The Nation Reviewed

Current Issue Taxes, death and superannuation

It’s only super till you die

By Judith Brett

Taxing has never been easy. It has, however, become harder in Western countries. The “victory” of neo-liberalism, as declared by Rupert Murdoch in his speech to the Institute of Public Affairs last month, has left us with the expectation, if not the reality, of smaller government. Although many of us still share the view of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jnr that taxation is the price we

Current Issue The nominal rewards of football

Ayce names in the AFL

By Peter Cronin

AFL footballers’ names in 2013 suitable for jockeys and unsuccessful petty criminals Jimmy Bartel, Billie Smedts (first prize), Jack Viney, Lenny Hayes, Eddie Betts, Sam Siggins Names suitable for an aide-de-camp, equerry, viceroy or other diplomatic posting Henry Slattery, Will Hoskin-Elliott, James Polkinghorne, George Horlin-Smith (first prize), Piers Flanagan

Current Issue A bid to boost foreign aid

On the road to end poverty

By Andrew McMillen

On a Tuesday morning in March, 80-odd young people wearing red T-shirts hopped off two buses in Lismore, in northern New South Wales, and began canvassing shoppers and retailers in the central business district. Their quest, as declared on their chests, was to help end extreme poverty. Not in Lismore per se, but globally, by petitioning the federal government to bump up its foreign aid spending. The team was one of many converging on

Current Issue Helping farmers rebuild with BlazeAid

Blazing fences after bushfire

By Lisa Clausen

An eagle hangs on a hot breeze above the group as they puff up and down the slope, unloading tools and heavy coils of wire. Bright-orange rosehips hang like jewels on scraggly bushes. Across the valley flocks of cockatoos are white against the burnt flanks of the mountains, their screeching a chorus for the sound of crowbars striking hard earth. In mid Ja

Shaddap you Facebook

Child photography vs pornography

By Joe Dolce

One day last December, there was a hard knock on the door. Through the bedroom window I saw two men, dressed in shirts and ties, and a woman. On the doorstep, one man introduced himself as a senior police detective. He politely handed me a search warrant. I lo

Veterans return to Vietnam

At the Vung Tau RSL

By Mark Dapin

As soon as World War Two ended, diggers returned to the battlefields and POW camps to retrieve makeshift crosses and small memorials, lost keepsakes and buried memories. But after the fall of Saigon, in 1975, it was impossible for an Australian veteran to go b

Rare meat

Policing Cambodia’s wildlife trade

By Daniel Otis

Along the narrow highway linking Phnom Penh to the Gulf of Thailand, military police tear through a corrugated iron and plank shack. When the gendarmes – members of Cambodia’s Wildlife Rapid Rescue team – were here four months earlier, they found monit

Brides revisited

Margaret Atwood comes to Perth

By Chloe Hooper

“Oh, boy, that’s a ghostly-looking thing!” Margaret Atwood, the grand dame of Canadian letters, is impressed by an antique lace veil suspended alone in a glass exhibit case. A slight woman with high, translucent cheekbones and very pale bl

Eyewitness to the whale wars

At Sea with the Whale Pirates

By Sam Vincent

Captain Siddharth Chakravarty, the Indian skipper of Sea Shepherd’s flagship Steve Irwin, hasn’t moved in two hours. “Somebody hand me a bottle to pee in!” he demands. Sneakered and irreverent, he stands with one hand on the Steve’s steerin

Lest we forget

Abbott steps up on reconciliation

By Robert Manne

On 13 February a short speech of perhaps genuine historical significance was delivered in federal parliament. Apart from Eureka Street’s Father Frank Brennan, no one seemed to notice. The occasion was the second reading of the Aboriginal and Torres Strai

Hollow the leader

The sport of killing leaders

By Waleed Aly

There’s an old Jewish prophecy that, as end times approach, history will speed up. Surveying the Australian political landscape, it seems Armageddon must be nigh. Events move in fast forward. The chaotic frenzy of our age, in which leaders are culled the

Nate Silver’s poker face

Quicksilver

By Michaela McGuire

Nate Silver embodies a strange mix of stock characters: he’s the magician people hope to catch out crossed with the underdog for whom everyone cheers. The political forecaster, world-class poker player, famed baseball statistician and bestselling author reached intern

Aboriginal violence and its interpreters

Thinking Backwards

By John van Tiggelen

On a warm Tuesday night last month, upstairs in the Sydney Room of the City Tattersalls Club, Gary Johns, once Paul Keating’s special minister of state but these days better cast as a John Howard man, announced the arrival of “the integrationist school of thought”. The occasion was the launch of a book, Liberating Aboriginal People from Violence, by St

Why I Resigned

Goodbye to All That

By Nicola Roxon

When we won government in 2007, I became the first female senior cabinet minister to have a very young child – Rebecca was two. Luckily, I’ve always loved being organised. Every extra hour worked during the week in Canberra meant more Sunday time with my family in Melbourne. Every early draft of a speech or media release, every declined dinner invitation, reduced the last-minute rush t

Julia Gillard and the women in cabinet

Critical Mass

By Anna Goldsworthy

It is the first sitting week in parliament. Somewhere up north, a man draws lewd cartoons of the prime minister. It is compulsive, self-pleasuring behaviour. He simply cannot stop himself. Closer to home, a deposed leader accepts a role on breakfast television

Australia’s policy drought

A taxing year

By Judith Brett

There are many things to dread about the forthcoming election year: set-piece speeches from both sides, full of motherhood aspirations and gangland rhetoric; the ABC’s Tony Jones hectoring ministers and shadow ministers alike; the slow playing out of sleaze

A travelling library in India

Mind the gap

By Nic Low

It’s a hot night at Mumbai’s Victoria Terminus. Outside the rail station, five writers, an industrial designer and three organisers are haggling with a group of sinewy porters. Strewn about, as if dropped from a great height, are two dozen assorted pieces of luggage

Antarctic cruise II

By Jo Lennan

On a recent morning in Malvern, Adelaide, Tim Jarvis was packing for a summer trip. From the gear spread on his bed, he picked up a pair of mittens made from beaver pelt and tied with a lamp-wick lanyard. “Wonderful, aren’t they?” Jarvis said as he donned the mitts. “They look just like beavers. There are lots of jokes, obviously.” The rugged 46-year-old slipped the lanyard over his head