To sum up the last half-century: in 1972 and 1974 Labor won all five Tasmania’s seats. Then from 1975 to 1984 the Liberals ...

Government schools, even in Queensland, will at last get the full Gonski. That is a win: not as big a win as it would have been in 2012 when the “I Give a Gonski” movement was riding high, and more a ...

What is a tribe? Anthropologists use the term very cautiously, for it has lost its earlier meanings of ethnicity and bounded social groups and taken on connotations of primitivity or blind adherence ...

Books & arts Before and after Zora Simic 4 February 2025 Gisèle Pélicot’s daughter explores the repercussions of her father’s crimes ...

Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada begins with the preparation of a room. There’s a practised efficiency as well as a ritual quality to the way three people unpack boxes, move furniture, shift a Christmas ...

Treasurer Jim Chalmers pulled one unexpected rabbit out of his hat in last night’s budget — a one percentage point cut in the bottom marginal tax rate, from 16 per cent to 15 per cent from 1 July next ...

National affairs It’s no time to lose our heads Paul Strangio 8 November 2024 What lessons should Labor take away from the Democratic Party’s defeat?

The Melanesian arc running from New Guinea to Fiji is also an arc across Australia, the geography loaded with history and strategic weight. Australia’s life in Melanesia is studded with dreams and ...

International Not only did Harris lose… Peter Brent 18 November 2024 With the results near-final, what do we now know about the shifting preferences of American voters? International Beware “the vibe” ...

The name Miles Franklin will be familiar to anyone with even a passing interest in Australian literary culture. When the writer died in 1954 she bequeathed funds to create a literary award to be made ...

Facts are simple and facts are straight. Facts are lazy and facts are late. Facts all come with points of view. Facts don’t do what I want them to. — “Crosseyed and Painless,” Talking Heads Every ...