Recently, legitimate concerns about the media coverage of Australia’s military involvement in the war in Afghanistan have been raised. It is true that much more that can and should be said about the army’s…
Kingston-upon-Hull has been named the UK City of Culture for 2017; a spotlight has been thrown on a place that many people either don’t really know much about, sometimes falling prey to typical Home Counties…
There are few English nouns that have received such relentlessly good publicity as the word “creativity”. Creativity — apparently — drives innovation, increases productivity, and safeguards the national…
The logo for the upcoming Anzac centenary was released last year with surprisingly little fanfare. The final design was selected from several options by the Anzac Centenary Advisory Board after consultation…
Australia’s national story is littered with significant occasions that have fallen on November 11 and two years ago, for me, was no different. It was the morning of November 11, 2011 and I was working…
Climate change has yet again been blamed for another natural disaster, this time the recent bushfires in NSW. But much more important is the role of poor land-use planning decisions that are increasing…
After two and a half years, the embattled Japanese government and Tepco, the company responsible for the Fukushima nuclear power plant, have sought the world’s assistance in tackling the three damaged…
This week’s launch of the two-volume Cambridge History of Australia comes just as the Coalition government fires the opening salvo of a new battle in the Australian history wars. Over the past 12 months…
In nearly 40 years of teaching Jewish Studies at university the course I found hardest to deliver was my first-year “Introduction to Judaism”. It didn’t get any easier: the more I learned, the more I agonised…
In the last week of the campaign, some naggingly familiar comments came out from the Coalition. Then opposition leader Tony Abbott said he wanted to see the national curriculum in history changed because…
Speakers in this week’s Commons debate on the Transparency of Lobbying, non-Party Campaigning, and Trade Union Administration Bill did not pull their punches. The bill was described as “flawed”, “rushed…
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…
In his recent Quarterly Essay, Mark Latham compared Labor parliamentary representation to the rotten boroughs of the 18th century. Though union membership has fallen away, suggested Latham, union officials…
In the current vicious political climate, caricatures in our daily press have become more savage. Perhaps no politician has experienced this more in recent times than former prime minister Julia Gillard…
Not for the first time in our long lives, Prince Charles and I find ourselves on parallel tracks, our first grandchildren born within weeks of each other. I offer him my congratulations, and hope that…
The words “environmentalism” and “military” are not typically found in the same sentence. Yet ideas about our vulnerability to environmental change are directly linked to military plans for a third world…
The modern Western university has five major historical trajectories, four of which were dominant for more than 400 years. But the fifth, while spanning no more than 50 years, has been a crucial driver…
A fifth of Britain’s young people are out of work; how long before they snap? The International Labour Organisation has recently issued warnings about possible youth unrest in the future, as young people…
Put a finger on the point of your elbow. Feel inwards from there about half and inch or slightly more until you find another bony outcrop. Got it? Good. Tap with your finger in the valley between those…