The government’s plans to bolster Australia’s fuel stores are sensible – but 5 years too late

Greater public fuel reserves will be held in Australia and more fuel kept in private stocks. The government’s new fuel plans ...

Donations, access and secrecy: 3 tactics tobacco companies use to influence smoking laws

Letting a global tobacco giant give evidence to a parliamentary committee behind closed doors is one of many lobbying tactics ...

More than 1 in 3 Australian adults are functionally illiterate. How can we fix this?

Functional literacy describes the skills needed for everyday life in our complex society. Improving it for adults may be ...

Increasing JobSeeker is long overdue. Here’s how we could do it, without breaking the budget

Research shows where those cost-of-living stresses are greatest. It’s not the vast bulk of middle income Australia, but ...

Urban trees cool the world’s cities more than we thought – but we can’t rely on them alone

Cities around the world rely on trees to keep temperatures lower. New research shows trees are remarkably effective – but can ...

5 great podcasts parents can listen to with children – backed by research

Children’s podcasts are a fast-growing part of the audio industry. Here are five that work particularly well for shared ...

Transcribing speech is never neutral. It shapes power and bias

Rendering speech into writing may seem natural, but writing is itself a technology. The task is not to achieve perfect ...

Federal investigation into Smith College probes whether transgender students can attend women’s schools – challenging the evolving mission of women’s education

The Smith College investigation marks the first time the Trump administration is considering whether trans students should ...

Teens came first at Australia’s world‑leading Centre For Youth Literature – until it was axed

What happened to the groundbreaking centre that ran Australia’s only national teen-voted awards for teen literature and ...

NZ is overdue for a population strategy – but there is only so much governments can do

New Zealand’s population structure is changing rapidly, yet the country has no comprehensive strategy to intervene or adapt ...

Recreational fishing in the US catches far more fish than previously estimated

Combining more than 15,000 reports from 36 states, researchers estimate that recreational fishing puts $3 billion worth of ...

Election day in the UK: what to look out for – and when we’ll know the results

In England, local elections run on a four-year cycle, which means different sets of seats in various locations are contested ...