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.
The tale of two cities
IN JANUARY 2016 in the holiday atmosphere that envelops Melbourne – remember the Australian Open and Australia Day long weekend? –...
A new mother tongue
AS OXFORD ECONOMIST Kate Raworth so rightly puts it, economics is the ‘mother tongue’ of public policy – and it...
Facing the zeitgeist
WITH ONE BOLD move King Henry VIII could solve many problems. He could meet his conscience. After divorcing his...
Beyond the nadir of political leadership
SHORTLY AFTER SEIZING the prime ministership in September 2015, Malcolm Turnbull told reporters covering their third leadership coup against...
The memory ladder
THERE APPEARS TO be a deep attraction to the naive idea that we can re-create ourselves and our societies...
Need, greed or deeds
AT THE BEGINNING of the First World War, a fifty-something German academic, vigorous but not fit enough for the...
The good old days
Over the last thirty years I have sought to explore how our top political executives exercised their power, whether they were prime ministers, ministers or departmental secretaries. My books include a study of the ways that the Australian Cabinets have changed over the past hundred and fifteen years, and two books on particular prime ministers, one from each side of the political divide. My interest has always been on how they do the job, how they define their responsibilities, what being prime minister means. Perhaps inevitably, when current circumstances are compared to, and placed in the context of, past leaders, it is the continuities rather than the differences that strike me as the most significant.
Avoiding the simplicity trap
AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC POLICY labours under the weight of illustrious ancestors. There was, in this country, a period that has...
Listening but not hearing
ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS – ONCE the subject of Australian innovation in policy and law reform attended to by the routine...
Bad news, inconvenient truths
IF NEWSPAPERS WERE reporting about anything else, the headlines would be telling of the apocalypse to come. But journalists...
The limits of ‘new power’
IN THE PAST decade, using the internet to harness people’s passion and direct it in support of issues and...
Ruling, not governing
RULING IS A consequence of professional politicking. Yet it has also created unmatched instability in modern Australian politics. Professionalisation...
