Australian politics

We are not experts on epidemiology, virology or economics. Our personal view is that we need to proactively isolate non-essential workers and children. We base our opinion on the evidence and modelling that we find most compelling. This…

The federal government has issued new guidance to federal departments and agencies to move as many of its 160,000 employees to working from home as possible, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to spread. Despite the exhortations to…

The government’s forthcoming wage guarantee will include people who have already lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, and is designed to keep employees connected to their employers, but on Sunday Scott Morrison gave…

The Morrison government will expand funding for telehealth, domestic violence support and mental health services, as well as boosting the emergency relief delivered through charities and community organisations, as the number of…

9.48pm GMT21:48 Greg Jericho on whether we can expect the economy to bounce back quickly after the pandemic: In this instance we need to consider the virus and the response of governments around the world. The global…

The Morrison government has upped its external spending on Covid-19 data analytics from $1m to $5m but declined to release modelling underpinning national cabinet decisions to delay tighter restrictions to prevent the spread of…

We are all off balance. From the moment I open my eyes in the morning, I feel the discomfiting sensation of being suspended between the set of propositions that existed before the pandemic and the set of propositions that exist now. I…

With the number of cases of Covid-19 climbing by the day and the country debating whether to go further into lockdown, for some the prospect of staying inside is just as dangerous as going out. The relationship between Covid-19 and…

Land-clearing approvals in New South Wales have increased nearly 13-fold since the Coalition government relaxed laws in 2016, according to a secret report to the state cabinet by its Natural Resources Commission. The report, marked…

The federal government has privately admitted it will be forced to refund more than 400,000 welfare debts worth about $550m that were wrongly issued to hundreds of thousands of Australians under the botched robodebt scheme. Confidential…

Across Australian cities and towns, street lamp banners advertise exhibitions no one can attend and film festivals that will never happen. It has only taken days for the coronavirus to obliterate programs that took years to produce. Now…

The New South Wales health department has ordered nurses and biosecurity staff at Sydney international airport to temperature check all incoming passengers, escalating that state’s response to combat the spread of Covid-19 above and…

It’s a strange new world, the era of the coronavirus pandemic: working from home is the new norm, toilet paper is a prized possession – and the ABC’s political editor, Andrew Probyn, has become a TikTok meme. Users of the video-sharing…

Broad new powers given to the federal and state governments to limit the movement of Australians during the coronavirus pandemic are appropriate but should remain limited for the duration of the crisis, civil liberties advocates have…

In the midst of the plague it’s very hard for a layperson to know if the government should be doing more, more quickly, or if its actions are proportionate and correct. If more needs to be done, so many are asking, why is it not being…

You might think that the consequences of recessions are short-lived. The unemployment rate goes up for a short time, but subsequent strong growth quickly gets things back to normal. Not true. The lessons of past recessions tell a…

8.25pm GMT20:25 Good morning The Queensland border is now closed to all non-essential or exempted travellers. Anyone entering without an exemption will have to self-isolate for 14 days. A 68-year-old Queensland man with a…

Covid-19 isn’t just infecting humans. It’s also weakening ideology. Think about Tina: the acronym popularised after Margaret Thatcher declared that “There is no alternative” to the market economy. From the 1980s on, a thoroughgoing and…

There is nothing more unedifying than different levels of government finger-pointing during a crisis. In the aftermath of the bushfires, there was sniping via the media as the prime minister’s office blamed the New South Wales premier,…

Health authorities have privately asked Australian universities to search their campuses for material that could be used to prevent Covid-19 testing shortages. Brendan Murphy, the chief medical officer, has warned of “extreme pressures”…