Essay Archives

A woman’s place …

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S commitment to establish a new Indigenous national representative body provides Indigenous Australia with a unique opportunity...

By Megan Davis

Been there, done that, still hoping for more

LET THE READER beware. Whilst this essay is, I hope, objectively written, it is committed. By that I mean...

By Peter Shergold

When the whistle is blown

IT WAS EARLY 1996, and getting late in the evening. Somewhere in a nondescript building in central Canberra, I...

By AJ Brown

Monitory democracy and media-saturated societies

THERE IS A need for a fundamental revision of the way we think about democracy in our times. An epochal...

By John Keane

Consumer democracy

THE IDEA THAT it is the primary function of elected governments to raise the disposable income of their citizens...

By Mark Hopkinson

Real communities

THE FORMER PRIME minister once dreamed of Australia as a nation of shareholders, enriched by their participation in the...

By Hugh Mackay

A quiet revolution

Once in a rare while the fundamental architecture of a significant part of society shifts. Over the last two...

By Cheryl Kernot

Cuba’s China syndrome

‘VIVA RAUL! VIVA Cuba! Viva la Revolución!' I awoke abruptly, stumbled over bottles at my feet and leaned over...

By Jorge Sotirios

Made in China

FOR THE FIRST in history, a communist country is in a position to bring down global capitalism. The Chinese...

By Michael Wesley

Material or post-material?

THE AMERICAN POLITICAL scientist Ronald Inglehart argues that ‘the basic value priorities of western publics' shift in affluent times...

By Paul D Williams

No soft landing

'Tis against some men's principle to pay interest, and seems against others' interest to pay the principal.– Benjamin Franklin FOR A...

By Ryan Heath

A short prehistory of the future

Ah, the old questions, the old answers, there's nothing like them!– Samuel Beckett, Endgame Above all, the bourgeoisie produces its own...

By Tom Morton