☕️ New One Nation polling

It's Leave the Office Early Day.

'Nuff said.

The quote: “The Government said they would put the care back into aged care, but they are just putting the wait back into the waitlist."
Shadow Minister for Aged Care Anne Ruston in a statement on Monday after the Federal Government announced the number of people on waiting lists for in-home aged care had fallen. Ruston noted there were 100,000 people on the waitlist.

The stat: 28 million. The number of people in Australia as of today, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The big question:

Yesterday’s results: 45% of you said your gift-giving style is something practical the receiver will actually use, while 26% of you said you gift an experience or adventure. 16% of you play it safe when you buy gifts and 12% of you said your gift-giving style is something else. Thanks for voting - your responses inform TDA's journalism and research. [1,415 votes].

Together with AAP.

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Ghana’s Parliament has passed a bill criminalising identifying as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community. The bill also builds on a previous law criminalising sex and relationships between people of the same sex, putting it in the same legal category as bestiality.

A previous attempt to pass similar measures stalled because the then-President did not sign it into law.

Human rights groups have warned that, if it passes into law this time, the bill will further endanger the country’s already marginalised communities.

MPs first proposed the bill in 2021 after the opening of an LGBTQIA+ resource centre in Ghana’s capital city sparked backlash from religious groups, traditional leaders and community organisations. It passed Parliament in 2024, but then-President Nana Akufo-Addo didn’t sign it into law before his term ended. He was unable to run again, and MPs reintroduced the bill to Parliament after the latest presidential election, held in 2024.

Here is what the bill criminalises:

The African Human Rights Coalition, which supports LGBTQIA+ communities across the continent, condemned the bill “in the strongest possible terms”. The Coalition urged the President not to sign it into law, calling it a “sweeping and dangerous assault on human rights”.

Executive Director Melanie Nathan said the bill would “continue to embolden and enhance the already pervasive harms suffered by LGBTQI+ Ghanaians”.

Reporting by Achol Arok.

🎧 On today’s TDA podcast, features editor Emma discusses why your HECS debt just went up (again) and the push to change the timing of indexation. Listen or watch on Apple here, Spotify here, or YouTube here.

💶 In need of an explainer about the latest housing prices data? You can sign up to TDA Finance here to make sure the explainer is in your inbox on Wednesday morning.

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A new poll has put Pauline Hanson’s One Nation ahead of Labor in primary vote support for the first time ever.

The latest poll conducted by Redbridge Group and Accent Research for the Australian Financial Review (AFR) found 31% of voters would rank One Nation first on their ballot if an election was tomorrow.

Labor was behind One Nation with 28% of those surveyed, while 20% said they would rank the Liberal-National Coalition first. It’s the latest sign of a broader voter revolt against Australia’s major parties.

Here’s how to understand the result.

In Australia, media companies commission polling firms to conduct research about people’s voting intentions and top concerns.

Polling companies often ask people who they would rank first on their ballot if an election was tomorrow, and then calculate the most likely winner after the flow of preferences to major parties, called the two-party-preferred basis (2PP).

One Nation was founded by Pauline Hanson in 1997. The party has four federal senators, including Hanson. In May, One Nation won the Farrer by-election in regional NSW, the first time the party has won a seat in the federal House of Representatives.

One Nation’s policies include significantly reducing the number of people allowed to migrate to Australia each year, and walking back the country’s commitments to action on climate change.

Last week, Redbridge/Accent Research ran an online survey of 1,005 people. The survey used quotas for age, gender, location, and education based on the 2025 election to make it representative of Australia.

Here are which parties the respondents said they’d rank first if an election was held tomorrow.

The poll has a margin of error of 3.4%, meaning the figure if you surveyed every Australian could be around three points higher or lower than the published result.

In the same poll, Labor leads over One Nation 51% to 49% on a two-party-preferred basis.

Anthony Albanese was the preferred Prime Minister.

One Nation has increasingly attracted conservative voters dissatisfied with the Coalition, as seen with the Farrer by-election. Either the Liberals or the Nationals had held the seat since the 1970s, until One Nation won it last month.

The federal budget, handed down on 12 May, does not appear to have helped Labor against One Nation.

A separate survey conducted by DemosAU for Capital Brief found 43% of Australians rated the budget as generally bad, against 23% who saw it as generally good.

The next federal election must be held by May 2028.

Right before the last federal election in 2025, Redbridge polling showed 8% of voters ranking One Nation first. At the election, 6.4% of voters ranked the party first.

Reporting by Elliot Lawry.

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Researchers from Utrecht University in the Netherlands and Spain’s Carlos III University of Madrid studied grooming behaviours across 24 groups of great apes. They tracked how each animal distributed its social time and effort, finding chimps and bonobos kept a tight inner circle of close companions and a wider network of looser connections, much like most humans. Bonobos spread their attention more evenly across the group, while chimps concentrated theirs on a tighter handful of favourites. Chimpanzees showed another very human tendency of becoming more socially selective with age, investing in fewer but closer relationships over time. Lead author Dr Edwin van Leeuwen said the findings point to deep evolutionary roots in how social bonds are formed. “Understanding these patterns may reveal crucial insights for studying cooperation, social learning, and emotional well-being in both humans and other animals,” he added.

Reporting by Emma Gillespie.

Over the weekend, a very real-life movie moment unfolded at La La Land in Concert in Sydney.

Halfway through the show, one of the musicians became too unwell to keep playing. So composer Justin Hurwitz turned to the audience and asked if there were any pianists who could sight-read.

21-year-old musician Sterling Nasa put up his hand. And he smashed it.

In a statement to TDA, Nasa said he thought it would “just be a great experience and the chance to play with world-class musicians and a two-time Oscar-winning conductor.” He added: “I’ve never imagined something like that would happen to me but just really glad I could contribute in a small capacity to what was an amazing show and an amazing night.”

Here’s to the fools who dream. 

Reporting by Annabel Whitehouse.