The $100 million mission to send an Australian into space

When John Howard introduced the GST in the year 2000, Australians were largely unimpressed. More than 25 years later, some experts – including a former treasurer – say it’s time for an update. A new report from the independent think tank the Grattan Institute proposes broadening the Goods and Services Tax and raising its rate to 15 per cent – to avoid what it says is a looming budget disaster. Today Grattan Institute CEO Dr Aruna Sathanapally on why she argues we should raise the GST – even during a cost-of-living crisis – and how to package the changes so poorer Australians could actually end up better off.

Once upon a time, Australians were told Pine Gap was a space research facility. Today, we know it's one of America's most important overseas intelligence bases – although much of what happens there remains secret. Now, Pine Gap is facing renewed scrutiny as defence experts say intelligence gathered at the base is likely being used to support US strikes on Iran, and an Alice Springs court recently received evidence alleging it assisted Israeli military operations in Gaza. The Greens and Independent MP Andrew Wilkie are demanding answers, but the Albanese government has refused to say how intel from Pine Gap is being used. In 2024, investigative journalist Peter Cronau uncovered a major expansion at the base, including three enormous new satellite dishes believed to be part of an American missile-detection system. Today, editor of Declassified Australia Peter Cronau on what Pine Gap actually does, why its capabilities are expanding, and whether its role in American wars could put Australia in danger. This episode first aired in June 2024.

It’s been a week of shock and grief. The attack on Helen Haines has left her family and the community she represents confronting a trauma that has reverberated across the country and whose consequences will endure long after the headlines have moved on. In Canberra, there have been calls for restraint, for care with words and for an end to the cruelty that has become so familiar in our public life. Those calls ask politicians and the media to recognise the weight of our words and our collective responsibility for the tone we accept in public debate. Today, ABC Melbourne’s Raf Epstein on a devastating week, the habits we’ve come to accept, and whether this moment will change anything once the political contest resumes.

In an Ebola treatment centre in eastern Congo, young children are being cared for by people in protective suits – isolated from the love and comfort of their families, who can only watch on from a window. For paediatrician Rupa Narra, it was unlike anything she’d experienced in 16 years working in global health. Some of her patients were too young to understand why their parents couldn’t hold them in what would be their final hours. And as health workers confront the outbreak, the international support they once relied on has been stripped away. Today, Médecins Sans Frontières doctor, Rupa Narra, on the children caught up in the Ebola crisis and what happens when the world retreats from helping contain it.

You can see it in the drawn faces of the politicians lining up to speak about Helen Haines this week – Canberra has been shaken to its core. ASIO and the Australian Federal Police have been liaising with parliamentarians – some of whom say they no longer feel safe after the alleged attack, which left the beloved Victorian independent fighting for her life. But some of the same politicians offering their condolences have been responsible for the increasingly ugly, even violent, rhetoric on the floor of parliament – their words contributing to the very environment that’s made them feel unsafe. Today, Independent MP Allegra Spender on her own experience, the hypocrisy in parliament, and why she’s calling for change – regardless of what the driver’s motivations are found to be.