The Policy Post

  Climate change, security … and Indonesia. Australia can, with difficulty, handle most of what climate change throws at us. Our biggest, nearest neighbour cannot.

  Democracy’s crisis of confidence. Autocracies are winning the trust of their people. Democracies are losing it.

  Prevention is not a substitute for cure. The better we get at preventing disease, the more we have to spend on hospitals. And life expectancy cannot improve forever.

  Australia Alone 1: The future without America. We are moving into a multipolar world  in which no single centre of power can dominate. For Australia, the time has come for independence.

  Australia alone 2: Where’s the enemy? The US wants Australia to help constrain China and preserve America’s supremacy. But what’s in it for us?

  Australia alone 3: In the national interest? As a sovereign nation, Australia should follow its national interest. But how do we do that? And what is it anyway?

  A party without a purpose. In May, federal Labor surged to power with its best result since the second world war. Eleven weeks later, Tasmanian Labor got its worst result since 1903. Why?

  One state has the worst hospital system – and the most expensive. Inefficient, neglected hospitals cost lives and waste dollars. You don’t always get what you pay for.

  Australia is now a one-party state. What price democracy? Governments need functioning oppositions to keep them in check. Australia no longer has one of those.

  Shocks and aftershocks 1: Five tipping points that made the modern world. Global change happens slowly, then all at once. And it’s driven by ordinary people shouting: “What about me?”

  Shocks and aftershocks 2: The undeliverable promise of liberalism. The difficulties besetting the world today can be traced back to their origins in the speculations of the 18 th century Enlightenment.

  Shocks and aftershocks 3: Freedom for the wolves. Between 1789 and 1860, Europe was transformed. Industrialisation and liberal economics fused into a kind of new feudalism.

  Shocks and aftershocks 4: And then the world ended. As the 19 th century progressed, reforms were minor and grudging, doing little for the great mass of the people. Finally, in 1914, the edifice collapsed.

  Shocks and aftershocks 5: After Armageddon, rebirth. Socialism turned out to be much worse than liberalism. Then a new way appeared … for a while.

  Shocks and aftershocks 6: Peace, love and company profits The upheavals of 1968 presaged the ultimate triumph of liberalism. Personal freedoms were finally realised – but neoliberal economics failed just as badly as ever.

  Shocks and aftershocks 7: The post-liberal malaise Liberalism has run its course. The US is no longer the ‘indispensable nation’. Other countries must find their own new way.

  Does Albanese lead a reformist government? Or not? He can leave taxes alone, or he can change Australia. Not both.

  Private hospitals: will they be there for you – or not? The system is broken. Hospitals are closing, patients turned away. It doesn’t have to be this way.

  The PBS is under fire from US drug giants. There’s not much they can do. The drug companies have bought both American political parties. They have not bought Australia.

  Labor’s health pitch (and why it won’t work). Undeliverable promises about bulk-billing ignore an entire health system in slow collapse. Labor has lost its capacity for transformative change and the Liberals are – well, the Liberals.

  Stop worrying about productivity. We’re doing okay. Australia’s productivity ‘crisis’ is not what it seems. We’re just not measuring it properly.

  The great mental health experiment … and why it went so wrong. Half a century ago, governments around the world ditched their old psychiatric hospitals for something they said would work better. It didn’t.