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.
Character
Character matters in all facets of our lives, but seldom is it more consequential than in politics and political leadership. Even before the rise of Donald Trump, there was a widespread consensus in American politics that presidential character was just as important as intellect, organisational and policy capacity, media and presentational skills, and a vision for the nation’s future.
Connection
Amid the posturing and tumult shone three moments of clarity that highlighted the gulf between cynical efforts to divide Australians and the leadership needed to bind the nation together at a time of unprecedented uncertainty and challenge. Each revealed the potential to rediscover and reconnect with the ‘holding centre’ that has defined Australian politics...
Consequences
Secrecy, a lack of accountability and lack of restraint breed incompetence and failure, creating a vicious cycle both for institutions and the public’s faith in them. And yet these are the hallmarks of how executive governance is now practised by populist leaders, including in the UK and Australia.
Power, populism and principles
As someone with lived experience of a regime so consumed by its determination to cling to power, a regime unconcerned about and unmoored from principle or a raison d’être beyond its own survival, I've found the past three years chilling and shocking in equal measure.
Who are ‘we’?
Then, in late May, S suggested something new. Next time, might we consider the Uluru Statement from the Heart? Immediate enthusiasm – and, unusually on my part, some nerves at the prospect of giving voice to a text.
Letter to Nardi
When I lived in Dubbo the riverbank was a place where the school you attended or what your house was like or whether your family could afford to run a car hardly mattered. For blackfellas and whitefellas it was a place free from authorities...
Remembering Nurreegoo
Although they do hold words with singular meanings, Aboriginal languages also encompass words that are practical, words that address overall understandings of states of being and circumstances, of events, moments or items.
Into the sun
The last glacial maximum was only 20,000 years ago and that was followed by sea-level rise many times the amount we fear now. Many cultures lived through that experience, integrating it into their spiritual understanding of the world, passed down from body to body
Silence
When I was taught history as a primary and secondary student, it was as though Australia sprang into being when James Cook sighted a beach in 1770. An easy date to remember with all those sevens, I had thought, supposing ‘history’ to be largely about the memorisation of facts.
Heartplace
Despite growing up in Western Australia, I’ve been infatuated with snow since childhood, beguiled by stories of frosted kingdoms accessible through wardrobes, of pearl-capped peaks and sleighbells and dragons, of the ever-present possibility of magic.
Nothing more to say
Inaction on climate change is not because we do not know what’s going on. It’s not because we’re waiting for someone to write just the right essay about why we should care. It’s not because we want to die in a fire.
Hum
It’s hard to find a way to justify falling asleep in the park, book splayed on my abdomen, as exercise – even within ten kilometres of my apartment. But the sun was just so warm on my thighs; it straddled heavy on me.
