Latest Story

  • Australian universities should rethink their broken business model

    Marcus Hellyer     |      May 29, 2020

    COVID-19 offers Australian universities a one-time opportunity to rethink their currently failing business model, which appears to be built on greed and scale rather than a real commitment to offering a high-quality educational and life experience.

  • Learning from disaster

    Janet Stanley     |      May 29, 2020

    Australia was largely unprepared for either the major bushfires of the summer or the current pandemic. The government’s response to each was very difficult, but both hold lessons as we plan to face future challenges.

  • Getting the cat back into the bag

    Lachlan Gilbert     |      May 29, 2020

    The Felixer, an autonomous device that can target and cull feral cats in the wild, could be key in rebuilding Australia’s decimated native animal populations.

  • Embracing cloud computing in national security

    John Coyne     |      May 28, 2020

    Policy makers should look beyond current technical security standards to unlock the capability benefit that cloud computing can bring to Australia’s national security.

  • How Covid-19 infected global trade

    David Uren     |      May 28, 2020

    The head of the WTO, Robert Azevedo, abruptly announced his resignation on 14 May. He didn’t explain his reason, but as the guardian of the global trade rules, it could well have been despair.

  • Gigging to recovery

    Open Forum     |      May 28, 2020

    Hundreds of thousands of Australians are out of work as a result of COVID-19, but some may find new jobs through digital platforms, particularly in areas like food delivery, writing, law, accountancy, home maintenance, IT or graphic design.

  • Embracing the new normal

    Terry Bowles     |      May 27, 2020

    COVID-19 restrictions have gone on long enough to establish new habits. So what do we want to keep doing and stop doing, both individually and as a community?

  • Protecting anonymous data

    Jessica Clarence     |      May 27, 2020

    The concerns raised by the COVIDSafe app suggest that Australians care a lot about privacy, at least when information to be held by the government is involved. Let’s turn that passion into action, starting with bolstering the privacy protections on large datasets.

  • Could wealth hidden in tax havens help pay for COVID-19?

    Rodney Brown     |      May 27, 2020

    Late last month, Denmark, France and Poland banned companies registered in tax havens from receiving government COVID-19 bailouts. Should Australia do the same?

  • Facing up to facial recognition

    Niels Wouters     |      May 26, 2020

    Facial recognition technology is one tool in the fight against COVID-19, but once the pandemic ends, is surveillance tech going to entrench itself in our society?

  • Life expectancy stalls as inequality widens

    Open Forum     |      May 26, 2020

    Growing socioeconomic and geographical inequalities are contributing to a stagnation of Australian life expectancy, new research published in Australian Population Studies shows.

  • Epigenetics holds the key to new blood treatments

    Open Forum     |      May 26, 2020

    New research into epigenetics will help scientists investigate new treatments for blood disorders.