Beyond victims

  Listen to ABC Radio National Big Ideas: Broadcast of Griffith Review Annual Lecture by Chris Sarra. Watch ABC TV Big Ideas: Broadcast of Griffith Review Annual...

Sanctuary in the city

EARLY IN THE evening of the 2016 presidential election, the streets of New York City sprang into messy, loud...

Signs of life

Rise again

EVERY TIME ANYONE asks me how I came to Australia, I tell them I was adopted from China. It’s...

Shanghai Baby

On the surface of the globe, for living matter in general, energy is always in excess; the question is...

Sous chef

They have to go.  – Trump This is how I remember you: Thursday nights, stray curlsstrong arms, beads & masks,...

I am building a wall

when they ask me what i’m doingat the end of this long campaignwhen they ask which course i’m pursuingthese...

The restorationist impulse

THE CHILDREN COME home from school to be greeted by their mother, who is wearing an apron. They then...

So you want to rule like an autocrat?

NOTE FOR CANDIDATES The word ‘populist’ has lately come to mean white nationalist, alt-right blogger, neo-fascist and so on. These...

Europe, June 2016

The flight path on the screenacross the aisle is a green linejoining the dots from Manchesterthrough Amsterdam, Bucharest,now Istanbul,...

What isn’t there

I DON’T KNOW how to write about something that isn’t there, such as longing. My entire life, it seems,...

When everybody does better

POPULISM – THE WORD – is surging. It has become the label of convenience for journalists, commentators and politicians to pin...