Some Provocations Archives

AUSTRALIA WAS A nation established behind walls. The outward barriers of racially restrictive immigration, Commonwealth defence, and the desire...

By David Ritter

IN THE WINTER of 1980, in the last few months of her life, Queenie Leavis, wife of renowned literary...

By Julian Meyrick

What of the real present, the men-of-no-politics, the once respectable Golden Mean? Obsolete; in any case, lost sight of.Thomas...

By Gary Clark

AFTER WORLD WAR II, geologists and others (such as Lang Hancock) discovered a series of gargantuan ore bodies.[1] These...

By Marcia Langton

NO ONE WANTS global warming, or wider environmental degradation, to be reality. The prospect of Earth becoming inhospitable to...

By Nadine Hood

THERE ARE, FOR many Australians, constant tugs of conscience about the fate of the Indigenous Peoples of Australia –...

By Paul Newbury

AMALGAMATION OF AUSTRALIA and New Zealand is now approaching the final stages. The remaining barriers to a complete union...

By Rodney Crisp

LET'S START WITH spelling: it’s often the first plank of literacy.As a child, I was renowned for my spelling...

By Dale Spender

THE ANNOUNCEMENT IN August 2011 that BlueScope Steel were about to close one of its Port Kembla blast furnaces...

By Chris Gibson

I: The great question THE TERM 'RESEARCH' is central to the discussion of higher education. There are research rankings,...

AMONG THE HIGHEST hopes for Australia is our intellectual capacity. We already have a substantial profile in education and...

By Robert Nelson

IS AUSTRALIA REALLY the ‘lucky country’? Not according to most Australians, who will tell you about the rising cost...

By Tapan Sarker