Features Australia

Black mass

14 July 2018 9:00 am

That Dark Mofo, the Tasmanian festival dedicated to the dark arts, has courted controversy once again is no surprise. Just…

Tin foil hats and the top end of town

14 July 2018 9:00 am

You have to wonder what Paul Keating will be thinking as the invitations to attend Labor fundraisers and campaign events…

Letter from Russia

14 July 2018 9:00 am

The Football World Cup was a winner for Russia; tourists like me flooded in (to cheer a reasonably performed Australian…

Anti-Abbott galahs just lying or incompetent?

14 July 2018 9:00 am

Tony Abbott has the politicians, the commentariat and other elites very worried, and not just about energy.They know that what…

My civilisation is better than yours

7 July 2018 9:00 am

Am I the only one who finds the Ramsay Western civilisation controversy unedifying? As I read the warring op-eds I…

Adjudication in advance

7 July 2018 9:00 am

What is going on with the top judges in Britain? They sure seem hell bent on travelling as quickly as…

Did Granny jump, or was she pushed?

7 July 2018 9:00 am

Dr Henry Marsh, British neurosurgeon, was displeased when the UK Parliament rejected euthanasia three years ago. The good doctor said,…

Cultural pronunciation

7 July 2018 9:00 am

When I lived in Sweden, I would watch football with my Swedish mate Rob and struggle with some of the…

Renewables becalmed

7 July 2018 9:00 am

As Australia’s electricity grids strain to cope with demand and government efforts to foist yet more renewable energy on them,…

Don’t call me Madam

7 July 2018 9:00 am

‘Respect women’ shouts a giant hoarding sponsored by Victoria’s wastrel Labor government (the one that squandered $300 million on not…

Judge for yourself

7 July 2018 9:00 am

An 82 year old American judge, Justice Anthony Kennedy, announces his retirement and the country is in uproar. It’s a…

Sounds from the silence

30 June 2018 9:00 am

From Janpath Road in the centre of Delhi, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts appears almost deserted. I’m…

Letter from London

30 June 2018 9:00 am

If the crescendo of cranes towering above development blocks represents a city’s prosperity, then Manila and London are prospering. Setting…

Writers are not moral guides

30 June 2018 9:00 am

Like Dorothy Parker, I have a decent number of grey hairs from my dealings with the intelligentsia. I’ve had my…

CNN sucks, Trump triumphs

30 June 2018 9:00 am

‘CNN sucks…CNN sucks,’ the capacity crowd of rank-and-file Americans in Minnesota’s giant Amsoil Arena chanted. This was their down-to-earth message…

Xena madness

23 June 2018 9:00 am

For sheer grotesquerie, a recent push for the feminisation of the Australian Army would be hard to beat. Former General…

Heart of darkness

23 June 2018 9:00 am

Sometimes African rulers get so corrupt that Western aid donors go on strike. Take what Trump would call the shit-hole…

Pride stripped bare

23 June 2018 9:00 am

Every now and again the clouds part, a shaft of light breaks through and something up ahead is illuminated. In…

Trump towers

23 June 2018 9:00 am

In his 1977 book The Age of Uncertainty, the American economist John Kenneth Galbraith depicted the great leaders of history…

Theatre of the absurd

23 June 2018 9:00 am

The controversial University of Melbourne dance performance, Where We Stand, is an insight into the kind of divided society we…

Nobel laureates manqués

23 June 2018 9:00 am

Calls for a Nobel Peace Prize for Donald Trump reminded me that if anyone should be a Nobel Laureate, it…

Closing down sale

23 June 2018 9:00 am

When an historic Melbourne church went up in flames three years ago, the actress Rachel Griffiths, who’d made her First…

Not our ABC

16 June 2018 9:00 am

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is a $1.04 billion piece of public policy and we treat it as exactly that: a…

Letter from Penge

16 June 2018 9:00 am

Australia is now unwittingly linked even more closely with the dreary outer-London suburb of Penge. Not only was it the…

Planetary perspectives

16 June 2018 9:00 am

Here I am, back in Ecuador. Ecuadorians boast that the 6,310-metre high Mt Chimaborazo volcano protrudes 2,073 metres higher into…