Powerlines by Chris Uhlmann

<p>We tend to think of conflict between states as something that arrives with a bang: bombs falling, missiles fired, ships sinking, or borders breached. Today, it might come as a whisper in the wires: our power...

<p>Jennifer Parker’s assessment of Australia’s strategic vulnerability is brutally simple: to defeat us, you don’t need to set foot on our soil; just cut our sea-based supply lines.</p><p>Parker speaks from the...

<p>Labor’s victory in Australia’s federal election is still being counted, both in scale and its place in history. With the party set to command more than 90 seats in the 150-member lower house, it is arguably the...

<p>The Albanese government’s failure to hold a Royal Commission into Australia’s response to COVID-19 will leave a historic stain on its record.</p><p>We lost the opportunity to shine a bright light on the worst crisis...

<p>It takes more than 25 minerals to build the phone in your pocket, but few ever pause to wonder how it’s made.</p><p>It is true of so much of modern life. Our largely urban society is so disconnected from its sources...

<p>In late October 2023, while filming the documentary Forged in Fire, I sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.</p><p>Our director/producer/cameraman, Michael Fardell, had asked the president’s office if...

<p>There’s an old line, attributed to the American humorist Josh Billings: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”</p><p>That sentiment cuts to the...

<p>Earlier this year, I spoke with Dr. Bjorn Peters—a physicist-turned-energy economist who once believed in the promise of Germany’s energy revolution. Back in 2008, as a senior adviser in Deutsche Bank’s asset...

<p>Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, when the world first committed to tackling climate change, carbon emissions have continued to rise every year with just two exceptions: the 2009 global financial crisis and the 2020...

<p>“Hope is not a strategy.” </p><p>With that one line, former Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo cuts to the heart of Australia’s strategic complacency. In a wide-ranging interview for Powerlines, Pezzullo lays out a...

<p>In far north Queensland, in the ancient forests of the Atherton Tablelands, Steven Nowakowski has spent three decades fighting to protect the natural world. A wilderness photographer and lifelong environmentalist, he...

<p>As Australians head toward a federal election, former Senate president and High Commissioner to Canada Scott Ryan offers a measured but clear-eyed assessment: the old certainties in Australian politics are breaking...

<p>At Thursday’s National Press Club energy debate, I asked Energy Minister Chris Bowen a simple question: “Have electricity prices risen on your watch?” Once again, he refused to concede it, saying only that prices...

<p>Ever stopped to think where your lifestyle comes from? How the modern world is made? How it runs?</p><p>Most of us don’t. Least of all the small group of activists that gathers outside Australia’s federal parliament...

<p>“We're supposed to go along with shutting down our energy sector, shutting down our natural resources.”</p><p>In February, I sat down with former Canadian Conservative leader Candice Bergen, who detailed the...