Great to join Han Yang for a wide ranging discussion on China, including the SLBM test, green steel, China-Europe relations, China’s capital cost advantage, Australian social cohesion (including migration & housing)… Hopefully people find it interesting m.youtube.com/watch?si=Sxa...

Speaking of AI, China's annual energy consumption hit a new record already this year, driven by massive growth in AI. From Bloomberg: "electricity demand from “internet data services” rose 44.6% in the first five months of the year" www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

This is one area where we might have to accept an uncomfortable option. Retail staff are subjected to constant abuse & occasional violence - they need ways to stay safe at work. ground.news/article/laun...

A generationally important speech for Australia, if it has the impact it deserves podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/b...

So many politicians in interviews discuss their strategy instead of implement it Listening now to shadow energy minister saying their strategy is to offer a positive alternative to the government, but instead of doing it he just talks about doing it It’s so strange

WTF? So the US is straight up into international piracy now? He's even calling it "protection" money. ground.news/article/4765...

I know how much you love writing… do you use Claude to help write? (Bloomberg) “I do, but I have not gotten to the point where I allow text directly written by Claude.” - Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO

Barnaby Joyce seems to want unelected bureaucrats to manage the budget instead of Parliament. Has he really thought this one through? www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...

I recently joined Mike Kelly on his podcast, Frontlines & Faultlines to talk about dealing with climate disasters without turning straight to the ADF. We need a civilian National Disaster Reserves, like the army reserves but for natural disasters. : youtu.be/oEfeg04iBng

Fascinating that Fiji sought out the alliance with Australia, and Australia agreed (rather than the other way around). At least that's according to Fiji's PM during the press conference announcing it. Fiji's first ever defence treaty.

Outrageous from the CCP, testing a nuclear-capable missile in the South Pacific, which is a nuclear weapon-free zone. I’m sure they’ll want Pacific Island countries to accept that this is somehow peaceful and not any kind of threat. I doubt that message will fly www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...

The pokies policy adopted at the NSW State Labor Conference yesterday was a major reversal - we were going hard in the wrong direction and now we’re going partially in the right direction. But only partially, and not on sports or online gambling www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...

Very lucky to meet Andrew this afternoon at the end of our delegation with FES to get a detailed brief on the Council’s recent China discussion. There’s a more happening to protect & reinvigorate Europe’s economy than most reporting suggests

Have been talking about how European industry is surviving competition from China with Germany’s peak business group & with @merics.bsky.social this morning.

Albo: “These [social media] companies… unaccountable… massive amounts of profit and… extraordinary power. We need to make sure that Australians are in charge of this." Hear hear. Algorithms shouldn’t rip society apart with no recourse. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06...

With FES on my way to Germany’s foreign office to discuss perspectives on China relations & the NYT is conveniently updating me on Australia’s foreign policy: Albo quoted saying China’s long term goal is hegemony. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/w...

Arrested for “soft resistance” - in this case, planning to sell a book about someone who disagrees with the CCP ground.news/article/hong...

Japan once again the country that is trusted by more Australians than any other. The two countries we fought in WW2 are now the countries we trust the most. I guess they weren’t the only ones to change over the last 80 years

I just learned that Australia is not subject to the Vienna Convention on Drivers’ Licenses & I don’t know how to think about that treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDe...

Hegseth… what a tragic joke: “As President Trump put it, he gave our allies a test—to support America when we asked for their help—and too many failed it.” The rest was: once he thoughtlessly took a dump on the world, who would rush to clean it up for him. youtu.be/x0pvVnrgC6I?...

JD Vance is Lin Biao to Trump’s Mao. Discuss.

Fascinating conversation on the history of evidence-based thinking. It can be easy to assume you just know how to do something, but it’s good to remember a lot of things actually have an evidence base that’s surprisingly accessible (esp. with AI) podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/c...

Anthropic: “We need serious management of the risks from powerful AI” Trump admin: “No foreign nationals can use it” (These aren’t the same picture, as much as that’s the internets favourite simplification this hour) www.anthropic.com/news/fable-m...

Australia can increase international student enrolments without relying on just 1-2 countries. We can even do it in a way that's population-neutral: HECS exchanges. Let international students pay off fees through their home country tax system. And make it bidirectional youtu.be/K6V3r4Cvz74

Meta employees should unionize.

Excellent to see, even if the it has the worst possible cause asia.nikkei.com/business/aut...

Great discussion with Australia’s longest serving Electoral Commissioner, Tom Rogers The AEC is one of Australia’s absolute gems podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/v...

Ed Husic is wrong to say Australia “blinked” on regulating AI. Actually we’re doing it in a far better way than he proposed www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06...

I wonder if the NSW government will listen this time. People have been screaming this fact for 6 years www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

Just learned from Insiders that Labor’s ‘party machine’ is a debate free zone. Obviously we’ve all been wasting our nights in meetings & zooms these past few months arguing about amendments to the national platform line by line

Surely this is the dumbest thing written about Pauline Hanson (so far)?

Just learned that Jack Clark, cofounder of Anthropic, is an English literature grad podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/t...

Interesting. I disagree with one academic quoted here: the first paragraph was clearly human written. The first four, actually. But at least half the rest was unmistakable AI slop. It’s extremely easy to recognise someone using AI with no skill or effort www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06...

If you can smuggle a container of these into a country, you can attack any part of that country at any time. It means hardening military bases & critical infrastructure becomes even more essential (unless your enemy is Russia or Iran, in which case you need to defend civilian areas, too)

I love this thought, but I suspect it depends on how the person uses the algorithm. Personally I’ve never seen anything on YouTube that encourages misogyny or racism. The most negative content I’ve seen is from Sky News (Aus)

This is horrifying. And aside from the actual horrors of this story itself, liberal multicultural immigrant democracies need to urgently sort out a strong positive core culture or the backlash to insane stuff like this will just tear everything down www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

SportsBet needs to be included www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw...

Shocked to hear the AFR acknowledge that capital gains tax doesn’t drive start up risk taking. Most entrepreneurs don’t make any more at all for years. Entrepreneurialism shouldn’t just be the kids of the rich trying to become obscenely rich

We had a guest lecture by Howard Bamsey in our Climate Policy class today. He talked briefly about a project extending coastal wetlands rather than installing concrete seawalls in the Pacific. I wasn't so aware of how effective these can be theconversation.com/forget-massi...

The utter depravity of this man. I’ve never heard of someone so consumed by narcissism www.bbc.com/news/videos/...

@carbonbrief.org includes a chart today showing new coal plants hit a 10-year high last year, with about 75% built in China. China reactivated even more than that. China turn on more than 5x the new coal consumption than the next country (India). Stabilizing the climate means working with China

What happens when AI starts reshaping identity, work, education & creativity? At 6pm on Wed 10 June, join Anna Goldsworthy and me at ANU for a conversation on her new Quarterly Essay, 'The God We Made'. RSVP: https://www.anu.edu.au/events/meet-the-author-anna-goldsworthy

I’ve been trying to help my students better understand policy writing as a specific form. In preparing a workshop, I asked Claude to help me find examples of bad policy writing that demonstrated multiple failure modes. It picked Angus Taylor’s 2021 climate policy, calling it “a gift to teaching”

The lawsuits are good, the editorials are getting better, but the news stories are still full of weasel words and normalization. The greatest power of a news organization is news. See: presswatchers.org/2025/09/how-...

Essential watching youtu.be/tIBCjzz-bmk?...

If your plan is to get very rich on the back of Australian public services, then just say ‘thanks’ when you pay taxes If you think your start-up is all you, then by all means, don’t hire anyone with an education or health needs; don’t require your staff to come to work or use data infrastructure…

Watched SBS Insight on people voting for One Nation. A lot of people don’t feel heard. I’ve got to say, the way to get heard is to participate. Join a political party and get involved. If you aren’t being heard, it could be because you aren’t speaking up. www.sbs.com.au/news/insight...

Our article on AI & jobs: “Australia already has laws governing discrimination, consumer protection, privacy, workplace safety and unfair dismissal. The task is ensuring those laws remain effective when AI becomes the instrument.” thenightly.com.au/opinion/nick...

AI psychosis is real. My account-level instructions to Claude include: “Prioritise accuracy over agreement. Correct factual errors directly. Push back on weak reasoning or misread evidence. Don't reinforce misunderstandings by omission.” www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05...

Been watching Jin on Netflix. Second episode is about epidemiology: a present day neurosurgeon wakes up in the Edo period of Japan & has to deal with a cholera outbreak. It’s pretty good (maybe a little over-acted) www.netflix.com/au/title/817...