News update for Tue 20 May 2025

Your trusted guide to the top independent news and views of the day...

May 20, 2025

Welcome to your TrueNorth news update where every weekday afternoon we share curated articles from Australia’s independent news media sector.

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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 TAI here - and through 6 News here

BREAKING NEWS:

Advance director says ‘bed-wetting anonymous Liberals’ trying to blame others after bitter election defeat - The Guardian

Several senior Liberal sources have questioned the impact of Advance Australia, with some arguing the rightwing advocacy group made “no difference at all” to the election result and others warning it “undermined” the party and cost it votes.

The criticism has sparked a bitter blame game, with Advance’s executive director, Matthew Sheahan, accusing “bed-wetting anonymous Liberals” of “looking to blame everyone but themselves”, and adding that Advance “does not exist to get hopeless Liberals elected”.

How to use power for good - The Women's Agenda Podcast

Legendary Labor policymaker Jenny Macklin spent 11 years in Opposition before the six years she spent on the frontbench of the Rudd/Gillard Government. She knows that the long setup is well and truly worth it, as long as you're ready to make the most of your time in power, knowing it's fleeting. In Jenny's case, she was instrumental in delivering Australia first national paid parental leave scheme, the NDIS and the National Apology, among other things.

Jenny joins the podcast for a conversation on how politicians can achieve great policymaking, just in time for the 48th Parliament of Australia featuring more women than ever in prominent leadership positions. But the lessons are for more than just policymakers; they're relevant to anyone keen to create change, in whatever field of work they do.

Listen to the Women’s Agenda Podcast

Rachel Withers: Boele, she wrote: The Bradfield independent appears to have claimed blue-ribbon Liberal seat - Crikey

‘Voices of Bradfield’ candidate Nicolette Boele has become the community movement’s only win in 2025, defeating her Liberal opponent by a hair.

After an excruciating two-week wait, teal independent Nicolette Boele has become the provisional winner in blue-ribbon Bradfield, squeaking in front of Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian in yet another blow to moderate Liberals.

Boele finished the count just 39 votes ahead, though the result won’t be finalised until after a formal preference distribution. The margin will almost certainly end up within the 100 votes required to trigger an automatic recount, though such recounts rarely change results by much. If the 39-vote gap sticks, Boele will hold Bradfield by a margin of just 0.017%.

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Ketan Joshi: From South Australia to Spain: Does blackout disinformation kill climate progress? - RenewEconomy

When Spain suffered a major blackout a few weeks ago, I spent plenty of time raising the alarm – not about the blackout itself, but about the disinformation firestorm that follows quickly whenever one of these incidents happens in a region with high wind and solar.

In a recent conversation I had with Bloomberg’s Akshat Rathi about the 2016 blackout that occurred in South Australia, an incident I’ve compared to the Spanish blackout, something significant occurred to me: what if misinformation isn’t particularly effective at stalling progress?

Also read >

Australia’s climate targets are only as good as the action behind them. We need to aim higher - Amanda McKenzie for The Guardian
Climate scientists are trusted globally, just not as much as other scientists – here’s why - The Conversation

Japanese firms reportedly cash in on-selling Aussie gas - Michael West Media

Japanese energy firms could be making upwards of $1 billion on-selling Australian liquefied natural gas to other countries at a time when domestic shortfalls loom.

Australia is the top supplier to Japan’s third-party trade business, a new analysis suggests, making up roughly 40 per cent of cargos with an estimated 600-800 petajoules onsold via the intermediary.

The findings from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis follow repeat warnings of domestic gas shortages as well as several interventions into Australian energy policy debate by Japanese figures.

After the victory: Kelty’s warning and why it’s still not enough - Pearls and Irritations

The Labor Party has just secured a resounding second-term mandate – defying forecasts, media pessimism and internal doubts.

But rather than silencing his critique, this victory makes Bill Kelty’s 2024 warning more urgent: is Labor governing boldly, or just winning cautiously?

Kelty, a veteran architect of the Hawke-Keating settlement, offered in his widely circulated “ _Labor Is Mired in Mediocrity_” essay a heartfelt lament: a party too risk-averse, too self-congratulatory and too disconnected from the material realities of renters, young people, and workers left behind in the post-COVID economy.

What is Labor proposing to do with superannuation, and why is it controversial? - The Guardian

Here’s why some are campaigning against plans to make people with more than $3m in super pay a bit more tax.

Passing a law that will make 80,000 Australians with more than $3m in superannuation pay a bit more tax doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that would worry a newly returned Labor party still giddy from a historic election victory.

But it is being styled by some as the Albanese government’s first big test. The Australian Financial Review calls it an “intrusion into the nation’s retirement funds to paper over the government’s runaway spending” that could pave the way for the government to “introduce other wealth taxes like higher capital gains taxes or even inheritance taxes”.

The federal government wants to boost productivity. Science can help - The Conversation

In the wake of Labor’s resounding victory in Australia’s federal election earlier this month, there has been much talk about flailing productivity in Australia.

In fact, last week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers made clear that the priority for the government’s second term will be to boost productivity. This crucial measure of how much we produce for every hour we work rises a little every year. But growth has slowed over the past decade.

As part of this, the federal government has tasked the Productivity Commission with a new strategy to enhance productivity. A draft report is expected in July or August, with implementable ideas across five key pillars.

Yes, it's a genocide - Pearls and Irritations

Building on Monday’s piece outlining a shift in scholarly opinions on Palestine globally, we bring you a very powerful short video, narrated by Israeli professor of holocaust studies, Amos Goldberg. He says: “A radical atmosphere of dehumanisation of Palestinians prevails in Israeli society to an extent that I cannot remember in my 58 years of living here.”

Why Australia’s political media need to understand how Labor governs - Crikey

Political reporting often misses context, history and any presence in time. It’s why the coverage of Labor’s recent ministerial dumpings are marred in personality politics.

So here we are, two weeks into the kerfuffle over the ministerial dumping of NSW’s Ed Husic and Victoria’s Mark Dreyfus, and our political press corps can’t get out of personality politics long enough to tell us how or why it matters.

Sure, the news media is stranded in that peculiar dead spot that falls whenever a government is reelected and before they get a-governin’. Something’s got to fill out the pages (and even Crikey!) Thank the news gods for the leadership struggles across the three losing parties, plus the entertainment factor of the will-she-won’t-she shenanigans of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

Liberal Party can't save itself from foundational flaws - Independent Australia

The Liberal Party isn’t just in trouble — it’s in denial. A new leader can't fix foundations built to resist progress.

WHEN I WAS ABOUT ten years old, I recall asking my mother why the Labor Party did not easily win majorities ahead of the Liberal Party since Labor represented working people and working people were the vast majority of Australian voters.

I remember her replying, “It’s more complicated than that."

It might have taken 30 years, but the result of the 2025 Federal Election makes it feel like this equation is no longer that complicated.

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