September 28 – October 4, 2024

“Denial is a funny thing. We have to find slippery ways of trying to live with high levels of cognitive dissonance: the discomfort we feel when faced with the reality that our thoughts and actions are contradictory. We must somehow rationalise the ways in which we fool ourselves. In the words of Seinfeld’s George Costanza: ‘It’s not a lie if you believe it.’ Nowhere is the denial of reality clearer than the political response to dealing with the existential threats posed by climate change.”

“The hard-headed assessment of one of Anthony Albanese’s closest allies is that Peter Dutton is the best thing Labor has going for it at the next election. Not because the unpopular Liberal leader cannot win, but rather because he can. This creates the circumstances for the election to become not a referendum on the performance of the government but rather a choice between Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party and Peter Dutton’s Coalition.”

“An important reason why Australia has fallen short of its potential to be the ‘clever country’, as many have aspired to over the years, such as prime minister Bob Hawke in the 1980s, is a shortage of research funding. Successive governments have happily cut or restrained this funding over many years, and it has also been difficult to interest the private sector – business, charities or high-net-worth individuals – in donating to research, let alone providing sustained funding.”