In “Cruising”, Malcolm Knox takes a weekend P&O cruise, exploring the culture of cruiseworld and tracing the last hours of Dianne Brimble. Knox celebrates the love of life, the hedonism and good-natured fun that mass-market cruising offers; at the same time, he is horrified by the degrading actions of the “eight men of interest” involved in the Brimble case – and by the pontificating the case engendered.

In “I Accuse!”, Julian Burnside looks at the hundred-year-old case of Alfred Dreyfus, the French Army officer who was wrongly accused and convicted of treason. It could happen here, Burnside argues, as Australia’s “anti-terror” legislation takes a similarly casual approach to the rights of all individuals.

In “There’s Something About Mary”, John Harms visits the Mary Valley, the site of the Queensland Labor government’s proposed new dam that will supposedly ease the water shortage in Brisbane. Harms finds a community that is bitterly upset by what it sees as a cynical ploy for votes, and highly organised to fight against it.

In The Nation Reviewed, David Corlett looks at the Howard government’s attitude towards those asylum seekers returned to countries where they face grave danger. There’s also Kate Holden on the unusual art of fencing, Mungo MacCallum on Labor’s dying Tree of Knowledge, Ashley Hay on the first table made from Australian wood, and Delia Falconer on roadkill in Tasmania.