During the past several weeks I have been reading, with a racing pulse, some recent literature on global warming while watching, with a sinking heart, the political skirmishes connected to the introduction of the Rudd government's emissions-trading scheme. …

A documentary collection

In November 2002 Keith Windschuttle published The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, volume one: Van Diemen's Land: 1803-1847. The publication was instantly greeted as a major cultural event almost entirely because of the accusation raised by …

Reassessing Wilfred Burchett

Tom Heenan, From Traveller to Traitor: The Life of Wilfred Burchett(Melbourne University Publishing, 2006)George Burchett & Nick Shimmin, eds, Memoirs of a Rebel Journalist: The Autobiography of Wilfred Burchett(University of New …

When my university offered to nominate me to attend the 2020 Summit, I accepted at once. Given that I had recently edited a book of ideas for a better Australia, it seemed churlish not to agree. But there was more to it than that. For the past decade …

The road to the apology

There are two distinct questions concerning the political events of late last year which it is important not to confuse. Why did the Howard government lose office? What does the Rudd victory mean? Attempting to find an answer to the first is the far …

Reinvigorating the national broadcaster

In the October issue of the Australian Literary Review, Australia’s most influential political journalist, Paul Kelly, published an article attacking Australia’s intellectuals. Kelly sought to turn Donald Horne on his head. Horne …

Saul Friedländer’s ‘The Years of Extermination’

A senior press-gallery journalist, one who frequently accompanies the prime minister on his foreign trips, once informed a gathering at which I was present that when John Howard visited Italy he declined an invitation to view the ceiling of the Sistine …

The past and future of remote Australia

Sven Lindqvist’s ‘Terra Nullius’ & Louis Nowra’s ‘Bad Dreaming’

In early March the ABC broadcast a superb episode of The West Wing, the series about the US presidency to which many politically minded Australians have become addicted. Nothing on television better captures the reality of contemporary democratic …