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Perspective

This Month

Anthony Albanese has a hat but does he have a rabbit?

For a government elected almost three years ago, the decline in Labor’s fortunes has been steep, and proportional to cost-of-living pressures that have driven out incumbents around the globe.

  • Phillip Coorey
The number of ADHD patients and prescriptions in Australia have doubled in four years.

Diagnosed in 10 minutes. Inside Australia’s ADHD industrial complex

Prescriptions for ADHD drugs have doubled in the past four years and private clinics are cashing in. Doctors fear profits are taking priority over patient care.

  • Michael Smith
Syrian journalist Bassel Shehadeh was one of more than 500,000 people estimated to have been killed in Syria since 2011.

Bassel was right about the Assads. It couldn’t save him

The 27-year-old had a Fulbright Scholarship and the future was bright. This is the story of one man’s pursuit of freedom for Syria.

  • Andrew Burke
If Donald Trump wins in November, expect even greater strain on American institutions. But he’s unlikely to be an “imperial president” abroad.

How long will Donald Trump’s dream run last?

The president-elect returns to Washington with a huge stock of political capital and a big to-do list.

  • Matthew Cranston

Are you guilty of using this year’s most awful jargon?

Here’s the past 12 months in words and phrases that professionals love to use, and what they’re really saying. We hope to never see any of them again.

  • Updated
  • Edmund Tadros
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Donald Trump is a child king cum tycoon cum rabble-rouser.

Autocrats rise as Trump scorches the land of the free

Strongman leaders have lit a bonfire of the orthodoxies: the role of the state, neoliberalism, globalisation and the international “rules-based” order.

  • James Curran
Index

The surprisingly small details that broke our biggest stories of 2024

Our reporters take you behind the scenes to reveal how they broke some of this year’s most engaging stories.

  • Lucy King and Daniel Reti
Bran can help gut motility.

Our obsession with junk food is creating a type 2 diabetes crisis

Dr James Muecke was Australian of the year in 2020, but his message about the mounting dangers of highly processed foods was swamped by COVID. Now he wants subsidies to big junk food slashed.

  • Updated
  • Terry Plane
Genevieve Bell in 2014 when she was being lauded in the New York Times as a “company contrarian, an irritant in an industrial oyster shell”.

How Genevieve Bell went from rock star to under siege

The Australian National University boss is pushing ahead with a massive restructure, and that is causing headaches for everyone.

  • Julie Hare
The Financial Review’s Primrose Riordan interviewing Andrew Forrest.

I sent Andrew Forrest 50 hard questions. He invited me to have a talk

After months of reporting, and only carefully worded written responses from Fortescue, I found myself with the iron ore billionaire on the company jet in the Pilbara.

  • Primrose Riordan
Syrians hold an opposition flag in celebration of the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government.

After Assad: everything you need to know about what’s next for Syria

Rebels have asserted control in Damascus, but Israel, Turkey and the United States are also involved in the action.

  • The New York Times
Andrew Tate illustration

The Australians inside Andrew Tate’s online ‘university’

Leaked member data from the controversial influencer’s “financial education platform” reveals its popularity.

  • Joshua Peach and Lucy King
Master Builders Victoria board directors say the employer group is reliant on Incolink for solvency.

How builders got captured by the CFMEU’s $1.2b redundancy fund

Master Builders Victoria’s solvency relies on millions of dollars in grants from the John Setka-backed Incolink fund, which whistleblowers say has created a huge conflict of interest.

  • David Marin-Guzman

Australia’s economic problems have been brewing for years

We are in the most prolonged downturn since the 1991 recession. It’s time for a treasurer to do something about it.

  • John Kehoe
The common room of a build-to-rent apartment building in Melbourne. Build-to-rent could help deliver 80,000 new homes within a decade.

Game changer or sellout? The election fight over the future of housing

Labor says build-to-rent changes will turbocharge apartment construction. The Coalition says it just kicks the problem along. Get ready for one of the big election battles.

  • Tom McIlroy
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Mark Butler has a difficult decision to make.

Mark Butler’s health problem with no fix

The health minister is in the middle of an almighty fight between private hospitals and the health insurers, and he’s facing a difficult decision in the lead up to the election.

  • Michael Smith

November

All smiles: Jim Chalmers, Katy Gallagher and Anthony Albanese on Friday. The government ended the year on a high, in stark contrast to last year.

Labor plans to kick with the wind for a second time

The dynamic could not be more different to this time last year when parliament wound up with the government blowing smoke and the PM resembling a shot duck.

  • Phillip Coorey

A bitcoin convention in Sydney rings crypto alarm bells

Bitcoin is up almost 130 per cent this year and the US election result put a rocket under crypto. But there are still plenty of ways to lose money in an (unregulated) bull market.

  • James Eyers
Daniel Andrews, Jacinta Allan and Tim Pallas.

How Daniel Andrews’ playbook turned sour for Jacinta Allan

The former premier’s strategy was based on massive public spending. But times have changed, Victoria’s finances are a basket case, and voters have noticed.

  • Patrick Durkin
Special envoy on antisemitism Jillian says the level of bile and hatred being directed at local Jews is at unprecedented levels.

‘We must rescue our society’: PM urged to lead on antisemitism

Jews are dismayed by the surge in hatred since October 7 and the lack of leadership by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. It’s a “fight for our way of life” says Jillian Segal, the antisemitism envoy.

  • Andrew Tillett

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/topic/perspective-1mu9