Commentary

Australia’s new Commonwealth government has pledged to initiate a ‘universities accord’ and build consensus on higher education policy questions. This follows a period of torrid relations between universities and the government where constructive dialogue was patchy at best. We may have heard little from Labor about universities over the course of the past nine years, but its ‘universities accord’ election pledge at least recognises that, for the good of Australia and its people, it’s time to reopen constructive channels of communication.

Following the recent federal election, we invited several senior contributors and commentators to nominate one key policy, direction, or reform they hope the Albanese government will pursue.

Russia’s full-throttle invasion of Ukraine is so shocking because it is such a brazen assault on the post-1945 world order. Reminiscent of the age of empire, this is no border skirmish but an attempt to extinguish and cannibalise an independent neighbouring country.

When I was launching my book Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga story in 2016, one of the guests put it to me that the name Maralinga should be just as recognisable in Australian society as Gallipoli. This comment suggested that the British tests had a broader meaning that spoke to a national mythology and were not just interesting historical events.

I performed my first abortion when I was twenty-five years old. I didn’t want to: I had seen abortions performed before and knew the procedure was messy and brutal. The women were lightly anaesthetised, unparalysed, not intubated. Sometimes a woman would twitch, even flinch, under the anaesthesia as her cervix was dilated and her uterus evacuated. I wondered if any of the women knew in a visceral sense what was being done to their bodies. Being pregnant, and then not; afraid, and then less so, the immediate problem solved, the deeper concerns of poverty and violence left untouched by my team. I would see them afterwards. No complications. No, you don’t need to pay. Yes, you can go. By the way, would you like a script for the pill?

When Ann-Marie Priest wrote to me in 2015 asking whether she might talk to me about her proposed biography of my mother, and requesting my permission to examine some correspondence in the Fryer Library, which I, as Gwen Harwood’s literary executor, had placed on restricted access, I replied with a terse refusal to cooperate. Since my mother’s death in December 1995, I had kept tight control of her vast correspondence, nearly all of which she had donated to various research libraries over the last two decades of her life, and I saw no reason to change my ways.

A deadpan comedian maintains a straight face or an even tone while delivering ridiculous content. As a performance of humourlessness that makes people laugh, deadpan registers tensions in contemporary culture. Comedy is among the most popular modes of entertainment and social commentary: the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, for example, is Australia’s largest ticketed cultural event, with attendances of up to 770,000. But over the past few years, criticism of comedy’s traditional reliance on stereotypes and its misogynistic and homophobic industry conditions has intensified as high-profile comedians (Bill Cosby, Louis C.K.) were denounced or tried for sexual misconduct and as a new generation of ‘woke’ comedians have engaged with a resurgent cultural earnestness, often disparaged as ‘PC humourlessness’.

In Australia today, many young people are actively engaged in politics. While adults often describe young people as disengaged, apathetic, or uninformed about politics, these perceptions and labels do not align with the reality. As Judith Bessant has pointed out, ‘[T]here is a long and rich history of political action by children and young people’ (Making-Up People: Youth, truth and politics, Routledge, 2020).