Journal
Articles
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.
Welcome
FROM THE TIME Kurt Talker disappeared, presumed drowned, people began to claim him. They named his parents, his extended...
Unaccompanied minor
THE FIRST TIME I fly to Melbourne to see my father alone I am four years old, and I’m so little...
soap
Artist Walter Inglis Anderson escaped from the Mississippi State Insane Asylum on 1 April 1939 i. hold, he prayed, and wrenched the sheet...
At the end of the line
THE CALLS STARTED the night I was released from hospital. My lungs again. I’d coughed so hard inside my motorcycle helmet that I’d blacked out as I slowed down for a traffic light, slipped off and under my bike, and out into a rain-slick intersection.
Speaking my language
MY AUNTIE HAS stopped speaking to her siblings. Rifts like these are commonplace in my family, where people fall...
Moonwalking
The first woman on the Moon will have to think carefully about her first words, as they will resonate for generations into the future. Neil Armstrong chose his famous ‘one giant leap’ line himself; but in this case, knowing what’s at stake, there’s bound to be a committee who gives this long and considered thought.
The banksia revolution
IT IS FRIDAY morning in a moderately busy, inner-suburban Melbourne supermarket and I am standing a little awkwardly in the...
Away from the edge
MY MOTHER EMIGRATED to Australia on the SS Australis in 1967 as a ten-pound Pom. I first opened my eyes...
For all we do in the dark
I DEAL WITH grief the way I deal with most trauma. I keep it locked away in a dilapidated archival box –...
