menu_open Columnists
Kos Samaras

Kos Samaras

Financial Review

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Monetising grievance is harder than we might think

Monetising grievance is harder than we might think

Right-wing podcasting in Australia is akin to a craft beer with a niche following. It is not a mass market. Karl Stefanovic and Nine have parted ways...

06.07.2026 10

The New Daily

Kos Samaras

Monetising grievance: in Australia it's harder than you think

Monetising grievance: in Australia it's harder than you think

Karl Stefanovic and Nine parted ways last week, immediately, rather than at the end of the year as originally agreed. The trigger was a podcast...

04.07.2026 20

Canberra Times

Kos Samaras

Monetising grievance: in Australia it's harder than you think

Monetising grievance: in Australia it's harder than you think

Right-wing podcasting in Australia is akin to a craft beer with a niche following. It is not a mass market. Karl Stefanovic and Nine parted ways last...

02.07.2026 10

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

Hanson's politics of subtraction offers her own voters less

Pauline Hanson’s National Press Club speech exposed the weakness in the old right-wing politics of subtraction: in an age of scarcity, promising to...

25.06.2026 20

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

The man who did everything right

The story of a voter who did everything Australia once told working people to do: work hard, buy a home, raise a family and keep faith. Now, after...

18.06.2026 10

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

Why Pauline Hanson's biggest weakness is her newest voters

One Nation’s surge is easiest to read as anger. It is better read through a different lens – gathering the Australians who formed their sense of...

11.06.2026 20

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

The quiet Australians who actually empty the bins

When the political class keeps choosing to squeeze outer-suburban, mortgage-stressed, salaried workers, we shouldn’t be surprised to see these...

04.06.2026 20

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

How the budget failed to land with the three Australias

One was reached. One was reached for and missed. One was never the audience.

03.06.2026 20

Financial Review

Kos Samaras

Three Australias: Polls show our deepening divide

Changing voting patterns are no longer a reaction to short-term events, they are a rebellion against inequality, says Kos Samaris. Our new Multilevel...

30.05.2026 30

The New Daily

Kos Samaras

Three Australias: new polling shows deepening divide

Changing voting patterns are no longer a reaction to short-term events, they are a rebellion against inequality, says Kos Samaris. Our MRP polling...

28.05.2026 40

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

Taylor may have just sent scores of voters to Labor

The trick at the heart of Angus Taylor’s budget reply is that it punishes a group that cannot vote. Strip the NDIS, Jobseeker, Youth Allowance and...

25.05.2026 20

The New Daily

Kos Samaras

Angus Taylor may have just created half a million new Labor voters

The Coalition’s plan to strip welfare access from non-citizens could accelerate a surge in citizenship and voter enrolment across migrant-heavy...

21.05.2026 30

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

Angus Taylor just alienated families like mine – and doomed the Liberal Party

Immigrant families and their votes are critical to the Liberals’ status as the alternative government. The party just formally walked away from them.

15.05.2026 30

WA Today

Kos Samaras

Angus Taylor just alienated families like mine – and doomed the Liberal Party

Immigrant families and their votes are critical to the Liberals’ status as the alternative government. The party just formally walked away from them.

15.05.2026 20

The Sydney Morning Herald

Kos Samaras

Angus Taylor just alienated families like mine – and doomed the Liberal Party

Immigrant families and their votes are critical to the Liberals’ status as the alternative government. The party just formally walked away from them.

15.05.2026 30

The Age

Kos Samaras

Angus Taylor just alienated families like mine – and doomed the Liberal Party

Immigrant families and their votes are critical to the Liberals’ status as the alternative government. The party just formally walked away from them.

15.05.2026 30

Brisbane Times

Kos Samaras

The second-last budget reply – delivered by a Liberal MP

The Coalition’s plan to strip permanent residents of access to welfare payments risks detonating support across Australia’s outer-suburban migrant...

15.05.2026 30

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

This budget is pitched at the under-45s bloc keeping Labor in power

The government has understood what those voters require in exchange: seriousness, structural touch, an acknowledgement the Band-Aids are over.

12.05.2026 30

Financial Review

Kos Samaras

Farrer exposed a political divide the Liberals cannot bridge

The Farrer by-election revealed a deep political realignment, with One Nation consolidating support in regional Australia while multicultural and...

12.05.2026 30

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

A decade of dog-whistles and lost voters

The Coalition’s path back to government runs through roughly 25 seats. The overwhelming majority of them sit in greater Sydney and greater...

08.05.2026 50

The New Daily

Kos Samaras

A decade of dog-whistles and a decade of lost voters

05.05.2026 30

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

Polls keep bouncing, destination doesn’t change

One Nation is up. One Nation is down. What the weekly polling movements are actually telling us and what they are not. In a single week, three...

28.04.2026 40

The New Daily

Kos Samaras

The polls keep bouncing. The destination doesn’t change

24.04.2026 50

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

Voters no longer want managers - they want fighters

There is a word that gets used a lot in political commentary right now - realignment - and like most words deployed too frequently, even by me, it is...

18.04.2026 40

Canberra Times

Kos Samaras

Chasing ghosts, losing votes

New research shows immigration is not driving voter anger, yet the Coalition is targeting it anyway – risking further losses in the diverse, urban...

17.04.2026 30

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

Voters want fighters — not managers

Across Western democracies, voters are abandoning consensus politics in favour of leaders willing to fight, name enemies and prosecute a cause – a...

16.04.2026 40

The New Daily

Kos Samaras

Voters no longer want managers – they want fighters

Across Western democracies, voters are abandoning consensus politics in favour of leaders willing to fight, name enemies and prosecute a cause – a...

14.04.2026 20

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

Fuel crisis won’t save the Coalition, it might end it

Cost-of-living pressure will not automatically shift votes to the Coalition, as culturally aligned voters begin drifting toward alternatives that...

02.04.2026 30

The New Daily

Kos Samaras

The fuel crisis won’t save the Coalition. It might finish them

Cost-of-living pressure will not automatically shift votes to the Coalition, as culturally aligned voters begin drifting toward alternatives that...

31.03.2026 40

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

The fuel crisis won’t save the Coalition. It might finish them

Cost-of-living pressure will not automatically shift votes to the Coalition, as culturally aligned voters begin drifting toward alternatives that...

31.03.2026 40

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

One Nation now speaks for a generation politics ignored

The rise of One Nation among Australia’s working- and middle-class battlers is a story of economic decline and political abandonment by Labor and...

30.03.2026 40

Financial Review

Kos Samaras

Starmer’s foreign policy is about politics – and a warning for Australia

When establishment parties are genuinely destabilised by their flanks in Australia, the economic consequences will be felt well beyond the ballot box.

10.03.2026 30

Financial Review

Kos Samaras

Howard battlers turning to One Nation is risky for business

Alienated Coalition voters are walking out the door. But the message they are sending to Canberra is one corporate Australia would be wise to heed.

15.02.2026 30

Financial Review

Kos Samaras

The big warning for Albanese in Mamdani’s win

Centre-left parties that built post-war success on broad coalitions are being hollowed out from the left; Labor must offer radical solutions that show...

07.11.2025 30

Financial Review

Kos Samaras

Why the Coalition can’t win without losing itself

28.10.2025 30

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

Why the Coalition can’t win without losing itself

The Coalition faces not a messaging challenge but a structural impossibility. Voters abandoning them won’t be satisfied by marginally tougher...

26.10.2025 30

Financial Review

Kos Samaras

The 3 demographic shifts sealing the Coalition’s fate

Australia’s unique political forces – migration, education, compulsory voting – are reshaping the nation, but the Liberal Party has failed to adapt.

12.09.2025 30

Financial Review

Kos Samaras

From globalisation to AI: Why history is about to repeat itself

02.07.2025 20

Pearls and Irritations

Kos Samaras

AI flips the script on globalisation. We need a plan for the fallout

In the age of automation, leadership will not be defined by who adopts AI the fastest but by who protects their people the best.

30.06.2025 30

Financial Review

Kos Samaras

The Liberals are fundamentally mismatched with modern Australia

The party is ignoring the realities, identities, and aspirations of the people who will determine its electoral future.

07.05.2025 30

Financial Review

Kos Samaras

Forget Boomers. Gen Z are smashing the old political playbook

The party that fails to understand the mindset of younger voters risks irrelevance in a political landscape that is far more complex.

22.04.2025 30

Financial Review

Kos Samaras