7am

The latest NAPLAN results show around a third of Australian students are still falling short in literacy and numeracy – results that have barely budged since 2023.
At the same time, Australia is settling a decades-long fight over how children should be taught to read.
For years, many schools relied on outdated methods that encouraged children to work out words using context, pictures and other cues. Now, some classrooms are increasingly moving towards phonics and explicit instruction.
But the evidence for that approach has been around for decades. So why is it taking so long for classrooms to catch up?
Today, journalist Martin McKenzie-Murray on why the old methods lasted for so long, and how children should actually be taught to read.
This episode was first published in August 2024.

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Guest: Associate editor of The Saturday Paper, Martin McKenzie-Murray
Photo: AAP Image/Dan Peled
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Australia has changed in ways our politics is still struggling to understand.
We are now a majority migrant nation. Professional women have overtaken blue-collar men as the largest group in the workforce. And the two countries Australia has relied on most, China and the United States, have become less predictable.
Labor has adapted to parts of this new reality. The Coalition, so far, has struggled to do the same.
Today, author of Three Shocks, George Megalogenis on the tectonic plates reshaping Australian politics.

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Guest: Author of Three Shocks George Megalogenis
Photo: AAP Image/Dean Lewins
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Over the past two weeks, allegations of sexual assault involving some of the country’s most powerful institutions – the Swans and Sydney’s Scots College – have forced an uncomfortable question about how Australia responds when women say they have been harmed.
But behind those cases is an even more troubling shift. New research suggests some young men are becoming more hostile towards women, while misogyny and sexual violence is being normalised online.
And with pressure building on leaders and governments across the country to confront it, the question is whether the response is keeping pace with the problem.

Today, Minister for Social Services Tanya Plibersek, on the institutions failing women, the forces shaping a generation of boys, and whether governments are doing enough to stop it.

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Guest: Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek
Photo: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
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As Trump’s war with Iran reaches the six-month mark, the US is increasing its economic pressure – threatening harsher sanctions not just against Iran, but against anyone else who does business with it.
That puts China, the country’s most important trading partner, directly in Washington’s sights.
But how much of this is just bluster? And has Trump lost the ability to turn this conflict in his favour?
Today, The National Interest’s editor-at-large, Steve Clemons, on the dwindling options available to the US – and what that means for its increasingly unpopular president.

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Guest: Editor-at-large of The National Interest, Steve Clemons
Photo: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
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Bird flu has reached a new milestone, crossing over to infect and kill a seal in South Australia.
It marks a new phase of the outbreak, and has sparked fears for many endangered wildlife species, which face the possibility of extinction.
So how does the way we farm, eat, and live make us vulnerable to viruses like this? And could humans be at risk with the next mutation?
Today, journalist and author of Sentinel: when diseases spread between animals and humans, Michael Dulaney on the root cause of the virus - and the future of animal pandemics in our times.

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Guest: Journalist and author Michael Dulaney
Photo: AAP Image/Darren England
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