Russia’s nuclear threats over Kaliningrad have heightened fears that escalating tensions with NATO could trigger a catastrophic wider conflict.

Rahul Gandhi backs ‘Cockroach’ demonstrations, Trump’s world court attack seen as illegal, AI producing have and have-not countries, and China’s unique ancient art replica.

Pork barrelling is not always corrupt, but discretionary grants create obvious risks of political favouritism and conflicts of interest. The NACC should provide clear guidance on where legitimate politics ends and corruption begins.

Around 2000 anti-war activists took to the streets in a strong rebuke to Land Forces _ _ and Western Australian Labor, which welcomed them.**Cas Smith** reports.

After learning that Justice Navi Pillay was awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, US President Donald Trump took to social media to demonise the prize, Norway, and the International Criminal Court, and to call Pillay a “hater”. Justice Pillay’s response? Humour. “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump,” the international human rights judge said, learning she’d received the prize while in Germany for a conference on international law and human rights. She was referring to Trump’s tantrum the year before, when he was also snubbed for the award in favour of Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado, who then gave her award to Trump. While Trump would likely have been waiting by the phone for a call from Oslo, Justice Pillay had no idea she would win it. In Oslo, when announcing the recipient, Jørgen Watne Frydnes said they had been trying to reach Justice Pillay to let her know but had so far been unsuccessful. He said, “If you see a Norwegian number, please pick up the phone!” When Justice Pillay finally heard the news in the presence of her international law colleagues, she thanked those in the room for applauding her, saying the applause meant so much and that she still couldn’t believe it. She received the Nobel Peace Prize for her lifelong dedication to international law and global justice, including her work at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which changed international human rights law by becoming the first court to hold that sexual violence can be an act of genocide. “Everyone says, ‘When are you going to stop? When are you going to stop? I just turned 85 last month,” she laughed on learning she’d received the award and declaring she “thought it was a joke” at first. Justice Pillay’s work involves exploring the worst of what humans do to each other, but she still refuses to give up on what humans can achieve in justice and for the victim survivors of crimes against humanity. She said people often pay tribute to the ‘courage’ behind her work, which she finds peculiar: the real courage belongs to those who give evidence. I heard that same humility and warm, generous nature when I interviewed Justice Pillay for the Women’s Agenda Podcast in November 2025, as she received the Sydney Peace Prize. I also heard about her extraordinary resilience and her ability to stay hopeful and vigorous while investigating horrific crimes. It’s remarkable, given she’s been at this work for six decades, including investigating genocide in Rwanda, Myanmar and Gaza. This career followed her facing discrimination in her home country, South Africa, before she became the first woman of colour appointed as a judge in South Africa. I asked at the time how Justice Pillay personally copes with hearing and seeing so much detail of human suffering, including sexual assault and rape — from apartheid in South Africa to Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Palestine. “Angela, it’s not about us,” she said. “It’s about the victims… You can never give up.” She also shared how she gets inspiration from others. “I’m inspired by activism on the part of civil society. I’m inspired by young people today, who will never put up with discrimination against women and girls as my generation had to go through,” she said. “So each step is a gain. People talk in terms of rights. There’s a rights culture, even among children. So I see great hope. I’m exhilarated by actions taken by civil society.” She also noted the importance of continuing to speak and act for others, regardless of how much you’ve already put into the work. “I’m in my eighties and for how many years I’ve been dealing with violence against women, private violence in the homes and public violence. But you can never give up. They can’t speak or act for themselves,” she said. “I have some power, whether as a lawyer, or High Commissioner for Human Rights, or a judge, and now chair of this Commission of Inquiry.” “I’m not saying we go out looking for the evidence or that we make up things. Absolutely not. We are trained to have absolute integrity and respect the truth. So I will continue.” Justice Pillay said the Nobel Peace Prize only strengthens her resolve. “This award strengthens my conviction that we must stand together in defence of the rule of law, in defence of independent courts and an international legal order based on principle rather than subjectivity,” she said. “Let me dedicate this award to all of the survivors of international crimes, as well as the practitioners and defenders of international justice whose compassion and courage continue to ensure that impunity will not be allowed to reign. **_We’ve just re-released our Women’s Agenda Podcast conversation with Justice Navi Pillay, timed to her Nobel Peace Prize win. Check it out on iTunes or Spotify._** Share this Navi Pillaynobel peace prizeTrump by Angela Priestley 4 days ago ## Stay Smart! Get Women's Agenda in your inbox * Comments This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. * Email SUBSCRIBE ## Latest news ### Women can still be sacked in religious schools for getting divorced or falling pregnant through IVF. It’s time to change the law ### ‘She coulda left’: The powerful artwork exposing the excuses used to minimise domestic violence ### After losing my baby, this is what helped me feel less alone ### Jacqui Lambie’s vaginal prolapse isn’t the joke. Pauline Hanson’s internalised misogyny definitely is. ### Heidi Forbes left finance for the arts. Now she’s building a business to help Australian creatives thrive ### Podcast: Why it’s time to quit being nice

As I flew out of Australia on the way to China this week, the big media screens in Sydney Airport featured a Financial Review story on high rotation. The headline screamed 'Chinese brands devour Australia's electric vehicle market'. It was accompanied by a shady illustration – the red and yellow Chinese flag with a blacked-out human figure superimposed across the top.

In Part Two, Connie Peck turns from Annie Jacobsen’s fictional scenario to the real legacy of the Soviet bioweapons program and the weakness of today’s global safeguards.

From Annie Lennox and David Byrne to ritual, childhood listening and Sweet Dreams, repetition in music can regulate, absorb and transform us in ways modern culture often underestimates.

Indonesia’s economic rise has lifted millions from poverty, but wildfires, deforestation and resource extraction reveal the danger of measuring prosperity while ignoring the depletion of the natural assets that sustain it.

As governments prepare for COP17 on biodiversity and COP31 on climate, the challenge is no longer setting goals but accelerating the changes in energy, food and finance needed to restore nature.

Danni Holmes makes the mind-bending mysteries of quantum physics accessible, entertaining and surprisingly down-to-earth in a fascinating journey through life, the universe and everything.

George Kanjere joined Green Left Radio to discuss the latest iteration of the campaign to save Preston Market.

Since the April ceasefire, Israeli forces have destroyed dozens of villages in southern Lebanon, displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians and built new military infrastructure across occupied territory.

Annie Jacobsen’s new book imagines a laboratory accident unleashing a weaponised plague across the world. Recent events in Siberia make its fictional scenario feel uncomfortably close to reality.

Australia is pouring billions into US and UK submarine industries while both countries struggle to meet their own naval needs. The risk is that AUKUS leaves Australia without the submarines it was promised.

Australia’s home battery rollout shows how infrastructure can be distributed rather than concentrated. The same principle could reduce the pressure AI data centres place on power, water, housing and local communities.

From Annie Lennox and David Byrne to ritual, childhood listening and Sweet Dreams, repetition in music can regulate, absorb and transform us in ways modern culture often underestimates.

Pork barrelling is not always corrupt, but discretionary grants create obvious risks of political favouritism and conflicts of interest. The NACC should provide clear guidance on where legitimate politics ends and corruption begins.

As I flew out of Australia on the way to China this week, the big media screens in Sydney Airport featured a Financial Review story on high rotation. The headline screamed 'Chinese brands devour Australia's electric vehicle market'. It was accompanied by a shady illustration – the red and yellow Chinese flag with a blacked-out human figure superimposed across the top.

Indonesia built its national identity around Bhinneka Tunggal Ika – unity in diversity. From next door, Pauline Hanson’s rejection of multiculturalism raises an uncomfortable question about the Australia we want to be.

Rahul Gandhi backs ‘Cockroach’ demonstrations, Trump’s world court attack seen as illegal, AI producing have and have-not countries, and China’s unique ancient art replica.

**The sensible approach to take in this situation is to not make drastic changes until proper research is conducted. This could and should be done by whatever government is elected in 2028, but this is likely to be a vain hope, writesPeter McDonald, _The University of Melbourne_ in this article republished from The Conversation.** Over the past month, the Labor government, the Coalition and One Nation have all announced new migration policies. Although they differ in some respects they have one feature in common: a focus on net overseas migration (NOM). If the parties were pursuing evidence-based plans, they would model what level of migration is in the national interest based on Australia’s economic and social needs. Instead, NOM, which is essentially an accounting outcome, is treated as a basis for policy. But are there any good ideas within these policies, and is one approach superior? Let’s compare them. ## One Nation One Nation’s policy has been very fluid. But the party has settled on NOM being “net-negative” for three years before rising to 130,000. How much net-negative is unstated. These targets for NOM are not justified by any modelling of their impact on the labour force, housing and infrastructure. Instead, there is a lot of empty political rhetoric that, in the words of former Tasmanian premier Peter Gutwein, blames migration for “every economic and social problem confronting Australians”. One Nation has announced specific changes to numbers on the various temporary visas, including heavily restricting international students. ## The Coalition The new Coalition policy states NOM would fall to 100,000 in its first two years in government before rising to 130,000 in year three and 160,000 in year four. Like One Nation, the Coalition’s NOM targets are not justified by any modelling of their impacts on the problems they aim to solve. And like One Nation, the proposals are accompanied by a lot of empty rhetoric. After four years, the Coalition proposes “to maintain the migration rate as a share of the population below the average under the Howard government”. This ignores the fact that, during the term of the Howard government, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) applied three very different definitions to the calculation of NOM. If the two definitions that ABS applied to NOM from 1996 to 2005 were in place today, NOM would be considerably lower than it is. This is because vastly more temporary migrants are now counted into NOM than would be the case if the 1996–2005 definitions were used today. The Coalition’s plans to cut the numbers on graduate and bridging visas would cut around 475,000 workers from the Australian labour force, 216,000 of whom are skilled (based on applying 2021 Census employment characteristics to 2026 numbers). This at a time when an estimated two million baby-boomers have retired, and when Australia’s labour market has become increasingly dependent on workers with temporary visas, especially in sectors such as aged care, construction and horticulture. ## Labor Labor in government tried for a long time not to have a target number for NOM. However, led by the prime minister and the very real prospect that NOM will fall to the level of the Treasury long-run forecast before the next election, Labor has adopted the Treasury forecast as its policy position for NOM. This number, 235,000 per year, derives from basic research conducted by Treasury’s Centre for Population in 2020 during the term of the Morrison Coalition government. Treasury has stuck with this forecast for six years, even though there have been considerable changes in the management of temporary migration since 2020. It’s ironic that Labor is now defending a forecast originally made by the Coalition. ## The permanent program Labor and the Coalition share the same policy on the permanent intake: 185,000 per year. They differ on the number of humanitarian migrants (Labor 20,000 and Coalition 10,000). For One Nation, permanent migration appears not to exist because there is no mention of it. The Coalition does not clarify how a continuing permanent migration program of 185,000 per year harmonises with its much lower and changing levels of NOM. With even more severe cuts to NOM, this could be a bigger issue for One Nation if we knew what its policy was. It is incumbent on One Nation to address permanent migration policy. None of the three parties has proposed ending the egregious and illegal practice of capping the number of permanent visas issued to partners of Australian citizens. ## Managing temporary migration In a potentially more positive direction, both the Coalition and One Nation have specified changes to the management of the various temporary visas. Immigration Minister Tony Burke made some less radical changes in his recent speech to the National Press Club. All three parties agree undergraduate students should not be permitted to bring family members with them. Labor has already implemented this change. Both One Nation and the Coalition propose to eliminate the graduate visa except for a small number of elite students. Reacting to labour demand, all three parties are seeking to increase numbers on the temporary skilled visa. In the absence of the graduate visa, the temporary skilled visa would become all-important in the recruitment of permanent skilled migrants. This is a positive direction as the skills which migrants hold are much more closely related to labour demand than the courses being studied by international students. They also come from a much wider diversity of countries than students. One Nation, however, has made the very bad mistake of proposing that temporary skilled visa holders will not be allowed to bring their families. These people are part of international labour markets. They have choices. They will not come to Australia on a four-year temporary visa without their families. All three parties want to move to much smaller numbers on bridging visas. The cut proposed by the Coalition is from around the present 400,000 to 40,000. They say they can achieve this by not permitting temporary migrants (other than working holiday makers) to apply for another temporary visa onshore. This ignores the fact that 133,000 of the people presently on Bridging Visa A are applicants for permanent visas. One Nation’s target for bridging visas is 300,000, which most commentators would say is still unacceptably high. The post-2028 election numbers on bridging visas will be highly dependent on the legacy number at the time of the election. This is in Labor’s hands. All three parties wish to eliminate 80,000 so-called “unlawful non-citizens”. Big (metaphorical) sticks are proposed, but not guns. Former migration administrator, Abul Rizvi, correctly says this is very much easier said than done. Alone among the three parties, One Nation has said there will be no amnesty for this cohort. ## What should be done All these announcements have been made in the absence of comprehensive information on the employment of temporary residents and their impacts on housing and other aspects of infrastructure. This information will become available from the results of the 2026 census, for which there is no published release date as yet. The sensible approach to take in this situation is to not make drastic changes until proper research is conducted. This could and should be done by whatever government is elected in 2028, but this is likely to be a vain hope. Politicking about temporary migration in lieu of reliable data will inevitably be ill-informed. **Peter McDonald, Honorary Professor of Demography, Centre for Health Policy, _The University of Melbourne_** **This article is republished fromThe Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.** Share this immigrationmigrationOne NationThe Coalition by Women's Agenda 3 days ago ## Stay Smart! Get Women's Agenda in your inbox * LinkedIn This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. * Email SUBSCRIBE ## Latest news ### Women are paying the price for Big Tech’s failures. It’s time the tech giants did too. ### Women are shamed for wearing shorts at the gym but shirtless men still get a free pass ### Karl Stefanovic, Dave Hughes and the lucrative business of pretending to speak for the battlers ### Matti Clements reappointed Director of Australian Institute of Sport ahead of Brisbane 2032 Olympics ### Australia’s aged care system leans on 2.43 million people — mostly women — it has never counted ### Podcast: Why it’s time to quit being nice

Australia is pouring billions into US and UK submarine industries while both countries struggle to meet their own naval needs. The risk is that AUKUS leaves Australia without the submarines it was promised.

Socialist Alliance will be on the ballot paper for the Victorian elections on November 28, after its registration lapsed in 2019. **Sue Bull** reports.

You've come up with a great idea for a business in Australia and you're almost 100 per cent sure it will succeed in the market.

Thank you to those who have not forgotten us. Your solidarity cannot undo our losses, but it reminds us that humanity has not abandoned us — and that we are still here, trying to live.

Josh Frydenberg was in the news this week, using his book launch to hint at a return to politics despite his inglorious history.

Sanctions are sold as a peaceful alternative to war, but their effects often fall hardest on civilians – through poverty, shortages, damaged health systems and preventable deaths.

A new film about queer lives erased by the Spanish Civil War feels newly urgent as Spain again debates sexuality, historical memory and the political legacy of Francoism.

High-profile allegations increasingly trigger media commentary, corporate distancing and public judgments that can undermine the presumption of innocence long before any court has determined guilt.

When Sharissa Wooldridge experienced a miscarriage after navigating five difficult years of infertility, she was left with a profound sense of grief. The grief, compounded by Sharissa’s ongoing struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts, made for an incredibly painful and difficult chapter in her life. “My mental health was down the toilet,” Sharissa shares. “I was really struggling.” “At that point, I didn’t feel like there was any point going on. It was very dark.” Sharissa, who is based in Melbourne, knew she couldn’t navigate it all alone. She sought support through counselling, medication and connecting with family and friends. She specifically reached out to people and communities who understood what infertility and pregnancy loss was like, a step that she says made a huge difference. She also came to see physical activity as a key part of her recovery. “Being physically active has been a major part of healing on my mental health journey,” she says. It was around this time Sharissa’s workplace offered an opportunity for staff to take part in One Foot Forward, an annual virtual walking, running, and moving challenge held every October during Mental Health Month, hosted by the Black Dog Institute Sharissa signed up for the challenge alongside a group of colleagues. She committed to walking 60km throughout October, while others in her team chose to commit to 40km. “It was really encouraging,” she says. “We’d message each other about where we were walking and share little pictures of us getting out and about.” What Sharissa didn’t expect was how participating in One Foot Forward would help her explore the neighbourhood she had recently moved to, and connect with the world around her. She walked with friends, took part in Parkrun events, and found it really helped during a time of life that otherwise may have been very isolating. “It was a really great opportunity to connect with those around me and actually focus on our mental health,” she said. “It’s a path to recovery for me. Just keep going and put one foot in front of the other.” “It reminded me that I could pull myself out of a really difficult place and keep moving forward.” ## Nobody should have to face mental health challenges alone The connection that Sharissa found through One Foot Forward reinforced her belief that no one should have to face mental health challenges alone. With one in five Australians experiencing a mental illness each year, and young Australians are experiencing higher rates of depression and anxiety than any generation before them, it’s a critical message. Sharissa’s gone on to become a mental health advocate, encouraging others to seek support if they need it. Whether it be reaching out to a GP or mental health professional, a community group, friends, family or an organisation like Black Dog Institute, Sharissa knows how powerful the right support can be. “Sometimes people don’t realise what’s available to them or how much support can help,” she said. In beautiful news, Sharissa is now pregnant and looking forward to a new chapter of life in parenthood. It feels all the more special after years of fertility treatment and loss. “I have a hope and a purpose that this one is going to make it,” she said. Sharissa is continuing to stay active and connected with others to support her mental health through this chapter. “I didn’t want to be lost in the abyss of my depression,” she says. “I wanted to keep going.” This October, she’s taking part in One Foot Forward again, and encourages others to start wherever they are at. “It’s a chance to get out into your community, improve your own mental health and support an incredible cause at the same time,” she said. “Depression tries to isolate you. The best thing you can do is get outside, connect with others and keep putting one foot in front of the other.” **You can find out more about One Foot Forward and register for the challenge** **here****.** Share this Black DogInfertilitymental healthmiscarriagewomen's health by Madeline Hislop 3 days ago ## Stay Smart! Get Women's Agenda in your inbox * Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. * Email SUBSCRIBE ## Latest news ### Women are paying the price for Big Tech’s failures. It’s time the tech giants did too. ### Women are shamed for wearing shorts at the gym but shirtless men still get a free pass ### Karl Stefanovic, Dave Hughes and the lucrative business of pretending to speak for the battlers ### Matti Clements reappointed Director of Australian Institute of Sport ahead of Brisbane 2032 Olympics ### Australia’s aged care system leans on 2.43 million people — mostly women — it has never counted ### Podcast: Why it’s time to quit being nice

Frontier AI depends on a highly concentrated supply chain for advanced chips. That creates a practical chokepoint governments could use to slow new model training without giving up the benefits of existing AI.

In regional Australia, many jobs are done from the driver’s seat of a ute or van. A water technician may spend the day driving between pump stations and a community nurse may visit properties an...

_Climate and Capitalism_ editor **Ian Angus**  presented some frightening forecasts from the University of Chicago’s Climate Impact Lab, regarding heat-related deaths worldwide from the Super El Niño.

P&I; — independent commentary on public policy, politics, and Australia's place in the world

Last week, Shane Gillis stood on the SNL stage and told the audience, “I haven’t been to the gym in so long I didn’t know women just dress like whores now?” The room responded with a mixture of laughter and groans. He carried on regardless, describing brightly coloured, tight-fitting shorts and joking that men weren’t allowed to look at women wearing them, because they might be filming something for social media. Hilarious. Truly. I’ll wait while the women in your life finish laughing. I had to Google who Gillis was, which says something about how little I’d missed. What I found was a long record of controversial remarks, including his 2019 sacking from SNL over a racist slur. So, the network gave a man with that history the opening monologue, and he used it to critique women’s gym shorts. Progress, apparently. Then came the commentary. The online response was a cesspool of misogyny, and the argument was depressingly familiar: women know exactly what they’re doing. Especially in the scrunch-bum tights. Especially at the gym. They want to be looked at, so really, who’s to blame for being called a whore? I’ve trained in an all-women’s gym. No men, no audience, and women still wore the same activewear you see everywhere. Funny, that. It turns out they were wearing it because it’s comfortable and it works. Here’s what I find fascinating. Some of the same people now explaining that women in tight gym gear are asking for it were, a couple of weeks ago, enthusiastically defending Sydney Sweeney’s near-naked shoot with strategically placed sports equipment. So, a woman is a whore for wearing shorts to the gym, but a woman posing almost nude with a barbell is art, or marketing, or a free-speech issue? The rule is not about clothing. The rule is that women’s bodies belong to the commentary, whatever they do with them. I’ve also seen the argument that this is feminism gone too far. Yes, that’s right. The suffragettes were apparently meant to stop at the vote, and the right to choose what we wear to a spin class was a step too far. Let’s try it the other way around. Men have breasts too. They have nipples for the same biological reasons as women, and men are the ones who sexualised them. So why do I have to look at shirtless men running, lifting and flexing in the gym mirrors? It’s offensive. Clearly, they must be whores. They should put a top on and show some self-respect, otherwise they deserve what they get. See how that works? It’s ridiculous, and it’s meant to be. That is exactly how ridiculous it sounds when it’s aimed at women. What is the male equivalent of “whore,” anyway? I’ve watched plenty of men spend hours at the gym staring at themselves, filming themselves and flexing to feel better about themselves. I don’t look at them and sexualise their bodies, because I’m there to work out and get on with my life. Maybe they should try the same. Dan Levy said it better than most. The Schitt’s Creek star responded in his own Instagram video: “Women wearing short shorts to the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists.” He added that “more men need to be standing up in opposition” to comments like these because “it’s complacency that has created the environment” in which women are sexually assaulted. “Men need to be defending women more. This is not a women’s issue. This is an everybody issue.” He’s right. Men commit the overwhelming majority of sexual violence against women and children, and somehow the conversation still lands on what the woman was wearing. If a woman is at the gym in a sports top and the tightest leggings she owns, that’s her choice. If a man can’t stop himself looking and sexualising every situation, that’s his problem, and it says far more about him than it does about her. Historically and across most cultures, women have been expected to be pure, untarnished and free of previous male attention. Men have not. The result is that women are scrutinised for supposedly promiscuous behaviour while men mostly aren’t, and a whole vocabulary of insults has grown up to police the difference. “Whore” isn’t a neutral word. It carries centuries of shame, and it only ever points one way. Now women are sharing their workouts in whatever they like, partly as pushback. Some men, and plenty of women, are calling them names. Others are telling them to wear tracksuit pants and a T-shirt. And a few, inevitably, are saying relax, it was only a joke. A joke isn’t just a joke when it’s recycled over and over. It has been the same punchline for generations, and we’ve heard it. Shane Gillis should get some new material– in comedy, and to cover himself up. Share this Gymmisogynysexismwomen's bodies by Rita Nasr 1 day ago ## Stay Smart! Get Women's Agenda in your inbox * Facebook This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. * Email SUBSCRIBE ## Latest news ### Women are paying the price for Big Tech’s failures. It’s time the tech giants did too. ### Karl Stefanovic, Dave Hughes and the lucrative business of pretending to speak for the battlers ### Matti Clements reappointed Director of Australian Institute of Sport ahead of Brisbane 2032 Olympics ### Australia’s aged care system leans on 2.43 million people — mostly women — it has never counted ### Molly’s abuser inherited her super after her death. The government is moving to close the loophole. ### Podcast: Why it’s time to quit being nice

NSW Government plans to increase migration to regional NSW, which could impact One Nation and Coalition NOM targets.

Karl Stefanovic’s experienced an awakening, apparently. Hosting the Conservative Political Action Conferences (CPAC) Australia last weekend, Pauline Hanson praised Stefanovic in his very public and very rapid shift to the alt-right. “Your eyes have opened, you’ve woken up”, Hanson told a rapturous crowd. “I appreciate it, replied Stefanovic. “There is no turning back now!” Judging by recent developments in Australian news, Stefanovic’s not the only influential man discovering the road to self-serving enlightenment. For a man who spent years as one of the most recognisable faces in Australian breakfast TV, with access to millions of households and a profile based on good natured, blokey but broadly liberal values, he’s now selling out in a bid to cash in. It’s a farce. This is not to say that people don’t change their minds, because of course they do. Political views evolve and systems disappoint us. Parties regularly lose their appeal when they stop representing our interests. Nobody knows this more than women. But there is a difference between changing your mind and building a new public identity around the idea that you’ve finally seen through the great progressive conspiracy. Increasingly, we see men with massive audiences and considerable cultural capital veer towards a politics that promises to expose the elites and defend the battlers—not realising that’s exactly who _they_ are. (Side note: Matt Canavan donning full high vis at the CPAC to appeal to genuinely hard-working average Australians was the pinnacle of cynicism). The pitch is always that someone, somewhere, has been silenced. The solution, invariably, is for the man with the microphone and the very big platform—our modern-day heroes—to speak even louder. No fear! But what are they actually using this newfound influence built upon influence for? From where I’m sitting, Dave Hughes, Karl Stefanovic, Barnaby Joyce et al, aren’t sticking their necks out on anything that would meaningfully shift things for the average punter. They’re instead, singularly focused on building and maintaining social grievance. Indeed, Hughes’ greatest contribution to the political debate, aside from claiming he wished he’d publicly backed the Mensa-level slogan _Nothing Easy Under Albanese,_ is to whinge about CGT changes and negative gearing reforms. The exact policies that have already begun shifting the housing and investment landscape, with property prices easing roughly 5 percent since March, enabling first-time buyers a fairer playing field. At a time when Australians are struggling with housing costs, insecure work, childcare expenses and strained public services, there is no shortage of worthwhile things for influential people to investigate. Yet, we’ve so far heard a lot of noise, and not one solution from Hughes or Stefanovic. The same questions arise in politics, where Barnaby Joyce’s move from the Nationals to One Nation has been accompanied by razor and unrelenting focus on cutting immigration, the anti-trans movement and national identity. He was conservative before, sure. But now, under Hanson’s watchful eye, he’s just reckless. We do not need every prominent man to become a progressive campaigner. We do need to be more discerning about the difference between someone who is genuinely standing up for people who feel ignored and someone who is using their frustrations to build a new public identity and benefit themselves. A personal circus-cum-awakening is not a public service, nor is a grievance a policy platform. Famous men telling us they’re finally speaking for the battlers doesn’t change that. And while they’re there contributing nada of value to public discourse, the rest of us have bills to pay. Share this Dave HughesKarl Stefanovic by Tarla Lambert-Patel 1 day ago ## Stay Smart! Get Women's Agenda in your inbox * Comments This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. * Email SUBSCRIBE ## Latest news ### Women are paying the price for Big Tech’s failures. It’s time the tech giants did too. ### Women are shamed for wearing shorts at the gym but shirtless men still get a free pass ### Matti Clements reappointed Director of Australian Institute of Sport ahead of Brisbane 2032 Olympics ### Australia’s aged care system leans on 2.43 million people — mostly women — it has never counted ### Molly’s abuser inherited her super after her death. The government is moving to close the loophole. ### Podcast: Why it’s time to quit being nice

A new film about queer lives erased by the Spanish Civil War feels newly urgent as Spain again debates sexuality, historical memory and the political legacy of Francoism.

AI companies are warning investors that frontier systems could create catastrophic or existential risks. Governments should impose licensing, independent testing and enforceable safeguards before those companies become even harder to restrain.

For almost two years, Jodie started her mornings with a coffee and a two way camera. One camera sat in her father’s living room, three hours down the road from her place at Raymond Terrace. The other was on her phone. Before work she would watch her dad, in his late eighties, try to get himself out of a chair. _“I used to sit here every morning and look at the camera and watch him get up and struggle.”_ Jodie has teenage daughters and a job. Every weekend she drove more than two hours from Sydney and more than two hours back to look after him. Jodie lives in public housing and asked for a housing transfer in November 2024 so she could live closer to him. It never came. Once she crashed her car racing to get to him after he had fallen while trying to get up off that damn chair. Her father had been assessed the previous January and then waited eight months for a callback. He was approved for a Level 8 Support at Home package, the highest there is, and was told the funding would take another seven months to arrive. The care package he already had went backwards while he waited. After the price rise on 1 July his provider cut his personal care to half an hour, took away the Saturday visit, took away the cleaner and halved his nurse visits. The system did not stand still while he waited. It shrank. In August he was admitted to Nepean Hospital so anaemic he needed two bags of blood and an iron infusion. He died in late September. The call offering him a reassessment came after he had been moved to end of life care. For eight of those months the only monitoring he got was a camera in the corner of the living room, watched every morning by a woman hours away with cereal and her heart in her mouth.**** _“If I had been there, his life would have been different these last 18 months. He said, I want to try and walk, and I’ve got no one to walk with.”_ ## Nobody had counted Jodie This week Vera and YouGov published the first national count of **t** he Jodies: the Australians caring for an ageing parent. There are 2.43 million of them, aged 35 to 70, doing it at least once a week. Treasury puts health care and social assistance, this country’s largest employing industry, at around 2.4 million people. We count every one of those workers every month. About the same number of Australians are caring for their own ageing mum and dad, and until this week not one of them appeared in a figure anywhere. Sometimes they are the same people juggling care jobs paid and unpaid on double duty. The numbers we had were too broad, too narrow or too old. The Bureau of Statistics counts primary carers by help with mobility, self care or communication, which leaves out the appointments, the medications, the provider phone calls, the coordination and the chasing. That is most of what this work actually is. Every existing definition of the sandwich generation also required children to be at home. It describes a 1950s household: one income, kids under the roof and a woman with time on her hands, which was not true then either. It writes off everyone whose children have grown up, everyone who never had any and anyone who married into the job. You do not need children to be in the sandwich. You need parents or parents-in-law. So Vera built a definition for the families this country actually has, and set a high bar, so nobody gets counted for a regular phone call on a Sunday night. We never used the word carer in a single question. Ask people whether they are carers and you count the people who accept the word rather than the people doing the work. Which turned out to be the finding. Only 46 per cent of the sandwich generation think of themselves as carers. Carer Payment, carer leave, Carer Gateway: every door this country has built for these people has that word painted on the front of it, and most of them would never use it about themselves. You have to claim the label before you are allowed through. ## What it costs the people doing it More than half of working Australians caring for a parent have spent their own annual, personal or other leave on it. Almost a third say it has cost them career progression. Leave comes back next year. Promotions do not. And we found people who say their employer understands have used the same amount of leave than people who say their employer does not. Sympathy, it turns out, is free. Policy costs money, which is roughly why we have so much of the one and so little of the other. Most of this work falls to women, as the Bureau of Statistics has told us for years. What is new is the size of the group it is falling on. ## It is as common at 38 as it is at 68 Everybody pictures a retired daughter looking after her mother. But caring starts younger than we thought. One in five of Australians at every age group from 35 to 70. This means 700,000 Australians aged 35 to 44 are doing the work every week, most of them with small children, a mortgage and a full time job. Every carer program built for the over 50s is designed for a life stage that many have not entered. Only one in four in the sandwich generation has a plan and somewhere to turn. The rest find out how the system works in an emergency department at two in the morning. ## What has to change Count this population. Put people supporting an ageing parent into the data used to plan health, aged care, work and family policy. You cannot plan for people you cannot see. Reach them before the crisis rather than after the fall, the admission or the funeral. And take the word off the door. When most of a service’s users would never claim it, the problem is in the design, and this is the cheapest thing on the list to fix. 6.32 million Australians aged 35 to 70 are either helping a parent now or expect to start within ten years, which is more than one in five people in this country. They will meet the same eight month wait for help unless something changes before they get there. Jodie’s mornings for two years were a coffee, a camera and a man she loved struggling to stand, hours away. She did that work whether anybody knew it or not. Now she counts. **_Stand up and be counted is published this week._ _Read the report_ _._** _YouGov surveyed 1,049 Australians aged 35 to 70 online between 2 and 6 September 2026. Data are weighted to population targets for Australians aged 35 to 70 on gender, region and education, with an effective sample of 961. National figures carry a margin of error of ±2 to 3 percentage points at 95% confidence. _ Share this aged careageing parentscaregivingcarersSandwich generation by Melissa Reader 1 day ago ## Stay Smart! Get Women's Agenda in your inbox * X/Twitter This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. * Email SUBSCRIBE ## Latest news ### Women are paying the price for Big Tech’s failures. It’s time the tech giants did too. ### Women are shamed for wearing shorts at the gym but shirtless men still get a free pass ### Karl Stefanovic, Dave Hughes and the lucrative business of pretending to speak for the battlers ### Matti Clements reappointed Director of Australian Institute of Sport ahead of Brisbane 2032 Olympics ### Molly’s abuser inherited her super after her death. The government is moving to close the loophole. ### Podcast: Why it’s time to quit being nice

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