Latest Story
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Doughnuts and decision making
Lauren Claire Fong | April 12, 2026The next time you find yourself in line at the bakery, you’ll find your brain has already been quietly gathering evidence toward your baked good of choice, and that choice happens a little faster than you realise.
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Who’s reading your paper?
Christopher J Watterson | April 12, 2026The research produced by Western universities is routinely shared with or stolen by hostile authoritarian states, forcing the sector to reconcile their dual roles as producers of confidential defence and security research and development on one hand and as open hubs of global knowledge exchange on the other.
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The crucible of early life
Brendan Burns | April 12, 2026On the shores of the west coast of Australia lies a window to our past. The stromatolites and microbial mats of Shark Bay are living “relics” of ancient ecosystems that thrived on Earth billions of years ago.
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4 visions of our future in space
Priyanka Dhopade | April 11, 2026NASA’s flight around the moon is a welcome reminder of its technical achievement and human ambition and in the background, decisions about what happens next and who benefits are already taking shape.
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An uncertain alliance
Fergus Ryan | April 11, 2026Australian hasn’t yet been seriously tested by the second Trump administration. If or when it is, regardless of which option Australia chooses, one thing is clear: there’s no going back to how the world used to be.
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Know when to go
Peter Edwell | April 11, 2026It’s a truism that all political careers end in failure as leaders always meet eventual disaster or cling to power too long, but the unique example of Roman emperor Diocletian suggests a graceful retreat is possible.
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Walking with a ghost
Tommaso Durante | April 10, 2026Virtual influencers are early indicators of a much deeper structural shift, one already reshaping how power, culture and identity work in a connected world.
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Chalk and cheese
Michelle Grattan | April 10, 2026The Liberals are losing voters to One Nation’s surge and have no strategy to reclaim urban seats lost to the teals, while One Nation is cannibalising the Nationals in rural seats, so can their new leaders work together to save their Coalition?
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Some of our black holes are missing
Open Forum | April 10, 2026When an international team of scientists, led by Monash University, working with the global network of gravitational-wave detectors measuring tiny ripples in spacetime, recently examined the masses of merging black holes, they noticed something strange – a gap where black holes should exist, but don’t.
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Perpetual peace – perpetual relevance
Roger Chao | April 9, 202618th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant remains a central figure in modern philosophy, but his argument that ethics and governance should be rooted in reason rather than self-interest or superstition is threatened even in the Western world by the current resurgence of nationalism, authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism.
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Why Taiwan matters
Marc Ablong | April 9, 2026The fate of Taiwan is not a peripheral issue but sits at the intersection of global trade, advanced technology, democratic values and regional security. As China gears up for its long-threatened invasion, what happens there will shape Australia’s prosperity, security and way of life for decades.
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The gold standard?
John Hawkins | April 9, 2026Bob Hawke remains the longest serving and most successful Labor Prime Minister but a new book explores whether the Hawke government was really the ‘gold standard’ for reform?
