In "British Rules", Gideon Haigh looks at why Australia is still more British than American. Examining Anglo-Australian relations through the lens of the countries' most famous sporting rivalry, the Ashes, he reflects on the role of cricket in creating and maintaining our national character, and makes an elegant case for the game's importance in understanding Australia's history.

In "Who Let the Dogs Out?", a powerful coda to her award-winning essay "The Tall Man", Chloe Hooper visits Palm Island in the aftermath of the coronial inquest into Cameron Doomadgee's death in custody. She finds a community buoyed by the results of the inquest and by the effects of the Queensland government's alcohol-management plan, yet still grieving over the suicide of Eric Doomadgee, Cameron's only child.

In "Time's Arrow", Peter Craven talks to celebrated expat art critic Robert Hughes. In an exclusive interview following the publication of the first volume of his memoirs, Hughes reflects on his youth and the people who influenced him, the significance of his family, and the difficult relationship he has with Australia.

And in "Howard's Brutopia", Kevin Rudd, the ALP's shadow minister for foreign affairs, follows up his essay "Faith in Politics" with a critique of the divide between the conservative tradition - Menzies, Fraser, Peacock - and the neo-liberalism of the Howard government, which, following Thatcher and Reagan, sets unrestrained free-market economics above social responsibility.

In the Monthly Comment, Robert Manne argues that the new media laws constitute nothing less than an attack on Australia's democracy, one compounded by the domination of the media by News Corporation and the government's sustained attack on the ABC. And in "For the Record", Malcolm Knox explores a veritable Library of Babel: the federal parliament's Hansard, a bafflingly large digital repository documenting our most famous and infamous political moments.

There's also Mungo MacCallum on the real "conga line of suckholes": those political leaders who, down the decades, have felt compelled to make a pilgrimage to the manors of the media moguls, desperate for approval. Plus, in "Park Life", Sarah Kanowski celebrates the cheerful civility and community spirit of the park, which, she says, is Australia's substitute for the great town squares of European culture.

In "Heroes (Just for One Day)", Robert Forster enjoys the "quick-shot run-through" of hits big and small from the participants in The Countdown Spectacular, finding not just the obvious greats but also some surprises, not least that Leo Sayer is actually good. And in "An Uncommon Diplomacy", Ramachandra Guha brings a forgotten gem to the fore: the finest book on Jawaharlal Nehru, Australian Walter Crocker's long-out-of-print Nehru: A Contemporary's Estimate.

There's also Drusilla Modjeska on Lloyd Jones's new novel, Mister Pip, which brings Great Expectations to the Bougainville of the early '90s, during the brutal civil war. Plus, Adrian Martin resists the mystery-thriller trappings of the new film from Australian director Ann Turner, Irresistible, and Chris Middendorp is charmed by the fourth instalment of Clive James's Unreliable Memoirs.