Artificial intelligence (AI) companion bots are a public health problem. This policy brief proposes applying a public health framework to AI companions. This is a logical extension of a regulatory tradition that has long held companies accountable when their products harm human health. While legislative solutions exist, most focus on the first layer of harm...

This analysis examines the Philippines as a central test case in the South China Sea contest, where the People’s Republic of China is reshaping the maritime operating environment. The case also matters directly for Australia. Canberra is not a South China Sea claimant, but it depends on open maritime routes and is deepening defence cooperation...

Australia’s strategic anxiety and emphasis on security in the Pacific Islands region have increasingly dominated bilateral affairs in the past decade. This paper argues the result has been a reconfiguration of valued development cooperation, risking a neglect of historical and contemporary reciprocal relations, which in turn can undermine diplomatic trust-building.

Young women are persistently absent from policymaking, but are overrepresented in experiences of financial stress, gender-based violence, medical misogyny and climate anxiety. This policy brief, written by young women, presents the most pressing policy issues impacting young Australians, and calls on the Australian Government to resource their expertise and safeguard their futures.

Forty years after Paul Keating’s famous warning that Australia risked becoming a “banana republic”, this paper argues the country is once again drifting towards economic decline through rising government spending, protectionism and an abandonment of the reform spirit that transformed Australia in the 1980s.