The cost-of-living crisis provides an opening, but public frustration doesn’t necessarily automatically flow towards those who provide the solutions: their story needs to be a convincing one. Anger over rising rents, unaffordable housing, grocery prices and electricity bills can feed demands for stronger public services and corporate accountability. But it can also be redirected towards migrants and welfare recipients, which is what most of the mainstream parties have been doing. While One Nation seeks to capture discontent from the right, the Greens need to make an equally clear argument about who holds economic power, whose interests government protects, and what could change.

Shoebridge’s performances in Senate estimates have given him a platform. Building lasting support requires taking those arguments beyond parliament; housing policy must speak to the renter facing another increase; energy policy must connect climate action with affordable electricity. Opposition to AUKUS needs a credible explanation of the spending choices Australia could make instead, including investment in healthcare, childcare and housing.

The demand that the Greens confine themselves to environmental issues also misses how closely those issues intersect with everyday life. PFAS contamination in Blue Mountains drinking water, the electricity and water demands of data centres, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure in war all raise questions about regulation, public resources and government responsibility. The political task is to make those connections real – and to offer workable responses.

Declaring an ambition to replace Labor is the easy part. The harder work is building the policies, public confidence and electoral support to make that ambition credible. Even if winning government never happens, a stronger Greens challenge could force Labor to compete more seriously for the progressive vote.

There are critical questions about OpenAI’s so-called safeguards, the delay in reporting and whether Australian authorities can independently establish what happened. Parliamentary scrutiny is important, but accountability also requires forensic expertise, access to relevant records and enforceable obligations to cooperate.

The Albanese government faces pressure to attract investment while protecting public services, data sovereignty and democratic processes. As businesses and government agencies become more dependent on international AI providers – predominantly American – the ability to impose meaningful conditions could become harder to apply. Industry warnings about lost investment should be scrutinised carefully, rather than accepted as a fait accompli an edict for what kind of public policy governments should create.

The same struggle is taking physical shape in Australian suburbs. The withdrawal of the proposed $1.2 billion Lane Cove data centre brings community opposition and the changing regulatory environment into focus. AI infrastructure needs land, electricity and water, raising questions about who receives the benefits and who carries the costs.

Australia’s AI debate needs to move beyond the choice between embracing innovation and fearing it. The real task is to establish the conditions under which this technology serves the public interest. The Medicare breach is a warning about what happens when capability advances faster than accountability, and Australia should determine the terms of its AI future before dependence determines them for us.

The Albanese government says Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law and has sanctioned people and entities linked to settler violence, yet it has declined to join other countries pursuing restrictions on goods produced in those settlements. If Australia recognises the problem but stops short of measures directed at the settlement economy, what weight should other countries give its promises to defend international law?

The killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom in Gaza brings that question closer to home. Australia has called for accountability after the Israeli strike on the World Central Kitchen convoy but for Frankcom’s family, and for anyone listening to the government’s pledges to protect humanitarian workers, the measure of diplomacy is what those demands achieve and, so far, they haven’t achieved anything.

Australia’s previous term shows that a temporary Security Council seat can matter. After Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down in 2014, Australia helped secure a UN resolution demanding a full, independent investigation. That was diplomacy put to a clear purpose.

A seat at the UN would give Australia a platform. Its choices before the 2028 vote will tell the world what it intends to say with it.

Intelligence agencies cannot publish every lead or expose their sources, that’s the nature of their business. But secrecy cannot resolve every question about performance, especially after an attack that killed 15 people.

A former ASIO informant known as “Marcus” says he warned the agency about Naveed and Sajid Akram years before Bondi. The public doesn’t yet know exactly what was reported, how it was assessed, or whether it could have changed the outcome in 2025. This is information that should be further examined by the current Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

The same standard should apply when Burgess speaks publicly about the possibility of Iranian threats to prominent Jewish Australians. Protecting people is the first priority of any agency and the public also needs to understand the distinction between a credible immediate threat, a broader intelligence concern and a possibility that cannot be ruled out. Otherwise, alarming warnings can shape political debate without giving people a way to assess their meaning and relevance.

This episode examines ASIO’s public claims alongside the questions raised by Bondi, its counterterrorism priorities, the Dural caravan hoax and Burgess’s previously undisclosed meeting with Israeli president Isaac Herzog. As ASIO’s resources and public profile grow, scrutiny of its decisions matters more. National security requires trust, and trust requires more than a running tally of threats the public cannot assess.

A $560 million infrastructure program that directed roughly three-quarters of its funding towards Labor-held electorates before the 2025 federal election has revived the politics of “sportsrorts”, while an invitation-only $6 million grant to Marrickville Golf Club in Anthony Albanese’s electorate raises further questions about how public money is allocated and who gets access to government funding programs.

The central issue is not simply whether these decisions technically comply with existing rules. There needs to be transparent selection processes, independent scrutiny and confidence that taxpayers’ money is being distributed according to public need rather than political advantage. Labor understood this principle perfectly well when it attacked the Morrison government over sportsrorts, commuter car parks and politically targeted grants. Is it now prepared to apply the same standards to itself?

This controversy also points to a wider problem in Australian politics: a political culture in which questionable behaviour can be defended because it has been declared or falls within parliamentary rules. Transport Minister Catherine King’s acceptance of a lifetime Qantas Platinum membership shows the weakness of that defence. Declaring a corporate benefit does not resolve the underlying question of whether ministers responsible for regulating powerful companies should be accepting valuable benefits from those companies in the first place – if the rules permit relationships that undermine public confidence in government, then following the rules is not enough, and the rules themselves need to change.

Changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme from 1 October bring another familiar argument back into Australian politics: that social programs must continually demonstrate affordability, sustainability and value for money. When disability services, Medicare and other social programs are discussed, restraint and value for money always dominates the conversation. When defence spending is announced, those restraints seem to disappear completely.

The contrast is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Another $2.4 billion has been committed to Australian air and missile defence, with tens of billions more expected over the coming decade, while the enormous long-term cost of AUKUS continues to expand Australia’s military commitments. Social expenditure is treated as a budget problem requiring restraint; military expenditure is always a place where money can always be easily found.

The big issue now is whether Labor is meeting the standards it demanded when it was in opposition, on pork-barrelling, political integrity, corporate influence, transparency and responsible government. If Labor condemns one set of political practices when the Coalition uses them, but finds reasons to defend similar practices once it controls the money and the machinery of government, the problem is bigger than hypocrisy. It suggests that changing governments has done much less to change the political system than voters were promised.

Kostakidis spent almost two years dealing with complaints and litigation arising from social-media activity concerning Gaza and Israel. The Federal Court proceedings ultimately ended without a judgment after the Zionist Federation of Australia discontinued its case, meaning there was no judicial finding that Kostakidis had breached any laws at all. Yet the length and cost of the process matter politically as much as the eventual legal outcome. When prominent journalists, academics, artists or activists see somebody subjected to prolonged litigation over their political expression, the consequences go far beyond the person involved, encouraging others to work out the potential cost before speaking publicly about Israel, Gaza, Zionism or Palestinian rights, and decide whether it’s worth it.

After bringing his outspoken support for Palestine to enormous audiences during Ed Sheeran’s US tour, Macklemore faced condemnation and pressure from pro-Israel organisations and influential figures within American business and philanthropy. He was subsequently removed from the remaining dates of the tour but whatever combination of commercial, contractual and political considerations resulted in that decision, the message received by other performers is also difficult to ignore: political advocacy will have consequences for access to stages, audiences and income.

The comparison becomes more bizarre when compared with the entertainment industry’s treatment of Kanye West, whose record includes outrageous antisemitic statements, praise for Adolf Hitler and the use of Nazi images. The inconsistencies surrounding who receives access to major venues – and under what circumstances free speech, contracts or commercial considerations are used – raise legitimate questions about where the Zionist red line is actually drawn.

In a functioning democracy – if that’s what Australia and the US really are – criticism of Israel must be treated like the criticism of any other state: judged according to what is actually said, rather than automatically conflated with hostility towards Jewish people. If journalists, musicians and public figures begin censoring themselves because they fear litigation, professional exclusion or reputational campaigns, the boundaries of political debate have already been narrowed – without parliament passing a single law.

Recognition was supposed to support Palestinian sovereignty, self-determination and the right of Palestinians to remain on their land. Yet Australia has imposed no meaningful sanctions on Israel, introduced no restrictions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and made no change to the military relationships that help sustain Israel’s occupation.

Instead, Australia remains embedded in the international F-35 production and support network. Senate estimates have revealed dozens of deliveries of Australian-made F-35 parts to Israel since October 2023, exposing the weakness of Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s argument that supplying weapons components is somehow different from supplying weapons.

The unresolved killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom is also another contradiction. Frankcom was killed by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza in 2024, yet her death has produced few lasting diplomatic consequences. Australia has recognised the Palestinian state in which she was working, but remains reluctant to confront the occupying power responsible for killing her.

Another contradiction: West Bank. Australia accepts that Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory are illegal under international law, yet continues to allow trade connected with those settlements. If the settlements are illegal, why should the economic activity sustaining them be treated as legitimate?

Meanwhile, far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is promoting the supposedly “voluntary” evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza. But removing a population from its homeland under conditions of military destruction, deprivation and coercion is not voluntary migration. It’s a forced displacement – and ethnic cleansing.

The double standard is just as visible at home. Since the Bondi attack, the Australian government has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to antisemitism, education and social-cohesion programs. At the same time, Palestinian communities and critics of Israel face political marginalisation, while proposals associated with antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal threaten to extend their ideological oversight across universities, cultural institutions and public broadcasters such as the ABC and SBS.

This is a a test of Australia’s democracy, political independence and the Albanese government’s willingness to resist powerful vested interests. With public opinion on Israel shifting so decisively, unconditional political support for the Israeli state may also carry growing electoral consequences.

Recognition of Palestine was still an important step for Australia to take last year, helping to break the inertia on Middle East/West Asia policy, and finally joining the overwhelming majority of United Nations members that recognise Palestinian statehood. But recognition should have been the beginning of a new policy, not the end of it.

Taylor’s proposals to criminalise the burning of the Australian flag and legislate January 26 permanently as Australia Day reveal the familiar petty tactics of conservative populism: identify an offence, amplify the outrage and promise the punishment. It’s politics designed to provoke an emotional response rather than improve people’s lives. While Australians struggle with housing affordability, stagnant wages, healthcare pressures and widening inequality, the Liberal Party is offering flag laws, patriotic hand-on-heart symbolism and another argument about the date of Australia Day. Are you bored yet?

The Coalition has also reopened its campaign against Respectful Relationships education in schools. Nationals leader Matt Canavan has attacked programs teaching consent, equality, mutual respect and non-violent relationships as “woke” indoctrination that makes boys and men feel inferior. It is another calculated tactic where efforts to reduce domestic violence, sexual violence and harassment are repackaged as attacks on men. The people experiencing violence disappear from the discussion, while those being asked to examine harmful behaviour are presented as the real victims.

This is not simply a collection of disconnected conservative talking points – it’s a political strategy based on resentment, division and the constant manufacture of cultural enemies. But it also exposes the Coalition’s fundamental weakness: it no longer seems confident that it can develop a distinctive economic or social program capable of winning broad public support.

The latest Essential polling places Labor and the Coalition level on 26 per cent of the primary vote, with One Nation close behind on 23 per cent and Anthony Albanese recording his lowest approval rating as prime minister. Labor’s weakness should provide the Liberal Party with an opportunity to establish its own agenda. Instead, the Coalition keeps validating Pauline Hanson’s. History suggests that “me-too” politics rarely rewards the imitator and voters attracted to One Nation’s nationalism and grievance politics will always vote for the original, while moderate voters are pushed further away from the Coalition.

Nowhere is this race to the fringe more obvious – or more dangerous – than tobacco policy. One Nation proposed cutting tobacco excise by 75 per cent, only for the Liberal Party to go further and propose an 80 per cent reduction. Taylor claims cheaper legal cigarettes would undermine the illicit tobacco market, but organised crime can also cut prices, accept smaller margins and continue operating. What is certain is that dramatically cheaper cigarettes will benefit Big Tobacco, increase access to nicotine and risk creating a new generation of smokers – and a new generation of cancer patients.

Scientists are still examining the sequence of events, but the danger is very clear. Rising temperatures are melting glaciers, degrading permafrost and destabilising the frozen ground that helps hold Himalayan slopes together. Climate change does not need to be the sole cause of every avalanche or flood to make these disasters more frequent, more destructive and more difficult to predict.

The political response is painfully familiar. Prime Minister Albanese has concentrated on condolences, rescue efforts and support for affected Australian families – which, of course, he should do – while resisting the calls to discuss the climate change issues surrounding the disaster. And it’s the formula used by Scott Morrison and other political leaders after floods and bushfires: now is not the time to discuss climate change.

But if climate change cannot be discussed when the risks are so visible, when exactly is the right time?

Nepal contributes only a tiny fraction of global greenhouse-gas emissions, yet it carries an extraordinary share of the consequences created by the industrial development and fossil-fuel consumption of wealthier nations. This is climate injustice in its starkest form: those least responsible are often the first to lose their homes, livelihoods and lives.

The rapidly changing Himalayan environment is also a global security issue. The region contains the largest concentration of frozen water outside the polar zones and supports river systems upon which almost two billion people depend upon. Accelerating glacial loss threatens not only mountain communities but water supplies, food production, energy infrastructure, migration patterns and political stability across a vast part of Asia.

For Australia, the disaster exposes a fundamental contradiction. The Albanese government wants to present Australia as a renewable-energy superpower and an indispensable security partner to Pacific nations, even as it continues approving new coal and gas projects and expanding fossil-fuel exports. Pacific leaders have repeatedly identified climate change as their greatest security threat. Australia will therefore be judged less by its speeches at the Pacific Islands Forum than by the emissions and fossil-fuel developments it enables at home.

The government’s progress also remains far behind the scale of its promises. Australia’s emissions in the year to March 2026 were only 25 per cent below 2005 levels, leaving a substantial distance to travel before reaching Labor’s legislated target of a 43 per cent reduction by 2030. At the same time, the proposed expansion of energy-intensive AI data centres will add further pressure to an electricity system already struggling through a difficult renewable-energy transition.

The question is no longer whether governments understand the danger. It is why, despite everything they know, they continue protecting the economic interests that are making that danger worse.

Western Australia’s economy is strong, and the state government has delivered visible infrastructure over nearly a decade in office, but none of that mattered in Secret Harbour. Voters are increasingly judging governments through the lens of their own household pressures: unaffordable housing, high rents, stagnant wages and public services that feel stretched thin. A win for One Nation isn’t necessarily an endorsement of One Nation’s policy platform, which remains thin and would likely unravel under scrutiny. It’s better understood as a protest against establishment politics as usual, and a signal that populist momentum, previously confined to the Coalition side of politics, has now crossed over to claim a seat from Labor for the first time in Western Australia.

Labor risks legitimising One Nation’s rhetoric by chasing its agenda on immigration and other issues, and they’re displaying the disconnect between government communication efforts and the seriousness of the cost-of-living crisis.

Despite this victory by One Nation, there needs to be some perspective. One Nation holds just one seat in a 59-seat WA parliament, and byelections are a low-stakes way for voters to register a protest without changing a government. But the pattern is becoming harder to dismiss: wins in South Australia, the seat of Farrer taken from the Liberal Party, and now Secret Harbour taken from Labor suggest opinion polling is starting to translate into real electoral results.

With the next state election in 2029 and the next federal election in 2028, Labor has time to change course – but only if it treats economic dissatisfaction as the core problem, rather than treating Pauline Hanson as the problem itself.

The reported involvement of several senior players makes it difficult to dismiss the incident as one individual behaving badly, and it also raises questions about entitlement, group behaviour and why existing education about sexual consent, drugs, alcohol and respectful relationships is failing to prevent serious incidents across elite sport.

Professional football clubs are powerful public institutions. They receive government support, use community facilities and help shape how young men understand masculinity, loyalty and acceptable behaviour. When clubs protect talented players or treat scrutiny primarily as a threat to the team, they suggest that sporting ability can provide insulation from ordinary accountability.

The media responses are also important as well: the coverage focused on lost careers, finals prospects and reputational damage can make accused players the principal casualties, while the women become background figures whose conduct and credibility are publicly dissected.

Standing down players might be necessary, but it can’t be the end of the response. Clubs must support complainants, cooperate with investigations and confront the culture surrounding their teams. Until football places women’s safety ahead of premiership calculations and brand protection, the mythology of the “good club” will remain little more than marketing.

Pro-Israel organisations always argue that language about “political capture” brings up those antisemitic conspiracy tropes about Jewish control but McKim’s position is that political Zionism and the organisations advocating for Israel must be open to the same scrutiny that applies to mining companies, defence contractors, pharmaceutical companies, unions and every other organised interest seeking access to government.

Australian politicians, journalists and other opinion-makers have travelled to Israel through organised programs which provides these participants with direct exposure to Israeli political, security and social perspectives – “re-education” programs. And this political access and sponsored travel then influences the policy positions of the people who partake in these programs.

This issue has become more urgent as Australia’s relationship with Israel has come under pressure over the issue Gaza, the occupied Palestinian territories, the killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom, and policing cooperation, military relationships and the broader connections between Australia and Israel.

Governments cannot credibly insist that these relationships have no political consequences while simultaneously treating scrutiny of the organisations advocating for them as somehow beyond acceptable debate.

But there’s another problem that lies behind the scene: money, and lots of it.

Australia’s political donation system has allowed substantial amounts of political funding – $138 million – to remain outside immediate the view of the public and with a high disclosure threshold and reporting delays, the public cannot easily see who is financing political parties, what interests those donors represent, or whether these donations relate to certain policy outcomes.

McKim’s intervention might ultimately become significant, not because everyone will agree with his language, but because he has brought an argument that’s usually conducted quietly behind closed doors, and into the mainstream political debate.

If lobbying is seen to be a legitimate course of action, scrutiny of lobbying must be legitimate as well. And if Australian politicians want the public to trust that policy is being made independently, the strongest response is to have more scrutiny and not less transparency.

The distress experienced by survivors of the Bondi Beach terror attack must be acknowledged and treated seriously but this cannot become a veto over material available to an entire community.

Public libraries don’t endorse every book they acquire. Their purpose is to provide access to knowledge, conflicting perspectives and uncomfortable ideas so readers can reach their own conclusions. If the possibility of offence becomes sufficient grounds for removing a book, libraries cease to be independent public institutions and begin functioning as political gatekeepers.

In the current political climate, this risks creating a system of pre-emptive censorship in which librarians avoid books critical of Israel or Zionism – not because those books are inaccurate, unlawful or outside collection guidelines, but because institutions fear organised complaints and reputational controversy.

The controversy also demonstrates why the word “genocide” has become such a contested part of the debate over Gaza. It’s a confronting word because it describes the destruction of a people, and its application to Israel’s conduct has been supported or investigated by human rights organisations, international legal experts, genocide scholars and United Nations officials.

At the centre of this dispute is the increasingly aggressive attempt to blur criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism, often through promotion of the IHRA working definition. Australian court decisions have reinforced the importance of protecting political criticism of Israel and Zionism.

A public institution worthy of the name should help communities confront difficult ideas – not hide those ideas when politically influential groups object.

Six months into his leadership, Angus Taylor has failed to establish a clear political identity, impose discipline on the Coalition or persuade voters that the Liberal Party understands why it lost office. Instead of beginning the long process of rebuilding, the party is fixated on devising a strategy for forlorn hope of winning the 2028 federal election – an ambition that looks increasingly detached from reality.

Labor’s weaknesses should be creating opportunities for the opposition, where Anthony Albanese remains vulnerable on housing affordability, the cost of living, productivity and declining living standards. But voters can be disappointed with the Labor government while still regarding the Coalition as an unacceptable alternative.

The Liberal Party is also being squeezed from both directions, where One Nation is attracting parts of its conservative base, and Labor, the Greens and community independents have captured many moderate and metropolitan voters. What remains is a diminished organisation struggling to decide whether its future lies in the political centre or in the conservative populism associated with Donald Trump and the US Republican Party.

These divisions are being intensified by strained relations with the Nationals, dysfunctional state branches and the growing influence of the religious right. Evidence presented to Operation Rosny at the NSW ICAC has drawn attention to the Reformers, a conservative Christian network seeking influence over Liberal Party branches, preselections and policies concerning abortion, voluntary assisted dying, transgender rights and same-sex marriage.

The Coalition’s response to Australia’s housing crisis reveals the same underlying confusion. Shadow housing minister Andrew Bragg has proposed reducing requirements in the National Construction Code and suggested that lower-income Australians may have to accept lower-quality housing. But poorly built, inefficient homes do not create genuine affordability: they transfer costs into higher energy bills, greater maintenance expenses and worse living conditions.

Bragg’s description of compulsory superannuation as “repressive”, communist and neo-Marxist also reflects the Liberal Party’s growing reliance on imported American culture-war rhetoric. Language that may animate sections of the US Republican base offers little practical response to the economic pressures facing Australian households.

The Victorian state election will provide the next major test. The Liberals may benefit from dissatisfaction with an unpopular government, but winning because the other side is rejected is not the same as rebuilding political relevance. In an increasingly fragmented two-party system, Australian elections risk becoming contests over which party voters consider least unacceptable – not which offers the strongest vision for the country.

A smartphone is an intimate record of a person’s life, containing private messages, photographs, financial and health information, location histories, internet searches and connections to hundreds of other people, if not thousands. Giving police easier access through Digital Evidence Access Orders – and forcing people to hand over their passwords and PINs – will expose far more than whatever is needed for a police investigation.

Extraordinary police powers, initially justified as measures against the most serious criminals, have gradually become normalised and extended to protesters, journalists and political activists. Premier Chris Minns, whose NSW Labor government has already pursued restrictive protest laws, is now expanded facial-recognition capabilities and is facing questions over the collection and retention of surveillance data.

The role of Israeli digital-forensics company Cellebrite also raises some serious questions. Its phone-extraction technology has been used against journalists, activists and political figures internationally, demonstrating why strong warrants, independent oversight and enforceable rules governing data retention and destruction are absolutely essential.

As technology becomes more powerful, democratic safeguards should become stronger, and not be swept aside. How much power should the state acquire in the name of security, and who will protect the public once that power begins to spread?

The risks go far beyond cost overruns and construction delays. Australia now needs to keep its ageing Collins-class submarines operational for at least another decade, establish an entirely new nuclear industry, train specialised crews, acquire used Virginia-class submarines from the United States and eventually build British-designed SSN-AUKUS vessels in Adelaide.

Yet America is struggling to produce enough submarines for its own navy, Britain’s shipbuilding industry is in “disarray”, and US law allows an American president to withhold submarines if their transfer is contrary to US military interests. Australia could spend billions reorganising its defence forces and expanding American facilities, only to discover that the promised submarines will never be available.

This is what makes AUKUS more than a terrible defence procurement program: it’s an enormous transfer of control away from Australia.

At least the cancelled French submarine agreement gave us a clearer delivery path and greater national autonomy. AUKUS has replaced that relative certainty with a grand bet on American production, British capacity and geopolitical assumptions that might end up looking completely different by the 2040s.

From 2027, American nuclear-powered submarines are expected to rotate through HMAS Stirling in Western Australia, supported by extensive infrastructure, contractors and thousands of US personnel and dependants, and this will be a de facto permanent American military base on Australian soil. And reversing this will end up becoming politically and economically almost impossible.

Okinawa offers a warning about how foreign military infrastructure can become deeply embedded despite sustained community opposition. Of course, Western Australia is not Okinawa, but similar questions arise about housing pressure, public services, environmental contamination, nuclear safety, military accidents and the conduct of foreign personnel.

There is also a bigger danger: if US military actions are launched from Australian territory during a conflict with one of our neighbours, can an Australian government genuinely refuse to participate? And would HMAS Stirling then become a military target?

Despite the extraordinary financial, environmental and national-security consequences, there has been no meaningful democratic debate. Bipartisan support has inoculated AUKUS from proper scrutiny, while its full costs and obligations will emerge long after the politicians who have created this mess have left political life.

By then, Australia will discover that it hasn’t acquired greater security at all, but locked future generations into an expensive military structure they never approved and will never be able to escape from.

The younger Albanese visited Palestinian refugee camps, challenged Labor’s courtship of the wealthy and questioned Australia’s dependence on the United States. As Prime Minister, however, he has severely restricted internal debate on Palestine, entrenched AUKUS, resisted stronger gambling advertising reforms, protected gas exporters from substantial taxation and treated modest interventions in supermarket pricing as dangerous “communism”.

His government’s enthusiasm for AI data centres follows the same process: Australia supplies the land, energy, water and public support while multinational technology corporations retain the data, control and profits.

Even with 94 seats in the House of Representatives, Labor appears to be more responsive to corporate interests, media pressure and One Nation’s immigration agenda than to its own membership or traditional Labor values. This is not just a story about one politician abandoning his principles: it exposes a political system in which governments facilitate the powerful interests within society, while presenting caution, delay and symbolic legislation as responsible leadership. Supporters in Labor’s first term insisted the real Albanese finally would emerge during his second term. Perhaps he already has – and power without purpose is all that remains.

Antisemitism needs to be confronted, and Jewish students should be protected from harassment and abuse. But education should develop independent judgement, competitive historical understandings and critical thinking – not prescribe an approved political position on Israel and Palestine. Holocaust education already exists in Australian schools; the danger arises when criticism of Israeli government policy, alleged war crimes, occupation, apartheid or Zionism becomes blurred with genuine antisemitism.

At the centre of this debate is the highly controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism and the risk that its institutional adoption could restrict teachers, students, academics and protesters. Australian law permits criticism of states and political ideologies, yet this might soon end if the Israel lobby ends up having its way.

Who determines what children are taught at school? Will participation in Segal’s curriculum be compulsory? And can Australia combat antisemitism without turning classrooms into the battlefields in a new phase of the culture wars?

Neoliberalism has narrowed the ambitions of government, while corporate influence across housing, mining, banking, gambling, defence and energy makes meaningful reform politically costly. The result is a system that rewards caution, protects vested interests and leaves renters, workers, pensioners and consumers with far less direct influence. Yet the solutions are readily available: real-time political donation disclosure, stronger lobbying laws, transparent ministerial diaries, truth in political advertising, greater freedom-of-information access, protections for whistleblowers and journalists, and a genuinely effective National Anti-Corruption Commission.

The challenge is not so much about saving Australian democracy from collapse, but redistributing political power so governments once again fear disappointing the public more than they fear upsetting wealthy donors and powerful industries.

Jacinta Allan’s resignation is more than just another leadership change: it signals the end of the Daniel Andrews era and leaves Victorian Labor confronting the political cost of its own lofty ambitions. Allan helped oversee one of the largest infrastructure programs in Australian history, including the Metro Tunnel, West Gate Tunnel, Suburban Rail Loop and the Big Build, while advancing housing and planning reforms, cost-of-living measures and Australia’s first Treaty with Indigenous peoples.

These projects were designed for a Melbourne rapidly becoming Australia’s largest city, but delays, cost overruns and state debt heading towards $200 billion allowed Labor’s nation-building narrative to be replaced by questions about financial management, integrity and public trust. Allegations of CFMEU corruption, criminal infiltration and questionable labour-hire practices – many originating during the Andrews years – were never politically contained, while Allan’s resistance to a royal commission allowed the crisis to overwhelm her government’s broader achievements.

She also struggled to escape the shadow of Daniel Andrews: voters increasingly viewed her premiership as a continuation of the past rather than the beginning of a new political agenda, while sections of the Victorian media applied relentless pressure and gave little space to the government’s longer-term case for infrastructure investment.

Ben Carroll now inherits the premiership, a divided Victorian Labor Party, deteriorating polling and an election only months away. His immediate announcement of a royal commission into the construction sector may neutralise the controversy over the Big Build, but it also confirms the seriousness of the problem Labor previously resisted investigating. Yet a Liberal victory is hardly assured: Opposition Leader Jess Wilson presides over an inexperienced and internally divided Victorian Liberal Party still contending with religious factionalism and ideological extremism.

The 2026 Victorian election will be a test of whether changing leaders can restore Labor’s credibility – or whether the political and financial legacy of the Andrews–Allan era has finally become too heavy to carry.