Monash University

Disinformation has become one of the defining security challenges of the digital age. Governments, political movements, commercial actors, and state intelligence services all use it to shape public opinion, influence behaviour, and weaken institutions. Recent elections, pandemic debates, and geopolitical conflicts have shown how quickly false narratives can spread online and polarise societies.

From 2021 to 2025, we conducted 2,731 surveys and 150 interviews with Australians aged 18–24 about education, work, wellbeing, relationships, and civic participation. When we started this Australian Youth Barometer in 2021, we didn’t foresee the troubled waters ahead - starting with the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are three things we learnt. Firstly, things got better for young people since the onset of COVID-19.

Affordable housing options, jobs for young people and climate change are the top three issues young people say need immediate action, according to our new youth survey published today. Our research, which involved 150 interviews and more than 2,700 survey responses over five years, tracked the challenges Australians aged 18–24 experienced during the COVID pandemic and its aftermath. While there are signs of recovery in some areas, deep challenges persist in others.

A little over a week ago, artificial intelligence company OpenAI announced ten advances in mathematics and computer science made with their as-yet unreleased model Astra. The discoveries cover a wide range of mathematical fields, including geometry, cryptography and coding theory. These ten are just the latest in a rapidly growing list of mathematical breakthroughs made by generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

Bet_Noire via Getty In 2022, Tomb of Sand became the first work of Indian literature to win the International Booker Prize. Written in Hindi by Geetanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell, the novel is Shree’s magnum opus and the pinnacle of a distinguished literary career. Indian writers have previously won the Booker Prize, which is restricted to works written in English: Salman Rushdie (1981), Arundhati Roy (1997), Kiran Desai (2006) and Aravind Adiga (2008).

Last week, Victorians found out what happened in 2016 when their state government negotiated a secret deal with the firefighters’ union. The Operation Richmond report, tabled by the state’s key integrity body the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC), investigated allegations that some senior ministers and public servants made a pay deal with the United Firefighters Union behind closed doors, without the knowledge of the minister responsible.

Biography Eric is a senior lecturer and associate with the Monash Centre for Commercial Law and Regulatory Studies. His research focuses on regulatory theory and practice, or what he describes as the science and art of modern regulatory practice. Through this research, Eric explores how regulation, public policy and the law intersect to inform regulatory regime design and implementation, particularly within federal systems.

Just when you thought the Australian Football League’s (AFL) management of concussion could not get murkier, news arrived yesterday the Geelong Football Club required a player with a history of concussions to sign a letter waiving their legal rights with respect to any future brain trauma. It was reported the Cats had a secret arrangement with a player who signed the agreement in a bid to clear the club and its medical staff from future court action.

Butterfly species, Junonia villida. Image credit, Dr Shawan Chowdhury Imagine spotting a butterfly species in your garden you have never seen before. You might take a photo and upload it to a citizen science app, or tell a local nature group about your new encounter. It feels like a small moment of joy. But if that butterfly has appeared in your backyard because its old home is becoming too hot, too dry or too damaged, the sighting is more worrying.

Social workers work with particularly vulnerable members of the community in areas such as child protection, youth justice, aged care and disability. But unlike most allied health professions, there is no process for formal registration. This means there is no formal registration framework, there is no boundary defining who is and isn’t a social worker, and no way to check whether a practitioner is professionally qualified.