“Howard’s flirtations with reactionary populism were always likely to turn perilous,” says Strangio. “Once that fire was lit, the probability was that it would be impossible to douse; instead it would escalate. That escalation… is dangerously close to a conflagration.” inside.org.au/what-makes-a...

“Hanson began her political career, in local government, with a campaign to prevent the building of a library in Ipswich because she thought it was a waste of ratepayers’ money. It is hard to discern much change in her outlook thirty years later. She is one of life’s straighteners.”

The most interesting contribution of 'Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed' is the authors' excavation of apartheid South Africa as the nursery of Musk's skill of turning public investment and state infrastructure into private leverage. trib.al/wWAzBau

National housing policy needs much more work www.croakey.org/national-hou...

“While One Nation casts itself as an alternative to the two-party seesaw, its strongest criticism is always directed at Labor (often with a swipe at the Greens). And yet it inflicts a lot more damage to the Coalition parties.”

“If Burnham’s popularity is remarkable — his approval ratings have risen the longer he has been mayor — Labour’s unpopularity isn’t hard to fathom. Under Keir Starmer it has squandered the opportunity that he himself had created to reverse the public’s growing disillusionment with politics.”

"Principals, those unfortunate sergeants of the force, increasingly hold heretical views; many are angry that a curriculum dominated by the university-oriented Australian Tertiary Admission Rank makes it impossible to give the kids what they need. Many bite their tongue" insidestory.org.au/crackdown

“Anyone who has followed Logan Wright’s work won’t be surprised to learn that he believes China’s sclerotic financial arteries make likely a long period of low growth. Essentially, China’s investment-driven strategy has been so poorly directed it is now a hazard for the whole system.”

“Sold as an educational measure… the push is better understood as a reassertion of ministers over bureaucracies, of bureaucracies over schools, of teachers over kids, of big states over small and of states over the Commonwealth and its ‘national approach.’” insidestory.org.au/crackdown/

“Enrich was a man who ‘keeps the receipts’ — he documented every text and email and took contemporaneous notes on every bonkers, Kafkaesque conversation he had with the political appointees and senior bureaucratic enablers hellbent on dismembering USAID.”

“Julia Cooke’s newly released ‘Starry and Restless’ brings us another group of three women writers, all of whom came into prominence in the middle of the twentieth century. Rebecca West and Martha Gellhorn would be known to most readers; Emily Hahn is the outlier, and possibly the most interesting.”

“I’d usually leave such intra-legal tiffs to the Australian and its ilk. But this particular tiff raises some quite startling issues about the High Court’s medium-term future.”

As the man says “Donald Trump might share a birthday with a Black woman paid the minimum wage to clean one of his hotels, but that doesn’t mean they have any significant experiences in common.” insidestory.org.au/can-generati...

“The Pope’s offering won’t directly cause any immediate changes. No technology company will fire its chief executive because of the commands of the Pontiff. And yet the very existence of the encyclical says a great deal about the moment we are in.” insidestory.org.au/will-governm...

“The storming of the upper echelons of the public service by women — who now head 8 of the 16 Commonwealth departments — and their appointment to other institutions and agencies partly reflects a longer-term evolution. But the Albanese government’s role has been to accelerate that trend purposely…”

insidestory.org.au/king-kenny/ King Kenny Football is important in Asif Kapadia’s new documentary, but it’s not the crux of the narrative by BRETT EVANS

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo isn’t the only sign of a world ill-prepared for another pandemic. My latest for @insidestory.bsky.social insidestory.org.au/ebolas-warni...

“Stop throwing your manuscripts away. We’ll take them and you’ll get a tax deduction.” This was Prue Neidorf, the founding music librarian of the NLA, and I told her I couldn’t believe anyone would be interested in what I regarded as garbage. “It is not for you to decide,” she said, very firmly.

“The share of the working-age population receiving social security payments fell to record lows in 2023 and 2024, partly due to very high employment rates among skilled migrants, which translate into a very strong net fiscal contribution.”

Budget political problems, media’s “death tax” and related matters insidestory.org.au/pundits-and-...

For people not in the UK... you may have seen that British politics is in turmoil (again), with Keir Starmer possibly about to be overthrown as Prime Minister. I have written a piece for Inside Story explaining what is going on. I hope is is helpful! insidestory.org.au/starmer-on-t...

Support @insidestory.bsky.social with a tax-deductible donation! artists.australianculturalfund.org.au/s/project/a2...

“Affectionately known as the ‘King of the North,’ Burnham has an ability to speak to voters in a manner unmatched by any other British politician.”

“By last night eighty-seven MPs had called publicly for him to stand down, four junior ministers had resigned from the government, and several cabinet members had apparently told him privately that he could not carry on.”

“if Albanese can discover something of the heroic within him and rise to the opportunities of this moment, it isn’t beyond the bounds of possibilities that he might one day be counted among those consequential prime ministers.”

“There is no reason to believe Google’s negotiators are going to distribute money more equitably than a clear, uniform government pass-through program that pays per journalist.”

I picked up this one from @patrickmullins.bsky.social on Wednesday, comes with a very enthusiastic seal of approval from Frank Bongiorno insidestory.org.au/bombast-of-b...

“The Economist’s Asian columnist ‘Banyan’ asked the cheeky Monty Python question: ‘What did the Mughals ever do for India?’ The answer: ‘They gave political Hinduism its eternal, indispensable villain.’” Robin Jeffrey on India’s latest state elections

“Relying on backroom deals will benefit the tech companies (by paying less) and the Murdochs (by emphasising their market power), but no one else.” Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton on Labor’s News Bargaining Initiative

“Hope was a central figure during the tempestuous literary upheavals of the 1940s, a period that suffers from having been endlessly studied by literary historians and largely forgotten by the Australian public.”

Excellent - sad but funny - account by Uni of Canberra historian Frank Bongiorno of how universities ended up in their current parlous state: Time to end bad governance: betterunis.nteu.au insidestory.org.au/the-preserva... #HigherEducation #HigherEdPolicy #auspol #AcademicSky #HigherEd #academia

“As Armando Iannucci once pointed out, you can sing the opening of Paradise Lost to the signature tune of The Flintstones.” Andrew Ford on the sound of Bob Dylan

“The only way for participants to exert pressure on providers is the threat of changing providers. But many local markets only have two or three providers (if that!) to choose from, and… consumers are powerless to exert any pressure on the service mix, approach or pricing.”

“The talk had inevitably turned to the federal election campaign, which was nearing its end. He confided that while he was going to vote Liberal — he always did; ‘I’m a Liberal voter’ — he hoped Labor would be re-elected.”

“History shows that political excess is not a natural feature of the country’s DNA and there remain grounds for confidence that the populist threat can be kept at bay by brave and judicious leadership.”

"This approach is politically convenient. It doesn’t require any admission that an earlier Labor government made a grave error when it commissioned the economists of the Productivity Commission to design a market-based scheme for human service provision." insidestory.org.au/the-ndiss-or...

“[Rings’s] book, packed with music examples and copious QR coded links to dozens of excerpts from recordings, is a revelation and, like all good writing about music, makes you want to listen to it all over again.” Andrew Ford reviews WHAT DID YOU HEAR? for @insidestory.bsky.social. buff.ly/bHVaePS

My old pal Gordon Peake's fascinating reportage, following in the footsteps of the Irish writer and journalist Beatrice Grimshaw to Samarai Island, Papua New Guinea. insidestory.org.au/memento-mori/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatric...

“How then should we be responding to populism? For a start, by listening to those who vote for populists.”

“Despite what AI told me, nothing on Spotify explicitly states that this music is AI-generated, even though the streamer claims to be ‘aggressively protecting against the worst parts of Gen AI.’“

“Sunset Boulevard is not only a thick stew of Hollywood references, it is also an ingenious hybrid of styles. It is a ‘comedy, crime film, horror story, Hollywood exposé, romantic melodrama and psychological thriller.’ There is something for every viewer in its variety and shifting tone.”

A terrific essay by Rod Tiffen on the roles of Irving Kristol in the US & George Pell in Australia on the genesis of the culture wars. A reminder that Kristol's son Bill has since become a leader of the Never Trump Movement among US Republicans. insidestory.org.au/our-thirty-y...

"Some of the jobs for which they had long been accepting large salaries were not actually indispensable to the efficient functioning of their institutions." insidestory.org.au/the-preserva...

“That universities...were able to continue to do so much of their work even under lockdown owed much to the ingenuity of ordinary staff and the adaptability and resilience of students. Meanwhile, many university leaders and managers were found seriously wanting." insidestory.org.au/the-preserva...

My contribution - on universities - to a retrospective series at the excellent Inside Story: The preservation of pure self-interest, on Inside Story insidestory.org.au/the-preserva...

I wrote about Carla Kaplan’s new biography, ‘Troublemaker: The fierce, unruly life of Jessica Mitford’. See it here: insidestory.org.au/the-other-mi...

“The world’s oceans already absorb more than a quarter of all carbon emissions; in principle they have the physical capacity to sequester the many additional gigatonnes required in the IPCC’s scenarios.”