Laura Poitras’ ‘Risk’ sidesteps the biggest question about Julian Assange
Politics gets personal
When Julian Assange launched a campaign against Alex Gibney’s hostile documentary on WikiLeaks, We Steal Secrets (2013), he argued that Laura Poitras – another documentary...
Roger Franklin’s comments on bombing the ABC Ultimo studio reflect a much deeper problem
The standards that ‘Quadrant’ seeks to uphold
On the morning following the Islamic State–inspired terror bombing in Manchester, and with the recent episode of Q&A fresh in his mind, Roger Franklin, the online editor...
Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey will jeopardise any future investigation
Once upon a time in America
It is difficult to believe but the following story is true.
On Tuesday, May 9, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, fired the director of the FBI, James Comey, who...
The asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru cannot wait for a medium-term solution
An urgently needed compromise
In recent weeks I have been involved in an extended argument on the Monthly’s website over the fate of the refugees on Nauru and Manus Island whose lives all participants in the...
Robert Manne responds to Klaus Neumann
Seeking a workable solution for asylum seekers
I am grateful to Klaus Neumann for his willingness to respond to the arguments that Frank Brennan, Tim Costello, John Menadue and I have mounted over the past nine months. Apart...
An open letter to the supporters and opponents of the Nauru and Manus Island asylum seekers
It’s time to rethink asylum-seeker policy
Not a day passes when, like many hundreds of thousands of Australians, maybe even more, I do not think about the unspeakable suffering our country is inflicting on 2500* innocent...
The Muscovian Candidate?
In the past there have frequently been discussions on the left about what was called a crisis of legitimacy within the countries of democratic capitalism. Most of these...
How precisely is this kind of permanent terror to be explained?
Dabiq and the Islamic State massacres
“First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin” – Leonard Cohen
Fearsome terror attacks led or inspired by the Islamic State group have now become an occurrence almost every...
Despite Canberra group-think, there is no longer any plausible reason to keep asylum seekers in detention
Yes, Virginia, there is a solution to Australia’s asylum-seeker problem
A year or so ago I met with a very senior official in the Turnbull government’s Border Force. We discussed the fact that the lives of 32,000 people who had sought asylum after...
The Australian’s campaign against Gillian Triggs is another in a long line of crude culture-war offensives
The national broadside
For the past three weeks, I’ve been observing the world from a hospital bed. One of my pastimes has been to read the Australian carefully each day, something I haven’t done since...
The climate-science champion of 2010 has morphed into the fossil-fuel supporter of 2016
Malcolm Turnbull: A brief lament
There are two kinds of political people in today’s world: a minority who believe that climate change is the most consequential problem humans now face or have ever faced, and a...
The government’s new legislation is an opportunity for Labor to end 15 years of bipartisan cruelty to asylum seekers
It’s time
It is likely that the Turnbull government will soon introduce new asylum seeker legislation into parliament. It appears to have two parts. The first part will aim to prevent any...
The mind of the Islamic State
Two years ago, the armies of the group that would soon call itself the Islamic State, a group that already controlled large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, entered Mosul,...
Thornton McCamish’s ‘Our Man Elsewhere: In search of Alan Moorehead’ is an antidote to forgetfulness
Born in Australia
Thornton McCamish – I'll call him Thornton from now on, even though I know him only through Our Man Elsewhere – has written a truly wonderful book about the writer...
Our asylum-seeker system has been taken over by a rigid, irrational mindset
How has it come to this?
Now that the High Court has decided that the offshore detention of asylum seekers is lawful, reports suggest that the Turnbull Government is considering returning 234 asylum...
Why have we failed to address climate change?
Diabolical
Unless by some miracle almost every climate scientist is wrong, future generations will look upon ours with puzzlement and anger – as the people who might have prevented the...
Deterrents and resettlement may be the only way to break the asylum-seeker gridlock
Slow death
For many years Australia’s asylum-seeker debate, or, more exactly, the debate over those asylum seekers who reach our shores by boat, has been in gridlock. The besetting sin of...
The papal encyclical is the first work that has risen to the full challenge of climate change
Laudato Si’: A political reading
When I was young the intellectual milieu was shaped by the need to come to terms with the unprecedented crimes and the general moral collapse that had taken place on European soil...
