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POLITICO Named Most Innovative Publisher
POLITICO has been named 2026 Most Innovative Publisher by Digiday. We are proud of this honor and of the incredible efforts of our team around the world. We also know the credit starts with you, our readers and subscribers.
Everything we have built this year, including our expansions to Australia and Spain, Decoded by POLITICO, the POLITICO Pub and our new mobile app, began with the same question: What do the people who count on us need next? Your feedback is how we find the answer, and your trust is what we work to earn every day.
Thank you. There is more coming, and we’re building it for you.
POLITICO CEO Goli Sheikholeslami and Global Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Greenberger
ESSENTIALS
— Closed grant programs under fire after AU$6m for Marrickville golf club
— Major parties’ 2025 campaign costs revealed in High Court case
— Meet the AI app founder with the receipts on social media abuse
DRIVING THE DAY
CLOSED GRANT PROGRAMS FOR ELECTION PROMISES BLASTED
The Centre for Public Integrity, which has been applying scrutiny to Major and Local Community Infrastructure grants, a closed program which delivered Labor’s election commitments, has a new report out scrutinizing the government’s defense of the program, which delivered a 6 million Australian dollar grant to Inner West Council for the Marrickville Golf Club.
Labor’s defense: Political parties make election commitments and it is standard practice if elected to deliver them through closed non-competitive grants programs.
On Sunday, infrastructure minister Catherine King confirmed Labor head office had a role in selecting projects before commitments were made, but said that public servants checked that the projects were eligible and constituted value for money after the election.
The Centre for Public Integrity analyzed comparable programs implementing the 2022 election commitments, finding that “around 97% of applicants proceeded to receive funding following post-invitation assessment.”
“This suggests that post-invitation assessment does not address the central integrity concern: how projects were selected for consideration in the first place,” it said.
Here’s the kicker: “Post-invitation assessment may establish that a project meets minimum standards of suitability, feasibility and value for money, but it cannot, by itself, establish that projects represent the best use of public funds when compared to other projects.”
No pork, no sweeteners: There’s no quibbling with the Centre for Public Integrity’s logic that making election commitments to select projects might mean other more meritorious ones miss out. The end point of this, though, is as King argued: Parties can’t promise specific projects will be funded if they’re elected. If every program is open, there’s no guarantee a particular project will be funded.
HOW MUCH DOES A FOCUS GROUP COST? WHAT ABOUT A ONE-PAGE AD?
Paul Karp scoops that Australia’s two major parties increased their spending on YouTube advertising by more than triple at the 2025 federal election, from AU$4.77 million to AU$16.5 million.
The figures come from the Commonwealth’s defense in the campaign finance case in the High Court, which contains an extraordinary amount of detail about the cost of reaching a voter on various platforms and sheds light on the changing nature of 21st century campaigns.
We’ve got the receipts: A 90-minute focus group costs AU$7,700. A robopoll of 400 people costs AU$29,040. YouTube ads gaining 1,000 impressions targeted at voters in an electorate cost between AU$42.90-AU$52.80, plus fees.
Hold the front page: Newspaper advertising rates for a full one-page ad are:
— The Age, Melbourne: AU$19,035.50
— The Herald Sun, Melbourne: AU$25,839.00
— The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney: AU$20,295
— The Daily Telegraph, Sydney: AU$22,011
— The West Australian: AU$11,550-AU$15,750
Have a look at what major party campaigns spent their dosh on.
INFLATION UP, BULLOCK CAGEY ON NEAR-CERTAIN RATE HIKE
The Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 4.3% in the 12 months to August 2026, up from 4.0%. Trimmed mean inflation was 3.6%, up from a revised 3.5%.
What she said: At Senate estimates, Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock said she “can’t give any guidance what it means for the board.” Bullock added the inflation figure was “consistent” with what the RBA was expecting, with both international and domestic upside risks materializing, including ongoing conflict in the Middle East and the AI investment boom.
What she meant: I’m not responsible for your inability to see that a Melbourne Cup day interest rate rise now extremely likely.
Under questioning from the deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume, Bullock agreed that government spending contributes to aggregate demand. In question time, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said everyone agreed on that, but he quoted treasury Secretary Jenny Wilkinson that private demand being stronger than expected was the bigger driver. Nobody is disagreeing — it’s all just emphasis (or spin) on both sides.
CHALMERS TRIES STRAIGHT TALK: Chalmers fronted up in a Blue Room presser to argue there is no easy lever he can pull to fix inflation. What he can do is trim the budget more, a point made repeatedly by shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson.
“TICKED UP” AND TICKED OFF: Chalmers told the House that inflation had “ticked up.” Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson was barely able to stop shouting during his press conference: “Australians can’t pay their mortgages with your excuses, Jim”
IT’S THE NET SAVINGS, JIM: Chalmers is most vulnerable around his claim of achieving $AU180 billion in budget savings, including AU$60 billion this year alone.
That is not maths that ordinary Australians believe or understand. Neither does Playbook. In the minds of most people inside and outside the building: When budget spending and the budget deficit continue to rise, that is not “savings,” even if cuts elsewhere reduce the spending growth rate.
AI REALITY CHECK: Wilkinson and Bullock also agree that the AI data center boom is pushing inflation up. That means AI is delivering inflation before it delivers measurable productivity. People already hate data centers in their neighborhood. If they don’t start increasing productivity, driving inflation can only further eat away at their social license.
ENERGY REALITY CHECK: Wilson claimed the government is driving up energy costs. The official stats show electricity prices are down 2.4% since June. One of the only bright spots.
THE PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW
ABUSE OF WOMEN ‘MORE ABOUT RIGHT TO EXIST': ARETO FOUNDER
Jacqueline Comer is the founder and chief product officer of Areto, an AI-powered app which POLITICO revealed Australian MPs were using to protect themselves against gendered abuse on social media.
Speaking with Paul Karp by phone, Comer reveals that almost half of all comments to politicians’ social media posts need to be hidden as abusive.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Read the full interview.
When was Areto created and what was it designed to do?
April 2020. We started a nonprofit that was working towards gender parity in government in Canada. We were hearing barriers in the early mid 2010s, around [candidates] not knowing how to raise money for campaigns. When we were meeting people to ask them to run, they were saying, “Actually, I don’t want to put myself or my family in the line of fire online.”
We were able to put together some hackathons and created a Twitter bot called ParityBOT that responded with positive comments to any abusive Tweets directed at women running for election. We did that for four elections. And then from there, it was really “you know there might be a business in this.”
How did the capability of the tool evolve?
The bot is dead. Long live the bot. What we have now is a content moderation platform that uses some pretty sophisticated AI to automatically remove abuse and spam from your social media.
Spam is usually produced by bots, not real people, so we delete it. Abuse is different. Our users set the threshold for their own community. Anything they deem unacceptable is hidden from public view and stored in their Areto account.
We don’t block, and I’m quite strict on that. Blocking cuts your constituents off from important government information. We also don’t delete abusive comments.
And we don’t touch criticism. You need criticism for a healthy democracy and for constructive conversations with your elected members around policy, so that stays up. What we hide is the racist abuse, the sexist abuse, the threats. Right now in Australia, we’re seeing that sexist abuse is higher than the racist abuse, things like misogyny, sexism, bodyshaming, transphobia.
Do you have a perspective about whether or not the platforms are shirking their responsibility as publishers by not moderating to begin with?
Should we exist? The goal has always been for us to not be needed, but we saw this problem and this major gap, and that was even before moderation responsibilities changed with Meta and across TikTok and YouTube. The interesting challenge we have is that social media was meant to connect us. Instead, it’s driving people out of public life.
What are your metrics for success?
Personally, the metric I care most about is the number of emails and texts we get from elected members and their staff telling us things are better.
In Australia, from the beginning of May till the end of September this year, we analyzed, just under 1 million comments across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, and moderated just under 500,000, so around 50% of all comments that the politicians we were working with received were considered abusive.
The average sports team would have about 5% of all comments hit the threshold to hide. And in public office, we’re seeing about 50%. If you’re a woman, you’ll get more. If you are not white, you’ll get more. If you are gay or from the LGBTQ+ community, you’ll get more. For men in public office the abuse that comes in tends to be directed more towards the post and the policy, as opposed to the abuse that comes through for a woman politician tends to be more about who they are and their right to exist.
CANBERRA MEETS WORLD
GREENS SEND POSITIVE SIGN ON EU FREE TRADE
Greens leader David Shoebridge, whose party has the balance of power in the Senate, has confirmed his party has a “favorable” view of the EU free trade agreement. The comment is significant because it gives the Albanese government a pathway to pass the deal in parliament without the Liberal-National opposition, which is seeking to remove climate commitments. The EU has said that isn’t happening because the deal is done.
TREATY TRICKINESS: DFAT has sought an explanation from Vanuatu after its Internal Affairs Minister, Andrew Napuat, said he has no plans to scale back China’s police presence in the country. That flies in the face of the Nakamal Treaty, which Australia views as key to curbing Beijing’s influence in the region.
“As mentioned in the treaty, Australia is the primary policy partner and our expectation is that arrangements with other parties would reduce over time,” DFAT head of Pacific Office Elizabeth Peak told estimates yesterday. “It was the Vanuatu government that gave us [that] reassurance.”
BRAT PACK: Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has met with the new U.S. ambassador David Brat for the first time.
And hack attack: Iran accessed pro-Israel News24 host Sharri Markson’s personal information via a “relatively sophisticated” online scheme, ASIO director general Mike Burgess has revealed. Former Liberal powerbroker Michael Kroger was also targeted by the same Tehran-backed group, though security agencies foiled that plot.
SAS SOS: The Nightly reports the Army effectively lost control of the Special Air Service Regiment during the war in Afghanistan, allowing sergeants and corporals to fight the war as they chose, according to a long-suppressed official investigation.
STATE OF THE NATION
ALBO TARGETS ONE NATION ON WORKERS’ PAY
In a speech to the Australian Workers Union, Anthony Albanese has warned that “only Labor will deliver genuine cost-of-living help.”
“Other parties, including One Nation, claim sometimes to be on the side of working people. But if you just listen to what they say, and one glance at their policies tells you they are coming after your wages, your conditions, your employment rights, your living standards.”
Albanese urged workers to judge One Nation “by their actions and their stated policies, and what way they vote in the Parliament, not the confected vibe of their social media posts.” He rattled off their opposition to minimum wage rises, penalty rates, and “their determination to play havoc with your members’ superannuation savings.”
ONE NATION DODGES VIOLENT CARTOON STOUSH
One Nation has introduced a bill to enact its policy of allowing mortgage holders and renters for three years to take superannuation as a 3% upfront payment and 9% into their retirement accounts, instead of the compulsory 12% into super —the status quo.
At a press conference in Canberra, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson repeatedly leaned on the fact former treasurer Secretary Ken Henry had suggested 9% super is adequate. She also called Chalmers a “hypocrite” because parliamentarians’ staff can reduce their 15.4% super to 12% by taking some as upfront pay.
Hanson dodged questions about violence depicted in One Nation’s “Please Explain” cartoons. “I’m not here to talk about the cartoons at the moment,” she said to News24’s Andrew Clennell.
One Nation staffer James Ashby has called Clennell “a dickhead” for applying pressure on the cartoons. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett has warned they could have a flow-on effect to violence in the community.
PARTY ROOM
CHANEY REACTION — MP GETS DUTY OF CARE CONCESSIONS
Independent MP (and resident crossbench AI expert) Kate Chaney secured two amendments as the government’s Digital Duty of Care bill passed the lower house. Labor has agreed to ensure:
— Opt in/opt out for algorithms can’t be buried in a platform’s settings. That was an issue in the EU, where big tech companies would force users to actively turn on the algorithm every time they opened an app, and heavily restricted functions
— Attachment hacking is listed as a harm for children. That’s where AI companions and chatbots simulate intimacy.
Chaney told Playbook: “Social media is all about grabbing our attention, but bots are about grabbing our attachment.”
“The longer-term psychological impact [of attachment hacking] is largely unknown, but the early evidence shows it could really affect people’s sense of self and how they form personality,” she said.
Green shoots: In a sign of what could happen in the Senate, where the Greens can pass legislation, the party’s sole lower house MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown backed Chaney’s amendments.
Communications Minister Anika Wells has agreed in principle to one of the Greens’ main demands: to allow individuals a right to sue for breaches, which eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant also backed at a Senate estimates hearing.
QUESTION TIME
THE COALITION’S WEIRD BUT RATIONAL TACTICS: Wednesday’s question time was a bizarre spectacle. On a day that should have been about rising inflation, Labor was able to launch a full-frontal economic attack — on the Coalition for opposing the EU free trade deal. Virtually every government MP question focused on the deal.
Labor achieved this effect because the Coalition is polling so badly, its most urgent task is to overtake One Nation rather than be the official Opposition. So it’s backed into the corner of ditching its entire history to oppose the deal.
It had neither the discipline nor the bums on seats on the House floor to use coordinated inflation questions to hold back Labor’s free trade attacks. Instead, we debated sewerage at a golf club as much as we discussed Labor’s fingerprints on high inflation.
The Prime Minister closed the session with: “I don’t know what went on in their tactics room. It’s hard to take the alternative government seriously.”
VOICE VOTE: If volume is any guide the Coalition benches find the idea of the government negotiating hard for the EU-Australia free trade deal far more laughable and concerning than the Digital Duty of Care Bill.
DATE DOUBTS: The Prime Minister can’t or won’t answer when he first learned that the $6 million in federal funding to Marrickville Golf Club was not, in fact, for sewerage works as he had repeatedly stated.
“HATE ON A PLATE”: Education Minister Jason Clare’s line about what algorithms and AI tools are serving up. He went on to agree with former opposition leader Peter Dutton on the world kids now face online: a “lawless jungle.”
“BULLSHIT!”: “Australia won’t accept it!” Speaker Milton Dick barked as he booted Llew O’Brien, the member for Wide Bay, from the chamber for three hours. O’Brien had described as “bullshit” the Prime Minister’s point that there are now more extreme weather events in Australia, related to climate change.
Our kindler, gentler parliament: Didn’t last the week.
AGENDA ASSISTANT
Community Affairs: Health, the National Disability Insurance Agency and Social Services. Read the full schedule.
Economics: ASIC, Industry and CSIRO. Schedule.
Education and Employment: Education, the ANU and TEQSA. Schedule.
Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade: Defence, Australian Submarine Agency and ASD. Schedule.
Follow all the hearings live on YouTube.
LOCAL CANBERRA
“The Alchemy of Leadership” named 2026 Australian Political Book of the Year
“The Alchemy of Leadership: Seven Australian Prime Ministers in a Turbulent Twenty-First Century” by Paul Strangio, published by Melbourne University Publishing. Announced by Treasurer Jim Chalmers at Old Parliament House in Canberra, the judges said the book is “a timely and masterful study of the necessary ingredients for successful political leadership.”
Read Playbook’s Tuesday interview with Strangio.
Jointly sponsored by bookstore Hill of Content and stakeholder strategy firm York Park Group, the award was judged by ANU’s John Warhurst, and journalists Kerrie O’Brien and Barrie Cassidy. “Paul Strangio does not pull back from thoughtful but sharply worded opinions,” the judges wrote.
Read Playbook’s interviews with the other three shortlisted authors:
— “Gough Whitlam” by Troy Bramston
— “Unfinished Revolution” by Virginia Haussegger
— “Earthquake” by Niki Savva
CLIMATE IN CIVIC: Need a reason to get your flexible working request approved? The Climate Change Authority said in its annual report that its office in Canberra’s CBD could face significant impacts from “extreme heat and bushfire smoke.”
“Climate projections for the ACT indicate rising temperatures, reduced rainfall, and more severe fire weather, creating potential impacts on staff wellbeing, air quality, business operations, and service continuity,” it reads.
Shhhh! Don’t tell your boss you’re spending the day at the new rooftop pool in Civic, if you do get that work-from-home request approved. More pics of the Crystalbrook Aurora here.
BIRTHDAYS
Labor MP Ged Kearney, former cabinet minister Helen Coonan, U.S. ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker, broadcaster Eddie McGuire.