
Society
May 1, 2019Reconciliation, Kwaio style
The end of a century-old enmity between Australia and a Solomon Islands community
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Society
May 1, 2019Reconciliation, Kwaio style
The end of a century-old enmity between Australia and a Solomon Islands community
Society
October 1, 2016The doctor
Bertram Wainer inspired a young Tim Flannery to take on the establishment
Culture
November 1, 2015The power of place
The personal and the political in Tim Winton’s ‘Island Home’
Society
May 1, 2015Bay of action
To preserve Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne should learn from Sydney
arts
March 1, 2014Stories of extinction
Andrew Glikson’s ‘Evolution of the Atmosphere’, Elizabeth Kolbert’s ‘The Sixth Extinction’, Errol Fuller’s ‘Lost Animals’ and Clifford Frith’s ‘The Woodhen’
The Naked Critic
Memories of Robert Hughes
Politics
June 2, 2010Rudd’s ETS backflip
Kevin Rudd’s decision to defer his emissions trading bill until 2012 represents an abrupt and dramatic policy reversal, the significance of which, both nationally and globally, will only grow with time. It’s a funk in the true sense of the word: a …
Society
March 25, 2010‘Solar’ by Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan’s latest work can be read as a farce whose principal theme is Hamlet’s musing that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Indeed, when introducing the novel’s protagonist – the physicist Michael Beard, …
Politics
November 5, 2009Copenhagen and beyond: Conference bound
On the morning of 19 December, we will likely wake to read the results of the United Nations Climate-Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The meetings will be, according to Lord Stern, the most important to have occurred since World War II, and whatever …
Culture
June 1, 2009Goodbye to all that
James Lovelock’s ‘The Vanishing Face of Gaia’
Politics
May 6, 2009Carbon omissions
Over the past four years, there has been immeasurable progress on climate change - in public awareness, in media interest and in the political response to the problem. In early 2005, one of us was completing The Weather Makers; the other was …
Society
April 1, 2009The third wave
As I write, in mid March, a geriatric sandy-coloured rat wanders his enclosure at the Alice Springs Desert Park. Death can't be far off for the poor creature, which would hardly matter except that, as far as anybody knows, he's the last central rock-rat …