In “No Closed Shops, No Leg-Ups, No Favours”, Nicholas Way looks at ACTU secretary Greg Combet, the architect of the campaign against the government’s radical industrial-relations reform. Will Combet’s master plan for a national system guaranteeing workers’ rights unite the unions and Labor, and convince voters?

In “Our Future Thinkers”, Drusilla Modjeska reflects on Australia’s next generation of public intellectuals: where they will come from, whether universities and the publishing industry will allow them the space and time they need to find a public voice, and whether there will actually be a thinking culture for them to join.

In “A True Hipster”, Robert Forster remembers Grant McLennan, his close friend and working partner of thirty years. Written exclusively for The Monthly, this is a keen insight into the artistic relationship behind legendary Brisbane band The Go-Betweens. It is also a eulogy: personal, affecting and often wryly amusing.

Plus, there’s a stunning twelve-page, full-colour photo essay on the troubles in East Timor by Walkley-Award-winning photojournalist David Dare Parker.

In The Nation Reviewed, Mungo MacCallum tackles the appointment of controversial historian Keith Windschuttle to the board of the ABC. There’s also Gideon Haigh on the Ashes ticketing fiasco, Ashley Hay on Hawaiian gods of war and rain, Shane Maloney on the Battle of Crete, and James Kirby on the ethics of ethical investment.

In Arts & Letters, Justin Clemens investigates the fifteenth Biennale of Sydney, Zones of Contact. There’s also Kerryn Goldsworthy on Philip Roth’s tale of old age, Everyman, Owen Richardson on the hi-jinks of Michael Winterbottom’s Tristram Shandy, and Fiona Hile on Peter Singer’s latest book.