Racism

Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard in Retirement

Love thy Leader

By George Megalogenis

A curious feature of our political debate is the way it compels former prime ministers to lose their dignity in the endless feedback loop of the legacy war. The Americans, despite their more openly hostile political culture, treat their ex-leaders with sufficient deference to absolve them of the need for after-the-fact combat. When a memoir is written by a Bush, a Clinton or a Carter, no othe

A Correspondence with Clive James

Clean As You Go

By Paola Totaro

Unfortunately my health is indecent at the moment. I’m in Addenbrooke’s being seen to but I should be back in London next week and I’ll contact you from there. You can take it for granted, though, that I think [the interview] is a good idea. All best, Clive (if I may) And so it began, an often elating, occasionally haunting, rollercoaster of a month in conversation w

Sex and the AFL

Out of Bounds

By Anna Krien

Proclaiming to be speaking on behalf of all women mistreated by footballers, she had in January attended St Kilda’s first training session and thrown flimsy placards on the ground reading “St Scandal”, “HU$H”, “AFL (All Fucking Lies)” and “RESPECT. AFL can you please spell that for me?” Female columnists wrote about her “chutzpah”, while older journalists reported wide-eyed on her ability to text, tweet, film and t

Who’s Afraid of Marcia Langton?

By Peter Robb

Marcia Langton has a longer and more various history than Pearson, and is a lot harder to place. She is 14 years older, a grandmother several times over, and she will turn 60 this year. She describes herself as “now an academic and writer” – which is not so much wrong as desperately inadequate. She has a PhD in anthropology from Macquarie University an

Sharia Law

The Way to the Watering Hole

By Sally Neighbour

Meanwhile, in a tiny office in Lakemba, south-western Sydney, with prayer beads hanging from the bookshelves and Islamic texts stacked to the ceiling, the Muslim minister and police chaplain Sheikh Khalil Chami quietly and methodically administers sharia law.

Court Order

By Anna Funder

My friend Sylvie-Anne loves everything about playing netball for the Pearlers, except that their uniform, a skirted bodysuit in white and purple, “only looks good if you’ve got Aboriginal legs”. When I went to watch her play, the game was fast – every

Cronulla Five Years On

Comment

By Malcolm Knox

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, watc

Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis' 'Machete' and Sean Byrne’s 'The Loved Ones'

Tools of the Trade

By Luke Davies

“Every time an illegal dances across our border,” says Senator John McLaughlin (Robert de Niro) at a rally, “it is an act of aggression against this sovereign state.” This Texan politician, the “Independent from Cocksucker County”, is running for r

The International Student Sector

Exodus

By Margaret Simons

Only a few years ago you could see them being preyed upon at major city railway stations. Touts would hand out leaflets urging them to approach certain migration agents. The noticeboards at TAFEs and universities featured the same gaudy promises: ring this number, email

Blanche’s Boy

By Anna Krien

“Until recently I’ve been pretty half-hearted about Welcome to Country,” Jack Charles confesses as he faces a room of social workers at a drug and alcohol rehab centre in Melbourne’s Fitzroy. A short Koori man with fuzzy white hair floating around his

Michael Haneke's 'The White Ribbon' and Jan Kounen's 'Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky'

As Long As It’s Black

By Luke Davies

Michael Haneke is an unforgiving film-maker who explores suspense in various permutations without ever quite creating a thriller. Yet despite being an intellectual, even conceptual, director, his films hold us gripped in the stomach. His theatre of operations

Keith Windschuttle

Comment

By Robert Manne

Windschuttle’s argument can be summarised like this. While there were many separations of Aboriginal children from their mothers, families and communities during the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the numbers have been wildly exaggerated by the

Richard Casey & Mahatma Gandhi

By Shane Maloney

On 1 December 1945, as British rule of India entered its tumultuous final phase, Mohandas Gandhi arrived in Calcutta. That night, he held the first of a series of meetings with the Raj’s local representative, Richard Casey, the governor of Bengal.Dick Casey was an Australian, a Cambridge-educated scion of the Queensland squattocracy. Treasurer in the conse

Racism, Australian-Style

Comment

By Waleed Aly

For all Kevin Rudd’s fantasies of international leadership, Australia rarely impinges on the consciousness of the wider world. We are neither sufficiently powerful nor sufficiently strife-torn to command global attention. Our prime minister can slip in and out of a foreign country – even a major trading partner such as Japan – without arousing more than a trickle of media coverage.There are

Faith Bandler & Paul Robeson

By Shane Maloney

Money was tight when Faith Bandler was growing up in Murwillumbah in the early 1930s, but her two older brothers managed to save a portion of their wages to buy records. Paul Robeson was a favourite and the family would all sing along. At 17, Faith sneaked awa

Revisiting 'Wake in Fright'

Home Truths

By Kate Jennings

The plot of Wake in Fright is as old as an outcropping west of Menindee. As old as Virgil:The way downward is easy from Avernus.Black Dis’s door stands open night and day.But to retrace your steps to heaven’s air,There is the trouble, there is the toil.&nb

Learning from America

Patriot Acts

By Waleed Aly

Hendi is the Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Despite the sober surrounds, he fizzes with energy and urgency. Certainly Hendi has his academic commitments - he teaches a class on inter-religious relations - but within him dwells the spirit of

'Jasper Jones: A Novel' by Craig Silvey

By Michael Williams

Publisher hyperbole can be off-putting - rarely more so than when it takes the overblown-comparison route. Wariness seems in order when Craig Silvey's publisher suggests that Jasper Jones, Silvey's second novel, is an Australian To Kill a Mockingbird. To 13-year-old Charlie Bucktin, the mining town of Corrigan is populated by barnacles: "hard shells that ... clench themselves shut and choose not t