Inside Story

1 week ago | insidestory.org.au | Noah Smith

The Trump administration often touts tariffs as a way of exchanging short-term pain for long-term gain. Yes, there will be disruption in the short term, they argue, but once manufacturing returns to American shores and trade deficits disappear, prosperity will be supercharged. That was always incredibly unlikely to be true. If it were, we’d probably see stockmarkets up since Trump’s election instead of down, since stockmarkets are forward-looking.

1 week ago | insidestory.org.au | Peter Mares

At the Coalition’s campaign launch on Sunday, Peter Dutton pulled a rabbit out of his otherwise empty housing policy hat by promising to let first home buyers deduct mortgage interest from their income tax. In essence, this would extend negative gearing from property investors to new homeowners. Negative gearing allows landlords to offset interest payments on loans against tax liabilities, not just as a deduction from rental returns, but from all sources of income.

1 week ago | insidestory.org.au | Joshua Benton

How do you like your news? A new study identifies which groups of readers prefer news sources that align with their own views Who actually wants impartial news?

2 weeks ago | insidestory.org.au | Peter Mares

My son, who is studying in London, was amused recently when an ad popped up on his social media feed encouraging him to head to Australia for a working holiday. The algorithm was sophisticated enough to track his interest in Australia but not smart enough to realise he’s a citizen with no need of a visa.

2 weeks ago | insidestory.org.au | Philippa Hawker

Spare and haunting, Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These works in undemonstrative ways. The prose has an inexorable quality, a kind of flow; the accumulation of detail is graceful, precise and telling. There is an apparent simplicity in the events it describes that might suggest it would be easy to bring to the screen. But there are considerable challenges in its quiet, distilled narrative and in the nature of its central character, Bill Furlong, a restrained, elusive figure.