Cut Through

Health Minister Mark Butler’s “major overhaul” of the National Disability Insurance Scheme will reduce the total cost of the scheme by $15 billion over the next four years. The majority of the savings will come from the 160,000 people who will be kicked off the scheme – a brutal decision given that the NDIS only supports a fraction of the 2 million Australians with a severe disability.

The justification for these cuts is the “social licence” that even supporters of the NDIS believe it has suffered from reports of provider rorting and criminal abuse of the system. So why has Butler’s overhaul focused on reducing participant numbers, rather than scrutinising the business-side waste within the scheme?

Grace Tame joins the podcast to challenge the corporate media spin that has made disabled people the scapegoats for what she believes is a poorly designed system.

Read more:
Slashing $15bn from NDIS while giving $53bn to Defence. Anyone’s autistic pattern recognition radar wailing?
I’m an NDIS insider. Forget rogue providers — conflict of interest is built into the auditing system
NDIS headlines are turning autistic people into the new dole bludgers
Belting the disabled, protecting fossil fuel giants: That creaking sound is Albanese’s project under severe stress
Gillard’s NDIS vision was a promise she couldn’t keep

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Is “free speech” an Australian value? We examine the latest developments concerning two state laws attempting to restrict political expression, and how the people are pushing back.

First, the verdict is in on the protest-restricting laws introduced by the Minns government ahead of the divisive visit by Israeli President Isaac Herzog: the changes are unconstitutional. Grata Fund founder Isabelle Reinecke explains what this means for the protesters who were arrested under laws that have now been overturned.

Next, Queensland’s new hate speech laws criminalising the phrase “from the river to the sea” have been challenged by protesters impersonating… John Farnham. Comedian and Crikey columnist Sami Shah joins the podcast to discuss why banning speech never works.

Catch up on our previous episode about the NSW protest laws here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TijjR1SJeFs

Read more:
Chris Minns is a constitutional vandal. He must apologise for NSW protest laws or resign
A view from the ground: As police argued with MPs, Sydney’s protest against Isaac Herzog descended into chaos
Try to understand it: John Farnham’s ‘river to the sea’ and Queensland’s war on words by Sami Shah
Red flags and ‘the six-word phrase’: Queensland protest arrests are part of an Australian history of crushing dissent
One critical word is missing in Australia’s push to criminalise pro-Palestine phrases
How Australia became a police state

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Crikey’s independent journalism is supported by readers — 98% of our revenue comes from our subscribers. We’re not accountable to billionaires; we’re accountable to you.
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If it walks, talks and quacks like a duck… is it insider trading? Journalist Lachlan Keller joins the podcast to explain the suspicious pattern of behaviour that has lead experts and analysts to believe people within the Trump administration are using insider trading to make huge, lucrative bets on global news events.

We discuss the major oil commodities trades made just hours before Trump announced the US-Iran ceasefire, how prediction market platforms like Polymarket could be influencing the behaviour of White House staffers, and why the $TRUMP meme coin is the perfect case study for how the Trump family profiteers off his presidency.

Read more:
$1.4bn was bet on oil falling mere hours before Trump’s Iran ceasefire. It follows a pattern of suspected insider trading
Has $TRUMP pulled off the world’s most brazen crypto scam?
Australia urgently needs a debate about the damage the US is doing to us

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Crikey’s independent journalism is supported by readers — 98% of our revenue comes from our subscribers. We’re not accountable to billionaires; we’re accountable to you.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made a surprise announcement before the Easter long weekend – the government’s long-awaited proposal for gambling advertising reform was finally ready and intended to come into effect from January 1, 2027. So, where will gambling ads be banned, and how?

Crikey media reporter Daanyal Saeed joins the podcast to unpack the proposed gambling ad reforms, including three big recommendations from the Peta Murphy report that the government has ignored, and how “vested interests” from gambling companies, sporting codes and mainstream media broadcasters have slowed down the process.

At the end of the day, a proposed bill will not pass without the support of non-Labor senators. Who will they negotiate with to get it through?

Read more:
‘Really disappointed’, ‘betrayal’, ‘bare minimum’: The reaction to Albanese’s long-awaited gambling advertising reforms
‘It’s fucked … most people know that’: Sports podcasters speak out over gambling ad influence
Has Albanese done anything at all on sports betting ads?
Here’s how much gambling money is worth to Crikey, and why we won’t take it
‘Lost in the product’: How the gambling industry creates problem gamblers
The gambling ad ban isn’t about gambling. It’s about the future of the media
What the media earns from gambling — and what it costs the rest of us
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Crikey’s independent journalism is supported by readers — 98% of our revenue comes from our subscribers. We’re not accountable to billionaires; we’re accountable to you.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Originally labels for a person’s economic perspective, “left” and “right” have been transformed into social markers that are not only wielded as weapons in political discourse, but actually tell us very little about how someone will vote. In fact, most Australians prefer to call themselves “centrist” regardless of their beliefs. So does the left-right political spectrum still apply to Australian politics in 2026?

That’s the question debated in today’s episode by Crikey politics editor Bernard Keane and RedBridge Senior Insights Adviser Alex Fein. We cover the generational divides, economic transformation and total erosion of trust that has almost all voters, from orange to blue to red, united against the “ruling class”.

So, what’s the alternative? And does it even matter?

N.B.: The quote at 44:36 is by Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Lucas.

Read more:
Are ‘left’ and ‘right’ useful anymore or do we need a new political alignment?
Left and right, forward and back, in and out: labels for a new political world
The Political Compass
Alex Fein: Polarisation is a Myth
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Crikey’s independent journalism is supported by readers — 98% of our revenue comes from our subscribers. We’re not accountable to billionaires; we’re accountable to you.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.