In this month’s cover essay, ‘A Dark Victory’, Robert Manne analyses how the push for urgent global action on human-induced climate change was defeated. Manne focuses on the United States, where nothing has been done nor, in all probability, will …

Noel Pearson and the Welfare Reform Trial

When lining up the photo shoot in mid May for the Bill Shorten profile, I put the question whether anything was likely to happen soon, leadership-wise. Don’t worry, the press secretary said. Nothing was going to happen before June. Sure, but the story …

Bill Shorten

When the federal Treasurer wrote an essay in the Monthly's March issue on the threat to Australia's egalitarian ethos posed by vested interests, the Australian interpreted it as the opening shot in a "class war". It marked an interesting …

It’s budget time, that onset of chill when the leaves turn golden, the currawongs descend from the mountains and the billionaires swing into activism. Two years ago, vested mining interests set about scuttling a tax on their super profits, going at …

In a typically clear-eyed blog post for the Monthly’s website, Robert Manne spells out what needs to be spelt out: Tony Abbott will be Australia’s next elected Prime Minister. There is nothing quite to describe the rictus that this realisation …

In May 2010 the country's treasurer, Wayne Swan, proposed a tax on mining super profits that, according to Treasury estimates, would have netted Australian taxpayers $15 billion per year. It was a tax that should have made eminent sense to Australians …

The Greens have withstood a number of disruptive forces, but the one that continues to build is from within. In this issue, Sally Neighbour exposes how the radicalism of the NSW branch has never ceased scratching away at the national party's veneer …

Ben Laycock buried his father on Melbourne Cup Day. The 300-odd mourners, a rather arty lot, were assured Peter Laycock wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. He had lived not by the Roman calendar but by the Melbourne Cup calendar. The affliction may …

In the populated spots of the North, where the surrounding savannah woodlands burn off as readily and regularly and safely as sugar cane, cyclones are the worry. You prepare for the season as well as the event. Cyclones arrive with notice, a name and …

When Tony Gibbins comes knocking, you know you’ve messed up. Gibbins is the Unsightly Properties Officer with the Loddon Shire Council. It says so on his name badge. Most shires prefer a prettier job title, such as Beautification Officer or Environmental …

One crisp spring evening, just on dark, an older man and a middle-aged woman met on a lonely bush track to inspect a patch of scrub by torchlight. They progressed purposefully, quietly and mostly on their knees. Their interest was restricted to a sparse …