By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
When One Nation leader Pauline Hanson addresses the National Press Club on June 17, there will be landmines everywhere.
It’s her first formal speech to the club in her 30-year (on and off) parliamentary career. How times have changed. When she spoke at a One Nation meeting there in July 1997, a contemporary report said the gathering was held at the club “after being refused permission to use other venues. The Press Club decided to host the meeting on the basis that it is a forum…
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By Gabrielle Appleby, Professor of Law, UNSW Law School, UNSW Sydney
Joo-Cheong Tham, Professor, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne
After the High Court struck down the state government’s previous attempt, Victoria had no donations laws at all. Here’s what the proposed new ones say.
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By Erica Millar, Senior Research Fellow, Social Inquiry, La Trobe University
Anna Noonan, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Faculty of Health, University of Technology Sydney
New South Wales parliament is debating a bill this week that seeks to ban abortions performed on the basis of fetal sex.
If passed, health practitioners who perform such abortions would face professional misconduct charges and lose indemnity insurance coverage for the procedure.
At first glance, this might appear to be a defensible measure to address a practice that sits uneasily with gender equality.
But there’s little evidence sex-selective abortions are occurring…
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By Javier Martín Vide, Catedrático de Geografía Física, Universitat de Barcelona
El Niño is a recurring climate event with impacts across the globe. It has three phases: one cold (known as La Niña), one neutral, and one warm (El Niño).
In 2026, spring in the northern hemisphere took place in a neutral phase, which followed a relatively mild La Niña. Short-term forecast models indicate that by mid-year it is very likely that we will enter an El Niño phase. This El Niño could become very intense towards the end of the year, with talk of a “super-El Niño”. But…
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By Robbie Moore, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Tasmania
Amanda Lohrey’s Capture plays out as a sequence of conversations in strange rooms.
The centre of the novel is the consulting room of psychiatrist James Mather, lately stripped of all its therapeutic paintings and suggestive curios to a state of clinical blankness. There is also the apartment where the psychiatrist and his former lover regard each other from “two enormous couches in the centre of the room”. And there are the rooms of a shiatsu…
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By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
For a nation obsessed with professional sport, there is a surprising dearth of Aussie sports films. There have been, of course, a handful of memorable ones: The Club (1980), The Coolangatta Gold (1984) and, more recently, The Final Winter (2007).
But apart from the low-budget 2024 film Life After Fighting – understandable if you haven’t heard of it, it made less than A$6,000 at the box office – Beast is the first Australian film to be set in the world of mixed martial arts.
Patton…
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By Amanda Turnbull-McRae, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Waikato
As AI models become cheaper and more attractive, they will likely encourage new uses and higher volumes of use – erasing any efficiency gains.
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By Justine Nolan, Professor of Law and Justice and Director of the Australian Human Rights Institute, UNSW Sydney
Using tariffs to make nations act on forced labour is questionable. Yet there is substance behind the US allegations – including that Australia hasn’t done enough.
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By Luke Nottage, Professor of Comparative and Transnational Law, University of Sydney; University of Tokyo
Can consumers be confident the products we buy online now are safe? Not really. Changing the law to catch up with other countries would help.
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By Nicola Postol, Research Fellow, Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Institute, University of Sydney
Cerebral palsy is the most common disability that starts in childhood, affecting about 50 million people worldwide.
Cerebral palsy can impact a person’s ability to move their body. This can result in mobility problems, muscle stiffness or weakness, and abnormal movements. There are often other neurological issues as well, such as epilepsy or visual impairment.
Physiotherapy can help people…
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