The Year Ahead in Politics

What will 2026 bring in politics? News Club is the place to find out...

January 07, 2026

Welcome to our Year Ahead series where we talk with our friends in news about what they reckon will be the big themes of the year. And we’re starting with a big one - politics…

The Squiz is the place to stay informed, not overwhelmed.

The good, the bad, and the ugly in the news will no doubt come hurdling at us this year - and we intend to be the place where you can stay on top of things without getting burned out.

To that end, we kick off our Year Ahead series with politics. Claire Harvey is the Editorial Director at The Australian, host of their daily news podcast The Front, and has worked as a reporter, foreign correspondent, deputy editor and columnist across 30 years in journalism. We sat down with her to talk Australian politics and geopolitics.

The story that stuck from 2025

Internationally, Claire nominates the assassination of Charlie Kirk - the young conservative activist who was a major figure in the MAGA movement. What struck her was the generational divide in how people absorbed the news.

Claire Harvey: Most young people I know, knew of Charlie Kirk and had a strong opinion about him. Most people my age, including myself, had never heard of him and didn't really have an opinion, but were then in the wake of his death... suddenly being called upon or feeling obliged to come up with some sort of view about who he was and what he said.

Closer to home, she points to the revelation that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind antisemitic attacks in Australia - including the firebombing of a synagogue in Melbourne and a deli in Bondi.

Claire Harvey: The AFP and ASIO to say that they believe that the ultra elite military wing of Iran was doing it - it's stunning, especially in a year when Iran had these huge blows in the Middle East. Their client paramilitaries, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen were all destroyed or very seriously damaged.

The big story for 2026

Claire reckons the Bondi terror attack and its aftermath will shape a big slab of the political news agenda in the year ahead. New gun laws are coming - restrictions on non-citizens owning weapons and limits on how many guns someone can own. These are laws that many Australians might have assumed were already in place… But the harder challenge for PM Anthony Albanese is bringing the country together.

Claire Harvey: There's deep anger in the Jewish community. I think justified anger that the government has minimised their suffering and tried to convince them that graffiti on walls and broken windows is not really antisemitism. Any student of history knows that that's where it starts.

She says the question is whether Albanese can address that anger while also bringing Muslim Australians - many of whom put their trust in him - along for the ride. Claire points to Ahmed al-Ahmed, the Muslim man from Syria who took down the Bondi shooter, as the kind of story that could help bridge that divide.

The story bubbling away to keep an eye on

Work from home laws might not sound like a political flashpoint, but Claire reckons it's a sleeper issue for 2026.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan says she will seek to legislate for the right to work from home 2 days a week this year - a move that has business groups nervous. And Claire points to a recent Fair Work decision in favour of a Westpac employee who refused to return to the office, sending chills through employer groups.

Claire Harvey: Look what happened to Peter Dutton and the Federal Coalition when they tried to set one tiny toenail into... Their idea was, we'll stop public servants from working from home. Labor very cleverly spun that into "they're coming for your work from home." They had to drop the policy. It was a hugely embarrassing moment [for Dutton].

She's also watching 2 state elections - South Australia in March and Victoria in November - and federally, whether Barnaby Joyce can energise One Nation in a way Pauline Hanson never could.

Claire Harvey: We've never had a razor-sharp Boris Johnson, Donald Trump style, Nigel Farage populist who is highly intelligent, incredibly articulate. Barnaby Joyce, I think, is actually much more intellectual. He might energise One Nation in a way we haven't seen before.

The interview

Claire Kimball and Larissa Moore chatted with Claire, and they also covered in the full interview:

  • The social media ban for kids and the High Court challenges

  • Why the gun register that was meant to come out of Port Arthur never really got there

  • Whether the Liberals can get their mojo back

Listen on your preferred podcast platform or watch on YouTube

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Claire Harvey’s recommendations

📺 The Diplomat (Netflix) - A political couple in the US foreign service navigating Washington. "Disappointing that Keri Russell doesn't have great hair like she did in The Americans, but it's fantastic."

🚢 Below Deck (Binge) - "Basically Upstairs Downstairs or Downton Abbey, but set on a super yacht with hot crew dealing with insufferable rich guests."

🎧 Sick to Death (The Australian podcast) - Hedley Thomas's deep dive into the original Dr Death, Jayant Patel, and the nurses who tried to blow the whistle on a surgeon who couldn't do the surgeries he claimed he could.

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