Strictly Speaking

By Alan Saunders

“I’m not going to bore you with a lot of oratory, because I’m not an orator,” Sir Les Patterson once remarked. “I’m an Australian politician.” He was unfair to his breed and to his country as well. Australia’s reputation for tongue-tied inarticulacy or, at best, strong silence, still much cherished in the Old Dart, is ill-founded; our politicians attain considerable eloquence.

Damien Wright & His Table

The Pursuit of Usable Beauty

By Gideon Haigh

The paradox of art and creative writing

Lies that Tell the Truth

By Simon Leys

Justice Menhennitt & Australia’s Roe v Wade

The Principle of Necessity

By Gideon Haigh

Yet no decision has ramified so powerfully as one just 14 months after Ryan's execution, in a case that occasioned little publicity, and on the crucial day none at all. On 26 May 1969, the front page of the Age proposed as the most pressing question for contemporary women ‘Are Ladies in Trousers Respectable?' The question resolved that same day by Justice

Comment

By Gideon Haigh

Alan Woods and his amazing computer. A nags-to-riches-story

Mr. Huge

By Tony Wilson

I shook down a plastic pig – fat, pink, traditional – while Dad explained once again about Tommy and Phar Lap and how Phar Lap had died in Tommy’s arms and how some people thought it might have been the Americans. Forty-five years later Tommy Woodcock, s

'Loner: Inside a Labor Tragedy' by Bernard Lagan

Strictly Speaking