Skip to content
Inside Story
About
Donate
Sign up
Search
Search
Menu
National affairs
Essays & reportage
Books & arts
International
Other Voices
About
Donate
Sign up
Search
Search
National affairs
Essays & reportage
Books & arts
International
Other Voices
Books & arts
The tools of a composer’s trade
Andrew Ford
3 July 2025
Is the act of composition itself a performance?
Books & arts
Reeled in by the Reich
Philippa Hawker
1 July 2025
A sharp, grim, exhilarating novel engages with the real-life story of a filmmaker’s return to Nazi Germany
National affairs
Whose voice?
Tim Rowse
30 June 2025
New shadow minister Kerrynne Liddle believes the rights of the vulnerable should take precedence over Indigenous rights
Books & arts
Imperialism’s stamping ground
Jim Davidson
30 June 2025
A new book explores the culture of philately
International
Benefits and costs
Michael Jacobs
29 June 2025
Keir Starmer is paying a heavy price for spending cuts that lacked a defensible rationale
National affairs
A self-proclaimed zealot throws down the gauntlet
Karen Middleton
27 June 2025
A leaked transcript of a Liberal Women’s Council meeting highlights the challenges facing Sussan Ley over women’s representation
Subscribe to our email newsletter
Three times a week in your inbox
Subscribe here
National affairs
National affairs
Are pro-natalists living on the same planet?
John Quiggin
30 June 2025
Nostalgia-fuelled panic about declining populations doesn’t match plausible forecasts
National affairs
Iran and the US alliance
Graeme Dobell
23 June 2025
How Australia viewed the weekend bombing
National affairs
Taxing times
Karen Middleton
20 June 2025
Jim Chalmers wants to “test the appetite” for more ambitious productivity reforms
National affairs
On parade in a new age of wars
Graeme Dobell
19 June 2025
As Iran and Israel wage war, big military parades are held in the United States and Britain
National affairs
Diagnoses in, now for action
Lesley Russell
17 June 2025
Labor can’t deliver better healthcare without embarking on the reforms proposed by a succession of inquiries
Essays & reportage
Essays & reportage
A political world we still inhabit
Frank Bongiorno
2 July 2025
Historian John Hirst founded a career on a distinctive view of colonial Australian politics
Essays & reportage
The rise and fall of John Pesutto
James Panichi
25 June 2025
A former leader’s trajectory is also the story of the Liberal Party’s narrowing base
Essays & reportage
A Silicon Valley for energy?
Ben Potter
24 June 2025
Australian solutions to renewable energy’s teething problems are attracting international interest
Essays & reportage
Quincentenary of a revolution
Klaus Neumann
17 June 2025
Commemorating the German Peasants’ War and an early charter of human rights
Essays & reportage
The American clever man
Martin Thomas
5 June 2025
How an Arnhem Land community distilled the 1948 American–Australian Scientific Expedition into a figure with unusual powers
Books & arts
Books & arts
How China put the bite on Apple
Michael Gill
3 July 2025
The tech giant helped turn its biggest partner into a world leader in electronics manufacturing
Books & arts
A kind of elegy
Susan Lever
27 June 2025
An award-winning memoir honours cultures old and new
Books & arts
Not alone in the dark tunnel
Tanya Dalziell
27 June 2025
Gail Jones’s latest novel echoes the preoccupations of much of her writing
Books & arts
Dropping out, burning out, tuning out
Andrew Dean
27 June 2025
Nobody’s happy about the state of Australian universities, but a seasoned academic has some remedies
Books & arts
Seize the day!
Caitlin Mahar
26 June 2025
Classicist Robert Garland leads a tour of ancient attitudes to death and the afterlife
International
International
Britain’s tough new climate test
Fergus Green
3 July 2025
Britain has leapfrogged Australia with strong rules for proposed fossil fuel projects
International
Trump’s war on knowledge
Lesley Russell
4 June 2025
Like his erratic tariff decisions, Donald Trump’s attack on universities will damage America itself
International
Flag fall
Nic Maclellan
28 May 2025
From Australia to New Caledonia, symbols of Indigenous sovereignty are proving divisive in both predictable and unpredictable ways
International
Syria’s problem neighbour
Ross Burns
14 May 2025
The benefits of thawing relations between Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government and the West could be undone by Israeli interference
International
Glass half full in Washington
Michael Jacobs
27 April 2025
America played a less destructive role than feared at last week’s spring meetings of the World Bank and the IMF
Other Voices
Other Voices
We finally know what “American carnage” was about
Paul Krugman
12 June 2025
Behind the sadism lies an attack on democracy
Other Voices
The flashing signals I saw in Israel
Thomas L. Friedman
30 May 2025
A broader antiwar movement is stirring
Other Voices
Is China the future?
Noah Smith
9 May 2025
What does it mean for China to be “the future”? And what does that future look like?
Other Voices
Donald Trump’s lose–lose tariffs
Noah Smith
16 April 2025
History shows tariffs are bad for rich economies — and Donald Trump’s decisions so far are actually reducing manufacturing investment
Other Voices
How do you like your news?
Joshua Benton
11 April 2025
A new study identifies which groups of readers prefer news sources that align with their own views