By this author
2020 hindsight
nation_reviewed
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 …
Changing of the guard
Politics
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 …
Sorry business
Politics
The road to the apology
New Teeth for Aunty
essay
Reinvigorating the national broadcaster
Why we need a change of government
Politics
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 …
A desert inside
essay
Saul Friedländer’s ‘The Years of Extermination’
Comment
Politics
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 …
Pearson’s gamble, Stanner’s dream
Politics
The past and future of remote Australia
The lost enchanted world
arts
Sven Lindqvist’s ‘Terra Nullius’ & Louis Nowra’s ‘Bad Dreaming’
Corrosion of character
Politics
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 …
A Turkish tale
Politics
Gallipoli and the Armenian genocide
Media reform
nation_reviewed
Last month, the federal parliament passed the most important media laws in 20 years. The laws allow newspaper owners to move into free-to-air television; they allow television owners to purchase a newspaper chain. Before their passage, controversy arose …
Yes, Virginia, there is a clash of civilisations
essay
Islamism, Islamophobia and Australia
