Very public health
I’ve known health minister Greg Hunt for over twenty years. When he is convinced about something he doesn’t hold back…
Very public health
I’ve known health minister Greg Hunt for over twenty years. When he is convinced about something he doesn’t hold back…
No guilt, no apology
Convicted of murder, Derek Bromley can teach us all a lesson about saying sorry when we are not guilty. And…
Business/Robbery etc
Beware of lawyers making recommendations about regulating the business community; they will inevitably lead to more business – for lawyers.…
Sisters aren’t doing it for themselves
Every era has its noble lies – the ideas that underpin a civilisation. The noble lie of contemporary culture is…
Labor’s quagmire of incompetence
A standard political tactic (of all sides) is to paint your opponents as inhumane or wreckers and wilful destroyers of…
And then there was one…
Exit, stage right, Ross Cameron. Sky TV has fired its second Outsiders host. This time the charge was racism and…
Australians do support recognising Jerusalem
The brouhaha that followed the federal government’s announcement that Australia will consider moving Australia’s Israeli embassy to Jerusalem continues to…
Hollow man of the Left
There are two types of people in political parties. One type joins a party because he or she thinks that…
Helen Thomson and Caroline Brazier
By my count, the 2019 Season will be the 40th produced by the Sydney Theatre Company. The coming season is…
Nadine Garner
As the most subscribed theatre company in the country, the Melbourne Theatre Company can be deservedly proud of its long…
Gail Kelly by Paul Newton
Australians have a particular affection for portraits as evidenced by the popular Archibald and Moran portrait prizes and Anh Do’s…
Paul Cézanne Fruit 1879/80
This year both Melbourne and Sydney have major exhibitions of ‘modern masters’. The big Winter show from New York, MoMA…
Books of the year – part two
Daniel Swift I feel as though I came late to the Sarah Moss party. Nobody told me she was this…
Saul Bellow: love the work, if not the man
Boxing writers sometimes try to make comparisons across weight groups. They used to say, for example, that Floyd Mayweather was…
Does an autobiographical novel really count as fiction?
Orhan Pamuk, writing about Vladimir Nabokov’s masterful memoir Speak, Memory, noted that there was a particular ‘thrill’ for the writer…
The Lion of the Punjab: the short, brutish career of John Nicholson
‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion’, said Winston Churchill as prime minister in 1942,…
Top topiary: the year’s best gardening books
There are probably no more gifted professional gardeners in England than Jim Buckland and Sarah Wain, husband and wife and…
Dreams of utopia before the Nazi nightmare
Today Munich is a prosperous and peaceful place — Germany’s most affluent, attractive city. Wandering its leafy avenues, lined with…
What was the celebrated Garrick really like as an actor?
The age of Garrick, Norman Poser, a law professor, insists, gave us much of what we take for granted today…
Japanese puzzle: how can an advanced, dynamic country function with such an ancient population?
When Japan hosts the Rugby Union World Cup next year, and still more so the summer Olympics in 2020, all…
Books of the year – part one
Andrew Motion Short stories seem to fare better in the US than the UK, and among this year’s rich crop,…
Celebrating the 1918 Armistice resulted in thousands more deaths
Reflecting on the scenes of celebration, the ‘overpowering entrancements’, that he had witnessed in November 1918 on the first Armistice…
Boys’ Own adventures in the war-torn Middle East
Ask most people whether they fancy a four-month, 5,000-mile trek across the Middle East and they might conclude you need…
Baron Haussmann: the man who set Paris straight
Rupert Christiansen’s City of Light opens on the evening of 5 January 1875, with the inauguration of Paris’s new opera…