Latest Story
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Bread, work, freedom
Open Forum | August 15, 2026The Taliban barred girls from attending school beyond Grade 6 shortly after retaking Kabul in August 2021 and the systematic oppression of women and girls by the hardline Islamic regime has only increased ever since.
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Still dancing after all these years
Wendy Hargreaves | August 15, 2026Swedish pop sensation ABBA released their single Dancing Queen half a century ago and it’s still riding the airwaves, being belted out on the West End stage, squealed at karaoke parties, paraded at Mardi Gras, and danced to at wedding receptions around the world.
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The grains of wrath
Iryna Skubii | August 15, 2026While the world’s attention is fixated on the US blockade of Iranian ports and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Russia has been subjecting Ukraine to a blockade of its own in the Black Sea, imperilling Ukraine’s summer grain harvest.
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Mama, we’re all political now
Intifar Chowdhury | August 14, 2026Young people have become ‘fluid citizens’ who eschew formal institutions but retain the energy and drive to transform what people believe, fear, reject and demand
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China’s broken dream
Robert Wihtol | August 14, 2026Minxin Pei’s new book lifts the lid on China’s great democratic leap backward under Xi Jinping, revealing why the country’s embrace of capitalism has given rise to hard authoritarianism, mass surveillance, and one-man rule instead of greater democracy as many in the West had foolishly hoped.
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One Nation is coming for Labor as well
Emily Foley | August 14, 2026Much of One Nation’s surge in support has been driven by disaffected Coalition voters but Pauline Hanson’s appeal to working class voters worried about immigration and the economy should give Labor genuine cause for concern.
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The Thucydides trap in Western tech
Justin Bassi | August 13, 2026For the first time in modern memory, the nation posing the most threats to Australia – under sea, on the sea, in the sky, in cyberspace and in space itself – is our largest trading partner.
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Shouting into the void
Vivi Tan | August 13, 2026Complaints about accounts or content sent to online platforms often go nowhere so using AI moderators help, given their lack of human staff.
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25 years after A.I.
Nathan Abrams | August 13, 2026Released in 2001, Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.” predated smart phones, let alone Large Language Models but the film feels newly relevant as it explored the emotional and ethical questions that emerge when people form relationships with machines.
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Stitching nature’s wounds
Michelle Ward | August 12, 2026The federal government signed a global pledge in 2022 to protect and restore Australia’s degraded natural environment, but how much progress towards this laudable goal is really being made?
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The authoritarian arms trade
Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan | August 12, 2026China’s reported sale of shoulder-launched missile systems to Iran should be concerning not just to the United States but also to Australia and other major powers in the Indo-Pacific.
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Garbage in, garbage out
Open Forum | August 12, 2026Some AI models designed to predict stroke and diabetes risk may be based on datasets whose origins cannot be verified, according to new research.
