7am

For decades it’s shone a light on corruption of the highest order, even toppling premiers: Now NSW ICAC, the state’s corruption watchdog, has set its sights on a secretive right-wing Christian faction of the Liberal Party, “the Reformers”, and its cashed-up group of backers.
Already the public inquiry, codenamed Operation Rosny, has heard of shit sheets, sham payments, phone taps, and dodgy deals with fugitive developers – with the reformers' connections reaching all the way to the top of the Liberal party.
Today, The Sydney Morning Herald’s chief investigative reporter Kate McClymont unpacks the tangled web of players at the centre of what she’s calling ICAC’s Game of Thrones.

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Guest: SMH chief investigative reporter Kate McClymont
Photo: PR Handout/Supplied by NSW Police
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What do Jacqui Lambie, Pauline Hanson, Lidia Thorpe and David Pocock all have in common?
Usually not much. But they're part of an unlikely group of politicians backing former senator Rex Patrick in a legal fight with the Albanese government over information the government does not want released.
At the centre of that fight are documents about potential sites for nuclear waste storage from AUKUS submarines, a bill that could see Patrick forced to pay $150,000, and a warning about what happens when ordinary Australians push too hard for answers.
Today, transparency campaigner Rex Patrick on the case that has united some of parliament's most unlikely allies.

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Guest: Transparency campaigner Rex Patrick
Photo: AAP Image/Jono Searle
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It’s the largest institutional emitter in the world. A bigger polluter than 140 countries. And yet its emissions are hidden from sight.
Now a new documentary ‘Earth’s greatest enemy’ is exposing the impact of the US military empire on the planet: the waste, the billion dollar budgets, and the political maneuvering that’s kept it all out of the public eye.

Today, Journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin, on what the world’s biggest war machine is doing to our Earth.

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Guest: Journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin
Photo: US Central Command
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This week, 7am spoke with former Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce, as he returned to public life with a memoir defending many of the decisions he made during his final years at the airline.
Joyce said the company was fighting for survival during the pandemic and that, while mistakes were made, the difficult decisions taken under his leadership were necessary to keep Qantas from going under.
Today, we revisit our conversation with journalist and author Joe Aston, recorded after Qantas was handed a record $90 million penalty for illegally outsourcing 1,800 workers.
It asks what those decisions cost, whether they really were necessary, and whether the airline has actually changed since Joyce’s departure.
The episode originally aired in August 2025.

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Guest: Rampart founder and author of The Chairman's Lounge: The Inside Story of How Qantas Sold Us Out, Joe Aston
Photo: AAP Image/Dean Lewins
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In America, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has turned anger over rent, groceries and childcare into a powerful movement on the left. One with real momentum.
In Australia, that same anger is increasingly being captured by Pauline Hanson and the populist right, while Labor retreats towards the centre.
So attention is turning to who in Australia could make a Mamdani-style case for economic change, and to whether the Australian left has the organisation, discipline and ambition to build a movement around them.
Today, freelance writer, political commentator and host of RRR's Spin Cycle Rachel Withers, on the political figure the left is searching for, and whether the conditions exist to produce an Australian Mamdani.

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Guest: Writer and political commentator Rachel Withers
Photo: AP Photo/Heather Khalifa
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