Crikey

A battle is brewing between Catholic Church leaders and secular groups over the religion question in the Australian census. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is currently testing whether it would be better to ask “Does the person have a religion?” rather than “What is the person’s religion?”, after 9.8 …

In the days before Treasurer Jim Chalmers delivered his third budget, veteran Canberra press gallery journalist Michelle Grattan wrote that as the Albanese government looked to an election next year, “holding up Labor’s female vote will be vital”. She added that women would be a “prime political target” of the …

So far this year, 27 women have allegedly been murdered by men, many by men “known to them”. That’s a phrase we in the media commonly use when recounting these horrific murders… and at this stage, I take it as read that those who follow the news know exactly what …

There are renewed calls for religious charities to face “a day of financial reckoning” and “pay their fair share of tax”, as the government prepares to table a report in Parliament on Australian philanthropy. The “once-in-a-generation” review, announced just over a year ago as part of the government’s election vow …

I begin this column with a long and heavy sigh. Now, I don’t often find myself in common cause with female Liberal politicians, but on this occasion, I would like to invite them to join me. Now that we’ve gotten that little act of bipartisan sisterhood out of the way, …

The Albanese government’s third round of industrial relations reforms passed last week, including a “right to disconnect”, prompted some big feelings from employer organisations and the opposition. The new right simply means employers will now be prevented from punishing employees who refuse to answer “unreasonable” calls and emails outside of …

Vancouver’s Eastside is generally viewed as a liberal place, but today librarians there have a new battle on their hands. “They are now spending their time looking for hate speech, which in Canada is an illegal thing,” Jen Ferguson, a Michif/Métis author with ancestral ties to the Red River, told …

Leaders in the disability sector say the process surrounding the National Disability Insurance Service (NDIS) review, released last week, “bled dry” experts in the women’s sector, who have long advocated for the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) to develop a gender equality strategy. They’ve now been left feeling “betrayed” and …

Despair and frustration characterised this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Saturday, and are casting a shadow over the following 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. Having worked in the women’s safety sector and reported on this issue as a journalist for more than …

Crypto: it's all fun and games until it hurts real people. Which it does.

On the spectacle of the Donald being told to sit down and shut up.

As soon as I got my mitts on the hotly anticipated final report from the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce (WEET) released earlier this week, I immediately did a search for the word “confidence”. Blessedly, the word appears just once in an entirely non-gendered context.

Claudia Goldin has won the 2023 Nobel prize in economics. She is only the third woman in the history of the prize to win it, and she’s the first to win it in her own right, not sharing it with a man. Goldin, a professor at Harvard University, was recognised …

Last week the legal and constitutional affairs committee published the much-anticipated final report of its landmark inquiry into current and proposed sexual consent laws in Australia.

Things are bad, and they’re about to get worse. Last month, Treasury published the 2023 intergenerational report, a kind of crystal ball exercise that looks 40 years into the future and highlights some defining issues of our time. Of course, the report only ever suggests a possible future that assumes …

The Greens and secular organisations have revived calls to remove the financial reporting exemptions given to thousands of religious charities, suggesting that scrapping them would enhance public trust in light of new research into their activities and wealth. No arguments put forward by Catholic and Anglican churches five years ago …

The Greens and secular organisations have revived calls to remove the financial reporting exemptions given to thousands of religious charities, suggesting that scrapping them would enhance public trust in light of new research into their activities and wealth. No arguments put forward by Catholic and Anglican churches five years ago …

Last week, two-thirds of the way through a horror year in terms of femicides — 44 women have allegedly been killed by violence in Australia so far this year — the Albanese government launched the first so-called action plan of the National Plan to End Violence Against Women 2022-2032.

Last week, the Senate inquiry into current and proposed sexual consent laws in Australia convened three days of public hearings. “I’m just absolutely appalled by what I’ve heard, and I think people need to be held accountable,” said Liberal Senator Paul Scarr, the inquiry’s chair. “There needs to be fundamental …

This month marked a major win for reproductive healthcare in Australia. The Therapeutic Goods Administration finally made it easier to access abortion pills by following expert advice and allowing doctors and pharmacists without specialist certification to prescribe MS-2 Step, also known as RU486. It has been a long, slow road …

Nearly six years after the #MeToo movement arrived in Australia, and more than a decade after the launch of the first national plan to reduce violence against women, those who witnessed the scenes in Parliament last week — and read the media coverage that spurred it — could be forgiven …

Amid the unedifying displays in Canberra last week, as the Liberal Party relentlessly pursued Minister for Women Katy Gallagher in the Senate, drawing on Brittany Higgins’ leaked text messages in order to claim Gallagher and her colleagues actively conspired with Higgins to “weaponise” her rape allegation — and then engaged …

Alert! Alert all the care feminists out there (and I dearly hope we are growing in number). You may have missed a very important announcement this week. But first, for the uninitiated, here’s what I mean when I talk about “care feminism”.

The Albanese government wants you to believe this is its budget “for women”. It isn’t. “Labor is backing Australian women with the most significant single-year investment in women’s equality in at least the last 40 years,” tweeted Minister for Finance and Minister for Women Katy Gallagher. “Because equality for women …

When I read the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce’s (WEET) pre-budget recommendations and the accompanying letter addressed to Minister for Women Katy Gallagher, both published earlier this week, I was struck — and deeply impressed — by how bold they were.

Recently the University of Melbourne’s relatively new Work Futures research initiative launched its first report, which looked at the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 in the workplace. Researchers asked a simple question: how are Australian workers faring into the COVID-19 recovery? The short answer is: not great, especially if you’re a …

Australia has reached a landmark moment in the battle to close the gender pay gap, one I’ve been waiting years for.

Last Wednesday, amid the myriad corporate bluster filling my inbox attempting to align anything and everything with International Women’s Day (IWD), I received a press release that took my breath away. The Council of Australian Tour Operators (CATO) proudly announced that Visit Saudi was the official sponsor of its “sell-out” …

In April last year, a 56-year-old-New Zealand man, Michael Cruickshank, was sentenced to one year in prison for threatening to kill then prime minister Jacinda Ardern. In one email, Cruickshank threatened to “personally wipe [her] off this fucking planet”. In another, he said he would “blow her head off”. Over …

On the first day of December last year, I went for my usual walk around the local park to find a scene that has become devastatingly common in Australia. The night before, police had descended on a house overlooking the park where a 51-year-old woman was found dead in her …