POLITICS

Author Clive Hamilton addresses the Thinking For Yourself Conference on humanity's failure to comprehend the extent of its impact on the environment. Presented by La Trobe University, March 2013

One such line was drawn in the infamous early summer of 2005, when Sydney seemed to fracture into racial violence. From Cronulla to Lakemba, two self-declared tribes took it upon themselves to settle their differences by violent means. An alarmed city, and country, watched and wondered what it meant.Cronulla, in the Sutherland Shire, the land of Puberty Blue

When I last checked, over 1 million readers had viewed this cryptic message. Among the more than 25,000 comments, the multiple effusions (“Love you!”) and myriad confusions (“Huh?”), was one that quoted from the first volume of Marx and Engels’ Collected Works: The government only listens to its own voice, and it knows it is only listening to its own voice, but it tricks itself into

Why is defence so toxic to its ministers? It should be an easy job to look good in – hobnobbing with the Australian Defence Force (ADF), managing weighty matters of national security and spending a lot of money. Of course the portfolio has an unparalleled capacity to shoot itself and its ministers in the foot, often over issues that are trivial in themselves. Smith will run into the usual defenc