Rear Vision — How History Shaped Today

After decades of cutbacks, pay freezes and allegations of politicisation, is the Australian Public Service still able to give the government of the day informed and independent advice?

The World Heritage Convention has become a victim of its own success, with increasing political pressure sidelining expert advice and the deluge of sites put forward threatening the value of the ‘brand’. 

In Scandinavian prisons the focus is on rehabilitation not punishment.

LIV, a new professional golf competition backed by Saudi Arabia, has created bitter division among players, challenging the future shape of the game.

Taiwan today produces ninety per cent of the world’s most sophisticated microchips that power everything from our smart phone and laptops to military equipment, electric cars and rockets that go to Mars. But Taiwan is also in the eye of a political storm, caught between China on the one side and the United States on the other.  How did the tiny island of Taiwan come to dominate the production of microchips and what happens if something goes wrong?

Secret trials and overblown sentences are the hallmarks of state hostage-taking. What can governments do when their citizens are wrongfully detained overseas?

Decisions made by the Reserve Bank affect so much of our lives—from our mortgage repayments to the cost of supermarket items. For the first time in decades, how it operates is up for review.

The e-book has turned the book industry upside down affecting bookshops, publishers, authors, libraries and readers.This program was first broadcast on 24 October, 2021

In the Uluru Statement from the Heart, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are calling for an Indigenous Voice to parliament. While they haven’t set out how that would work there are models we can look back on.Ever since the referendum of 1967 federal governments have attempted and failed to set up administrative organisations to give Indigenous Communities a say in their own affairs.As we once again debate how we acknowledge Australia’s first people - what if anything can we learn from those past attempts?

Britons were promised an economy free from European regulation and the right to make their own laws once they left the EU. Instead, British businesses are setting up in Europe and holidaymakers are stuck in traffic as they try to get to France.