Commentary
For decades, centuries, millennia, homosexuals (here as elsewhere) have been insulted, blackmailed, beaten, incarcerated, and murdered. Even now homosexuality remains one of the principal causes of suicide and despair in our society, especially among young males.
... (read more)Springtime allows Parisians to indulge their predilection for life en terrasse. Trees and gardens are blooming, neighbourhood markets and squares are coming alive, and the newly pedestrianised right bank of the Seine is busy with walkers and cyclists.
A rollerblading poet stopped to cadge some tobacco from a friend of mine as we were sitting outside a bar on ...
You see them driving from Kings Canyon to Alice Springs, the majestic ghost white river gums depicted so faithfully in the paintings of Albert Namatjira. You would think you were looking at a Namatjira painting. And then there is the vista of the craggy hills of the West McDonnell Ranges in their mysterious blue hue – a signature feature of Namatjira’s art.
... (read more)Inga Clendinnen, who died in Melbourne on 8 September 2016, was an historian whose primary research interest was the exploration of the social conditions of extreme violence in different periods and societies. She was born Inga Vivienne Jewell, the youngest of four children, in Geelong in 1934. Her father had a cabinet and furniture workshop, the income of which he ...
Whatever it takes: A chronicle of failure and deceit in the Chilcot Report by Ross McKibbin
The publication of the much-delayed Chilcot Report on the origins and consequences of Britain’s participation in the Iraq war has had its resonances, but they would have been more profound had it been published two or three years ago. It is hard on John Chilcot that his Report has had to compete in the public mind with Brexit and Donald Trump. Furthermore, in a ge ...
Describing Mexico City without tripping over a cliché is not easy. Vibrant, colourful, dangerous, loud, exhilarating, rich in history and gastronomic delights, it’s all been ...
... (read more)In late 1963, Rodney Hall – an aspiring but unpublished poet and novelist – travelled through Greece’s Saronic islands with his wife and their infant daughter. Shortly after ...
... (read more)'The god of cheaper prices: New threats to our literary culture from the Productivity Commission' by Colin Golvan
The federal government has been promoting the innovation economy, but is considering recommendations for legal reform which will undermine the financial and cultural interests ...
... (read more)'Bobbin Up was written in 1958 during eight weeks of the coldest Sydney winter on record', recalled Dorothy Hewett in her introduction to the Virago Modern Classics reprint of her ...
... (read more)It is not often that a legislative provision leaves the pages of the statute books and enters everyday conversation. Statutory interpretation rarely enters public consciousness ...
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