The Minefield

The federal budget is, in many respects, the high point of Australia's political calendar. This federal budget is no exception. The public had been primed for weeks to expect a series of significant reforms this year. But it is striking how little there is in the budget by way of direct social benefit.
The budget is broadly redistributive — it removes certain tax concessions that disproportionately benefit the wealthy — but it does not then distribute that additional tax revenue to those struggling with cost-of-living pressures. Even the $250 permanent annual tax offset for workers is quite modest and deliberately non-inflationary.
It would seem that the object of this “rebalancing” through changes to capital gains tax, negative gearing and discretionary trusts is “intergenerational equity” itself: the budget adjusts the tax system so that it benefits property investors less than first home buyers — even if these benefits are dispersed over time and only gradually felt.
The question is, does the underlying philosophy of this federal budget provide a template for budgets-to-come?
Guest: Luara Ferracioli is Associate Professor in Political Philosophy at the University of Sydney, and Philosopher-in-Residence at the Sydney Policy Lab.
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THE MINEFIELD - LIVE AT THE SYDNEY WRITERS’ FESTIVAL
24 May 2026
“The Return of Nationalism and the Crisis of Democracy”
With each new election, geopolitical deal and technological advancement, it seems like the ideals of democracy are slipping away. In this special live recording of ABC Radio National’s The Minefield, hosts Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens discuss the state of democracy today with Canadian podcaster and political scientist David Moscrop.
When: Sunday, 24 May 2026, 4-5pm
Where: Carriageworks, 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh, NSW, 2015
To purchase your tickets: https://www.swf.org.au/program/festival-2026/abc-the-minefield-live
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NEXT WEEK: Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus”
Expressions like “deal with the devil”, “selling one’s soul” and “Faustian bargain” are woven through our language. And popular culture is filled with variations on the unsavoury theme of attaining wealth, fame and pleasure by permanently corrupting one’s soul.
In the third week of May, Waleed and Scott will be turning their attention to the source of these tropes: Christopher Marlowe’s play “Doctor Faustus”. It was first performed in 1592, just a year before Marlowe’s own untimely death.
It is neither a long nor an overly complicated play, but it is powerful and ethically rich. We will be discussing the so-called “A-Text” of Marlowe’s play, revised in 1604. We hope you’ll join us in reading the play beforehand.

One of the by-products of digital technology’s pervasiveness in our lives is its seeming irresistibility. However much we try to remain conscientious objectors, to resist its allure, its promises of convenience and casual pleasures, to keep some part of our inner lives free of its influence, we soon discover that it is of the essence of new technological forms to exceed their boundaries, to seep out into the wider culture — into our language, our rhythms and habits, our expectations, our ways of seeing and interacting with the world.
Such that, before long, we find we’ve become like the technologies we created. It’s like the Turing Test, but in reverse. And once that happens, precisely because there’s no longer any “outside”, it can become very difficult to think clearly about what is, in effect, our habitus. This is how technology ushers us into a condition of unthinkingness. Perhaps we could call it habituation.
Digital technology’s irresistibility and sheer scale can make our efforts at thinking seem tiny, irrelevant, insignificant. Perhaps the best we can do is occasionally pause, and try to make sense of underlying rules that govern online experience — perhaps we could call it “the grammar of online life”: the rules of the game, as it were, that you must obey if you want to go viral.
Over the last ten years, one of the most popular forms of online content is the reaction video — a kind of split-screen experience in which viewers watch both a piece of content (the livestream of a game, a movie trailer, a music video, another YouTube clip and so on) and another person’s reaction to that content. There is something about the desire to see the facial responses of other people, their seemingly spontaneous responses to what they see and hear, that is inseparable from the viewers’ enjoyment of the content itself. It is similar to the experience of hearing audience laughter during a sitcom, and before that “canned laughter”.
Emotion here is the currency. But the point isn’t that the emotion is felt — rather, that it is conveyed. It is communicated. It is as if the emotion is the content.
But even if we were to regard all social conventions as performances, as various ways of paying homage to the rules that govern social interactions, this commodification of emotions — which is to say, turning reactions into content — invites such a degree of performance, of exaggeration, that would be impossible to sustain the kind of un-self-consciousness that is essential to authenticity.
To put this another way: the online emotion economy encourages participants — whether on reaction videos or video podcasts — not to be themselves but to act themselves; not to listen to what’s being said, but simply to react to it. What is this doing to our capacity to cultivate moral responsiveness?
Guest: Nicholas Carah is the Director of Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies and Professor in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland.
Nicholas makes reference to Rose Horowitch’s article in The Atlantic: “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books” (1 October 2024).

In a speech to the National Press Club, Health Minister Mark Butler announced a series of sweeping changes that the federal government will make to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
In the thirteen years since it was legislated, the growth of the NDIS has surpassed all expectations. By 2030, the Productivity Commission projected that the scheme would cover around 550,000 people and cost about $40 billion. This year there are already 760,000 people on the scheme at a cost of $50 billion. On the current trajectory, by the end of the decade there will be 900,00 people on the NDIS and it will cost $70 billion per year — this would represent a greater expenditure than Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme put together.
Concerns over the affordability of the NDIS are nothing new, and since returning to government Labor has repeatedly indicated their intention to curb its growth (even if, while in opposition, they resisted the Coalition’s efforts to do the same). But in an economy threatened by high inflation and at a time of increasing cost-of-living pressures — from fuel and food to housing — it is understandable that the federal government would feel a certain urgency to bring the NDIS under control, not least for the sake of the long-term viability of the scheme.
And yet, what was telling about Butler’s speech was the way he proceeded to justify the radical changes the government has in store for the NDIS — which include removing around 160,000 people from the scheme by 2030 and reducing the projected annual cost by $15 billion. He swiftly pivoted from its long-term viability to its declining “community support, or social licence”.
Citing research conducted by Talbot Mills, Butler claimed that 70 per cent of Australians think the NDIS has “gotten too large and struggles with dodgy providers” and that 60 per cent think the scheme is “broken”. He went on to detail mistakes in design and “structural flaws” that make the NDIS susceptible to fraud. He drew particular attention to criminal behaviour on the part of unaccredited “third-party” service providers and neglect by unqualified support workers.
Given the dearth of qualified, registered, sufficiently committed carers, it was perhaps inevitable the NDIS would become “a soft target for shonks and rorters”, as Butler described them. It is, frankly, baffling that there wouldn’t be tighter government regulation over who could qualify to be paid to provide such support in situations that demand attentiveness and care.
But some of the criticism that is now being levelled at the design of the NDIS threatens to besmirch its original moral genius: the provision of support to those with a disability in the form of personalised budgets, such that those in need of care would be accorded the dignity of “choice and control” over the form their care would take. Which is to say: it turned people with a disability from those for whom everything must be done, those who are a societal “problem” needing to be solved, and who must rely on the “good graces” of others; to those who are rightfully accorded agency in their own pursuits on an equal basis with other Australians.
While this approach effectively created a competitive “disability services market” over which there has been far too little oversight, such a market is also the condition of possibility for the type of agency and equality the NDIS promises.
This raises a number of dangers lurking beneath the government’s proposed reforms. In addition to the inherent danger that the expressed intention to reduce the number of people covered by the NDIS will see some people denied the care and support they are entitled to, there are a range of unintended moral consequences that accompany the reputational damage done to the NDIS itself.
If we accept that the NDIS is noble if flawed, that it was a worthy aspiration for a nation like ours and represents a tremendous collective achievement which nonetheless needs to be placed on sustainable and just footing — the question becomes: how can the federal government address the “structural flaws” and escalating costs without undermining public faith in the NDIS itself?
Guest: Jennifer Smith-Merry is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellow and Professor of Health and Social Policy in the School of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney.
You can read Professor Smith Merry’s reflections on the moral risks and consequences that accompany the federal government’s NDIS reforms, on ABC Religion and Ethics.
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THE MINEFIELD — Live at the Sydney Writers’ Festival
24 May 2026
“The Return of Nationalism and the End of Democracy”
With each new election, geopolitical deal and technological advancement, it seems like the ideals of democracy are slipping away. In this special live recording of ABC Radio National’s The Minefield, hosts Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens discuss the state of democracy today with Canadian podcaster and political scientist David Moscrop.
When: Sunday, 24 May 2026, 4-5pm
Where: Carriageworks, 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh, NSW, 2015
To get tickets: https://www.swf.org.au/program/festival-2026/abc-the-minefield-live
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UPCOMING EPISODE: CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE’S “DOCTOR FAUSTUS”
Expressions like “deal with the devil”, “selling one’s soul” and “Faustian bargain” are woven through our language. And popular culture is filled with variations on the unsavoury theme of attaining wealth, fame and pleasure by permanently corrupting one’s soul.
In the third week of May, Waleed and Scott will be turning their attention to the source of these tropes: Christopher Marlowe’s play “Doctor Faustus”. It was first performed in 1592, just a year before Marlowe’s own untimely death.
It is neither a long nor an overly complicated play, but it is powerful and ethically rich. We will be discussing the so-called “A-Text” of Marlowe’s play, revised in 1604. We hope you’ll join us in reading the play beforehand.

There has long been a gap between the emergence of new forms of technology and the development of laws designed to mitigate their dangers. But with the rapid advances in artificial intelligence and immersive technologies, that gap is becoming increasingly problematic.
Take the example of wearable technology, such as smart glasses. Companies like Meta, in particular, have poured vast amounts of money into the development and commercialisation of augmented reality (XR) headsets. This would seem to represent the natural extension of the decades-long ambition to commodify and capture the attention of users — combined now with seamless search, audio, call, image/video and geolocation functions.
But quite apart from their troubling military and law enforcement applications, there are a range of ethical problems presented by the widespread adoption of smart glasses.
For example, on the side of the wearer/user, the interposition of technology directly into one’s field of vision — thereby making the technology the immediate object of one’s gaze — corrupts the ethical concept of attentiveness and further erodes our capacity to be morally present to others in a technologically unmediated way.
Smart glasses also erode the concept of a shared reality by imposing prompts from interested parties and advertisers directly into users’ field of vision. And speaking of interested parties, don’t these forms of wearable technology represent new means of acquiring vast amounts of data for advertisers and the training of large language models?
What about those who are being observed by wearers of smart glasses? We are assured that safety measures are in place to indicate to non-consenting parties that they are being recorded. But even if those safeguards are trustworthy, the mere possibility of misuse imposes a degree of suspicion between persons that cannot help but be corrosive. And this doesn’t approach the opportunities for abuse that are presented by the technology itself — not least due to embedded facial recognition technology.
Then there is the wider issue of the prospect of the inescapability of technology itself, even for those who attempt to opt out or evade the datafication of their lives by tech platforms. 
It is clear that legislation needs to catch up in order to encompass the vast new possibilities for harm presented by wearable technologies with AI integration. But are we prepared for what that same technology might do to our moral conceptions and habits?
Guest: Milica Stilinovic is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Sydney, where she is working on the ARC-funded project “Governing Immersive Technologies”. You can read her analysis of the social harms of smart glasses on ABC Religion and Ethics.
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The Minefield — Live at the Sydney Writers’ Festival
24 May 2026
“The Return of Nationalism and the End of Democracy”
With each new election, geopolitical deal and technological advancement, it seems like the ideals of democracy are slipping away. In this special live recording of ABC Radio National’s The Minefield, hosts Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens discuss the state of democracy today with Canadian podcaster and political scientist David Moscrop.
When: Sunday, 24 May 2026, 4-5pm
Where: Carriageworks, 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh, NSW, 2015
To get tickets: https://www.swf.org.au/program/festival-2026/abc-the-minefield-live
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UPCOMING EPISODE: CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE’S “DOCTOR FAUSTUS”
Expressions like “deal with the devil”, “selling one’s soul” and “Faustian bargain” are woven through our language. And popular culture is filled with variations on the unsavoury theme of attaining wealth, fame and pleasure by permanently corrupting one’s soul.
In the third week of May, Waleed and Scott will be turning their attention to the source of these tropes: Christopher Marlowe’s play “Doctor Faustus”. It was first performed in 1592, just a year before Marlowe’s own untimely death.
It is neither a long nor an overly complicated play, but it is powerful and ethically rich. We will be discussing the so-called “A-Text” of Marlowe’s play, revised in 1604. We hope you’ll join us in reading the play beforehand.

Ever since the eighteenth century, there has been a prevailing belief that mutually beneficial commercial relationships between nations provide a powerful disincentive to international conflict.
Montesquieu perhaps put it best in his Spirit of the Laws (XX.1-2):
“Commerce cures destructive prejudices, and it is an almost general rule that everywhere there are gentle mores, there is commerce and that everywhere there is commerce there are gentle mores … The natural effect of commerce leads to peace. Two nations that trade with each other become reciprocally dependent; if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling, and all unions are founded on mutual needs.”
After the devastation of the First and Second World Wars, the principle that commerce is conducive to peace was the guiding philosophy behind the establishment of some of our vital international institutions. And even if its implementation has been inconsistent and most of the economic benefits have tended to flow upward toward wealthier nations, the belief was that such disparities represent a fault in design not in the animating principle itself. We should remember, for instance, the role interdependence played in thawing Cold War antipathies. As West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt told US President Jimmy Carter in 1980 regarding Germany’s decision to develop a joint energy policy with the Soviet Union, “those engaged in trade with each other do not shoot at one another”.
But the practices of interdependence and “oil diplomacy” that emerged from energy crises of 1973 and 1979 paradoxically reinforced the reality of a further source of instability — one that has become especially pronounced in 2022 and again in 2026, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the current conflict in the Middle East. And that is what Michael LaBelle calls the use of energy as a “weapon of war”, in which assertions of state sovereignty intentionally disrupt relationships of energy interdependence in order to inflict economic pain.
This leaves nations like Australia — which is both a major energy exporter (of LNG and the critical materials for solar panels, among other things) and extremely reliant on fuel imports for our own energy needs — vulnerable to disruptions in the global supply chain as the result of international conflict. When this sense of vulnerability translates into higher fuel costs or uncertain supply, and when it accentuates an already palpable sense of rising unaffordability, it can be a catalyst for democratic instability and popular resentment.
Even as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese acknowledges the reality of Australia’s dependence on other countries for our fuel needs by making diplomatic trips to Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei, he has also stressed the need to reduce that dependence: “The Middle East conflict has reminded us of … the need to make more things [in Australia], of the need to not be at the end of supply chains and to be less vulnerable to global events.”
For many, becoming “less vulnerable” means pursuing greater “energy sovereignty”, or even “energy nationalism”. But what would that pursuit entail? Some insist it means a turn to far greater reliance on renewables; for others, the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act (EPBC) has denied Australia access to its own oil reserves. And then there is the vexed question of the balance between Australia’s LNG exports and its domestic reserves. But on top of all this is the likelihood that greater “energy sovereignty” will likely prove more costly to voters.
The tension between these three elements — the benefits of interdependence, the dangers of vulnerability to global supply chains, and the domestic costs of greater self-reliance — presents one of the most vexing problems of our time.
Guest: Hamish McKenzie, Deputy Program Director of Grattan Institute’s Energy and Climate Change program.
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UPCOMING EPISODE: CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE’S “DOCTOR FAUSTUS”
Expressions like “deal with the devil”, “selling one’s soul” and “Faustian bargain” are woven through our language. And popular culture is filled with variations on the unsavoury theme of attaining wealth, fame and pleasure by permanently corrupting one’s soul.
In the third week of May, Waleed and Scott will be turning their attention to the source of these tropes: Christopher Marlowe’s play “Doctor Faustus”. It was first performed in 1592, just a year before Marlowe’s own untimely death.
It is neither a long nor an overly complicated play, but it is powerful and ethically rich. We will be discussing the so-called “A-Text” of Marlowe’s play, revised in 1604. We hope you’ll join us in reading the play beforehand.