Back to reality
If the first full week of 2025 is anything to go by, expect a year of fractured politics, social media mischief and... well, who knows what else?
If you, like us, are back on the tools after the Christmas break, the defining feature of your first week is most likely voicemails and out of office email bouncebacks. Depending on your industry — and your position in the employment hierarchy — you might also find coworkers and stakeholders aren’t reliably back in their chairs until February.
Regardless, the first week of 2025 has given us a glimpse of what some of the macro themes of this year might look like — as we’ve been reporting at Capital Brief.
As we drift towards a federal election in the first half of the year, with the Labor government preparing itself to campaign, some old lines of attack are rearing their heads. One is the issue of the national debt, possibly inspired by similar discourse bubbling up in the US partially thanks to the interventions of mercurial billionaire Elon Musk. Jennifer Duke dove into the Australian story today with a story asking the key question: is it that big a deal?
Speaking of political debate, anyone following the harrowing scenes from the Los Angeles fires this week on social media would also have been exposed to the clashes surrounding it, like the arguments over what exactly is to blame for the carnage. Is it yet another consequence of unchecked climate change? Is it the decline of American state capacity? Is it because the Los Angeles Fire Department is — heaven forbid — too woke?
