When Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister, he made a call that made the then president of the United States very, very angry. Donald Trump called it the “worst call he’d had all day” – a “killer”, “crazy” and “disgusting”. But Turnbull argues that standing up to Trump, even if it means saying things he doesn’t want to hear, is the only effective way…

The death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is a pivotal moment in the war in the Middle East. Sinwar, a mastermind of the October 7 attacks, was top of Israel’s most wanted list before he was killed by Israeli troops in Rafah last week. His death represents a significant win for Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describing it as a “settlin…

There are few people in this country as obsessed with understanding the cultural and social potential of Australian cuisine as New Zealand-born chef Ben Shewry. And there are even fewer who have managed to combine that passion with the highest echelons of success. On this episode of Read This, Michael sits down with Attica’s head chef to discuss hi…

The government led by Anthony Albanese is a timid troupe of shivers looking for a spine to run up. That’s the assessment from the Labor wise men who gather for lunch in Sydney once a month – Paul Keating, Bob Carr, John Faulkner and other warriors of the past – who claim the government is too cautious and defensive. For many Labor insiders, both in…

According to Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyer Zali Burrows, he is “arguably Australia’s most hated man”. Burrows also told a federal court that her client is too “scared” to attend court, and his reputation has been so tarnished that “the only shot he’d probably ever have in making money is by going on OnlyFans or something silly like that”. Lehrmann has la…

Alice Springs is littered with “For Sale” signs as those who can afford it are packing up and leaving. Punitive government curfews made daily life more challenging, and families struggle to see a future for themselves if things continue the way they are. With the newly elected Country Liberal Party promising to be even tougher on crime – and loweri…

Police are everywhere in Alice Springs. You see them driving pursuit vehicles and caged vans on the streets, or stationed outside the bottle shop checking IDs. But more police doesn’t mean less crime – it just means more people are getting locked up. As Alice Springs reels from the police shooting of Warlpiri teenager Kumanjayi Walker, and in the w…

From afar, Alice Springs is a whirlpool of myth and truth. A town with competing interests and few solutions, marked by chaos and decades of government overreach. That all came to a head earlier this year, with what’s been described as a “youth riot” in town. The violence led to the Northern Territory government imposing an emergency curfew. This i…

Malcolm Knox began his career as a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald, back in the 90s. His breakout was in 2004 when, as literary editor, he broke the story of the fake Jordanian memoirist, Norma Khouri for which he won a Walkley Award. Since then he has written more than a dozen books of nonfiction and has been publishing fiction since 2000…

The war in the Middle East is dominating Australian politics. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton spent the week attacking Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – claiming he disrespected the Jewish community when he included calls for de-escalation and a ceasefire in a condolence motion to mark the one-year anniversary of October 7. But there are signs that …

A five-minute drive from the cliff where Ben Roberts-Smith allegedly murdered Afghan farmer Ali Jan, there is a small mud-brick room used for storing almonds. It was in this room, locals say, that a separate group of Australian soldiers killed two Afghan men in a shocking and brutal way. Despite the intense publicity around the killing of Ali Jan, …

For two-and-a-half years, Ukraine has been fighting Russia with the goal of “total victory” – to not only beat President Vladimir Putin’s forces back to the border, but to reclaim all territory annexed by Russia since 1991. But as both President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin’s popularity and resources fade, and as another winter approaches, it’s pos…

Protecting Australia’s environment is a matter of urgency – or at least that’s the message the Albanese government campaigned on two and a half years ago. But now, with environmental legislation stalling in the Senate and a series of announcements lacking detail, there’s a sense that the government’s priorities have shifted. Today, director of the …

One year on from the October 7 attacks against Israel, the region is bracing for more war. It seems almost certain Israel will launch a retaliatory attack against Iran, after it fired ballistic missiles at Israel last week. Meanwhile, over the weekend, Israel continued its airstrikes on Lebanon, with multiple explosions reported in the suburbs of t…

Charlotte Wood became a mainstay in Australia’s literary firmament in 2016 following the release of her award-winning novel, The Natural Way of Things. Her latest book, Stone Yard Devotional, is a meditation on grief, solitude, what it means to live a good life, and what we owe one another. It has been shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. On this…

There’s a greater than 50 per cent chance that there will be a terrorist attack – or a planned attack – in Australia in the next year. That’s the reality behind the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s recent decision to upgrade the nation’s terror threat level to “probable”. So the need for all states and territories to be w…

As much as they would hate to admit it, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris fit the definition of “coastal elite”. The United States presidential candidates are a wealthy New York businessman and reality TV star running against a San Francisco liberal with a career in public office. That’s why they’re both hoping their vice-presidential candidates …

There are hundreds of angry posts on X, TikTok and Reddit from citizen journalists archiving Coles and Woolworths' published prices and noticing some strange patterns. The posters complain that the two supermarket giants have misled their customers with their “Down Down” and “Prices Dropped” promotions. Now, the Australian Competition and Consumer …

When Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in Beirut over the weekend, Michelle Jasmin Dimasi felt the blast from her apartment. Michelle’s an Australian journalist and she’s been based in the city for a few months. Now, as Israeli airstrikes continue, she is preparing to leave, likely by plane. But for a million displaced people within …

The leader of Hezbollah has been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut. Hassan Nasrallah led the group for more than 30 years, building it into a powerful political force within Lebanon and the most heavily armed non-state militia in the world. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly ordered the killing from his hotel room in New Yo…

Sri Lankan-born Canadian essayist, poet, and Booker Prize-winning novelist Michael Ondaatje recently released a stunning collection of poems. Ondaatje is now 80 years old and it’s almost half a century since he published his first novel; even longer since he first published poetry. On this episode of Read This he joins Michael for a conversation ab…

The Reserve Bank should lower interest rates, and if they don’t, the government should make them, according to the Greens. Their spokesperson for economic justice Nick McKim has said he won’t support the government's reforms to the RBA unless the treasurer intervenes in the bank’s decision-making processes and tells them to lower interest rates. It…

The Liberal National Party has been in the political wilderness in Queensland for most of the past three decades. But in a month’s time that’s likely to change, after an election campaign fought on youth crime. Yesterday, David Crisafulli announced courts would be able to access young people’s full criminal histories, even after they have turned 18…

In more than 30 years of lobbying for gambling reforms, Tim Costello says no government has tried to silence him through the use of a legally binding non-disclosure agreement. That’s until the Albanese government asked him to sign an NDA as part of lobbying the government on new gambling advertising laws. The chief advocate for the Alliance for Gam…

If you ask a Melbourne local, almost all of them would have heard of the 1977 Easey Street murders. In one of Victoria’s most brutal unsolved killings, two women in their 20s were stabbed dozens of times in their home on Easey Street in Collingwood. Now, after 47 years and examining over 130 “persons of interest”, police have finally made an arrest…

Peter Dutton is now on TikTok, and his first post was about as inspiring as you might imagine. It’s shot in an office, he’s wearing a suit, and he’s talking about housing. It’s easy to see this as a case of trying to appeal to the kids. But it’s also a sign of a broader trend among Australian politicians, with around a third of them now on TikTok a…

Even if you’re not an obsessive Ancient Rome aficionado, you may have heard of Mary Beard. With more than 20 books to her name, including the wildly successful SPQR, Mary might be most famous for her work as a BBC host for shows such as Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town and Julius Caesar Revealed. On this episode of Read This, she sits down w…

In a court case earlier this year, an art installation at Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art that was designed to playfully poke at the historic and ongoing disadvantages faced by women was found to be discriminatory. MONA’s Ladies Lounge was a small, private room within the museum, bordered by silk green curtains and open only to those who identif…

As a child refugee in India, Harini dreamt of making it to Australia to study medicine and become a doctor. She arrived in Australia in 2013 when she was 10 years old, leaving behind her two siblings and mother. Harini did not realise her visa status made her different to her classmates until she received a university offer for a biomedical science…

When Bill Shorten finally gave up his hopes of ever becoming prime minister, one door closed and another, much more lucrative, door opened. In his new role as vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra, he could earn up to three times as much as the PM. His appointment comes amid a fight about the exorbitant salaries Australian vice-chancellors …

When Jim Chalmers said that interest rate hikes were “smashing the economy” he was either stating the obvious or starting a war, depending on who you ask. For weeks – in question time and in the news – a picture has been forming of an aggrieved treasurer, angry at the governor of the Reserve Bank. At the same time, senior unnamed Labor insiders hav…

The militia movement in the United States has a long and bloody history. In the aftermath of January 6, it was buoyed by Donald Trump’s praise of those who attacked the Capitol, and the numbers of people wanting to join militia groups grew. With a resurgence in numbers, militia groups are now patrolling the US-Mexico border, forming bonds with acti…

Star investigative journalist Louise Milligan has spent her career working on some of the most high-profile criminal cases in Australia. This incredible breadth of experience informs her first novel Pheasant’s Nest, which follows the abduction of a young journalist and provides a unique insight into the media, policing and politics that surround a …

When former inmate Daniel Vansetten heard about the idea of a national newspaper, produced for prisoners and by prisoners, he jumped at the opportunity to be involved. He says the incarceration system in Australia can be an information black hole and About Time intends to rectify that. The free paper is available to approximately 21,000 prisoners i…

The United States presidential campaign so far has largely been based on fashioning public perceptions: with the Democrats painting Donald Trump as a threat to democracy, and Republicans calling Kamala Harris a radical Marxist who will destroy America. And with the election just around the corner, their first and possibly only debate was a chance t…

Peter Dutton’s first major promise when he became opposition leader was to build nuclear power plants. It was a curious idea with no cost attached and and without much community support, according to polling. Now, the Labor government has signalled it wants the next election to be fought on the viability of these plants, with the release of a new a…

Politics was changed at the last election in a way the major parties are still grappling with. Now, the record crossbench it delivered looks set to grow even more, with a hung parliament looking ever more likely. In the lead up to the next election, Labor is courting the teals, knowing the relationship could be crucial to forming government and kee…

The Albanese government’s long-promised National Anti-Corruption Commission was met with high hopes that it would weed out corruption within our institutions and restore faith in politics. But when it came to its first big test – investigating the robodebt scandal – it took the commission a year to decide it would do nothing. Now, there are concern…

Gerald Murnane doesn’t have readers, he has acolytes. The New Yorker described him as “the reclusive giant of Australian letters”. He’s written 10 novels, several collections of short stories and essays, and a memoir about horse racing. Together these books represent one of the most formidable and singular bodies of work in literature. On this epis…

Bill Shorten has wanted to be the prime minister since he was a teenager. Yesterday he finally gave up that ambition, announcing his resignation from politics. Shorten spent almost two decades in parliament – rising to be opposition leader and contesting two elections, but never winning. As an architect of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, …

At a Senate committee last year, the NRL and Football Australia acknowledged the link between head injuries in contact sports and the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). But a core member of the NRL’s concussion research group is also one of the most outspoken critics of the link between repeated head injury and CTE, c…

Although Australians voted resoundingly against an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, Thomas Mayo – one of the Voice’s key campaigners – has not given up hope. He says while the “Yes” campaign lost the referendum, what they gained was resilience and a new generation of Indigenous leaders ready to take up the fight. He’s also written a new book, Always…

The census is meant to reflect the country back to us – to give vital data on who makes up Australia. But this week it’s become a political landmine for the federal government, who first cancelled questions on sexual orientation and gender identity, only to partially reverse that decision amid tense backlash. But the question of data isn’t just aca…

It’s been almost a decade since Jacqui Lambie dramatically quit the Palmer United Party. Since then, she’s become a political force in Canberra and in her home state of Tasmania as the leader of the Jacqui Lambie Network. At the last federal election, Lambie’s longtime staffer Tammy Tyrrell won a senate spot – and at the last Tasmanian election, ju…

Writer, artist, and filmmaker Miranda July has a devoted – even rabid – following, through her writing, her work on the screen, and her collaborative art projects. On this episode of Read This, she and Michael discuss her new novel, All Fours, which explores desire, intimacy, dance, and an often overlooked part of the ageing process.…

The most damaging controversy the Indigenous art sector has experienced in years started with a video. The Ngura Pulka exhibition was set to open in June last year, featuring 28 new paintings by three generations of Aṉangu artists represented by the APY Art Centre Collective in South Australia. The footage shows white studio assistants working on c…

It’s been a tough few weeks for Jim Beyer, the CEO of Australia’s third largest goldmining company, Regis Resources. The multi-billion dollar McPhillamy goldmine in NSW had been through all the approvals processes, but at the last minute, Beyer had to tell investors that it likely won’t go ahead. The announcement comes after an intervention from th…

Jess Hill hasn’t been sleeping much lately. For the past three months, she’s been working on a plan to try to end violence against women and children. Now, that plan is out. The rapid review looks beyond the education campaigns that we have come to understand as domestic violence prevention and calls for a complete overhaul to the way the governmen…

It was the biggest escalation between Hezbollah and Israel since October 7. On Sunday, Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel while Israel said it hit more than 40 targets in Lebanon – and isn’t done yet. The attacks come as talks of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel continue with no sign of an outcome. Today, world editor o…

After the resounding defeat of last year’s referendum on the Voice to Parliament, the path towards Truth and Treaty has appeared to be on shaky ground. But history has been made in Victoria, with the state’s Indigenous representative body formally confirming it is ready to negotiate with the government on a state-wide treaty. The process is being l…