Digital technologies are changing how we live, driving innovation and new industries. Governments are eager to foster Silicon Valley-like innovation hotspots in their state or local region. What role should government play in stimulating new industries? Why do plans for high tech digital ‘hubs’ often not come to fruition?

Queensland Chief Scientist Hugh Possingham is very annoyed with his fellow scientists as well as environmentalist and conservationists: They are too conservative, don’t debate respectfully, are too obsessed with growing their own organisations and can’t compromise a bit.

If you want an animated conversation in Australia mention first home buyers, investment properties, building costs , interest rates or negative gearing. Home ownership is our national obsession. But as house prices boom,  people on low or moderate incomes are pushed further to the margins. They struggle with high rents and face long waiting lists for public housing. And some will experience homelessness. How can we ensure that every Australian has a roof over their head?

There’ve been many shots fired in the gender wars over the last two years most notably the MeToo movement and the outcry over the treatment of women in federal parliament. On the positive side womens sport is on the up and up. So does this mean progress across the board or has the pandemic had an unequal effect on women? Natasha Stott Despoja looks at the on-going struggle for a level playing field.

Conspiracy theories are not a new phenomenon, but the internet has turbocharged the dissemination of misinformation and disinformation. A disturbing number of people are now getting sucked into online conspiracy cults. One of the most prominent is QAnon, whose believers think a cabal of Satanic worshipping paedophiles operate a global child sex trafficking ring, and conspired against former U.S. President, Donald Trump. Van Badham spent a year undercover in the online conspiracy community.

Despite years of campaigning we still don’t have gender equality in the workplace. We have a persistent gender pay gap, not as many women in top management or on company boards and rising childcare costs which act as a disincentive to return to work. Julia Gillard hosts a panel on the buttons we need to push to achieve workplace equality.

Coal regions around the world are feeling the pinch of the move to renewable energy. What do we owe these regions? Is supporting them a moral reckoning with the trade-offs we have made in building the world we live in? With all the modern conveniences we now enjoy? Big Ideas up next looks to experiences of the coal exit in Germany – and what we can learn from them.

The recent election in the Philippines confirmed the power of political families. The president and the vice-president are the children of a former , and current , president. And Japan is promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific as it feels the heat from the the three nuclear armed states on its doorstep.

Australian, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, endured a living nightmare. She was arrested and convicted of espionage in Iran, and then sentenced to 10 years in prison. The charges were baseless; the trial was a sham. Kylie became a pawn in a high stakes geo-political negotiation. How did she survive over 800 days of interrogation, psychological torture, and imprisonment in Iran? What did it take to free her?

The threat of trade wars that the world faces today can be traced back to the handling of the Great Depression in the 1930s. The response to this crisis was not just based on monetary and financial considerations, but rather on geopolitical and national interests. This remade democratic capitalism and eventually led to embedded liberalism.