Democracy Sausage with Mark Kenny

What are the five forces reshaping Australia's economy and society over the next four decades? What it will take to keep Australians' faith in government alive while managing them? What can younger Australians expect from future governments?

Treasurer of Australia and ANU Alum the Hon Dr Jim Chalmers MP joins Mark Kenny and Liz Allen on Democracy Sausage to unpack the 2025 Intergenerational Report.

Is too much political capital being put into meaningless foreign policy platitudes rather than defining what modern Australian security looks like? If Australia's shared values with its allies are contradicted can we still rely on those principles to steer policy with them? Can Australia take a globally prominent position in petitioning the US to end the wars that fundamentally threaten Australia's national security?

On this epi...

Is Australia's looming digital duty of care about censorship, as its critics claim, or about handing control back to the people whose attention is being sold to advertisers?

With Meta's $18 billion US settlement still fresh and an exposure draft due out within hours, independent MP for Curtin Kate Chaney makes the case for a broad duty on tech platforms to prevent foreseeable harm — and why she thinks this fight has nothi...

For the first time since federation Australia's population is made up of a majority of migrants and their children, changing the electoral maths for our politicians - have our leaders caught up to the times or are they getting left behind? Labor has learned how to win an election, but does the Liberal party have what it takes to break their losing streak? As trust in both our allies and our key trade partners has waned will our pas...

Why has David Farley's and Pauline Hanson's immigration number not matched up — and does it even matter to One Nation's supporters? What do focus groups really say when people explain why they're giving up on the major parties? If many disaffected voters want a left-wing agenda of "taking back what we own," why is it the populist right keeps cutting through? 

RedBridge's Alex Fein joins Democr...

Twenty-five years ago, Insiders went to air for the first time – the morning after the Aston by-election, before smartphones, before social media, and long before anyone had to explain what a fax machine was. So how much of what's changed in Australian politics since has really been about the politicians, and how much about the technology reshaping how they communicate and how we watch? Is the fe...

Why has the government fallen so far short of the Murphy Report's recommendations despite around 80 per cent of Australians wanting gambling ads banned? How did an under-resourced Northern Territory regulator end up overseeing a $34 billion-a-year industry? Why do inducements — not just the eye-watering ones, but the humble "here's $100, have a punt" kind — count as predatory when someone's trying to quit?

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Is a policy that students, staff and vice-chancellors all agree has failed still standing because no one in government wants to spend the political capital to fix it? Can universities rebuild trust and student voice after a string of governance crises, from the ICAC probe into the University of Wollongong and parliamentary inquiries? What does it say about the state of higher education when the queue for the student food pantry is ...

How did a Prime Minister sitting on one of Labor's largest-ever majorities turn his national conference into a masterclass in silence — and what does that say about who's allowed to argue inside the party? Is Albanese's "command and control" PMO disciplined governance or a party too afraid of its own conscience? With One Nation polling above 25 per cent in a Victoria that's just lost its Premier &mdas...

Why has social cohesion — a concept researchers still can't agree how to measure — become one of the most contested ideas in Australian politics? What separates the multiculturalism built by successive Australian governments from the harder, more exclusive boundaries being drawn by Pauline Hanson and Tony Abbott today? And with the political cost of saying the unsayable at an all-time low, ...

Is the collapse in trust of Australia's institutions, the retreat of unionism from everyday working life, and the alliances forged in Victoria's Covid lockdowns and reactivated by the 2023 Voice referendum responsible for the rise of the far right? Is One Nation's surge a passing spike, or the tail end of a forty-year rupture in Australian political life? Could a revived, class-based union movement win back the "recent defectors" d...

Is social media now a more powerful force reshaping Australian democracy than any politician, party, or policy? Why has Pauline Hanson spent thirty years in the political wilderness only to emerge as the country's most potent electoral force in 2026? Can the anger-entertainment industrial complex explain everything from One Nation's surge to the Voice referendum's collapse — and if rage bait is more engaging than po...

Have Zali Steggall and Allegra Spender just become the party they always swore they weren't? Can a "free vote" constitution and no party room really survive contact with a Senate seat? Does the donation and spending caps from the last parliament leave community independents with no real choice but to collectivise? And what happens to "putting community first" the moment a hung parliament forces a deal?

Zali Steggall and Al...

How did a Prime Minister who won one of the largest parliamentary majorities in British history find himself gone within two years — and what does his fate tell us about the limits of triangulation politics? Is Andy Burnham's victory a genuine realignment moment for British Labour, or is he inheriting a structurally broken state where no leader can succeed? With Reform UK on the march and the North-South divide wider than the...

How long will the honeymoon last for One Nation? Can Pauline Hanson create a robust political party to be competitive at the next election? How do populist leaders like Trump, Farage, and Hanson convince the working class that their wealthy backers back them? 

With One Nation rising in the polls, Special Correspondent at the Saturday Paper, Jason Koutsoukis joins Mark and Marija ...

Does the experience in the US, Germany, and Brazil reflect the Australian experience? How have institutional structures insulated centrist parties against new political threats? Can the rise of anger captured by the populists be effectively tested, and has Mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani shown the way? 

Dr Rüçhan Kaya joins Mark and Marija to discuss the dri...

Can Australia manage the tensions between our strategic relationship with China and the alliance with the United States? Does membership of AUKUS and the Quad damage our China relationship? How significantly are societal and economic issues - such as the role of women in decision making, aging population, corruption and the household regi...

Have young voters lost faith in the major political parties and politics in general? Did the recent federal budget go far enough in addressing the generational wealth gap and what will it take for political parties to successfully engage young voters?

In this special classroom edition of Democracy Sausage, Dr Jill Sheppard joins the DS team and heads back to school (literally) to discuss the growing distrust in politics amo...

Will the budget changes reconnect young and disaffected Australians to the benefits of the economy? Is Angus Taylor’s vision likely to arrest the decline in support to One Nation? Is the ALP open to creating a sovereign wealth fund as outlined by Pauline Hanson? 

Treasurer of Australia, Dr Jim Chalmers joins Marija and Mark to discuss last week&rsqu...