Essays & reportage
22 April 2014
In this extract from Mike Steketee and Milton Cockburn’s biography, first published in 1986, Neville Wran – who died earlier this week –…
Essays & reportage
18 April 2014
A new study finds social status rippling across the centuries
Essays & reportage
17 April 2014
This eBook features Tim Senior’s recently announced prize-winning entry in the Gavin Mooney Essay Prize for 2013, together with the four runners-up
Essays & reportage
26 March 2014
In 2007, Tom Bamforth left post-earthquake Pakistan for a different crisis, the war in Darfur. As he describes in his new book, a whole culture was being lost through…
Essays & reportage
18 March 2014
Screening for cervical cancer saves lives every day, so surely men should be screened for prostate cancer? Unfortunately it’s a bit more complicated than that, writes…
Essays & reportage
11 March 2014
The number of people imprisoned in the United States has fallen every year for the past three years, yet the land of the free still has a far higher incarceration rate than any…
Essays & reportage
6 March 2014
The accountability of the ABC and SBS should be a two-way street, writes Geoff Heriot. A pattern of erratic government scrutiny fails the public-interest test
Essays & reportage
25 February 2014
It’s five years since Canberra’s innovative Alexander Maconochie Centre admitted its first group of prisoners. Peter Mares visited to see if the facility is…
Essays & reportage
24 February 2014
In his winning entry for the Gavin Mooney Memorial Essay Competition, Sydney GP Tim Senior argues that language, and different ways of knowing, have been getting in the…
Essays & reportage
13 February 2014
Labor’s combative relationship with the Greens reflects its failure to develop a genuine counter-narrative to the Coalition worldview, argues Dennis Altman
Essays & reportage
14 January 2014
As the Cold War intensified in the mid fifties, Australia saw a special role for itself in disseminating information and propaganda in Southeast Asia, writes Alan Fewster
Essays & reportage
16 December 2013
The cyclones of the late 1960s and early 1970s didn’t shape the Whitlam government as much as gentler breezes of the 1950s and early 1960s
Essays & reportage
4 December 2013
Armed with an ambitious political and legal agenda, the new attorney-general faces a testing time, write Shipra Chordia and Andrew Lynch
Essays & reportage
19 November 2013
Technology is going to drive the first revolution in schooling since the invention of the printing press, says Dean Ashenden. But it’s not just a matter of the machinery
Essays & reportage
31 October 2013
Uzbekistan is still writing and rewriting its own history, reports a recently returned R.J.B. Bosworth
Essays & reportage
23 October 2013
Charmian Clift’s Peel Me a Lotus has inspired Australian women travel writers for over half a century, but the result has been a quite different kind of writing,…
Essays & reportage
14 October 2013
A murder trial in Alice Springs held up a mirror to the town’s dealings with issues of race, writes Kieran Finnane, and the inter-racial dynamics turned out to be…
Essays & reportage
14 October 2013
Unlike Australia, the European Union buckled on plain packaging in the face of fierce lobbying, writes James Panichi. Still not satisfied, the tobacco industry sought to…
Essays & reportage
27 September 2013
Within months of the end of the second world war, an iron curtain had fallen across Europe. Its impact reached into the inner suburbs of Melbourne, writes Geoffrey Barker
Essays & reportage
26 September 2013
Indi’s new local member Cathy McGowan fits into a long tradition of independently minded country MPs. In this extract from her new book, Jackie Dickenson traces the…
Essays & reportage
24 September 2013
Has the environment movement failed to frame the climate debate effectively?
Essays & reportage
15 September 2013
Measured by income, most Australians have never had it so good. But some groups are falling dramatically behind. Peter Whiteford warns of the dangers of residualising the poor
Essays & reportage
10 September 2013
The electorate of Indi has been changed forever, write Cambell Klose and Nick Haines from Cathy McGowan’s campaign
Essays & reportage
6 September 2013
Can conservation, tourism and industry coexist in Tasmania’s Tarkine wilderness? Kimberley Croxford looks at the current controversy and the contending pressures
Essays & reportage
3 September 2013
Kathy Marks visits Australia’s most-watched suburbs
Essays & reportage
2 September 2013
A cross-dressing MI6 agent and a shadowy British anti-communist propaganda outfit were key players in the development of Australia’s cold war “soft diplomacy”…
Essays & reportage
26 August 2013
In many ways the opposition has already won this election by shifting the political middle ground, writes Dennis Altman
Essays & reportage
23 August 2013
Political bloggers brought a new rigour to interpreting the polls
Essays & reportage
20 August 2013
Has Labor’s campaign taken a fatal turn? History shows that divided control of campaign messages can be a disaster, writes Stephen Mills
Essays & reportage
30 July 2013
In his first stint as prime minister, Kevin Rudd set a target of halving homelessness by 2020. If he is still committed to that goal, then the Common Ground approach might chart a…