thought for the office of the DPP. #auspol #ACT #Appeal #DPP

If Israel passes this horrific death penalty law, it is yet another reason for Canberra to end its timidity and impose sanctions on this rogue state. #auspol #Israel #Palestinian #Deathpenalty

A gaggle of royals all collaborated with Kerr in the dismissal of the Whitlam Government – the Queen,  Prince Philip, who called Whitlam "a socialist arsehole",  Prince Charles and Lord Mountbatten. #auspol #theDismissal #Whitlam #Charles

Netanyahu faces an election next year in what he says is the region’s only democracy. That claim is supported by the evident freedom of articulate Israelis and their relatively unfettered media to speak truth to power and hold government to account. #auspol #Israel #Gaza

Australian were unable to stop the genocide in Gaza but we must insist that our government support the Palestine people and work overtime to protect international humanitarian law. #auspol #Israel #Gaza

The Maduro Government has its fans and its detractors; both can mount solid arguments. But it is a national project that seeks to resist dominance from foreign interests, foremost the US. #auspol #Venezuela #Maduro #Trump

Retailers are not so thrilled about the new initiative, with peak industry body the Australian Energy Council releasing a statement effectively saying, "well, this is news to us!" #auspol #Renewables #ChrisBowen

Previously published research, including multiple studies in The Lancet, has concluded that the official tally is likely a significant undercount. #Gaza #Hamas #Israel #auspol

The Press Gallery members who were interviewed described their editors’ handling of their copy as they reported the election. Many were angry, traumatised, despairing and depressed, and told their stories graphically. #theDIsmissal #Whitlam #auspol

A fiscal crisis may greet Mamdani if/when he becomes mayor. According to The New York Times, “JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, put the odds of a recession by year’s end at 40%.” #NewYorkCity #Mamdani

The importance of China to Australia is certain to continue to increase, economically and strategically. Learning about China’s approach to public administration is an essential component of a "stabilised" relationship. #auspol #China #Taiwan

It is starting to seem, however, that adventurism has little place in Trump’s strategic world of great power relations. #auspol #China #Taiwan

It is nonsense to say the Queen was not involved. Her favourite courtier and she carry joint responsibility for the sacking of a government that had a clear majority in the Australian House of Representatives. #auspol #theDIsmissal #Whitlam

Episode 2 of Pearlcast revisits 11 Nov 1975 — the day the Governor-General dismissed the Whitlam govt. Catriona Jackson talks with Jenny Hocking and John Menadue about the shock, secrecy and constitutional revolt that changed Australia. #Auspol #Whitlam #Pearlcast #podcast

Power does reveal what people are really like: what their base and true instincts are. That’s something I’ve learned watching people grow with the job, and certainly Gough Whitlam did. Power revealed the things he cared for. JM #auspol #Whillam

The ongoing genocide is conclusive evidence that the “cursed promise” was not a page that turned, but a continuous project of destruction and erasure. It is time for justice to erase this promise from humanity’s memory. #auspol #Palestine

The much-touted Western exemplar of moral superiority, that has been forced down the throats of the other 88% of humanity for hundreds of years, was, and is, a tissue of lies. The bulk of humanity were forced to accept them. #auspol #superiority

Fathering: An Australian History is a moving testament to the attempts on the part of many men and their children to forge a closer relationship with one another and a reminder that gender norms continue to be a barrier. #auspol #review

Zombie multilateralism is not about failure; it’s about inertia mistaken for endurance. The real question after Gyeongju is whether Korea and other middle powers will keep animating these diplomatic corpses. #auspol #APEC

The challenge for socialist forces is to articulate Gen Z’s genuine grievances into a program that demands a higher share of the social surplus and uses that to enhance net-fixed investment and transform social relations. #auspol #GenZ

Prime minister Gough Whitlam’s Dismissal on 11 November by the governor-general Sir John Kerr, 50 years ago, provoked outrage and fury. The shock and perceived injustices led to a bitter election contest. #auspol #theDismissal #whitlam

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.): “Trump needs to stop weaponising hunger. They have the authority to fully fund SNAP for 42 million Americans – including 1.4 million Michiganders. Anything less is unacceptable"..#auspol #USpolitics

The Quad has served whatever purpose it might have had, since India will not be anyone’s cats-paw. The vague geostrategic construct “Indo-Pacific” does not retain much currency when the focus of the power struggle is Asia Pacific. #auspol #QUAD

The Dismissal pushed me more to the left politically. I had been too trusting of the powerful and wealthy. I saw first hand that a governor-general, justices of the High Court and subsequently the Queen and her advisers were untrustworthy. JM #Auspol #theDismissal #Whitlam

Launching Pearlcast - the 50th anniversary of the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government. Editor-in-chief John Menadue – the living link to the scandal; Jenny Hocking, author of The Palace Letters and Brian Toohey, the journalist who has dug deepest into the darkest elements of the events. #auspol

Plastics are a part of this toll, but a part that is set to redouble as our use of these deadly substances grows. It is a fresh case of how civilisation intends to die by its own hand.

Silence reigns in the major Australian parties and legacy media on the importance of Francesca Albanese’s latest report, and its predecessors. International law, derided by successive Australian governments seems to be consigned to the too-hard basket. #auspol #palestine

Instead of digging in on failed migration settings to defy racists, Australia could take a lesson from Denmark or Canada. By heeding popular calls to lower immigration, they have defused support for right-wing groups while easing rents and unemployment. #auspol #immigration

What’s the likelihood? Who knows? We know that contagion in one area of the market can have spill-on effects. We also know that, despite all the protestations about debt being bad, governments around the world are going deeper and deeper into it. #auspol #USpolitics

While #Connolly has said that she will represent the entire country, she will be largely the voice of the working-class and the oppressed – not the Irish landlords and bankers. Nor will she be kind to US imperialism and its allies. #auspol #ireland

Nothing “started” on 7 October 2023, despite strenuous efforts to decontextualise and de-historicise the attack. The only unique aspect to these events is that the Palestinians initiated a breakout from what has long been called a concentration camp.@Iranalyst #auspol #Palestine

US allies and partners across the Asia-Pacific must anticipate more than just a future in which the US is unwilling to lead on the security, economic and diplomatic fronts, a future in which the US cannot lead, regardless of who is in power. #auspol #AsiaPacific

The AFP has long had ambitions to be some sort of FBI, with elite investigators working to secure federal interests, including, in theory at least in these days of Donald Trump, the prevention of corruption, bribery and fraud against the state. @waterfordjack #auspol

My enduring memory of Ali Kazak is of a person with enormous energy. He never stopped, his work for Palestine was tireless. There was always big thinking, new initiatives, fire in the belly, a desire to challenge, unrelenting determination.@djspratt #AliKazak #auspol

Deceit is the one word that comes to mind when I think about the Dismissal. Many in the Coalition, with a born-to-rule view after 23 years of conservative rule, believed that the election of the Whitlam Government in 1972 was an aberration. JM #auspol #Dismissal

The government response to the final report from the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport inquiry into regional bank closures is 430 days overdue. #auspol

Gina Rinehart AO should review the Clean Your Room meme and extend her renowned philanthropy towards the impoverished Banjima people and remediate the mess her late father left behind. #auspol #fossilfuels

Recognising the contributions of early Muslims and contemporary migrants strengthens our sense of national identity and social cohesion. It honours the past and future. #auspol #migration

By 2034, it will be 23 years since the Gonski Report recommended that public schools be fully funded according to a schooling resource standard. Lamentable failure. #auspol #Gonski

The US will be reluctant to commit a major ground force to take and hold #Venezuela: that job will likely fall to the opposition, led by Nobel Peace Laureate Maria Corina #Machado. #auspol #USpol

Israel's strategy to continue the war on Gaza: find a baseless pretext, use it to kill dozens of civilians and fighters, stop fire and claim you’re honouring the ceasefire. Do it again.

In 2021, #Google and #Amazon signed a US$1.2 billion contract with the #Israeli Government for advanced cloud computing and AI services – tools used in the onslaught on #Gaza Strip. #auspol