- 4 mins
According to ANU expert Dr David Pledger negligible levels of direct funding, long-term apathy to artists’ working conditions, oversized bureaucracy, and censorship at universities and the national arts agency, Creative Australia, point to a devaluation of artists and their work
“Australia’s artist-population is around 39,000. This is higher than anecdotal evidence suggests, but still a significant drop [since 2011]”
Billions of dollars have been spent on recovering water for the environment in Australia’s most important and extensive catchment, the Murray-Darling Basin.
According to a group of experts led by Dr Matthew Coloff from the Australian National University, three quarters of the indicators used in a major review of that spending were chosen to justify investment past investment, not to reflect the efficacy of those decisions.
Major political parties have committed to new bulk-billing, workforce, cost-of-treatment and medicine policy. This is good news, especially for women, Associate Professor Amy McLennane writes.
“But access is only the tip of a much larger iceberg. One of the deeper issues, hiding just below the surface, is something the incoming government will have to address a the biggest source of growing demand for care: chronic disease.”
According to ANU expert Adam Butt, current means testing rules are confusing, but there is a solution.
“The Age Pension payment in Australia is unusual in that it is universal, non-contributory and means tested. Age Pension means testing leads to complex interactions between the retirement phase of superannuation and the Age Pension payment; and navigating these interactions can have significant impacts on the amount of Age Pension received.”
According to Professor Nicholas Biddle from the ANU School of Politics and International Relations, this financial strain can be linked to a reported decline in life satisfaction.
“Australia’s life satisfaction is at its lowest level, since we’ve been tracking it back from 2019,” he says.
“One of the things that is really driving the results now is the continued financial stress Australians are experiencing.”
In the wake of the federal budget, ANU expert Stephen Howes assesses the state of Australia's spending on aid.
“The aid budget makes the bold claim that Australia is“reprioritising our development investments to bolster support to our region”. But this is more spin than substance. The increase is marginal.
Aid to Asia and the Pacific as a share of total aid increases from 73.5 per cent in 2024-25 to 74.4 per cent in 2025-26.”
Which campaign messages are cutting through on both traditional and social media platforms? Are politicians seducing the electorate any more than in the past?
On this Democracy Sausage, Andrea Carson joins Mark Kenny and Dr Marija Taflaga to discuss a ‘subterranean’ election campaign, asking if Gen Z-courting memes and crackpot AI videos could even affect public decision-making.
Are agencies doing enough to make intelligence useful for their decision-makers? How can they build skilled, diverse intelligence workforce? How can they balance Australia’s intelligence sovereignty with keeping alliances strong?
In this episode of the National Security Podcast, Chris Taylor and Miah Hammond-Errey join Rory Medcalf to delve into the 2024 Independent Intelligence Review.
According to the 2022 China Mental Health Survey found more than seven per cent of the population of the country were suffering from depression, half of them are schoolchildren.
On this episode of Little Red Podcast, Louisa and Graeme explore the problems drawing the children of China to the couch with experts Yiying Xiong, Barclay Bram, and Hsuan-Ying Huang.
ANU Policy Brief is for time-poor policymakers needing quick access to evidence-based research. It features actionable and digestible briefs drawn from the University’s full range of expertise across the campus.
