If writing always made sense to the writer, it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting,” says journalist Susan Orlean ...

Books & arts Dizzy times John Edwards 17 November 2025 Does the 1929 Wall Street crash hold a message for our times?

National affairs Less Hastie, more speed Peter Brent 17 October 2025 The pretenders to the Liberal throne are united by one thing — a lack of electability ...

Essays & reportage Which are the polls to watch? Murray Goot 14 April 2025 Does the national two-party vote tell us whether Labor will finish with the most MPs, or will it come down to 150 ...

In Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, 93 per cent of children attend public schools. In Alberta, the province that topped Canada for reading and science in the latest round of OECD tests, ...

Nations are built with pens and brushes not just hammers and nails. They exhibit their character in what they say about themselves as much as what is said about them. — Bruce Pascoe, Convincing Ground ...

In July 1966 a special federal conference of the Australian Labor Party voted, in dramatic circumstances, to abandon its opposition to “direct state aid” for non-government schools. The decision was ...

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 ...

For almost a decade the Coalition government insisted the states and territories had sole responsibility for ensuring that Australians on the lowest incomes had a place to call home. Even at the ...

“I cannot live with You —” goes Emily Dickinson’s poem. “It would be Life —/ And Life is over there —/ Behind the Shelf.” Once upon a time many Australian homes had the books of Patrick White out ...

Our European ancestors locked us in a madhouse. To explain why their society was technologically more complex than others, they came up with what I call the Great Divide — the separation of the ...

Late July 1923, Newdegate district, Western Australia. It is not a sublime landscape, but beauty may yet be found in its intricate, fragile detail. The slender trunks of the merrit mallees glow pink ...