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Are those high-vis vests and lots of photo ops we see? There must be an election in the air. With a poll expected between March and May next year, it feels a little early to be on the hustings, but that’s how it is these days. Certainly, as Michelle Grattan writes, Scott Morrison would have been glad to be touring New South Wales and Victoria after a disastrous overseas trip and wrangling on climate policy.
But next week it’s back to parliament for the final two sitting weeks of the year, and it’s likely to be heated.
The government will introduce its religious discrimination legislation, which it has watered down, although it could still face controversy. But what’s happening with the legislation for an integrity commission is unclear. The government promised to bring it in during this final fortnight but ministers are now leaving the timetable open. If the integrity commission is once again put on the backburner, this will give ammunition to Labor and other critics. The integrity issue resonates in the community.
For Morrison, putting up the legislation on religious discrimination is fulfilling an election promise, but he will also see it as a possible chance to wedge Labor. The issue itself has long been highly controversial, write Louise Richardson-Self and colleagues, and the language around it is telling: where once it was about “religious discrimination”, now it is about “religious freedom”.
Also, in time for Christmas, readers of The Conversation can pick up our collection of our best 50 articles since we started ten years ago, along with our Curious Kids book Why Do Tigers Have Whiskers as a bundle for 25% off. Just put the items in your cart and enter the code CON25, valid until December 31.
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Amanda Dunn
Section Editor: Politics + Society
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Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra
Morrison has started the campaign trail but with parliament back next week, two key pieces of legislation will be in the spotlight: the religious discrimination bill and a bill for the long-awaited integrity commission,
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Louise Richardson-Self, University of Tasmania; Elenie Poulos, Macquarie University; Sharri Lembryk
What is at stake with the new bill very much depends on how discrimination is conceptualised and who is doing the claiming.
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Tanya Hill, Museums Victoria
A partial lunar eclipse during moonrise will let viewers in most Australian capitals see the Moon partly shrouded in Earth’s shadow, while the “Moon illusion” makes it look larger than life.
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Jennifer Martin, University of Newcastle; Richard John Head, University of South Australia
We’ve made a few mistakes in the past two years, when it comes to developing COVID drugs. Some were obvious and could have easily been avoided.
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Natalie Kon-yu, Victoria University
My family is Mauritian, but when I take a DNA test, Mauritian didn’t even rank as an ethnicity. It can’t. Everyone from Mauritius is from somewhere else, or from many places at the same time.
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Karen Scott, University of Canterbury
Carbon dioxide can be classed as pollution under the UN law of the sea and countries have an obligation to prevent it from entering the ocean.
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Robin Smit, University of Technology Sydney; Enoch Zhao, University of Technology Sydney; Hussein Dia, Swinburne University of Technology
We need to rapidly reduce global emissions before 2030. Developing hydrogen for low-emissions road transport won’t happen fast enough.
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Gemma Ware, The Conversation; Jack Marley, The Conversation; Daniel Merino, The Conversation
Experts from around the world react to the COP26 Glasgow climate summit. Listen to The Conversation Weekly podcast.
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Politics + Society
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Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra
Liberal backbencher Dave Sharma, a former diplomat, discusses climate policy, the religious discrimination legislation, a national integrity commission, voter ID, China, and the Liberal party.
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Silke Meyer, Monash University; Eugene Hyman, Santa Clara University; Samantha Wild, Indigenous Knowledge; Wynetta Dewis, Indigenous Knowledge
First Nations young people make up around 20% of missing children in Australia. However, these cases rarely make national, let alone international headlines.
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Miranda Francis, La Trobe University
The Channel Nine program pits ten different parenting styles against each other. It may make for compelling TV, but parents need information, not extra pressure.
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Health + Medicine
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Philip Britton, University of Sydney; Louise Baur, University of Sydney; Nicholas Wood, University of Sydney
Obesity and excess weight increase the risk of COVID progressing to severe disease, including in children. Vaccination is key to reducing this risk.
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Science + Technology
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Brendan Chapman, Murdoch University
As a forensic scientist who has worked at thousands of homicide, sexual assault and serious crime scenes, I can tell you the process is not as straightforward as depicted on popular true crime shows.
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Education
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Emily Ross, University of the Sunshine Coast
The draft version of the revised Australian Curriculum has caused much controversy since it was released in April this year. And many wonder what the point is of having a national curriculum at all.
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Business + Economy
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Juliette Overland, University of Sydney
ASIC suspects some super fund trustees of using inside information for personal gain, but they might not be caught by the insider trading laws.
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Richard Holden, UNSW
True wages growth, and true price growth, is probably less than the official figures suggest – meaning there’s no need for alarm about inflation in Australia.
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