Japan’s new PM is the 'Trump whisperer'. Will she compel Albanese to follow suit?

The new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is so pro-Donald Trump she’s become known as the “Trump whisperer”. She also just gained an enormous amount of power in a historic landslide election win. What will this do to Australia, if she encourages Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to strengthen …

Who is Isaac Herzog and why there are protests everywhere he goes

The violence that unfolded outside Sydney Town Hall on Monday night was ugly. Protesters were punched, kicked and trampled as they tried to breach a police line. Thousands of demonstrators were crushed together as capsicum spray was deployed indiscriminately at close range. Dozens were arrested, a…

The politics of Bad Bunny and the Super Bowl’s half-time show

If you’ve taken a passing glimpse at news over the past week, you would have come across the name Bad Bunny. The Puerto Rican musician recently won three Grammy awards and just performed on the biggest stage in the world as headline act for the NFL Super Bowl’s half-time show, which usually attrac…

Gina Rinehart, the disability pensioner and a fight over 12km of fencing

We all know how a neighbour with irksome habits can drive us to distraction. Maybe their leafblower is their best friend. Or they blast their music at all hours. But what if your neighbour is Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person? And you’re on a disability pension? Today, investigative repor…

Bill Shorten on his random, oblique reference in the Epstein files

Today on Inside Politics, we welcome back former opposition leader Bill Shorten, who is now the Vice Chancellor of the University of Canberra. It's a timely moment to have Shorten on the podcast as he obliquely (very obliquely, we stress) came up in the Epstein files this week. Strangely, in the ma…

The Epstein files troubling Trump and who he’ll threaten next

Another tranche - amounting more than 3 million pages - of the Epstein files has been published. The US Department of Justice says this is the final drop, but there are reportedly millions of more pages being kept from view. So is there anything in them that hurts President Donald Trump? Today, …

Why our obsession with interest rates and cost of living is a problem

The Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate for the first time in two years yesterday, to 3.85 per cent. Exactly as mortgage holders have been fearing. But what if many of us are not actually in the cost-of-living crisis that we keep being told that we’re in? And that this new interest rate is comparati…

'A crazy week' ahead: Leadership spills and more Liberal defections

Can the Coalition reunite, after two weeks of political infighting? And will the Liberal and National parties’ leaders, Sussan Ley and David Littleproud, even keep their jobs, given the threats to their leadership that continue to play out, as this episode goes to air? These are only two of the po…

Forged via Facebook. The anti-vax parents faking child health records

"No jab no play” policy means unvaccinated children can’t be enrolled in childcare or preschool in most Australian jurisdictions. But some parents have found ways to evade those laws. According to an investigation by reporter Kayla Olaya, these parents are using Facebook groups to share the contac…

A funeral, secret plots, and 'wayward children' — another messy week for the Coalition

The drama between the Liberals and the Nationals continued this week with what seems to be a total breakdown in the relationship between Liberal leader Sussan Ley and Nationals leader David Littleproud. Meanwhile, Ley's leadership remains in mortal peril, and in a plot twist, Littleproud faces his…