Cut Through

Is “free speech” an Australian value? We examine the latest developments concerning two state laws attempting to restrict political expression, and how the people are pushing back.

First, the verdict is in on the protest-restricting laws introduced by the Minns government ahead of the divisive visit by Israeli President Isaac Herzog: the changes are unconstitutional. Grata Fund founder Isabelle Reinecke explains what this means for the protesters who were arrested under laws that have now been overturned. 

Next, Queensland’s new hate speech laws criminalising the phrase “from the river to the sea” have been challenged by protesters impersonating… John Farnham. Comedian and Crikey columnist Sami Shah joins the podcast to discuss why banning speech never works. 

Catch up on our previous episode about the NSW protest laws here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TijjR1SJeFs

Read more:

• Chris Minns is a constitutional vandal. He must apologise for NSW protest laws or resign
• A view from the ground: As police argued with MPs, Sydney’s protest against Isaac Herzog descended into chaos
• Try to understand it: John Farnham’s ‘river to the sea’ and Queensland’s war on words by Sami Shah
• Red flags and ‘the six-word phrase’: Queensland protest arrests are part of an Australian history of crushing dissent
• One critical word is missing in Australia’s push to criminalise pro-Palestine phrases
• How Australia became a police state

Sign up to Crikey’s free newsletter: https://bit.ly/crikey-newsletter

Crikey’s independent journalism is supported by readers — 98% of our revenue comes from our subscribers. We’re not accountable to billionaires; we’re accountable to you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If it walks, talks and quacks like a duck… is it insider trading? Journalist Lachlan Keller joins the podcast to explain the suspicious pattern of behaviour that has lead experts and analysts to believe people within the Trump administration are using insider trading to make huge, lucrative bets on global news events.

We discuss the major oil commodities trades made just hours before Trump announced the US-Iran ceasefire, how prediction market platforms like Polymarket could be influencing the behaviour of White House staffers, and why the $TRUMP meme coin is the perfect case study for how the Trump family profiteers off his presidency.

Read more:

• $1.4bn was bet on oil falling mere hours before Trump’s Iran ceasefire. It follows a pattern of suspected insider trading
• Has $TRUMP pulled off the world’s most brazen crypto scam?
• Australia urgently needs a debate about the damage the US is doing to us

Sign up to Crikey’s free newsletter: https://bit.ly/crikey-newsletter

Crikey’s independent journalism is supported by readers — 98% of our revenue comes from our subscribers. We’re not accountable to billionaires; we’re accountable to you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made a surprise announcement before the Easter long weekend – the government’s long-awaited proposal for gambling advertising reform was finally ready and intended to come into effect from January 1, 2027. So, where will gambling ads be banned, and how?

Crikey media reporter Daanyal Saeed joins the podcast to unpack the proposed gambling ad reforms, including three big recommendations from the Peta Murphy report that the government has ignored, and how “vested interests” from gambling companies, sporting codes and mainstream media broadcasters have slowed down the process. 

At the end of the day, a proposed bill will not pass without the support of non-Labor senators. Who will they negotiate with to get it through?

Read more:

• ‘Really disappointed’, ‘betrayal’, ‘bare minimum’: The reaction to Albanese’s long-awaited gambling advertising reforms
• ‘It’s fucked … most people know that’: Sports podcasters speak out over gambling ad influence
• Has Albanese done anything at all on sports betting ads?
• Here’s how much gambling money is worth to Crikey, and why we won’t take it
• ‘Lost in the product’: How the gambling industry creates problem gamblers
• The gambling ad ban isn’t about gambling. It’s about the future of the media
• What the media earns from gambling — and what it costs the rest of us

Sign up to Crikey’s free newsletter: https://bit.ly/crikey-newsletter

Crikey’s independent journalism is supported by readers — 98% of our revenue comes from our subscribers. We’re not accountable to billionaires; we’re accountable to you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Originally labels for a person’s economic perspective, “left” and “right” have been transformed into social markers that are not only wielded as weapons in political discourse, but actually tell us very little about how someone will vote. In fact, most Australians prefer to call themselves “centrist” regardless of their beliefs. So does the left-right political spectrum still apply to Australian politics in 2026?

That’s the question debated in today’s episode by Crikey politics editor Bernard Keane and RedBridge Senior Insights Adviser Alex Fein. We cover the generational divides, economic transformation and total erosion of trust that has almost all voters, from orange to blue to red, united against the “ruling class”.

So, what’s the alternative? And does it even matter? 

N.B.: The quote at 44:36 is by Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Lucas.

Read more:

• Are ‘left’ and ‘right’ useful anymore or do we need a new political alignment?
• Left and right, forward and back, in and out: labels for a new political world
• The Political Compass
• Alex Fein: Polarisation is a Myth

Sign up to Crikey’s free newsletter: https://bit.ly/crikey-newsletter

Crikey’s independent journalism is supported by readers — 98% of our revenue comes from our subscribers. We’re not accountable to billionaires; we’re accountable to you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s been one month since the US began its war on Iran, which means one month that the critical oil passageway the Strait of Hormuz has been closed. As a result, the price of crude oil has shot up, taking the price of fuel with it. At petrol stations across Australia diesel is more than $3 per litre, with unleaded creeping up to $2.50 in metro areas and well beyond that in regional areas.

Economics correspondent Jason Murphy joins the podcast to answer some crucial questions: is the rising cost due to price gouging? What can the government do to keep the price of essentials, like groceries, from spiralling out of control? And is Australia actually at risk of running out of fuel altogether?

Read more:

• Do we actually need to panic about fuel?
• With petrol prices rising, so is Australia’s interest in EVs. We should strike while the iron is hot
• The Iran War is costing a lot more than higher petrol prices
• Painful as it is, the rate rise was the easy part. Trump has turned economic policy into a lottery

Sign up to Crikey’s free newsletter: https://bit.ly/crikey-newsletter

Crikey’s independent journalism is supported by readers — 98% of our revenue comes from our subscribers. We’re not accountable to billionaires; we’re accountable to you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After 10 years, more than 470,000 wrongly-issued debts, six separate investigations and $2.4 billion in compensation to victims, the National Anti-Corruption Commission handed down its final report into the unlawful debt recovery scheme known as robodebt. Two public servants were found to have engaged in serious corrupt conduct, but will not face criminal investigation. The other four individuals – including Scott Morrison – were cleared.

The reaction from victims, their families and the advocates campaigning for accountability was one of disappointment and frustration. Rick Morton, the journalist who has followed robodebt most closely, says he was “shocked, but not surprised" by the NACC report. 

Morton joins the podcast to unpack the NACC’s robodebt report, what the saga reveals about the public service, and why covering this story has changed him forever. 

Read more:

• The NACC robodebt report: A heartbreaking work of staggering incompetence
• NACC’s robodebt investigation conjures offensive and stupid excuses for letting Scott Morrison off
• Not ‘newsworthy’: Why the NACC decided not to update the media for 63 days
• Does the NACC have any hope of regaining public trust?
• Exclusive: Robodebt architect remains employed in a senior governance role in the public service

Sign up to Crikey’s free newsletter: https://bit.ly/crikey-newsletter

Crikey’s independent journalism is supported by readers — 98% of our revenue comes from our subscribers. We’re not accountable to billionaires; we’re accountable to you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can “good people” make change in Australia’s political system, or will power always corrupt? That’s the question that Jo Tarnawsky — former diplomat and chief of staff to Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles — is answering with her series exploring how power protects itself.

Tarnawsky joins the podcast to discuss what it’s like to be “in the room” when big decisions are made, how power is maintained by either weaponising or rewarding silence with gag orders, NDAs and party rules, and the biggest obstacles faced by independent voices attempting to challenge the major parties. 

Plus, in light of the robodebt corruption report, how do institutions like the National Anti-Corruption Commission hold us back from good governance? 

Read more:

• Swimming with narcissists: What power looks like up close
• Why good people leave politics — and what it costs us
• Setting the standard? Parliament still doesn’t take workplace harm seriously
• Power and silence: The strategy of saying nothing
• Labor MPs quietly alarmed by Albanese government’s response to US-Israel strikes on Iran
• NACC’s robodebt investigation conjures offensive and stupid excuses for letting Scott Morrison off

Sign up to Crikey’s free newsletter: https://bit.ly/crikey-newsletter

Crikey’s independent journalism is supported by readers — 98% of our revenue comes from our subscribers. We’re not accountable to billionaires; we’re accountable to you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On February 28 the US and Israel launched an unprovoked missile strike on Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several Islamic Republic officials and sparking further strikes across the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz, the pivotal oil shipping route, is closed. Washington’s claim of attacking to provoke “regime change” in Iran is dubious at best.

But the Iranian people have been largely left out of the geopolitical discourse. Just last month, huge revolutionary protests saw the regime massacre up to 40,000 people. So when the Iranian diaspora shared their mixed feelings about this week’s strikes, why were they shouted down as “US propaganda agents”?

Writer and doctor Hessom Razavi joins the podcast to give his take on the complicated feelings of many Iranians, his own family’s story of persecution in Iran, and explain why calls for adherence to the “rules-based order” are meaningless right now.

Read more:

• US intervention in Iran is not benevolent. But Iranians do not have the privilege of choice
• I’m an Iranian doctor in Australia. The eyewitness accounts sent to me of medical brutality in Iran are chilling
• As in Iraq, America wants regime change in Iran. It’s a smokescreen for US hegemony
• If you can’t get online in Iran, do you still count as human?
• The Art of War, with Donald Trump

Sign up to Crikey’s free newsletter: https://bit.ly/crikey-newsletter

Crikey’s independent journalism is supported by readers — 98% of our revenue comes from our subscribers. We’re not accountable to billionaires; we’re accountable to you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Campaigning has officially begun for the South Australia state election set for March 21. Peter Malinauskas’ already-dominant Labor government will be returned and increase their representation – the only question is how many more seats will they win?

Jo Dyer joins the podcast to give the political background to the election, including how the SA Liberals collapse differs from the federal Libs, and why they’ll be fighting off One Nation for their existing lower house seats. Plus, Dyer gives her hot tip for two independent challengers to watch. 

Read more:

• Malinauskas faces a landslide win in SA. But cracks are appearing in his ‘good-time agenda’
• The Liberals face a drubbing at South Australia’s election next month. But what of One Nation?
• A South Australian Handmaid’s Tale: Inside the room where a Trumpian abortion bill was narrowly defeated
• South Australia is now the battleground for the forced-birth movement

Sign up to Crikey’s free newsletter: https://bit.ly/crikey-newsletter

Crikey’s independent journalism is supported by readers — 98% of our revenue comes from our subscribers. We’re not accountable to billionaires; we’re accountable to you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Palantir is in the business of data and surveillance. It is run by key members of the “tech right”, builds the technology that has powered violent and illegal ICE raids in the US, and is accused of providing the AI-assisted autonomous weapons the Israeli military deployed on Palestinians in Gaza.

So why does the Australian Future Fund hold a $100 million stake in Palantir? And how has the company secured multimillion-dollar contracts and top security clearance from government departments and agencies?

Associate editor Cam Wilson joins the podcast to unpack his reporting on the growing Australian footprint of “the world’s most controversial SaaS company”.

Read more:

• Revealed: Australia’s $100 million investment in controversial tech giant Palantir
• Defence signs biggest ever contract with Palantir for department’s ‘Cyber Warfare Division’
• ‘Effectively passive’: Future Fund says it didn’t choose to buy its $100m Palantir stake
• From ICE to Coles: Controversial US tech company Palantir’s links to Australia spark backlash
• As top AUKUS official joins Palantir, ethics watchdog warns of lobbying ‘risks’
• Why do right-wing figures name their companies after Lord of the Rings?

Sign up to Crikey’s free newsletter: https://bit.ly/crikey-newsletter

Crikey’s independent journalism is supported by readers — 98% of our revenue comes from our subscribers. We’re not accountable to billionaires; we’re accountable to you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.