The first boatpeople were South Vietnamese fleeing from the communist victory of 1975. Between 1976 and 1982, 2000 reached our shores. In order to stem the flow, the Fraser government accepted more than 50,000 Vietnamese from the archipelago of refugee camps in Thailand, the...
The Nation Reviewed
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Gay Bilson | September 2010 | Society & Culture | The Nation ReviewedFor dessert we ate hot puff pastry with a filling of grated apple cooked with butter, eggs and lemon. It pleased the guests, although one of them asked about the filling and seemed shocked that the ingredients were so rich, which is to say (she implied by her look), unhealthy...
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Gail Bell | September 2010 | Society & Culture | The Nation ReviewedMy mother-in-law is bracing herself for loss. As moving day approaches, appetite and sleep have deserted her. She is shrinking in size. Her voice is going. The family, rallying to help, creep back and forth like cat burglars wrapping keep-sakes that rightfully belong on the...
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Anna Funder | September 2010 | Society & Culture | The Nation ReviewedSpeaking before going onstage at the Sixth Annual New York Burlesque Festival in 2008, Angie Pontani tried to encapsulate her genre of performance. “Some people say it’s, like, how many ways can you think of to take your clothes off,” she admitted, patting cream on her face...
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Julia Baird | August 2010 | Politics | The Nation ReviewedWhen Julia Gillard was sworn in as Australia’s first female prime minister, the greatest plaudits and most excited commentary came from those who leapt upon her difference. She wasn’t just a woman, which, frankly, would have been enough: she was a left-leaning woman who had...
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Guy Pearse | August 2010 | Business | Environment | The Nation ReviewedNext time you fly, grab your in-flight magazine or newspaper, carefully rip out a few pages, jot a few words on each, smile knowingly to those seated next to you and stash them away. Upon arrival, use your phone to photograph some billboards in the terminal with the same care...
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Anna Funder | August 2010 | Foreign Affairs | The Nation ReviewedIt’s Sunday, 13 June 2010. My phone beeps an SMS: “Successful separation of space return capsule from mothership. Re-entry at 11.21 pm SA time. All looking good.”
It’s hard to capture the excitement of this – the excitement I know is in the heart of the sender, Lindsay...
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Kathy Marks | August 2010 | The Nation ReviewedIn a room at the back of the Wallan Hotel, a radio station pumping out Blondie’s ‘Atomic’ competes with a chorus of upbeat chirrups and bells, and the occasional clatter of coins. It’s a chilly weekday afternoon and a dozen or so men and women are hunched, statue still, over...
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Robyn Annear | August 2010 | Society & Culture | The Nation ReviewedAn obelisk, I always think, sounds as if it ought to be squat and round. I can’t help knowing otherwise, though, since I live in the shadow of one. Fifty metres from my back gate stands a soaring obelisk dedicated to memory of the doomed explorers Burke and Wills. Stuck on a...
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Robert Manne | July 2010 | Society & Culture | The Nation ReviewedThe story of the Rudd government falls rather neatly into three discrete chapters. The first involves the fulfilment of promises and the conjuring of dreams. In coming to office, the Rudd government ratified the Kyoto Protocol, an important but easy and essentially costless...
