HalfEarthMedic

It is easy for such operatives to point to the experience of the Whitlam Government or even the 2019 election under Bill Shorten as evidence that “big picture” stuff doesn’t work and that you have to ease your way into reform.

But ffs, it doesn’t work. None of that works. Not really. Not Ultimately. Not if your goal is a genuinely more equal society in which people’s most pressing needs are met. Not if your aim is to create a world in which we can be something more than inputs into an economic system. Even the modest goal of 8 hours work, 8 hours recreation, 8 hours rest seems wildly utopian in this new dispensation, and it shouldn’t be that way.

I disagree with none of this. Everyone sooths read it in full.

Australia is failing more than 130,000 people with significant psychosocial disability – despite spending billions every year on the NDIS.

This gap is fuelling a growing problem. People without adequate support are more likely to be homeless, admitted to hospital, or have their needs escalate – adding pressure to systems already under strain.

The gap can be closed without spending any more public money – by redirecting some NDIS funds to ensure Australians can get help whether they are in the scheme or not, and no matter where they live.

A Manjimup fisherman says the State Government has ignored more than a decade of community warnings about declining fish stocks, amid fears the recent West Coast gillnet ban will create new pressures further south.

On December 3, the State Government announced a full closure of all commercial demersal gillnetting in the West Coast bioregion.

It includes a 50 per cent commercial catch reduction for zone two on the South Coast.The West Coast bioregion will become an exclusively recreational fishing zone for snapper and dhufish following a 21-month recovery closure for boat-based recreational fishing, remaining permanently closed to commercial fishing for demersal fish from January 1, with a compulsory buyback of commercial fishing licences.

The reforms aim to protect demersal fish like pink snapper, red emperor and dhufish from extinction and to help stocks recover for future generations, with scientific stock assessments of WA’s prized demersal fish showing species are under “severe threat”.Under the reforms, the West Coast fishing region from Kalbarri to Augusta will not reopen on December 16.

While many fishers are worried this will mark the end of their businesses, Manjimup man Wayne Pedretti, who has been campaigning to save the region’s fish stocks for years, believes it could just push the problem further south.

He remains concerned about the vulnerability of local species.

Having fished in the Broke Inlet, 25km west of Walpole, for nearly 50 years, Mr Pedretti said the well-known breeding ground for pink snapper and groper remained dangerously unprotected, despite years of warnings.

Mr Pedretti told the Times he had repeatedly voiced his fears to governing bodies as part of the group Save Our Fish Stocks, formed 13 years ago.

The group believes netting should be banned at Broke Inlet to protect the breeding grounds.“We were told over a decade ago that the commercial sector would reduce their catch by 50 per cent — we thought we finally had a win,” he said.

“But the very next day, they reneged. If they had stuck to that agreement, maybe we wouldn’t be going through this now.”

Mr Pedretti is increasingly frustrated at the lack of action, and said he had offered to take decision-makers to the inlet to show them the problem first-hand

“I offered to set a small 60m net overnight and show them the hundreds of dead pink snapper and groper we would get in that net in the morning,” he said.

“I could explain that the pros use kilometres of net, then they might be able to see the damage, but they were never interested.”

He said the threat of gillnetting boats coming into South Coast waters to avoid the complete ban would devastate the region — and it was already happening.

“A mate called me and said they’re all down netting along Long Point, west of Walpole,” he said.

“They are going hammer and tongs before the reduction kicks in. If they are allowed to continue in this way, the breeding stocks will be pillaged and the inlet and the region will never recover.”Premier Roger Cook said the changes had been “difficult decisions to make” but it was “the right thing to do”.

“We want our kids and grandkids to be able to enjoy fishing in our beautiful State into the future,” he said.

“Our iconic demersal fish species like dhufish and snapper are on the verge of extinction in some parts of WA, so we need to take urgent action to save them for the future generations of fishers.

“We know that these reforms will have a large impact on the fishing industry and sectors, and we have been working with them closely throughout this decision-making process.

“We will be providing a $29.2 million Fisheries Support Package to help them to adapt to the incoming reforms and establishing an advisory council to provide guidance as the reforms are implemented.”

“A 25% tax on gas exports would solve the gas crisis. It would cut energy bills, ensure there is enough gas for Australians. It would also provide $17 billion annually for better housing, health care, education and childcare,” said Mark Ogge, Principal Advisor to The Australia Institute.

A decent analysis of one of the systemic weaknesses of our system, party discipline.

Think about one of the things happening in our parliament at the moment. An independent candidate, in the form of Andrew Wilkie from Tasmania, is trying to get the parliament—the body we elect to represent our views—to pass legislation that would ban gambling advertising. It is an issue on which we-the-people are in loud agreement and yet our elected body will not enact such legislation. Or rather, cannot. The impediment is the government itself, more specifically, the Labor Party, even more specifically, the prime minister.

Our Antisemitism Envoy may have slight shades of Nazi

Antisemitism Envoy Jillian Segal — whose family bankrolls far-right political lobby group “Advance” — has misled the Senate over her failure to denounce last month’s NSW Parliament House neo-Nazi rally.

Segal said, she had conveyed her “condemnation” to those media outlets “who approached me”.This is false. The Klaxon approached Segal and her office on November 9, in writing, expressly asking: “As Australia’s Antisemitism Envoy, do you denounce the neo-Nazi rally at the weekend?” We received no response.

As previously reported, Segal’s family trust was the tied-second biggest funder of [far-right group] Advance in 2023-24 — the latest data — giving it $50,000 in the year.

There is a moment in every public conversation about children’s imprisonment when language becomes a weapon. Governments call uprisings “disturbances”, media outlets describe frightened children as “rioters”, and the public is invited to see young people in crisis as threats rather than as children who have been deeply harmed.

That framing tells us far more about the adults in power than it does about the children locked inside these prisons.

Let's try help kids rather than locking them away and forgetting about them while doing nothing to correct the failures that created them.

Revelations of secret F-35 fighter jet parts shipments to Israel have exposed a yawning hole in Australia’s sovereign national defence.

Exclusive reports by Declassified Australia of at least 71 packages of F-35 fighter jet weapons parts being exported from Sydney to Israel have revealed that Australia has forfeited control over the plane’s spare parts stored here for Australia’s fleet of F-35s.

Australia has signed up to a system where, at a moment’s notice, those ‘parts and components’ may be whisked off the shelves at the RAAF Williamtown Air Base in New South Wales on the whim of a foreign state to be exported to a foreign country in a distant war zone.

While it may be known to defence experts and insiders, this was the surprise public admission by a senior Defence official, Deputy Secretary Hugh Jeffrey. He was responding to questions about the F-35 parts exports, that had been earlier revealed by reports in Declassified Australia, during a Senate interrogation ... “These are US owned goods. They’re managed by Lockheed Martin. Australia does not direct the export of those goods. It does not control the export of those goods..."

When senior Indigenous medico Dr Louis Peachey heard about police racially profiling a 17-year-old Aboriginal boy in Canberra, pulling him from a bus with guns drawn before realising he was the wrong person, Peachey was reminded of ‘The Talk’, and the ubiquity of institutional racism and the trauma it causes.

Medicare’s founding promise is failing millions as jurisdictional division leaves patients stuck on waiting lists and priced out of specialist care. A shared federal–state hospital system is the missing reform.

Our Deep Sea ecosystems are some of the most uncharted in the world. But before we get to fully understand them, we could lose them.

Penny Wong’s cautious diplomacy reveals Australia’s struggle to balance loyalty to the U.S. with the need for genuine independence on the world stage, writes Mark Beeson.