October 2025, no. 480
As the fiftieth anniversary of the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam approaches, ABR turns its attention to the consequences of that political rupture for land rights in Australia. In a powerfully eloquent essay, Heidi Norman and Francis Markham explain that whereas Whitlam sought a ‘national covenant’ on land rights, the dismissal stalled progress, resulting in a ‘patchwork of rights and tenures, fractured by jurisdiction and industry pressure’. Sean Scalmer looks at the rise of the terms the ‘Australian way’ and ‘progressive patriotism’ in light of Australia’s unique history of progressive labour reform and suffrage. Poet and technology writer Judith Bishop examines two major new American books on AI and ABR Poetry Editor Felicity Plunkett considers three new Sylvia Plath books about this ‘single-mother poet’. ABR reviewers look at fiction by Omar Musa, Paul Daley, Nicolas Rothewell and Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson, Solvej Balle, and Catherine Lacey. We publish poems by Ellen van Neerven, Dženana Vucic, Toby Fitch, and Charmaine Papertalk Green, plus Kate Fullagar’s essay ‘Questions for Mai: Joshua Reynolds’s portrait and the memory of Empire’.
October’s cover artwork is by Jeffrey Smart, courtesy of the Estate of Jeffrey Smart.