News update for Tue 15 April 2025
Your trusted guide to the top independent news and views of the day...
18 days until the May 3 federal election
Welcome to your TrueNorth news update where every weekday afternoon we share curated articles from Australia’s independent news media sector.
Please share with friends, family, colleagues - as good journalism is always worth supporting.
Scroll down for the news and views you need to know today…
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - Amy Remeikis for The Australia Institute here - and through 6 News here
Coalition scores just 1/100 points for environment and climate policies from conservation organisation - The Guardian
Australian Conservation Foundation says opposition has ‘failed every single test’ while Labor passes with 54% and Greens achieve 98%
One of Australia’s largest conservation organisations has awarded the federal Coalition just 1 out of 100 for its environment and climate change policies – the lowest score it has given the Liberal and National parties in more than 20 years of compiling pre-election scorecards.
Labor scraped through with a pass – on 54% – while the Greens achieved 98%, according to the scorecard, which ranked the major parties and key independents on their policies for protecting nature, championing renewable energy, and rejecting nuclear and fossil fuels.
Also read >
Victorian Liberal leader distances state party from Peter Dutton’s nuclear proposal: ‘Our focus is gas’ - The Guardian
Ted O'Brien fires up over Coalition nuclear debate - Independent Australia
The Paris Climate Agreement is a simple acid test. Both major parties fail it - Ketan Joshi for Crikey (paywall)
Protecting the ABC from Dutton - 7am Podcast
In January, Jonathan Holmes met with the ABC’s then managing director, David Anderson. Jonathan and his colleagues at ABC Alumni wanted to know if Anderson was concerned about funding cuts under a Dutton-led government. Successive Coalition governments have made cuts to the national broadcaster over decades. Now, as Peter Dutton signals he’s looking to cut anything he deems to be “waste” at the ABC, alarm bells are once again ringing. Today, chair of ABC Alumni and former host of Media Watch, Jonathan Holmes, on the Coalition’s plans for the ABC, and whether it’s possible to truly shield the national broadcaster from outside interference.
Why is it so hard for everyone to have a house in Australia? - The Conversation
Home ownership in Australia was once regarded as proof of success in life. However, it remains elusive for many people today.
Prices have soared beyond wage growth, rents keep rising, and even some well-intentioned government initiatives, including those announced by Labor and the Coalition at their election campaign launches on the weekend, risk driving up demand.
What’s gone wrong?
Also read >
Amid the election promises, what would actually help ‘fix’ the housing crisis? Here are 5 ideas - The Conversation
Cutting migrant numbers won’t help housing – the real immigration problems not being tackled this election - The Conversation
Would looser lending rules help more people buy a house – or just put them at risk? - The Conversation
The housing pitch for young voters - The Daily Aus Podcast
Labor and Coalition housing policies a 'dumpster fire', expert says - ABC News
Australia does not have enough tradies to fulfill Labor’s housing promise, experts say - The Guardian
Renting a home in Australia means handing over too much sensitive info. It’s a national security risk - The Conversation
The Coalition has attacked the teals for voting with the Greens in parliament. What does the data show? - The Guardian
The Coalition has run a wave of attack ads against the teal independents. Since January it has spent $137,000 on Facebook ads via its “teals revealed” page. Elsewhere, billboards in key electorates promote its anti-teal campaign website, and ads are also running on YouTube.
Many ads zero in on the teals’ voting record in parliament, and some highlight this News Corp article, headlined “Teals ally with ‘radical, extremist’ Greens”, which cites Parliamentary Library research to claim that seven teal MPs voted with the Greens “between 73 and 81 per cent of the time” over a period of more than two years.
But the Coalition campaign is based on only a portion of the parliamentary voting data and does not show the complete picture.
Also read > ‘
The deck is stacked against us’: How big party machinery squashes independent campaigns - Crikey (paywall)
Elections are no longer a binary contest – independents of all persuasions make for a noisier political discourse - Peter Lewis for The Guardian
In Melbourne's bayside suburbs, a teal-Liberal rematch for Goldstein is underway - The ABC
Jack Waterford: Federal election: A different type of beauty contest - Pearls and Irritations
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is fighting this election as if it were what some of my sisters in journalism would call a dick-measuring competition.
On many of the key issues, he invites voters to assume that he is firmer, stronger and tougher. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is, by implication, smaller, weaker and (dare we say it, as Dutton has) more limp-wristed. I have no idea of the size of either’s private parts, but I am cynical enough to know that size is not a synonym for masculinity or courage, and self-advertisement is not, of itself, evidence.
Read more from Jack Waterford for Pearls and Irritations
Rex Patrick: What is the War Memorial so desperate to hide? - Michael West Media
The Australian War Memorial doesn’t want us to see the full history of Australian operations in East Timor, having wrapped the truth in four layers of secrecy, with even more secrecy to come.
It’s been like a slow-motion striptease, as bits and pieces of information about Australia’s involvement in East Timor have been released to me. It includes details about the operations of our forces with other nations, including Indonesia’s, back in the period 1999 to 2000. Some of the redacted material also relates to diplomatic strategies engaged in by the Australian government.
Read more from Rex Patrick for Michael West Media
Today’s cartoon by Cathy Wilcox
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - Amy Remeikis for The Australia Institute here - and through 6 News here
Join the new Boiling Point community - where we’re growing a group of politically informed Australians in the lead up to the 2025 federal election. See details and sign up here.
Which are the polls to watch? - Inside Story
Does the national two-party vote tell us whether Labor will finish with the most MPs, or will it come down to 150 seat-by-seat swings?
What is the best way of working out whether Labor or the Coalition will win next month’s election outright — or, failing that, which will be better placed to form government? The polls offer two distinct narratives, one based on the national two-party-preferred vote and the other on seat-by-seat two-candidate-preferred swings. Both could be right; both could be wrong; one could be right, the other wrong.
David Smith: is the US descending into authoritarianism? - Full Story Podcast
In just over 80 days of Donald Trump’s second administration, the world already seems to have been remade. Even before the tariffs brought economic turmoil, the world watched as legal US residents were deported, and others arbitrarily detained at the border. And now some Australians are questioning whether they should risk travelling to the US at all. The Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief David Smith tells Reged Ahmad why experts fear the US is nearing ‘Defcon 1 for our democracy’
Listen to the Full Story Podcast
Also >
The two tipping points for when we officially become a dictatorship could occur this week - Robert Reich
Trump: "Home-growns are next" - Foreign gulags for US citizens - Timothy Snyder
The democracy sausage and the complex psychology of voting - The Mandarin
A humble sausage, local camaraderie, and complex psychology blend into Australia’s uniquely relaxed voting culture.
In 2016, the Australian Word of the Year was ‘democracy sausage’, beating out other contenders such as ‘census fail’ and ‘smashed avo’.
Defined, with the detachment of lexicographers, a democracy sausage is a ‘barbecued sausage served on a slice of bread, bought at a polling booth sausage sizzle on election day’.
While accurate, the definition does not touch the experience of the post-voting sausage in bread accompanied by the most important question of election day: ‘With or without onion, mate?’.
The democracy sausage seems to be a uniquely Australian cultural phenomenon that provides a window into Australian voter psychology.
Dutton tossed aside Liberal beliefs. Now his collapse leaves the party bereft - Crikey
If the polls are right, the Coalition is headed for defeat. Where does that leave the Liberal Party, which has abandoned so many of its traditions to get here?
Peter Dutton is in heaps of trouble. Three polls were put out in the past 24 hours, all showing a growing swing to Labor. They’re just the latest in a growing list of polls indicating that at first the Coalition’s momentum had halted and then, point by point, has gone into reverse. When Anthony Albanese talked about kicking with the breeze in the last quarter, he wasn’t wrong.
Worse, Dutton’s own personal numbers are declining while Albanese’s are improving. It’s almost as it, as voters have paid more attention to the leaders as the campaign got under way, they’ve decided that they don’t like what they see in Dutton.
Read more from Bernard Keane for Crikey (paywall)
Also read >
Dutton’s claim Labor was handed books ‘in balance’ is false - Crikey (paywall)
Rightwing challenger Peter Dutton’s ‘anti-woke’ drive loses ground with Australian voters - Financial Times
Trump’s depravity infects Australia too - The Politics
As the US lurches into a constitutional crisis under the administration of a hardened con artist, our politicians will have nowhere to hide when the shock waves hit our shores.
Tanya Plibersek and Anthony Albanese had an awkward air-kiss at the Labor campaign launch at the weekend. Peter Dutton dragged his 20-year-old son Harry to a media conference yesterday to explain how hard it is for young people to buy a house. The Australian turned the air-kiss into a story on Labor Party disunity. The Dutton episode was just plain risible given the Duttons’ status as property millionaires courtesy of family trust investments.
Read more from David Hardaker for The Politics
Inspired by a local group of people in Sydney's north who were looking for t-shirts to wear on their regular walks, Democracy Walks champions, supports and actively engages in our democracy.
CLICK here to see Democracy Walks’ t-shirt designs - and join the democracy walkers today!
See a list of the 38 community independents - who have (so far) announced their candidacy in the upcoming federal election. Subscribe, volunteer, donate to support their campaigns.
Join the new Boiling Point community - where we’re growing a group of politically informed Australians in the lead up to the 2025 federal election. See details and sign up here.
Quick Links…
How Trump’s tariffs will affect Pacific islands - Pearls and Irritations
Albanese names Adelaide as host of COP31, while experts remind Labor that coal must go - Renew Economy
US sees biggest drop in Australian visitors since Covid as travellers avoid Trump’s America - The Guardian
Covid and the Atlas Network: End Times in plague and storm - Lucy Hamilton
Tariff storms push Australia toward crisis - Bogan Intelligentsia
Fee-free TAFE isn’t failing. But axing it would fail students and skills - Women's Agenda
Social media is the new election battleground. Is embracing influencers smart, risky or both? - The Conversation
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - Amy Remeikis for The Australia Institute here - and through 6 News here
Share your views on Australia’s media landscape through TrueNorth’s short survey
You’re up to date for Tuesday the 15th of April. See you tomorrow!
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - Amy Remeikis for The Australia Institute here - and through 6 News here
Join the new Boiling Point community - where we’re growing a group of politically informed Australians in the lead up to the 2025 federal election. See details and sign up here.
Discover independent news media. See the clear difference.
