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Author: Marilyn Mccoy
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The United States Is a Warning, Not a Model: What Australia Must Learn from America’s Democratic Crisis
For most of the post-war era, Australians looked to the United States with a mixture of admiration and affection. America was the cultural superpower, the military ally, the land of opportunity and innovation. Its democratic institutions — its constitution, its separation of powers, its tradition of peaceful transfers of power — were held up as…
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What Would an Evidence-Based Climate Policy Actually Look Like?
Climate change is perhaps the clearest example in contemporary Australian politics of a genuine, evidence-based problem being transformed, through the alchemy of media and tribal politics, into an identity-defining culture war. On one side: those for whom climate action is a quasi-religious commitment, in which doubt about any particular policy is treated as equivalent to…
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Can You Be Pro-Immigration AND Want Controlled Borders? Most Australians Already Are
Immigration is one of the most reliably polarising topics in Australian political debate — and one of the clearest examples of how media framing distorts reality. The debate as it is typically presented offers two positions: you are either pro-immigration, tolerant, and committed to multicultural values; or you are anti-immigration, restrictionist, and probably at least…
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The Teal Wave: What Independent Voters Are Really Telling the Major Parties
At the 2022 federal election, something unusual happened in Australian politics. A group of well-funded, community-backed independent candidates — mostly women, mostly standing in wealthy urban and suburban seats that had been safe Liberal territory for decades — won seats that the Liberal Party had held for generations. The media called them the “teal independents,”…
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Why Australian Politics Is So Boring (And Why That’s Actually Good)
By global standards, Australian politics is profoundly dull. Our most dramatic political events — the revolving door of prime ministers, the occasional leadership spill, the odd ministerial resignation — are tepid by international comparison. We have not had a January 6th. We have not had a prime minister charged with criminal conspiracy. We have not…
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Conspiracy Theories and the Mainstream: How Fringe Beliefs Entered Australian Politics
Something has changed in Australian politics that deserves serious attention: ideas that were once confined to obscure corners of the internet have found their way into the Senate, onto mainstream platforms, and into the political rhetoric of figures who aspire to govern the country. This is not a left or right phenomenon — conspiracy thinking…
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The New Nationalism: How ‘Australia First’ Rhetoric Is Being Weaponised
Patriotism is not a dirty word. Most Australians love their country — its landscapes, its larrikin culture, its relative prosperity and stability, the hard-won institutions that make it one of the most liveable societies in the world. A healthy love of country, combined with honest reckoning with its failures and injustices, is not just acceptable.…
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When Activism Becomes a Brand: The Commodification of Progressive Politics
There is a peculiar irony at the heart of contemporary progressive politics: the movement most loudly opposed to capitalism has become one of its most profitable product lines. Walk into any major Australian bookshop and you will find prominent displays of titles about racism, gender, colonialism, and privilege — selling briskly at $35 a copy.…
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Cancel Culture or Accountability? Finding the Line
Few phrases generate more heat and less light in contemporary Australian political debate than “cancel culture.” For those on the right, it describes a terrifying new form of mob justice in which any deviation from progressive orthodoxy can result in the destruction of a career, a reputation, or a life. For those on the left,…
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The Algorithm Knows You’re Angry: How Social Media Makes Politics Worse
Before you read this article, consider what you saw in your social media feed this morning. Was it uplifting? Probably not. If you follow anyone political on Facebook, X (Twitter), or YouTube, your feed was likely dominated by outrage — things that made you angry, frightened, or contemptuous of people who don’t share your values.…
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