Jim Chalmers’ first speech as treasurer outlines the enormity of the global economic situation – inflation, energy and supply chain issues, and a continuing war in Europe – and signposts that this is a budget that’s much more about what he’s taking away (or reallocating) than new announcements.

It’s not often we get two budgets in the one year, and this one is in stark contrast to the Coalition’s before the election.

Milton Speer, University of Technology Sydney; Joshua Hartigan, University of Technology Sydney, and Lance M Leslie, University of Technology Sydney

The northern Murray-Darling Basin produces 93% of Australia’s cotton. Cotton is one of Australia’s biggest agricultural industries – worth about A$2 billion each year – and a steady supply of water is crucial for production.

Kathryn Allen, University of Tasmania; Alison O'Donnell, The University of Western Australia; Benjamin I. Cook, Columbia University; Jonathan Palmer, UNSW Sydney, and Pauline Grierson, The University of Western Australia

Most Australians have known drought in their lifetimes, and have memories of cracked earth and empty streams, paddocks of dust and stories of city reservoirs with only a few weeks’ storage. But our new research finds over the last 1,000 years, Australia has suffered longer, larger and more severe droughts than those recorded over the last century.

The prospects of Australia securing a strong federal anti-corruption agency have taken a huge leap forward, with introduction of the Albanese government’s much awaited National Anti-Corruption Commission bill into federal parliament.

It’s 17 years since Transparency International Australia first recommended this reform, and five years since a Senate Select Committee agreed unanimously it was time to give it serious consideration.

Though they’d be the last to admit it, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton have more in common than you might expect. They’re both unapologetic pragmatists.

Albanese, a left fighter in the distant past, is the prime minister who looks for consensus where it’s possible and useful, including with his opponent.

Dutton, who built a reputation as a head kicker of the right, as the opposition leader is seeking to reinvent himself as a more nuanced player, willing to negotiate when circumstances or interests demand or justify it.