Most of us think of Aussie coalmining as a local issue, and why not? Coal exports have doubled since 1992 and are set to do so again by 2020. The consequent scars across the Hunter Valley and central Queensland are visible from space, as anyone with Google Earth can see....
The Monthly Essays
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Guy Pearse
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Environment | September 2010 | The Monthly Essays
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Paul Barry
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Business | September 2010 | The Monthly Essays
In the four years BBL was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), Phil Green and his team of tyros harvested more than $2 billion in fees from the bank’s satellite funds and other operations, and paid themselves almost $1.2 billion in bonuses. Green, the chief...
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Emily Maguire | September 2010 | Society & Culture | The Monthly Essays“Shame!” someone shouts. Jeffreys pauses and looks up towards the back of the auditorium as another voice calls out, “Absolutely!” It’s unclear whether the interjections are aimed at Jeffreys or those she is speaking about. She continues: “Anti-sex work feminists have chosen...
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Nicolas Rothwell | September 2010 | Society & Culture | The Monthly EssaysStalker, which was made under the Soviet Union’s studio system in 1979 with limited resources, tells a science fiction tale in stylised fashion. The stalker of the title is a professional guide, who leads two pilgrims into a forbidden “Zone” where the laws of nature...
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Mark Aarons
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August 2010 | Politics | The Monthly Essays
Almost a quarter of a century separates the coup against Hawke from that of ‘Richo’s’ successor, NSW Right faction leader Mark Arbib. But the circumstances and substance of these two political dramas were very different, although Richo did play a small role in Rudd’s demise,...
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David Malouf | August 2010 | Politics | Society & Culture | The Monthly EssaysIt had of course, in history and in the history books, and we had a constitution to prove it, but not in the many places where Australians actually live: in Cunnamulla or Queenstown or Port Hedland, and not in those even more numerous places, the hearts of those of us who,...
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Paul Barry
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August 2010 | Business | Environment | The Monthly Essays
Eighty metres below our vantage point is a flat oblong the size of 15 footy fields. Deep red in colour – because the vegetation has been stripped away – it is speckled with giant yellow earthmovers that look like beetles and a couple of hundred tiny figures dressed in bright...
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Margaret Simons
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August 2010 | Society & Culture | The Monthly Essays
Pluck an episode from the midstream of human life and it can be hard to glean meaning. Sometimes there is just senselessness and mess. If there is a theme to the events that have interrupted these women’s lives, however, it is surely care, and its opposite, carelessness. The...
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Ken Inglis | August 2010 | Foreign Affairs | Politics | The Monthly EssaysAfter eight weeks at sea, the internees were disembarked: some in Melbourne, en route to a camp in Tatura, in northern Victoria, but most in Sydney, where they were then taken on a 19-hour train journey to the town of Hay and marched into two camps. There the internees...
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Guy Pearse
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July 2010 | Politics | The Monthly Essays
Having moved so far to the Right, both major parties are perceived by many to have lost touch with their political roots. On one side, the Liberal Party is unrecognisable to those who once led it. Doyens of the party’s right-wing in their day, Malcolm Fraser and John Hewson...
