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The Monthly | Australian politics, society & culture

DAILY OPINION

Friday, December 1, 2023

The empty centre

From border security to tax, the hollow centrism of the two-party system is destructive to the national interest


Essays  Right arrow

Social Justice

How to change a bad law

The campaign to repair the single parenting payment was a model of how research and advocacy can push government to face the cruel effects of a policy and change course

How to change a bad law
Dog day afternoon

Society

Dog day afternoon

Animal welfare concerns have long plagued the greyhound racing industry, but in Victoria a campaign from covert investigators now has a parliamentarian leading the fight

Park of the covenant

Environment

Park of the covenant

With the Ranger Uranium Mine now closed, Kakadu’s traditional owners want the government to make good on the original promise of a national park in their care

Writing in nature

Books

Writing in nature

The laureate of the Western Australian surf break sees a task ahead for our essayists, our novelists and our poets alike in the fight against climate catastrophe

Who is Taiwanese?

Race and ethnicity

Who is Taiwanese?

Taiwan’s minority indigenous peoples are being used to refute mainland China’s claims on the island – but what does that mean for their recognition, land rights and identity?

Ash’s to Ash’s

Sport

Ash’s to Ash’s

From stepping away from tennis as a youth before returning to dominate Wimbledon and the Australian Open, to retiring as world No. 1 at the age of 25, Ash Barty has always owned her career path


Online Latest  Right arrow

Installation view of the Kandinsky exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, showing three framed abstract paintings hanging on a wall

Art

Kandinsky at AGNSW

The exhibition of the Russian painter’s work at the Art Gallery of NSW provides a fascinating view of 20th-century art’s leap from representation to abstraction

Image of Margret RoadKnight playing guitar and singing.

Music

The unsung career of Margret RoadKnight

Little-known outside the Melbourne folk scene for decades, singer Margret RoadKnight’s 60 years of music-making is celebrated in a new compilation

A woman rides her bike past the Australian flag, the Indigenous flag and the flag of the Torres Strait Islands, Canberra, October 13, 2023. Image © Lukas Coch / AAP Images

Beyond the Voice referendum

Looking towards the next 65,000 years

View of the High Court of Australia. Image © Mick Tsikas / AAP Images

Law and order

Guarding the power of the court in our democracy

The hidden forces agitating at highest levels to undermine judicial independence

The Nation Reviewed  Right arrow

Image of Treasurer Jim Chalmers standing at lectern at Parliament House, October 25, 2023, taken from side stage

Federal politics

What kind of year has it been?

Was 2023 – beyond the referendum calamity – a year of government timidity or a demonstration of its ability to keep the national conversation on course?

Illustration by Jeff Fisher

Indigenous rights

Truth after the Voice

The lost opportunity of the Voice referendum revealed Australians’ poor understanding of the Constitution, and the level of racism in the community

Illustration by Jeff Fisher

Science and technology

Mars attracts

Reviving the Viking mission’s experiments may yet find life as we know it on Mars, but the best outcome would be something truly alien

Illustration by Jeff Fisher

Film

Way out Southwest

The local debut of the SXSW film, TV, music and tech fair is a sign the road to Hollywood now runs in both directions

Vox  Right arrow

The Vox Owl

An open swimmer

How a lockdown whim turned into a discovery of the purifying power of sea swimming

Arts & Letters  Right arrow

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Anmatyerr people, not titled [detail], 1981

Art

A clear view: Emily Kam Kngwarray at the NGA

A major exhibition of the late Anmatyerr desert painter is welcome, but the influence of the rapacious art market on Aboriginal art is inescapable

Image of Agnieszka Pilat with robot dog, in front of painted wall

Art

The rule of threes: NGV Triennial

The sprawling show’s exploration of technologies and pressing politics takes in artificial intelligence and deep-fake photojournalism

Black and white close-up photo of Sigrid Nunez

Books

Animal form: Sigrid Nunez

The celebrated American author’s latest book, ‘The Vulnerables’, completes a loose trilogy of hybrid autobiographical and fictional novels

Emma Stone in ‘Poor Things’

Film

Modern Prometheans: ‘Poor Things’ and ‘All of Us Strangers’

Emma Stone seeks a moral conscience in Yorgos Lanthimos’s upended Frankenstein grotesque, while Andrew Haigh delivers a metaphysical coming-out story

Noted  Right arrow

Cover of ‘Question 7’

Books

Richard Flanagan's ‘Question 7’

A slim volume of big ideas that takes in H.G. Wells, chain reaction, Hiroshima and the author’s near-death experience on the Franklin River

Scene from ‘The Curse’

Television

‘The Curse’

Nathan Fielder directs and co-stars in an erratic comedy about the performative benevolence of a couple creating a social housing reality TV show

Life sentences Right arrow

Flowers being watered

‘That is inappropriate’

The author is challenged on the privilege of the progressive, egalitarian ideals of her ‘multicultural’ generation

Podcasts  Right arrow

7am

Is it finally time to change immigration detention?

Columnist for The Saturday Paper Paul Bongiorno on calls for more accountability in Australia’s hardline immigration regime.

HOST Ange McCormack
GUEST Paul Bongiorno

Read This

Why Michelle de Kretser Wants You to Read Shirley Hazzard

Michael speaks with Michelle and Shirley Hazzard's biographer Brigitta Olubas about one of Australia's most underrated and underread authors.

HOST Michael Williams
GUEST Michelle de Kretser, Brigitta Olubas

7am

The moment boomers cooked the housing market

Finance journalist and author of the latest Quarterly Essay, ‘The Great Divide on Australia’s housing mess and how to fix it’, Alan Kohler.

HOST Ange McCormack
GUEST Alan Kohler