It has significant public support across party lines, but politicians who advocate Australia becoming a republic are likely to have their priorities and even their right to do so questioned.
Be very afraid – and vote for me.
Reuters/Blair Gable
Disputes over intellectual property and car parts are emerging as last-minute hurdles as negotiators race to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership ahead of elections.
Ka-ching! The sound most countries heard when news of the nuclear deal with Iran broke.
Euro Iran via www.shutterstock.com
Most countries welcomed the deal as they jockey to boost trade with the Islamic Republic and gain from the eventual end of sanctions.
Australia’s proposals to recognise Indigenous people in its Constitution will likely be much less substantive than those of many other countries.
AAP/David Moir
Constitutional recognition may have very limited impact if the groups benefiting from the change lack the political weight to leverage it into greater social change.
England’s Jodie Taylor prepares to score against Canada in the first half of the quarter final.
EPA
England’s great run in the Women’s World Cup has heightened UK media interest in the tournament. Is it the game-changer that women’s sport has been waiting for?
A number of countries – including Canada, France, the US and the UK – allow for the deprivation of citizenship on national security grounds. But the scope of ministerial discretion varies significantly.
Increasing emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector will make Canada’s post-2020 pledge very difficult to achieve.
kris krüg/Flickr
Christian Holz, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
This month Canada revealed its post-2020 climate target as 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. But current policies make it unlikely Canada will achieve the target within the country.
Senior Queensland Police at the 2014 launch of the Stay on Track Outback road safety project, sponsored by Santos, Izuzu and others.
Queensland Police Service
The Queensland Police will now disclose all sponsorships, after a backlash over almost A$700,000 in unnamed donations. But what are the lessons from elsewhere about police and corporate donors?
Despite declining gun fatalities, there should be no room for complacency in Australia, with an estimated 260,000 illegal guns in Australia – including this MP5K 9mm machine gun, seized in Queensland in 2013.
Dan Peled/AAP
The rate of fatal shootings has fallen in Australia, the US and other nations in recent decades. Yet anti- and pro-gun ideology still makes it hard to have a sensible discussion about gun violence.
Census collectors go door to door in Sydney in 2011, the 100th year of census taking in Australia. Now the next census, due in 2016, is in doubt.
AAP/Dean Lewins
Before Australia proceeds with plans to devote fewer resources to a less frequent national census, we should consider the Canadian experience of what losing such rich data means.
The retrospective nature of the changes to the rules of succession means it ultimately made no difference whether the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s first born was a boy or girl.
EPA/Tal Cohen
The Crown has become a little less discriminatory with changes to the rules of succession – and descendants of George II who failed to get permission to wed need no longer fear their marriage is void.
Pole position: the resource-rich Arctic matters like never before.
Duncan C
As the ice recedes and technology for recovering resources in extreme conditions improves, the Arctic could become the theatre for future global conflicts. Here’s the story so far.
Australian and Canadian prime ministers Tony Abbott and Stephen Harper operate in political cultures where all-out warfare is now the norm.
AAP/Steve Christo
Last week’s release of Black Ice – the memoir of Val James, the first African American to play in the NHL – brought me back to when I was a teenager living in Boston. It was the winter of 1978 – the year…
Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Health Governance; Scientific Director, Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society, Simon Fraser University