Reflections on weddings after the legislation of marriage equality – an extract

To help combat unwelcome ideas about sex, women, human rights and especially race

The author stays out of the picture, and other personal rules of writing

The rise of Bill Shorten in Victoria’s faction wars

David Malouf’s extraordinary musings on life and art

Helen Garner’s ‘This House of Grief’

The brief life and quiet death of Tony Abbott’s love of liberty

A predictable and selective rehash of old material. G.K. Chesterton said: “A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.” Marr has no idea what motivates a believing Christian. - …

The presbytery of St Alipius is a redbrick gothic bungalow built when gold money was still washing through Ballarat. It sits in a Catholic compound of brick and granite schools and convents where the road from Melbourne reaches town. White crosses stand …

The Making of Tony Abbott

I am not asking the Australian people to take me on trust but on the record of a lifetime and an instinct to serve ingrained long before I became opposition leader: as a student president, trainee priest, Rhodes Scholar, surf life-saver and volunteer …

David McKnight’s 'Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Power'

Frank Moorhouse’s ‘Cold Light’

Anna Funder’s “All That I Am”

Sydney’s brand new archbishop wanted money – lots and lots of money – to persuade 400,000 souls in the nation’s most sinful city “to serve Christ in love” within a decade. By chance – or malign good fortune, perhaps – Peter Jensen’s …