No spray spring

This spring, Invertebrates Australia are encouraging residents and gardeners across Australia to put down the insect spray and to learn a bit about the invertebrate life in their back gardens to manage pests and encourage beneficials more effectively and safely.

The right to protest

Australians might think their right to march in the streets is constitutionally guaranteed, but it isn’t, as Australia lacks the protection of a Bill of Rights, unlike most nations.

Australia’s uncertain future

Australia has a rich but turbulent history and contemporary divisions between disparate generations, cities and regions, ethnic groups and social classes threaten to widen rather than close long-standing divides. In a major new essay, Bernie O’Kane reflects on the complex past, contested present and uncertain future of a land which will always be “vast, extreme, fragile and alone”.

A very different nation

The Australia of the 2060s will be very different from the one we know today, according to the latest Intergenerational Report issued by the Federal Government.

Shopping for sustainability

While younger people are thought to be more concerned about environmental issues than their older peers, new research suggests that it’s older shoppers who actually exhibit more sustainable shopping practices.

No going back

A new book explains how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was designed to reabsorb it into the Russian empire but has succeeded only in driving it away forever.

Natural numbers

New research supports the idea that arithmetic is biologically-based and a natural consequence of how our perception is structured, rather than an abstract or entirely intellectual construct.

Integrating policy and climate action

State and Federal legislative obligations to integrate climate change into consideration of government decision-making could play an important role to help Australia achieve its international emission obligations.

Young people and sustainable development

How can we expect current and future generations to rally around sustainable development goals they think do not represent them or the challenges they face?

Lost in space

Open plan classrooms have largely replaced traditional rows of desks in primary school classrooms but research shows their noisy, disorganised nature inhibits learning, rather than enhancing it.

Standing up for the Philippines

The Philippines has become one of Australia’s most important defence partners and Australia should explicitly support its case against ever-increasing naval bullying by China.

Treaties aren’t scary, and a draft bill saying how the voice will work might be worth the risk

Support for the Yes campaign in the Voice Referendum continues to slump, and so it may be time for the government to publish a draft of the Bill it plans to put to parliament, should the referendum pass.