Category: Media Analysis

Standing Together (a joint Palestinian‑Jewish project advocating for equality and peace in Israel‑Palestine)

Who’s Got Religion? Part One: The Myth of the Religious Nation

Australia is a post-religious nation whose institutions remain structured for religious privilege. We have declining religious participation but expanding religious institutional power. We have fewer believers but stronger legal protections for discrimination. We have marginal religious practice but media that treats religious institutions as deserving special deference. Most Australians don’t have religion. But religious institutions—operating through legal privilege, institutional networks, lobbying capacity, and media deference—hold a powerful grip on Australian public policy, education, and employment law. They retain structural power precisely because they no longer need mass participation.

Don Farrell: The Godfather of Business as Usual

Jason Koutsoukis’ fawning Saturday Paper profile glosses over the hard truth: Don Farrell represents everything Labor has become. He’s the living fossil record of the Labor Right, the factional godfather who ensures the party never threatens capital’s fundamentals. He rose through the SDA—the union that collaborated with supermarket chains rather than fighting them. He helped orchestrate Kevin Rudd’s removal when the PM threatened mining profits. Now he controls trade policy, ministerial appointments, and the invisible machinery that keeps Labor compliant. The Saturday Paper presents this as diplomatic skill. It’s systematic capture of a workers’ party by those who’ve abandoned workers.