A day didn’t pass this week without Peter Dutton amping up the rhetoric. The Home Affairs minister’s firm victory in Dickson has propelled him out of the defensive shadows of the Coalition’s election campaign and onto the front pages.

It started on Sunday with Insiders when, as Rebekah Holt reported this week, Dutton perpetuated the myth there are no kids in detention. Over the week, Dutton kept going — arguing to axe Kerryn Phelps’ medivac laws. In doing so, he has once again taken his fight to the medical community.

On Thursday, he told Sky News that women are falsifying rape and abortion claims in order to get into the country. “Some people are trying it on,” he said.

All that before parliament returns.

Plus, don’t forget that next week the first stories from our new inquiry journalism unit, INQ, will be landing.

As ever, we’re keen to hear your comments via boss@crikey.com.au.

GUY RUNDLE 4 minute read

There is a melancholy settling across the world, as the consequences of decades of climate inaction reverberate. What can be done to place the impending cataclysm back at the centre of everyday life?

KISHOR NAPIER-RAMAN 5 minute read

After an almost 10-year battle, which has come to symbolise so much about our changing society and climate, Adani's Carmichael mine is going ahead.

WILLIAM BOWE 3 minute read

The Coalition has achieved a voting bloc so solid it may not even have to dirty its hands with One Nation.

GUY RUNDLE 5 minute read

If Labor is using gendered violence for factional warfare, it won't end well.

PATRICK MARLBOROUGH 4 minute read

Those championing the Adani Carmichael mine and similar projects are pushing a new sort of nihilism — asking us to take one more step into our collective graves, with the promise of some small reward along the way.

DAN HOGAN 3 minute read

The public school classroom has become a site of perpetual material malfunction and deprivation. Meanwhile, private schools are putting on productions of Oliver Twist in $47 million theatres.

JUSTINE LANDIS-HANLEY 4 minute read

Boris Johnson is best known for his history of lying, racism, and downright buffoonery, leading many to wonder whether Britain's next prime minister has more in common with Donald Trump than a shockingly blonde mop.

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In April, the former chief justice found there was no evidence of a “freedom of speech crisis” at Australian universities. And while that should have been the end of it, the debate continues.

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At a time when unions should be on the front foot and pushing for structural changes to address wage stagnation, figures like John Setka play into right-wing campaigns to demonise the union movement.

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SALMA ISLAM 4 minute read

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MICHAEL BRADLEY 4 minute read

We need to accept that parenthood is a subjective, social concept — not a scientific fact.