Opinion

AARON PATRICK: Labor’s deal to create a new environmental agency will have the unfortunate consequence of damaging an Australian success story.

MARK RILEY: Pauline Hanson’s poll ‘surge’ is just a protest-vote blip that won’t last.

With the final season of the hit fantasy/horror series crashing the streaming platform on its release day, it’s timely to consider one question: what is Netflix without Stranger Things?

MITCHELL JOHNSON: Ben Stokes, and England, need to get some runs on the board — and maybe a Test win — before sledging their own greats as their hubris was clearly their undoing in the first Test.

EDITORIAL: The public service’s continued bloat is strangling private sector growth. Will the Albanese Government have the guts to make the cuts necessary to rein it in? 

JENI O’DOWD: Potholes might be deemed too bland to be a problem, but couple them with a struggling ambulance service and you have a recipe for disaster.

AARON PATRICK: An opposition that looked like a political irrelevancy managed to embarrass the government over taxes, energy prices and interest rates

DANE ELDRIDGE: There is nothing a Kiwi hates more than admitting an Australian is right, but Brendon McCullum’s refusal to see the writing on the wall is beyond the pale.

EDITORIAL: The constant chopping and changing of regulations must end and give way to a system that is workable for both conservationists and developers.

LISA STHALEKAR: Travis Head’s heroics should signal the end of Usman Khawaja’s Test career and he only has himself to blame.

ROSA PRINCE: The case is overblown and Trump’s graceless, grasping threat is yet another White House assault on press freedom.

AARON PATRICK: China’s third-ranked political leader, Zhao Leji, helped oversee a vast purge of officials designed to entrench Xi Jinping’s power.

Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups pleaded not guilty to charges he engaged in rigged high-stakes poker games that prosecutors said had ties to the Mafia.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: It is unclear where the new deal is headed. Here is what seven experts in the United States, Europe and Russia think needs to be done. 

EDITORIAL: It was bewilderingly bad, brainless cricket. The good news is, it’s over for now.