John Birmingham

Labor, the Greens and GetUp are preparing for battle in the Queensland electorate of Dickson

Clive Palmer and his Palmer United Party

The humiliating retreat from the southern Iraqi city of Basra, into cantonment at the airport, is widely regarded as the modern nadir of the British military. On 2 September 2007, a bugle sounded ‘Advance’ to signal the withdrawal, and a convoy carrying …

It was Winston Churchill who famously refused to cut funding to the arts to pay for more Spitfires and destroyers during the grimmest days of World War II, demanding of his art-hating, penny-pinching advisers in Treasury, “Then what are we fighting …

Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks

Tasmania is another country, sometimes another world. To move beyond the edge of settlement, which largely peters out a short drive from the fairytale towns of Hobart and Launceston, is to pass into an antipodean Middle Earth. As quickly becomes clear …

Cities have memories that outlive those who first held them. London will always recall the Blitz, Rome the glories of empire. Some memories are, of course, lost. Time, war, civilisational collapse all take their toll. But how do you explain a city that …

It might seem strange and contrary, but among the many surprising truths in Sebastian Junger’s brilliant evocation of 15 months, on and off, spent at the front in Afghanistan is the presence of love at the heart of war. The strong bond that can develop …

New South Wales

The National Party

A short history of the media future

Australia and the Indian Ocean

The dimpled orange, bursting with sweetness, that you cut for your breakfast this morning had been dying from the moment it was plucked from its twig. Human hands might have grabbed it from the branch, or perhaps a giant mechanical harvester shook the …

Out of work in a land of plenty

The same dirty old energy