Articles Archive

A toxic mix

In June, 2006, after we'd returned from the screening of the film Ten Canoes at the Cannes International Film Festival, I...

By Rolf De Heer

Some clubs I have known

THE PLEASURE OF the club is a guilty pleasure, a pleasure of satisfaction sitting at the edge of arrogance,...

By Jay Verney

Lies, truths and other mysteries

Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K, for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one...

By Malcolm Knox

Where’s my girl?

Milli was born able to hold her head up, and kept this ability. She had sheeny, topaz eyes, dark...

By Jennifer Kremmer

Who’d have thought …

"I agree with the gay Englishman [Irishman Oscar Wilde] who said you should either look like a work of...

By Lee Tulloch

Two tales of a city

Aaron Wildavsky was a fiercely clever, combative kid from Brooklyn who became a professor of political science. He had...

By Glyn Davis

A culinary adventure

In a Sydney restaurant in 1978, what was called a "maritime" salad exploded my notion of Australian restaurant fare....

By Stephen Downes

Lifting the curtains of mist

History is a nightmare through which we are all trying to get a good night's sleep.– Saul Bellow On a...

By James Halford

Australia by numbers

IT WAS AN embarrassing moment, probably the most embarrassing moment experienced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics this century....

By David Dale

Fantasy, paranoia, enthusiasm and reality

The peaceful revolution that swept away Communist rule in Czechoslovakia six months ago was engineered by leaders of the...

By Paul Monk

White guilt, victimhood and the quest for a radical centre

Selected for Best Australian Essays 2010Selected for Best Australian Political Writing 2009Shortlisted, 2007 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, The Alfred...

By Noel Pearson

A school reunion

CITIES ARE SOCIALLY stratified. The nobs live where the views are best. The workers live in the valleys and...

By Bruce Elder