Randa Abdel-Fattah has acquired considerable name-recognition since being invited to appear at the 2026 Adelaide Writers’ Week only to be disinvited for fear, it is said, that her session would be too controversial. AWW’s director resigned, soon followed by most of the Adelaide Festival board. Writers Week was cancelled. I
Until recently, pollsters in Australia haven’t had a lot to complain about. True, sampling isn’t what it used to be. When polling was conducted face to face, and sampling points drawn from the electoral roll gave almost every voter an equal chance of being interviewed — indeed, even after polling
When a determined and resourceful young man from Punjab — I’ll call him Hari — was driving me home recently, our conversation turned to his experiences and aspirations in Australia. He’d finished a Masters in IT in Melbourne and secured a two-year post-study work visa that was supposed to give
When I was growing up there was always a copy of our local morning paper — the Hobart Mercury — fresh every day in our house. I can’t remember if we had it delivered, or if someone fetched it early from the local shop, or if my father picked it
I have sat on reviewing this book for too long, partly because the recent dynamics of political populism have been in such flux (exemplified in Donald Trump’s America but hardly peculiar to it) and partly because the task was offered to me with an encouragement to reflect on the relevance
In March 2016 Terry Hughes pulled up at a lavish cane farm near Mossman, an hour north of Cairns on the northeastern tropical coastline of Australia. He stood on the lawn next to the small red helicopter, owned by a tour operator, that typically squeezed in four tourists along with
If the aim of the federal Liberal Party was to seal the breach that was allowing surveyed support to pour to One Nation, it would have installed Andrew Hastie as leader. His very conservative, anti-establishment, dare we say Trumpian positions, along with some innate qualities, would have been just the
Among schooling’s many running sores, teacher education — the subject of more than a hundred formal reviews since the late 1970s, and still not fixed — must hold some kind of record. I was there when it went wrong, and was among the many who have tried to do it
Donald Trump betrayed his panic about the 2026 midterm elections last week when he vented at Dan Bongino, formerly the number two official at the FBI and now a podcaster, about his baseless conspiratorial thoughts on immigrants and voting. After glazing his “landslide” 2024 victory (in which he defeated Kamala
France’s national human rights body has detailed violations of human rights and “violent, often disproportionate repression” by French security forces during the 2024 crisis in New Caledonia, which pitted Kanak protestors against thousands of French gendarmes and police. Meanwhile, deep underlying disagreements over the future of the French dependency seem
When I arranged to visit Mossmont Nurseries outside Griffith in the NSW Riverina, I pictured something like an expanded Bunnings garden centre. The reality is starkly different. In the words of Jonathan Moss, it’s “a tree factory.” Moss is a sixth-generation owner of a family business that’s been around for
Mark Carney is a serious man. Prime minister of Canada for just under a year, he is overwhelmingly preoccupied with responding to the upheavals of the second Trump administration. The tone of the prime minister’s office has drastically shifted from the mood encouraged by his predecessor Justin Trudeau. Carney has
Randa Abdel-Fattah has acquired considerable name-recognition since being invited to appear at the 2026 Adelaide Writers’ Week only to be disinvited for fear, it is said, that her session would be too controversial. AWW’s director resigned, soon followed by most of the Adelaide Festival board. Writers Week was cancelled. I
Until recently, pollsters in Australia haven’t had a lot to complain about. True, sampling isn’t what it used to be. When polling was conducted face to face, and sampling points drawn from the electoral roll gave almost every voter an equal chance of being interviewed — indeed, even after polling
When a determined and resourceful young man from Punjab — I’ll call him Hari — was driving me home recently, our conversation turned to his experiences and aspirations in Australia. He’d finished a Masters in IT in Melbourne and secured a two-year post-study work visa that was supposed to give
When I was growing up there was always a copy of our local morning paper — the Hobart Mercury — fresh every day in our house. I can’t remember if we had it delivered, or if someone fetched it early from the local shop, or if my father picked it
I have sat on reviewing this book for too long, partly because the recent dynamics of political populism have been in such flux (exemplified in Donald Trump’s America but hardly peculiar to it) and partly because the task was offered to me with an encouragement to reflect on the relevance
In March 2016 Terry Hughes pulled up at a lavish cane farm near Mossman, an hour north of Cairns on the northeastern tropical coastline of Australia. He stood on the lawn next to the small red helicopter, owned by a tour operator, that typically squeezed in four tourists along with
If the aim of the federal Liberal Party was to seal the breach that was allowing surveyed support to pour to One Nation, it would have installed Andrew Hastie as leader. His very conservative, anti-establishment, dare we say Trumpian positions, along with some innate qualities, would have been just the
Among schooling’s many running sores, teacher education — the subject of more than a hundred formal reviews since the late 1970s, and still not fixed — must hold some kind of record. I was there when it went wrong, and was among the many who have tried to do it
Donald Trump betrayed his panic about the 2026 midterm elections last week when he vented at Dan Bongino, formerly the number two official at the FBI and now a podcaster, about his baseless conspiratorial thoughts on immigrants and voting. After glazing his “landslide” 2024 victory (in which he defeated Kamala
France’s national human rights body has detailed violations of human rights and “violent, often disproportionate repression” by French security forces during the 2024 crisis in New Caledonia, which pitted Kanak protestors against thousands of French gendarmes and police. Meanwhile, deep underlying disagreements over the future of the French dependency seem
When I arranged to visit Mossmont Nurseries outside Griffith in the NSW Riverina, I pictured something like an expanded Bunnings garden centre. The reality is starkly different. In the words of Jonathan Moss, it’s “a tree factory.” Moss is a sixth-generation owner of a family business that’s been around for
Mark Carney is a serious man. Prime minister of Canada for just under a year, he is overwhelmingly preoccupied with responding to the upheavals of the second Trump administration. The tone of the prime minister’s office has drastically shifted from the mood encouraged by his predecessor Justin Trudeau. Carney has
