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It’s easy to dismiss conspiracy theories as fringe or imported.

But conspiratorial ideas are gaining traction with everyday Australians – about one in three endorse at least one conspiracy belief.

They’re also being echoed by people in power, and have spilled into real-world violence.

Today, Conspiracy Nation authors Cam Wilson and Ariel Bogle on how conspiracies leap from the fringe to the mainstream – incl...

Pauline Hanson’s call for Australia to become a monoculture was meant to draw a line around national identity. Instead, it opened up a new split inside the Liberal Party.

This week, the idea left Opposition Leader Angus Taylor looking bewildered, unable to say clearly where he stood on multiculturalism.

Andrew Hastie took the opposite approach in navigating the challenge presented by One Nation, launching a full frontal assau...

Karl Stefanovic has spent decades as one of the most recognisable faces on Australian television. 

A household name from the largely inoffensive world of breakfast television. 

Now, that multi-million dollar career at Nine is officially over, after Stefanovic published an interview with Tommy Robinson, a British far-right activist with a long criminal history, who has built a large following based on hate-driven rhetoric ...

Bird flu has reached mainland Australia – with cases first confirmed in WA and now South Australia.

The strain, detected in three seabirds, is H5N1 – a deadly form of the virus that has swept through wild birds overseas, forced farmers to slaughter millions of chickens, spread to mammals, and, in the United States, infected dairy cows and farm workers.

Authorities in Australia say the risk to the public is low – b...

Amid the seismic political shift currently underway in this country, there’s been one party missing from the conversation: the Greens.

And it’s curious, because the conditions that have seen One Nation rise – frustration with the major parties, a slip in living standards, appetite for change – should suit the Greens and their anti-establishment politics.

So why are they lost in the political wilderness?
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The Prime Minister of the UK Keir Starmer has announced his resignation – meaning Britain is preparing for its seventh leader in just ten years. 

Starmer, who won in a landslide victory for the Labor party only two years ago, has been haemorrhaging support from the public and the party for months.

The man likely to replace him: Andy Burnham.  

Today - host of the News Agents Emily Maitlis on Starmer’s dow...

In Western Australia, police have just started trialling technology that can identify people as they walk past. 

A marked police van will scan faces outside major events, cross-checking them against a watchlist of people wanted by authorities. Police say it’s targeted and that innocent people have nothing to fear. But once this kind of surveillance is switched on, the question becomes how far it spreads, and who decides ...

Anti-abortion activists say it was the most successful pro-life campaign in Australia - last week a bill to overturn abortion access after 25 weeks was voted through the upper house of South Australia’s parliament.

It didn’t make it through the lower house, but women's advocates are still sounding the alarm amid a growing push against reproductive rights - led, in part, by One Nation.

Pauline Hanson, once a supporter of...

In 2017, billionaire businessman Sanjeev Gupta rescued the Whyalla steelworks from administration, becoming known as the “saviour of steel”.

There was hope in this small South Australian town that steelmaking – and the thousands of jobs tied to it – would survive. But since then, Gupta has lost control, the South Australian government has forced the steelworks into administration, and taxpayers are now under...

This week, Pauline Hanson took to the National Press Club stage with a greatest hits collection of the grievances that have fueled her political career. 

Immigration. Multiculturalism. Trans rights. Indigenous Australians. The “political elite”. The changing face of the country. 

The backlash from the government, sections of the community and commentariat was immediate.

But that may no longer be enough. For ye...

This week, Pauline Hanson called for multiculturalism to be replaced with monoculturalism. 

At the same time, the Soccerros were capturing the hearts and minds of Australians everywhere on the biggest stage of all, the World Cup. 

It’s a team filled with players from multiple cultural backgrounds and one,  that if Hanson’s vision of the nation came to bear, simply wouldn’t exist. 

Today, former...

Parkinson’s is the fastest-growing neurological disorder in the world.

And in some Australian farming communities, doctors are questioning why so many seem to be getting it.

For years, some farmers and doctors have drawn a link to paraquat – a powerful weedkiller still used widely on Australian farms, despite being banned in more than 60 countries, including the UK, China and Brazil.

This month, Australia’s chemic...

For three decades, Pauline Hanson has built a career on grievance. 

In all that time she hasn’t fronted to the bastion of political journalism, the national press club. That was until yesterday where she appeared for the first time.

In a long address she laid out how she aims to turn her politics of grievance into policy; targeting immigration, the ABC, multiculturalism, renewable energy, transgender rights and journalis...

Over the weekend, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire.

It came after his company, SpaceX, was publicly listed, reaching a valuation of more than two trillion dollars.

Elon’s wealth is now the equivalent of the bottom one-third of the entire globe’s population. It’s more than the entire annual GDP of Belgium, Sweden or Ireland.

But while some are celebrating Musk’s milestone, for others it&r...

Donald Trump said what he wanted for his 80th birthday was world peace

And now, alongside the UFC spectacle on the White House lawn, he appears to have given himself the headline he wanted: a so-called peace deal with Iran.

Or more accurately - a sixty day “pause” – while negotiations continue. 

Today Director of the Australia Institute's International & Security Affairs Program Dr Emma Shortis on the lat...

Aukus is the most expensive defence project in Australia’s history; a project, that at its heart has the plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines through the United States and the United Kingdom. 

But the doubts around it are growing: over the cost, over whether Australia will get the submarines it’s been promised, and over what the deal means for our sovereignty.

Now, a public inquiry, in lieu of parliamentary d...

When Professor Christian Downie appeared before a Senate inquiry into climate and energy misinformation, he warned that Australia is facing coordinated campaigns designed not to debate climate solutions, but to stall them.

Professor Downie has spent years inside boardrooms and the lobbying world studying how these campaigns are built – tracing the billions spent on messaging by lobby groups, PR firms and think tanks – a...

Pauline Hanson has spent decades casting herself as the outsider, the voice of people who feel ignored by the political class. 

Now, One Nation is surging in the polls and in donations. On Friday their fundraising site crashed under the weight of more than three million dollars in new money, forcing Labor to treat Hanson less like a fringe dweller and more like a direct threat.

But as Hanson’s popularity grows, so does t...

The scenes in Belfast this week have been horrifying to watch - ugly clashes, masked men rioting in the streets, immigrant families begging neighbours to hide their children - fearing for their safety.

Politicians, far-right agitators, and billionaire Elon Musk have been accused of sparking the riots - weaponising a brutal stabbing attack, to ramp up anti-migrant rhetoric and whip protestors into a frenzy.

Today, British journalist...