By this author
Editor’s Note August 2015
blog
The asylum-seeker issue reared its head again this week, following the ALP’s policy reversal on turnbacks and revelations that Australia returned a boatload of Vietnamese asylum seekers to the place from which they fled. Meanwhile, up to a million Rohingya …
Editor’s Note June 2015
blog
The Greens have changed leaders and “the Tasmanian era is over”, as Amanda Lohrey writes. The transition from Christine Milne to Richard Di Natale was a smooth one, and for all the criticism she faced during her time as leader, Milne left the party …
Editor’s Note July 2015
blog
Was anyone seriously suggesting that we didn’t already have sufficient laws to deal with terrorism? No. The citizenship issue is about national identity, and the right to dictate to whom it, and the law, applies. If Tony Abbott is choosing to exclude …
Best laid plans
Politics
The 2015 budget has come and gone, but where is Joe Hockey's National Conversation?
Champagne government
Today
George Brandis’ arts money grab will not win him many friends
The blindingly obvious
Today
Sometimes you don’t need a Senate inquiry to work out what’s going on
Lady problems
Today
The government’s cuts to parental leave and aggressive rhetoric risk alienating half the population
Kicking the can down the road
Today
Last night’s budget does little but put problems off for another year
Editor’s Note May 2015
blog
When the Monthly’s publisher, Morry Schwartz, launched the magazine in 2005, he insisted that its success would rest on the quality of its writing. The Monthly isn’t pitted against other politics and current affairs magazines any …
Editor’s Note April 2015
blog
When Julie Bishop rolled her eyes while seated behind Treasurer Joe Hockey in parliament last Monday, she was expressing several things at once. The first was that she was not at all impressed by the Expenditure Review Committee, which Hockey slyly mentioned …
A lawless hellhole
Politics
The Moss review into allegations of the sexual abuse of asylum seekers on Nauru was released, in redacted form, within hours of the announcement of the death of former prime minister Malcolm Fraser. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton bridled at the insinuation …
Editor’s Note March 2015
blog
While the nation remains captivated by the inordinate dysfunction of the Coalition, it is perhaps unsurprising that Labor has avoided scrutiny. An attacking Opposition is barely necessary at times like this: the government is doing a perfectly good job …
Editor’s Note February 2015
blog
The nation’s politicians are back at work, but they don’t look very refreshed. Tony Abbott seems to have left his brain on holiday, his government looks mired in the same policy disaster zones as last year, and the rest of the parliament appears in …
