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Democracy

May

King Charles delivers the speech from the throne in the Senate in Ottawa, Ontario.

King Charles says Canada faces unprecedented dangers

Donald Trump’s threats to make his northern neighbour the 51st state prompted Prime Minister Mark Carney to invite the monarch to the opening of parliament.

In theory, competition should mean the best ideas win out and people are better informed. But conditions apply.

How efficient is the marketplace for ideas?

Is significant regulation of speech required? Or can we leave it up to the “marketplace for ideas” to handle it?

Deputy leader of the Liberal Party Sussan Ley.

Factional enemies of NSW Liberals reform are opposed to election wins

Those demanding that the three administrators leave are not helping Sussan Ley either, who has declared her determination to lead from the centre.

Albanese read the mood of the Australian electorate.

How the election was won and lost (and the key voters that mattered)

Labor gained seats with a higher share of mortgagors, renters, young people and ethnic communities. The Coalition’s base is looking whiter, older and poorer.

March

Donald Trump, in Florida at the weekend, has suggested there are ways to run for a third term.

Trump says he’s considering ways to serve a third term

The comments were an extraordinary reflection of the desire to maintain power by a president who had violated democratic traditions four years ago.

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Macquarie’s Viktor Shvets says investors now find themselves in a 1930s world.

Macquarie’s Viktor Shvets sees a world on fire. Here’s how to play it

Investors have been slow to wake up to the scale of change Donald Trump is trying to engineer, in part because it seems so wild. But inertia could be costly.

Donald Trump

Democracy dies in dumbness

Donald Trump’s trade war will end in disaster. What else isn’t going to end well, at least for the administration? Let’s make a list.

It looked like a setup.

Trump is rootin’ for Putin

It was a sickening spectacle. The man who tried to upend democracy bullying the man who is fighting for democracy.

February

Tony Abbott speaks at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London.

Guess what shocked 4000 right-wingers in London about Australia

The conference dubbed “Woodstock for conservatives” displayed the growing confidence of the right, showing the shift in the Western intellectual landscape.

January

Mike Baird and Jay Weatherill will be joining forces at the Susan McKinnon Foundation.

Down cudgels: Baird and Weatherill push for more civility in politics

The 2025 election campaign has begun with insults on both sides of politics. These two former premiers want a better political discourse.

Bianca Spender.

More than tax reform, we need budget guardians

Readers’ letters on fiscal discipline, improving productivity, the Los Angeles fires, diversity, equity and inclusion policies, and democracy under threat.

A sea of cabanas at Avoca Beach, NSW.

Were the good old days really that good?

Readers’ letters on “old-fashioned Australian values”, the erosion of democracy, gas as a transition fuel, ExxonMobil’s hypocrisy, the Congo’s riches, four-year terms, and nuclear power.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump. It would be an understatement to say there is no precedent for such a relationship between America’s president and the world’s richest man.

Musk is at war with America’s allies, quiet on its enemies

The Trump administration’s antipathy towards European liberal democracy is real. The eastern side of the Atlantic alliance thus faces a journey without maps.

Trudeau with Donald Trump at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate in November.

Immigration, voter fatigue brought down Trudeau. Not Trump

It’s easy to blame the US president-elect for everything but what brought the Canadian prime minister down is more retail politics than global conspiracies.

November 2024

Gordon Ng was first detained in 2021.

Wong blasts Beijing over Hong Kong protest sentences

Australian Gordon Ng was among 45 dissidents who Hong Kong’s High Court on Tuesday sentenced to jail terms of up to 10 years.

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Justice Robert Beech-Jones.

High Court judge warns of world’s ‘slide towards autocracy’

Elsewhere, voting closes today in Victorian Bar Council elections, and Justice Ian Jackman continues on his anti-direct speech crusade.

October 2024

As Nobel Prize winners prove, strong institutions are good for us

The 2024 gong in economic sciences went to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson. Their studies have vital lessons for today’s democracies.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will go head-to-head in November when  Americans cast their vote.

Over a billion have voted in 2024: Has democracy won?

Half the world has taken part in elections so far this year, but with the US set to vote in less than a month, the trickiest is yet to come.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland says X could face huge fines when new laws are introduced this year.

Everything you need to know about Labor’s misinformation crackdown

More than 75 per cent of people believe addressing the deliberate spread of misinformation online is extremely important or quite important. On how you achieve that goal, the country is far more divided.

September 2024

United by a shared hatred of the US-led order, the rulers of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are growing worryingly close.

A new ‘axis of evil’ is threatening the world

United by a shared hatred of the US-led order, the rulers of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are growing worryingly close.

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/topic/democracy-jfb