The phrase ‘social cohesion’ is being used as a code for assimilation and undermines progress towards a harmonious society, Australia’s race discrimination commissioner warns.

Giridharan Sivaraman first sounded the alarm on the term’s overuse after a July 2024 Australian Human Rights Commission report found governments at all levels preferred to address ‘social cohesion’ instead of ‘racism’.

Politicians’ calls for social cohesion have only grown after two gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach in December, killing 15 people.

But preferencing the term over racism – which includes anti-Semitism – can have serious consequences.

“The irony is, by calling out the need for social cohesion, you are not talking about racism, and you undermine your progress towards a harmonious society,” Mr Sivaraman told AAP.

“Sometimes social cohesion has been used as a means of causing racism in the sense that it’s been code for assimilation and for people shedding parts of their identities when they don’t fit within what is seen as acceptable in Australia.

“I’ve had people say to me, ‘don’t talk about racism, because you’re disrupting the social cohesion’, so it actually stops you from being able to talk about the problem, because talking about the problem is seen as disruptive.”

The commissioner avoids saying ‘social cohesion’ as much as possible as it is a vague and often amorphous concept that goes in and out of vogue.

But it has become something of a buzzword among the major political parties.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – who briefly appointed a special envoy for social cohesion – has used the term almost 70 times since the commission released its report and more than 35 times since the mass shooting.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley similarly has said ‘social cohesion’ at least 24 times since assuming her role in May 2025.

Australians find it hard to talk about racism, Mr Sivaraman said.

“The person that calls out racism tends to get attacked more than the perpetrator,” he said.

“In that environment where it’s really difficult to talk about it, where racial literacy is really low, where people think talking about racism is somehow divisive – people start using terms like social cohesion.”

The federal government’s royal commission, which was announced after significant pressure following the Bondi attack, is a clear example of this problem, according to the commissioner.

Its terms of reference are about anti-Semitism and social cohesion instead of anti-Semitism and other forms of racism.

The prime minister in July and September of 2024 also announced special envoys to Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

While Mr Sivaraman has productive working relationships with both envoys – noting that stereotypes are unique to different groups – he believes policy must help everyone.

“We don’t want communities feeling like they’re being pitted against each other and we don’t want to create a hierarchy of racism,” he said, urging the government to implement the National Anti-Racism Framework.

“The beauty of anti-racism work is: once you make systems and institutions more transparent, responsive and accountable, you’re making them better for everyone, irrespective of class, gender, age and disability – not just race.”

The Nationals risk an exodus of support from voters wanting to “burn the house down” after weeks of damaging infighting.

With the Liberals and Nationals unable to agree on terms for a reunion, polling has shown support for One Nation surpassing the coalition.

Conservative working class voters who had experienced economic decline were flocking to One Nation out of disillusionment, Redbridge Group director and former Victorian Labor strategist Kos Samaras said.

“The point is revenge, cultural and political revenge,” Mr Samaras said.

“These individuals know One Nation might not have robust policies, but want to burn the house down.”

He said the Nationals risked losing all of their seats in regional NSW and Queensland, where One Nation was expected to perform particularly well.

The Liberals and Nationals were fighting to exist in the multi-party system, he added.

“They’re getting pressured from the left and the right and they don’t have an answer for one or the other,” Mr Samaras said.

A Redbridge Group/Accent Research poll, published on Sunday by The Australian Financial Review, showed support for One Nation had jumped to 26 per cent to make them the second-most popular party after Labor.

The polling has alarmed many within both the Liberals and Nationals, and is likely to spur conservatives to challenge Sussan Ley’s Liberal leadership.

Ms Ley has offered to restore the coalition on the condition that Nationals senators Bridget McKenzie, Ross Cadell, and Susan McDonald remain on the backbench for six months after they breached shadow cabinet solidarity. 

It’s understood Nationals leader David Littleproud is unlikely to accept the condition, and maintains the three need to be reinstated for the coalition to reconcile.

The Redbridge poll showed the combined Liberal and National vote had sunk to 19 per cent.

Former Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has joined One Nation and will run for the party in the upper house in the South Australian election in March.

Mr Bernardi, who served as a senator until 2020, said the major parties were failing voters.

The Reserve Bank’s decision to lift the benchmark borrowing rate to 3.85 per cent has brought an end to the shortest easing cycle in the inflation-targeting era.

Given the central bank’s dramatic U-turn from cuts to hikes in the space of six months, the opposition was quick to point the finger at Treasurer Jim Chalmers after the RBA confirmed its move on Tuesday.

“This rate rise is not an accident,” said Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien in a joint statement.

“It is the direct consequence of Labor’s addiction to spending, which has kept inflation higher for longer and left the RBA with no choice but to keep tightening.”

With the RBA board saying it had no choice but to hike rates after a modest increase in demand caused a “material” increase in inflation pressures, the opposition argued it was government spending that pushed the economy over its speed limit.

Dr Chalmers’ mid-year budget update, delivered in December, showed government expenditure is expected to rise to 26.9 per cent of GDP this financial year – the highest level in decades, excluding the pandemic.

The Reserve Bank’s updated forecasts, also released on Tuesday, showed public demand exceeded their previous estimates in November.

Their forecast for public demand was 0.1 percentage points higher in 2025 and 0.2 percentage points higher in the year to June 2026.

But this was nowhere near the upside surprise they copped from higher private demand, as governor Michele Bullock said in her post-meeting press conference.

“What’s happened over the last six months or so is that private demand has turned out to be much stronger than we had been forecasting,” she said.

Dr Chalmers was quick to point out that the RBA had singled out private demand as the culprit.

“What we’ve seen in our economy is public demand in retreat over the course of the last year, private demand growing strongly, and that explains the additional pressure on inflation,” he said during question time.

But Ms Bullock noted Australia’s productivity growth was so dire that the economy could not sustain a higher level of growth without price pressures kicking off.

Deloitte Access Economics partner Stephen Smith said the blame extended beyond the current government.

“The fact that an economy growing at 2.3 per cent breaks out in inflation sweats points to a more fundamental problem in our economy – our poor capacity to produce goods and services and our low run rate,” Mr Smith said. 

“That we are here is an indictment on the piecemeal and lacklustre nature of reform over the last three decades.”

The result is lower forecast growth in household disposable income – essentially, living standards.

“This is not ambition for Australia,” Mr Smith said.

“If this is really as good as it gets for economic growth, then Australia has bigger problems than an interest rate rise.

“Today’s decision will increase the pressure on the May budget to deliver meaningful reform that boosts investment, drives productivity, and delivers an economy that can grow faster without inflationary pressures.”

Representatives from more than 100 technology companies are calling on state and federal governments to bring the popular SXSW conference back to Australia and to the nation’s future Olympic city. 

The grassroots campaign, called SXSEQ, launched on Tuesday with the backing of executives from a diverse range of companies including EOS Worldwide, The Content Division, STEM Changemakers and Blackroc Recruitment. 

The group is calling on the Queensland and federal governments to financially support an Australian return for the cultural event that attracted more than 345,000 people to Sydney in 2025. 

Their call comes less than a month after event organisers announced it would not be staged in 2026, and Destination NSW revealed the NSW government had pulled future funding for the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival. 

Based on an American event, SXSW Sydney was a week-long cultural conference combining movies, music, interactive technology displays, and a series of talks. 

Organisers estimated the event generated $276 million over three years, and SXSEQ campaign organiser and PatientNotes co-founder Sarah Moran said moving it to Queensland could deliver a boost to start-ups and established companies. 

“Sydney dropped a winning lottery ticket – we’re just asking (Queensland Tourism and Innovation) Minister (Andrew) Powell to pick it up.”

“SXSW is an export vehicle for both his portfolios, bringing international dollars into Queensland while showcasing our innovation industry to global buyers for export.”

Supporting the event would fit within the state government’s Destination 2045 commitment to invest $100 million in tourism, Ms Moran said, while bringing attention to the wealth of tech workers that had moved to the Sunshine Coast. 

Mr Powell did not comment on the event proposal but said multiple funding initiatives were available to bring tourism events to the state. 

“Queensland continues to cement its reputation as Australia’s events capital, hosting world-class festivals, sporting spectacles and cultural celebrations year round,” he told AAP.

Efforts to boost tourism come as Brisbane prepares to host the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, for which the state government has committed $7.1 billion to build and upgrade sporting venues. 

Australia’s South by Southwest festival, which ran from 2023 to 2025, was the first held outside the US and had been expected to continue in 2026 and 2027.

In a statement, SXSW director Jenny Connelly said organisers were proud of the event they established in Australia.

“Over three years, SXSW Sydney demonstrated the power of convening global innovators, creatives, and leaders, and created a platform that elevated voices from Australia and the Asia-Pacific region onto the world stage,” she said.

“While the event will not proceed in 2026, we are grateful for the collaboration, creativity and commitment that defined SXSW Sydney.”

Australia is set for higher inflation, faster price growth and lower real income growth, the Reserve Bank has predicted in grim new forecasts.

Released alongside the central bank’s decision to lift interest rates by 0.25 percentage points on Tuesday, the updated forecasts produced by the bank’s staff hint at further rate hikes down the track to get inflation back to target.

The RBA uses market cash rate pricing as its base case assumption to inform its modelling for the broader economy.

At the time the bank was writing its last set of forecasts in November, markets expected the bank to cut rates one more time.

Ahead of Tuesday’s decision, that had flipped to two hikes in 2026.

But even with two hikes priced in, the RBA still forecast its preferred measure of core inflation would only get down to 2.6 per cent by June 2028.

This means the central bank does not expect two hikes in 2026 to be sufficient to bring inflation down to its point target of 2.5 per cent by the end of its forecast horizon.

Core inflation is still expected to be at 3.2 per cent by the end of 2026, compared to a forecast of 2.7 per cent in November.

The RBA said it had underestimated the strength in the economy, as international conditions proved better than expected.

Australian household consumption, business investment and the housing market all outperformed expectations.

With the unemployment rate below forecasts at 4.1 per cent, it appears there is even less spare capacity in the economy than previously thought.

That has contributed to the rise in inflation, although the RBA said some of that was still down to temporary factors, like volatility in some goods prices and domestic travel.

“Elevated capacity pressures are consistent with the recent pick-up in inflation, though less persistent sector-specific factors are assumed to explain most of the recent inflation surprise,” RBA staff said in the Statement on Monetary Policy.

The forecasts spell more pain for Australian workers, if borne out.

Workers wages’ are predicted to have gone backwards in real terms at the end of 2025, after eight consecutive quarters of real wages growth.

Real wages – which represent how much more or less money workers are taking home when accounting for the rise in prices – are expected to fall 0.9 per cent in the year to June, compared to November’s prediction of 0.5 per cent.

The unemployment rate is also expected to be higher than previously expected in the medium term, with the jobless rate set to hit 4.6 per cent by June 2028.

GDP is expected to be lower than previously predicted beyond June 2026, largely as a result of the higher cash rate pricing.

The peak union body has urged the Albanese government to push ahead with tax reform to help get more young workers into homes, as fresh data shows Australia falling behind its housing supply target.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions called for the capital gains tax discount to be cut in half from 50 per cent to 25 per cent, arguing the generous concession incentivises professional landlords to invest in property, driving up prices.

In a submission to a Greens-led parliamentary inquiry into the discount, the ACTU said it was at best “a failed tax policy long in need of an overhaul”.

At worst, it is a “tax avoidance scheme for the richest Australians that is helping to drive record inequality and is pricing mostly younger people out of home ownership”.

“Too many workers can no longer afford to live near where they work, and a growing number of workers will never be able to save enough for a deposit,” ACTU president Michele O’Neil said.

“At the same time, accelerating rents and house prices are outpacing the money people can save each week.”

Calls to scale back the discount, which was introduced by the Howard government in 1999 and aims to compensate investors for inflation, have been echoed by think tanks such as the Grattan Institute and NSW Treasury.

In a recent interview with Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz published in The Monthly, federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the government was instead focused on other ways to make housing more affordable, by encouraging new supply.

On Tuesday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed just over 195,000 new homes were approved nationwide in 2025, after dwelling consents fell 14.9 per cent in December to 15,542.

To meet the national housing accord target of 1.2 million new homes over five years, the industry needs to be building new homes at a rate of 240,000 each year.

The drop in approvals in December was driven by a 29.8 per cent fall in approvals for private dwellings excluding houses, ABS head of construction statistics Daniel Rossi said.

It comes after a 29.6 per cent rise in November and demonstrates the volatile nature of the data.

While approvals are still below target, the trend rate has been steadily rising since the start of 2024.

“We’ve seen three years of increases in building approvals and building approvals in 2025 were up 13 per cent on the year prior,” Housing Minister Clare O’Neil said.

“We know there’s still much more work to do to turn around a housing crisis a generation in the making.”

Home prices rose 8.6 per cent in 2025, according to property data firm Cotality.

Values climbed another 0.8 per cent nationally in January, underpinned by chronic undersupply, Cotality research director Tim Lawless said.

Rallies planned in anticipation of the Israeli president’s visit to Australia will be restricted to prevent any riots breaking out.

Police will need to protect Isaac Herzog’s entourage and enable Sydneysiders to visit the city centre without being held up by protesters, NSW Premier Chris Minns has warned.

“It’s not going to be straightforward, but you can expect restrictions to be in place,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

“A reasonable person will look at the circumstances and say, ‘we just can’t have a riot in Sydney’ … and most people would expect the government and the police to ensure that there is public safety during that period.”

Controversial anti-protest restrictions were granted to NSW Police after 15 people were killed in the Bondi terror attack on December 14.

NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon can make fortnightly declarations for up to three months after a declared terror event.

Mr Herzog is due to visit Australia on February 8 after an invitation was extended by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to show solidarity with the Jewish community following the massacre.

But the contentious visit has been lambasted by pro-Palestine activists and legal groups for his comments suggesting Palestinians bore collective blame for Hamas’s terror attack in Israel on October 7, 2023.

A United Nations Human Rights Council commission of inquiry in September found his statements might reasonably have been interpreted as inciting genocide.

Mr Herzog has denied the claim and said his comments were taken out of context.

Protesters took to the streets of Sydney, Melbourne and Perth on Sunday to demand the cancellation of the invitation, with activists vowing to make his visit “incredibly uncomfortable”.

Mr Minns said he was not pre-empting Mr Lanyon’s decision to extend the fortnightly protest ban but said there had been ongoing security discussions.

“We’ve got to balance police’s responsibility to keep people safe alongside that desire by many people to have a protest,” he said.

Speaking generally before the announcement, race discrimination commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman said governments had a responsibility to allow for different sections of the community to express themselves freely.

“If you suppress protest supposedly because you’re pursuing social cohesion, you’re actually suppressing a democratic right,” he told AAP.

Although the declaration does not explicitly ban protests, it prevents organisers from gaining authorisation that shields them from arrest for obstructing traffic or pedestrians.

Protesters can also be issued a move-on direction, even if they participate in a static demonstration.

Mr Minns described the limits attached to the protest rules as reasonable in a Western nation.

“Even in liberal democracies, there’s an expectation that you’ll keep public safety…and that might mean keeping groups separated,” he said.

US President Donald Trump says Republicans ​should “nationalise” and “take over” voting in at least 15 unspecified places, reiterating his false claims that US elections are marred by widespread ⁠fraud.

In a podcast interview with his former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, Trump — who continues to claim falsely that his 2020 election defeat was the result of fraud – gave no details on what he intended.

Referring to immigrants, the president said on The Dan Bongino Show, ‘these people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally”.

“And you know, ‌amazing that the Republicans ​aren’t tougher on it.”

“The Republicans should say, we want to take over. We should take ‍over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalise the voting,” Trump said.

“We have states that are so crooked and they’re counting votes. We have states that I won that show I didn’t win.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a ​request for clarification of Trump’s remarks.

The comments were met with pushback.

‌US Representative Don Bacon, a Republican, said on X, “I opposed nationalizing elections when Speaker Pelosi wanted major changes to elections in all 50 states. I’ll ​oppose this now as well.”

Separately, Michigan Department of State spokesperson Cheri Hardmon issued a statement clarifying the law.

“The US ‍Constitution puts states in charge of elections, not the federal government. That’s the law.”

Trump’s comments came days after the FBI searched ​an ​election office in Georgia’s Fulton County for 2020 ​records as the president continues to press false claims of ​fraud in his 2020 defeat, an accusation that has been rejected by courts, state governments and members of Trump’s own former administration.

The US will hold midterm elections in November that will determine control of Congress for the next two years. Under the ‍US Constitution, states and local jurisdictions conduct elections.

Elon Musk says SpaceX has acquired his artificial-intelligence startup xAI, combining the rocket-and-satellite company with ​the maker of the Grok chatbot in a move aimed at unifying Musk’s AI and space ambitions.

“This marks not just ⁠the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI’s mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!” Musk said.

The deal represents one of the most ambitious tie-ups in the technology sector yet, combining a space-and-defence contractor with a fast-growing AI developer ‌whose costs are ​largely driven by chips, data centres and energy.

It could also bolster SpaceX’s data centre ambitions as ‍Musk competes with rivals like Alphabet’s Google, Meta, Amazon-backed Anthropic and OpenAI in the AI sector.

The combined company is expected to price shares at about $US527 ($A759) each, and would have a valuation of $US1.25 trillion ($A1.8 trillion), Bloomberg News reported earlier in the day.

Under the merger agreement, xAI would become a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX, said a source familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity.

The ​merger comes as the space company plans a blockbuster public offering ‌this year that could value it at over $US1.5 trillion ($A2.2 trillion), two people familiar with the matter said.

SpaceX, xAI and Musk did not immediately respond to requests ​for comment.

The deal further consolidates Musk’s far-flung business empire and fortunes into a tighter, mutually reinforcing ecosystem – what some ‍investors and analysts informally call the “Muskonomy” – which already includes Tesla, brain-chip maker Neuralink and tunnel firm the Boring Company.

The world’s richest man has a history of merging his ventures together.

Musk folded social media ​platform ​X into xAI through a share swap last year, ​giving the AI startup access to the platform’s data and ​distribution.

In 2016, he used Tesla’s stock to buy his solar-energy company SolarCity.

The agreement could draw scrutiny from regulators and investors over governance, valuation and conflicts of interest given Musk’s overlapping leadership roles across multiple firms, as well as the potential movement of engineers, proprietary technology and contracts between entities.

SpaceX also holds billions of dollars in federal contracts with NASA, the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, which all have some authority to review M&A transactions for national security and other risks.

Debt collection and lending group Credit Corp has posted a flat interim profit, on the back of lower earnings from its Australian and New Zealand loans book.

The company, which also owns the Wallet Wizard small cash loans and Wizit ‘interest free forever’ credit card businesses, generated a first half net profit of $44.1 million, in line with the previous corresponding period.

Credit Corp’s Australian and NZ debt buying business suffered after several issuers temporarily suspended debt book sales, which impacted its collections volumes.

However, the group did buy several debt piles, including a large credit card book, over December-January, which it said would deliver stronger collections and earnings in the second half of 2025/26.

“While the AU/NZ debt buying market remains competitve, as buyers attempt to secure volume in a diminished post-COVID market, there are some early signs of supply,” it said on Tuesday.

“Interest bearing credit card balances grew 12 per cent over the year.

“In time, this growth will likely be reflected in charge-offs and sales volumes.”

Credit Corp, which has a US operation as well, also noted that the volume growth in new Australian and NZ customers facing credit issues was up 25 per cent in the half year.

These are customers who face hurdles trying to access loans, and are prime targets for its unsecured Wallet Wizard loans business.

“While Reserve Bank of Australia statistics indicate a modest recovering in unsecured credit demand, more granular credit bureau data suggests that credit impaired segment demand has remained flat,” the company said.

“Accordingly, Credit Corp’s market leading Wallet Wizard product has succeeded in growth its share of the credit impaired market segment.”

The Wallet Wizard loan book jumped to $442 million in the half year, while the Wizit digital credit card operations added more than 4000 new customers for a loan book totalling $17 million.

Credit Corp’s earnings guidance for the 2025/26 financial year, of net profit growth of between six and 17 per cent, remains unchanged.

Shares in the group, which has a stock market value of almost $1 billion, closed on Monday at $14.28.