The Morning Edition

Today on Inside Politics, we welcome back former opposition leader Bill Shorten, who is now the Vice Chancellor of the University of Canberra.It's a timely moment to have Shorten on the podcast as he obliquely (very obliquely, we stress) came up in the Epstein files this week.Strangely, in the massive dump of new documents from the files, there is a text message exchange between Steve Bannon, the former strategist for Donald Trump, and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.In the messages, Bannon boasts that he spoke to Australian billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer on his disruptive $80 million advertising campaign during the 2019 federal election.This was the election contested by Shorten, and we asked him what he thought.Joining host Jacqueline Maley for this discussion is chief political correspondent Paul Sakkal.
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Another tranche - amounting more than 3 million pages - of the Epstein files has been published.
The US Department of Justice says this is the final drop, but there are reportedly millions of more pages being kept from view.
So is there anything in them that hurts President Donald Trump?
Today, international and political editor Peter Hartcher on how the Epstein files are driving Trump's "war pageant".
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The Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate for the first time in two years yesterday, to 3.85 per cent. Exactly as mortgage holders have been fearing.
But what if many of us are not actually in the cost-of-living crisis that we keep being told that we’re in? And that this new interest rate is comparatively good?
Today, senior economics reporter Matt Wade on how obsessing over the cost of living hides the real challenges of our age.
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Can the Coalition reunite, after two weeks of political infighting? And will the Liberal and National parties’ leaders, Sussan Ley and David Littleproud, even keep their jobs, given the threats to their leadership that continue to play out, as this episode goes to air?

These are only two of the political tripwires that are at high risk of being stepped on, this week; a period that veteran political analyst Sean Kelly calls “absolutely insane”.

Today columnist Sean Kelly on this week’s expected chaos and whether it might lead the government to finally enact bold changes, in housing and tax reform.
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"No jab no play” policy means unvaccinated children can’t be enrolled in childcare or preschool in most Australian jurisdictions. But some parents have found ways to evade those laws.

According to an investigation by reporter Kayla Olaya, these parents are using Facebook groups to share the contacts of doctors who will falsify their children’s immunisation records. This, as vaccine uptake in Australia has stalled below national targets.
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