Australia needs a cabinet-level portfolio dedicated to managing culture, one of the country’s leading cultural commentators, Julianne Schultz, said at a breakfast address in Sydney today. The Ministry…
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Today’s announcement by the Liberal Party that they will preference against the Greens at this year’s federal election should hardly come as a surprise. There has been endless speculation that the Liberals…
Last week, two secure email providers - Lavabit and Silent Circle - announced the closure of their services, citing pressures on them to reveal user information as the key reason for the decision. The…
Natural gas has been extracted from Australia’s North West Shelf and exported as liquefied natural gas (LNG) for almost 30 years. It is Australia’s fastest growing resource export. But the recent introduction…
Have you ever wondered how diseases get defined? How “high” does your blood pressure have to be before it’s called “high blood pressure”? How “low” does bone density have to be before it’s “osteoporosis…
As I write, the front pages of Melbourne’s newspapers this morning scream in chorus: Charged: Bombers Drug Scandal. But is this really the worst “scandal” in footy history? My first lesson in football…
Imagine a construction company asks its employees to take some health supplements to increase their stamina, thereby enabling them to work more productively. Imagine that the efficacy and legality of the…
Welcome to the **The Conversation Election 2013 State of the Nation* essays. These articles by leading experts in their field provide an in-depth look at the key policy challenges affecting Australia as…
From the beginning of the 2013 election campaign, prime minister Kevin Rudd has put young people front and centre. Be it through the use of social media (although no more “selfies” have surfaced of late…
Recently, Lingiari MP and Minister for Indigenous Health and Veterans’ Affairs Warren Snowdon made a big fuss in the local NT media about a A$4,500 grant for a new stove for the ailing RSL club in Alice…
Child sexual abuse is a topic of extremes. We are never short of politicians and journalists keen to voice their disgust at offenders and their sympathy with victims. But substantive responses are few…
The planet is building up heat at the equivalent of four Hiroshima bombs worth of energy every second. And 90% of that heat is going into the oceans. Right, now I’ve got your attention. It’s widely acknowledged…
“The changes to lifetime health cover will increase [private health insurance] premiums by up to a reported 27.5%. This is hitting many local residents very hard, with some struggling to find the money…
The recent arrest by Canadian police of two young people who allegedly shared a photo of a young woman being sexually assaulted has once again highlighted the danger that social media can pose for teenagers…
Recently a petition signed by 25,000 people was handed in to UK’s 10 Downing Street urging British bank Barclays to reconsider its decision to close the bank accounts of scores of money remitters. A remitter…
Tony Abbott is asking a lot of voters who have political memories when he asks them to take at face value his line that “the GST won’t change, full stop”. What immediately springs to mind is John Howard’s…
Mine operators have proposed nine major new coal mines for the Galilee Basin in central Queensland. Those proposals currently being assessed by the Queensland government could significantly impact water…
Although in use for over 50 years now, chemotherapy is a blunt instrument in the battle against cancer and one that’s based on an outdated understanding of tumour biology. Personalised treatment has been…
The Coalition is now under pressure to get out its policy costings, following the release of the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook, which shows virtually no change in key figures since the government’s…
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal titled Humanities Fall From Favour reveals a further escalation in the crisis affecting the humanities. Harvard University, “a standard-bearer of American letters…
Welcome to the The Conversation’s Election 2013 State of the Nation essays. These articles by leading experts in their field provide an in-depth look at the key policy challenges affecting Australia as…
Ever since the Neandertal (Homo neanderthalensis) type fossil was discovered in the Neander Valley of Germany in 1856, the species has been variously portrayed as knuckle-dragging cavemen and primitive…
**Northern futures, northern voices: It seems everyone has ideas about how Australia’s north could be better, but most of those ideas come from the south. In this six-part weekly series, developed by the…
“The truth about the Pacific Solution is that 70%, thereabouts, of those people sent by Mr Howard to Nauru and elsewhere as part of the Pacific Solution, used it as a [way] station and within a couple…
“We have among the lowest of budget deficits and debt to GDP of any other major economies in the developed world… If it’s so bad, Mr Abbott, why have we been given by the three ratings agencies a AAA credit…