Welcome to GR Online, a series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.
Active citizens, constructive answers
IN THE DAYS after Labor’s unexpected defeat at the May 2019 federal election, a social media storm raged. ‘What...
Remembering who you report to
EARLY IN MY career as a Queensland public servant, I attended a workshop with the renowned Professor Patrick Weller,...
Towards a reconception of power
IT WOULD BE disconcerting to wake up one day and discover that everything we thought was real in the...
Negotiating the grey zone
WHILE SUCCESSIVE AUSTRALIAN governments spent the past decade focused on their budget deficits, another deficit quietly opened: one of...
Co-operation, mutualisation, innovation
THE MURMURED ANTIPHONY of counsels assisting, witnesses and the commissioner that fills the bulk of any public hearing is...
‘Imagine us as part of you’
LIKE MOST VISITS to ‘the future’ of anything, the wonders of a trip to Australia’s most advanced digital hospital...
Truth, lies and diplomacy
IN 1604, SIR Henry Wotten – an English diplomat travelling through Augsburg – composed an epigram for the guest...
Hail Hydra
‘DO YOU TRUST me?’ An earnest question. ‘I do.’ An earnest answer. And then that ancient, global gesture of earnest intimacy:...
Archival secrets and hidden histories
IN DECEMBER 2005, Gough Whitlam was at the National Archives of Australia in Canberra speaking on the occasion of...
A great experiment
IT’S EASY TO get lost in the disruption: our obsession with technology and how to regulate it; minimise our...
Democracy and the corruption question
I’M RUNNING ON a beach near Cairns, spending a rare holiday moment trying to regain some of the fitness...
Enduring change
PUBLIC INQUIRIES AND their subsequent reports suffer chequered histories in Australia. Some disappear with nary a trace, while others go...
