With his inauguration this week, America’s 46th president has vowed to heal the US. But Joe Biden inherits a country more paranoid and polarised than ever.

Having outperformed the world in containing coronavirus, Australia’s lack of action on climate change will precipitate a much greater crisis.

In his first major interview since passing a landmark energy package, NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean outlines his philosophy for a new kind of politics.

Despite howls from some of the loudest voices in the media and politics to ‘let it rip’ in response to Covid-19, the latest economic figures show Australia’s health-first approach saved lives and the country from a long and painful recession.

Australia’s fertility rate is the lowest it has been in history. While successive governments have paid scant attention to this, Covid-19 has made the issue more urgent than ever.

As a senate inquiry investigates Rio Tinto’s destruction of the Juukan Gorge caves, Senator Pat Dodson says a royal commission into the entire Native Title Act may be necessary as the law ‘has been basically brought into disrepute by the capacity of those who are rich and powerful’.

Pressure is mounting against News Corp, led by former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd. They say democracy is damaged by the company’s ‘propaganda’ and ‘vendettas’.

The tightness of the US election tells us two things: Trump’s first win was not an aberration; and the plutocratic electoral system, with its roots in slavery, still grossly distorts outcomes.

Mining magnate Clive Palmer is pouring millions into political advertising for the Queensland election and, as at the federal poll, he is pushing a lie about a death tax the Labor Party never proposed.