Two months ago, I wrote a paper for the Electoral Matters Committee. It clocked in at 23,000 words with 16 data tables, 11 graphs, 204 footnotes and 30,000 datapoints. I made the case that we should take advantage of this historic juncture to expand participation in our representative democracy.

What's going on at UQ politics? Five one year teaching contracts! uq.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/uqcare...

3-storey townhouses and apartments should be permitted on all residential land in all capital cities to help fix Australia’s housing crisis. Building more homes will create cheaper housing and more productive cities. Our new report shows how. buff.ly/NfAM6C7 #auspol

Parl Library has updated the Bills Digest to include analysis of these proposed measures (section at the end): www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentar...

Snacks Bar Okrika; P3VQ+52G Snacks Bar, Abuloma, Okrika 500103, Rivers, Nigeria https://www.google.com/maps/search/?api=1&query=4.742937899999999%2C7.0875901&query_place_id=ChIJaVbHkg7LaRAR4S5RGEqp4MA

Granted I know extremely little about health policy but this feels like an important point theconversation.com/gps-will-soo...

Today's blog post is again about the 1984 election - how many MPs jumped ship to safer seats? And how different was the swing in seats with sitting Labor MPs or without any sitting MP? #auspol www.tallyroom.com.au/63522

breathless Mamdani coverage from desks in Sydney when i couldn't get SHIT up about a demonstration movement next door that killed eight people

I promise you will not believe *why* Elizabeth Lee has been suspended from the Canberra Liberals www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

Today's blog post looks back at the 1984 parliamentary expansion - how did it change the shape of the pendulum, and how did it change where marginal seats were located? www.tallyroom.com.au/63515 #auspol

Last Friday I appeared before a Senate committee to talk about the Commonwealth's proposed changes to FOI laws @withmeaa.bsky.social, in my capacity as a working freelance journalist. The changes copy FOI regimes at the state level -- two hours later, one of those states hit me with a charge: /1

How is WeChat used to mobilise ethnic Chinese voters in political campaigns? Luna L Zhao looks at the case of New Zealand in this new article in @ausjpolsci.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

How did #Housing shape the 2025 #auspol Election? Come to our free webinar. We analyse new data to see how generation, tenure and voting shape housing politics With @emmabaker.bsky.social @shaunratcliff.bsky.social and @everybodyshome.bsky.social Maiy Azize events.humanitix.com/webinar-on-h...

Scholars & pundits have focussed a lot on the electoral demise of center left, but in doing so we paid to little attention to the electoral problems of the center right. Case-in-points here not only British conservatives or center right in France, but increasingly also the center right in Spain.

This, from @catherinedevries.bsky.social, is really useful advice for young (and, tbh, old!) academics. Worth passing on if you know any, maybe? catherineeunicedevries.substack.com/p/fail-bette...

Reading a week-old Canberra Times and see the Cbr Libs have paid for (I assume??) advice that suggests campaigning as though the ACT has an entirely different electoral system. Very good!!

I accidentally inspired one of the best things I've read in years www.woroni.com.au/words/all-of...

“I’m strong and I want to have like fifty kids and a farm” of course you do. You’re twelve. “I don’t want to eat vegetables I think steak and French fries is the only meal” hell yeah homie you’re twelve. “Maybe if there’s crime we should just send the army” bless your heart my twelve year old buddy

On the morning of Keir Starmer's conference speech here's a new post on an odd psychopathology in British politics - our main parties don't like the people who vote for them - the dreaded Professional Managerial Class. And so they are acting out like a divorced dad seeking cooler voters. 1/n

Students use #ChatGPT to do their homework, so how can teachers design effective courses so they actually learn anything at all? Register before August 31st to get early bird tickets! wombat2025.numbat.space/program/work... #RStats #AI #LLM #DataScience

Private consultants are taking control of how public universities are evaluated and run. My submission to the Senate university governance inquiry raises concerns about the impact of Nous Group and their dodgy UniForum data on our universities. www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStor... A thread

Oi @palesl.bsky.social wants to know if Shingy has a PhD. Anyone know?

I am running for the ANU Council. If you are a member of NTEU, please consider voting for me. Here is my platform, in brief: I have worked in academic governance on three continents over decades, including six years in ANU College leadership.

Not much happening today, good chance to share this banger www.instagram.com/reel/DMa1x6g...

Bishop needs to go as well. There is no sensible governance arrangement where she gets to lead appointing a new VC. A new Chancellor / Chair and then a deep breath followed by a proper process to appoint a new VC / CEO needed. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

Across almost every metric, the ACT healthcare system is an outlier in terms of access and affordability. This needs to change. The Govt has made welcome commitments about bulk billing but we clearly need a plan that works for the ACT. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

The federal government wants fewer FOIs. Crikey wants more. We know filing FOIs can be daunting — so let us do it for you! For the next few weeks, we're accepting ideas for requests that we'll take, shape, file and then will keep you in the loop when we hear back. www.crikey.com.au/20...

An important and intuitive intervention. Some universities (not Australian ones I don’t think) allow key positions like chancellor to be elected by alumni, staff and students. The democratic design of Australian universities (imo) do have accountability loops, but they are too narrow…

Over the last decades, public and private organisations have caused major health, financial and ecological damages. Join Benjamin van Rooij for an insightful talk on the organisational mechanisms that allow such harm to develop and continue. Learn more here: regnet.anu.edu.au/event/why-or...

same thing happened at the 2022 election where anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown groups had a negligible effect. for whatever reason — I'll let you speculate — there are big chunks of mainstream media and politics who elevate extreme anti-migration sentiment as if it is a strongly & widely held view.

NEW SUBMISSION CATEGORY ADDED! AJPS invites Reform Notes from practitioners and/or academics that set out proposed innovations about (or relevant to) aspects of Australian politics practice - e.g. proposals for or modifications to existing political institutions, procedures, laws and practices 1/4

For those interested in the history of the far right in Australia, @drjpersian.bsky.social, Vashti Jane Fox and I provide an overview in the introduction to our book 'Histories of Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Australia'. www.academia.edu/121035689/Hi... www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Attacking health infrastructure, killing journalists, starving children - how many more flagrant breaches of international law will governments tolerate before sanctioning PM Netanyahu and stopping trade with Israel? www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...

Please consider signing this petition to put a stop to Renew ANU and the involuntary redundancies www.megaphone.org.au/petitions/pe...

Prof Michelle Arrow is one of the finest writers on Australian society and how we’ve ended up where we are. In this piece for The Conversation she tackles a timley issue: what are Australian universities for?

First they came for the immigrants, and I did not speak out (because the message test performed at a low percentile rank compared to other messages in our testing bank for non college men who opt into online surveys through various consumer reward programs)

This is an excellent point. It’s not really a ‘methodology’ problem because these experiments are very internally valid. It’s that they don’t generalize externally to politics. That requires us to believe actual voting would really be different if Dems used nearly identical message A vs message B

If you’re mad about Dems avoiding talking about DC, you can blame the Democratic quants, as demonstrated in this memo from David Shor’s Blue Rose Research

🌟New: At the last #UK General #Election, new “digital imprint” rules required online campaign content to state who is behind it. Katharine Dommett, Stephanie Luke & Hazel Gordon (@sheffielduni.bsky.social) find few campaigners fully complied. @electoralcommission.org.uk #Transparency

It's National Radio Day! Explore public opinion polls collected by the Harvard Opinion Research Program in conjunction with #NPR and #RWJF. This series focuses on questions related to health and health care: myumi.ch/MkJPp #publichealth

I understand this is real

Are women bourgeois?

Somewhere in this Australian university, some well-paid HR people (and consultants, there's always consultants) thought that it was good idea to tell staff worried they might be made redundant that they should hand-wash their good undies to cope with the stress. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...

One of the lessons people learn when they're exempted from required activities is that they're special and unaccountable. It's not a serious argument that no one should have to do something they don't want to do in school, in part b/c being an adult involves lots of doing things you'd rather not do.