The Monthly | Australian politics, society & culture

Current Issue

False Profits

How Australian Coal is Causing Global Damage

By Bill McKibben

I read it with the mild incomprehension one brings to the politics of any foreign country. I quailed when I saw outraged quotes from various ministers, all of whom were unknown to me, except that I remembered just enough about Australian politics to know Labor was currently in charge, and so these were the rough equivalent of the US Democrats. A man named Wayne Swan, identified as treasurer, was saying that the attack was “a disturbing development”, “deeply irresponsible” and “completely irrational and destructive”. A man named Craig Emerson, apparently the trade minister, said “they are deluding themselves”, adding that the plan, whatever it was, would “mean mass starvation”. The environment minister, Tony Burke, said that the mysterious attack was “simply designed to undermine people who are doing...

Current Issue

Villawood’s bad neighbour problem

By Fiona Harari

Since the housing department moved him to Miowera Road eight years ago, Jones has become accustomed to the screams in the night from his faceless neighbours, and the sirens don’t bother him any more. But his partner, mother of six Tracy Tisdell, is less keen on those “cranky”...

June 2013

The Mad Election

By Mungo MacCallum

Can it get any crazier? As the Australian political scene descends into a wallow of pettiness centred around who is and who is not wearing a blue tie, the long-suffering electorate is preparing to install a Prime Minister less than one fifth of the voters actually want in the job. Yes, that is what...

Plus

Dateline Doha: At last it's time for America to talk to the Taliban "No more long dinners in Qatari restaurants, or idle afternoons in the capital's many shopping centres. Since they were first secretly...

More than seven million refugees displaced in 2012 "The UN says 7.6 million people became refugees in 2012, with the total number now higher than at any time since 1994… The report say 55% of all refugees come from five countries: Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan and Syria. It also found that developing...

The Nation Reviewed

Current Issue

Clive Palmer and his Palmer United Party

By John Birmingham

Galilee has turned into an even bigger headache for Palmer than he has proven himself to be for politicians from Treasurer Wayne Swan to Queensland Premier Campbell Newman. Palmer is generous to a fault when you please him. He has dropped goody bags of free holidays and luxury cars on his employees. Six hundred and more hungry urchins and their families did he host to lunch this Christmas past. But Palmer’s...

Current Issue

Silk Road and the Fast-changing World of Online Drug Shopping

By Alex McClintock

After an increasingly anxious wait, Will hears the postman drop the A4-sized parcel, bound in butcher’s paper, in the mailbox of his inner-Sydney terrace house. His name and address are handwritten in thick black texta. Will carries the parcel to his bedroom, closes the...

Current Issue

Villawood’s bad neighbour problem

By Fiona Harari

Current Issue

The Eucalypt Invasion of Portugal

By Michaela McGuire

Popular for ornamental and medicinal reasons, eucalypts were introduced to Europe in the late 18th century by British and French botanists, including Sir Joseph Banks. By the 19th century there was almost no native woodland left in Portugal and, in 1866, some 35,000 eucalypts...

Essays

Current Issue

After Gatsby

Joel Edgerton’s Flirtation with Fame

By Luke Davies

We’re sitting at the kitchen table in Edgerton’s temporary digs, a log home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I’ve ostensibly come to observe him for a couple of days on the set of the Gavin O’Connor–directed western Jane Got a Gun, in which Edgerton is the leading man, opposite Natalie Portman. By any measure, the actor has made some progress in the two decades since...

Current Issue

Eve Teasing in India

By Bem Le Hunte

We stepped into the temple and quietened as we passed in front of a depiction of Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, tearing open his chest to reveal Ram and Sita inside: Ram and Sita, eternal consorts, the perfect balance of male and female cosmic forces. Jan’s smile was...

May 2013

Vox

Death in Amsterdam

By Margaretta Pos

One spring day in Hobart, I was having dinner with my son and Goshwin, my Dutch half-brother, who was visiting us, when the telephone rang. My son answered it. “Grandpa!” he exclaimed, as he always did whenever my father called. Yes, we were together, and he passed...

Current Issue

The Candidate

How Julian Assange’s Senate Bid Will Change Australian Politics

By Guy Rundle

The WikiLeaks Party has the distinction of being the first Australian party to have a leader not merely in exile, but in asylum. Campaigning by video link, Skype and encrypted email, Julian Assange hopes to win a seat in the Senate from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he...

Current Issue

Northern Exposure

What Indonesia’s Rise Means for Australia

By Hugh White

Indonesia was barely a blip on Australia’s strategic radar until the Pacific War, when Japan seized it from the Dutch and attacked Australia from bases there. Indonesia won independence after the war and, for the first time, Australia had a neighbour big enough and close...

Video

The Higgs Boson and the Future of Physics. Sean Carroll