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SMH Editorials

Sun Herald Editorial dinkus.

An illusion smashed: the avocado's been framed

The relief in cafes across Sydney will be palpable today: the avocado is innocent. The lumpy green fruit has not been stopping the millennial generation from buying a house. That is the conclusion from the figures we report today on the price and availability of avocado meals.  

We need a banking royal commission more than ever

CBA chief executive Ian Narev, whose bank stands accused of breaching the Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Funding ...

With scandal after scandal, the call for a banking royal commission gets stronger. The Commonwealth Bank's alleged failures hindered law enforcement and exposed the community to "serious and ongoing financial crime", Austrac says.

Untrusting voters demand tangible action

Justice Party senator Derryn Hinch.

There is much to trouble Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten in the findings of focus groups conducted for Fairfax Media in recent days, but more for their dispirited constituency.

Same-sex marriage: if not now, then when?

Dean Smith (front left) and Tony Abbott listen to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during a Liberal party room meeting in ...

That loving gay couples should be able to declare a lifetime commitment to each other before the law with the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexual couples do is now mainstream thinking. So when will it happen, and why not now?

Urgent fixes needed for mental health care

National Mental Health Commission chair Professor Allan Fels wants the Productivity Commission to look into mental ...

It is shocking indeed that in Australia, where we enjoy one of the best healthcare systems in the world, people with a serious mental illness die younger on average than the general population by between 14 and 23 years.

No more room for excuses on sexual assault at universities

Female students from universities throughout Australia protested in July at Parliament House over inaction on sexual ...

The onus is on universities to change culture on campus and in residential colleges where unacceptable sexual behaviour has for too long been tolerated as part of university life, to be preferably ignored or if necessary covered up.

No quick fixes in school education mix

Australian schools are full of success stories, but performance across the system is slipping.

Every family involved with a school knows that up close there are brilliant success stories every day. At a system level, though, things aren't going so well.

NSW voters won't easily forget botched council mergers

Running back down the hill: NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Minister for Local Government Gabrielle Upton arrive at a ...

The backdown on local council mergers is a humiliating defeat for Premier Gladys Berejiklian and local government minister Gabrielle Upton, their predecessors Mike Baird and Paul Toole, and the NSW government as a whole.

Four-year fixed terms for Federal Parliament are overdue

Political co-operation alert: Fixed-term parliaments require bipartisan support.

A four-year fixed parliamentary term will always look pretty good to the incumbents and pretty bad to the challengers. That's one reason this important constitutional reform for Australia has been so long talked about but never achieved.

Survival of Aboriginal Australians should be a cause for national pride

Traditional owners Simon Mudjandi, Rosie Mudjandi, May Nango and Mark Djanjomerr at the Kakadu rock shelter where ...

The revelations from an ancient campsite in Kakadu should deepen our nation's respect for Indigenous Australians. On the evidence, though, that respect is in short supply, so a discovery that should be a cause for national pride is instead another reminder of our national shame.

A question of trust in new national security arrangements

The Prime Minister backed by rows of gas-masked, camo-clad, machine-gun-toting special forces.

Masked soldiers were in the frame to convey that there's a new normal, and it's not safe, and that's why we need the blitz on national security arrangements which the Prime Minister prosecuted with vigour this fourth week of the parliamentary winter break.

A risk for all sides from Greens chaos

Former Greens senator Scott Ludlam has resigned after discovering he held dual citizenship.

Scott Ludlam has made an honest, though extremely careless and costly mistake.When governments rely on the narrowest of margins to get their legislation passed, we can expect the validity of every vote to be scrutinised.

Trump presidency's dishonesty exposed

Donald Trump jnr admits with the benefit of hindsight he might have done things differently.

Who knows for sure why anything goes viral on the internet. There's a bright future for the person who can figure that out. Surely, though, the reason ABC political editor Chris Uhlmann's assessment of Donald Trump's performance at the G20 meeting took off was that it showed Americans from the perspective of an informed outsider just how far and fast the reputation of not just the US Presidency but of the US itself is falling under Trump.