Opinion / Analysis

Voluntary assisted dying isn’t available to all Australians. In 2026, this may finally change
Ben White, et al: Until now, voluntary assisted dying has largely been a matter for the separate states and territories. This has meant strict residency requirements in jurisdictions that allow it. Currently, these requirements limit voluntary assisted dying access to people who have lived in the particular state or territory for a specified period. But if the NT joins the rest of the country and voluntary assisted dying is permitted nation-wide, these requirements are not needed. Read the full article

NSW anti-protest laws were rushed through to keep the peace. They’ve failed
Ben Saul: Under international law, expressions such as “globalise the intifada” and “from the river to the sea”, accusing Israel of genocide or apartheid or calling for its boycott, or political criticism of Zionism, are not intrinsically violent or hateful and are presumptively legitimate free speech, absent other indicators. No Australian has any right to be shielded from political ideas they do not like. Read the full article

Chris Minns has cracked down on protests. Will it pay off?
Alexander Lewis: Minns is hardly the first premier to put limits on protest. But it is striking that a Labor government has taken such a hardline stance when the Labor movement has been characterised by protest historically. Read the full article

Dragged from prayer – how Muslim belonging became conditional in Australia
Shaymaa Elkadi: Young Muslims watching that footage will carry it longer than any speech about multiculturalism. Muslim parents will speak differently to their children about safety and citizenship. Community leaders will recalibrate what cooperation yields, and what it costs. Because we can no longer pretend that if we condemn loudly enough, rescue bravely enough, cooperate fully enough, we will be protected. Read the full article

Genocide is the story, not antisemitism
John Menadue: When will the Zionist lobbyists do some honest soul searching? Has it ever crossed their minds that Jews are less safe because of Gaza and their misuse and abuse of the term antisemitic. Free speech and the right to organise and protest is also being challenged across the western world. A new McCarthyism is afoot. Now it is not communists under the bed – it is people who oppose genocide. Read the full article

The Herzog visit and the Israelisation of antisemitism
Peter Hooton: If the Royal Commission is to make any real progress on its mandate, it must be clear from the outset that Israel is not above criticism and that Jews are not always simply victims of other peoples’ misguided animosity. They, too, do sometimes orchestrate and/or facilitate actions which may themselves be hate-inspired, ethno-culturally specific and exclusionary. Read the full article

History teachers are terrified by new hate speech laws, with good reason
Claire Golledge: Under NSW’s new hate-speech regulations, now expanded to specifically include teacher conduct, that teacher may hesitate. Could explaining historical antisemitism be misconstrued as vilifying Jewish people? If a student raises a contemporary conflict, could answering their question expose the teacher to complaints? Read the full article

Abortion laws, gun control and the rise (again) of One Nation: is Queensland’s LNP fraying at the seams?
Ben Smee: The party’s handling of abortion explains much about Crisafulli’s triumph of pragmatism over purpose. The LNP’s grassroots membership has an average age of 72. Most members – and many of the party’s state MPs – are in favour of repealing laws enabling access to termination of pregnancy. But that puts them at odds with their own political interests, and the state’s urban voters who have in the past been put off by the LNP’s Bible-thumping hard right. Read the full article

The way, the Trump and the lies: prayer breakfast displays US right’s devil’s pact
David Smith: They had come to say a prayer for the father, the son and the holy ghost. The father was Donald Trump, who, despite sending federal militias to roam Minneapolis, threatening to invade Greenland and telling lies by the dozen, remains the lord and saviour of the religious right. Read the full article

‘Women’s freedoms are at stake’: concern at rise of Islamist party before Bangladesh election
Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Redwan Ahmed: For many in Bangladesh, the past few weeks have been a cause for jubilation. The first free and fair elections in 17 years have been promised for Thursday, after the toppling of the regime of Sheikh Hasina in a bloody student-led uprising in August 2024 in which more than 1,000 people died. Yet for swathes of women the hope of the election has become tinged with disappointment and fear, amid a resurgence of regressive Islamist politics. Read the full article