… where politics & culture meet
This is the introduction to the book I stopped writing on 15 September 2015, when Malcolm Turnbull grabbed Tony Abbott by the pants and pulled him back down the greasy pole. It was to be called Operation Shirtfront: Tony Abbott and the Crisis of Australian Conservatism. I always knew it might not see the light... Continue Reading →
The decision of the Lego company not to supply the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei with bricks for a new artwork is one of the most striking instances I can recall of life imitating art. A huge and impersonal power structure combining arbitrary state power and capitalistic greed; the determination of that power structure to silence... Continue Reading →
When I read in the telly guide that the Treasurer Scott Morrison was going to be making Annabel Crabb a Sri Lankan curry on the season-opener of Kitchen Cabinet I thought it must be a joke. Oh right, I can remember thinking; and what else will the one-time Minister in Charge of Not Answering Questions... Continue Reading →
‘Events, dear boy, events,’ British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is said to have replied when asked what was most likely to blow his government off course. What goes for politicians goes for writers too, as I discovered for myself on 14 September, when Malcolm Turnbull replaced Tony Abbott as Prime Minister. At that time I... Continue Reading →
Though it didn’t attract a huge amount of comment, Bill’s Shorten’s article for Fairfax last Thursday may turn out to be an important moment in the campaign for marriage equality – not for the outcome, which is all but assured, but for the manner in which we reach that milestone. His argument – not new,... Continue Reading →
I emerged from the WA premiere of This Changes Everything in a foul mood. To get to the cinema – in Innaloo: not the most charming neck of the woods – I’d had to sit in heavy traffic for an hour and a half, moving barely at all. Arriving at the cinema one minute before... Continue Reading →
The official launch of the Australian Liberty Alliance in Perth on Tuesday afternoon brings to a head a disturbing trend in Australian politics: the tendency of the anti-Muslim right to cast its ideology in what we might call ‘civic nationalist’ terms. Taking its cue from the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, whose Party for Freedom was... Continue Reading →
When Geert Wilders assumes the podium at the launch of the Australian Liberty Alliance tomorrow evening – looking, one assumes, as he always does, like a Disney prince in a hall of mirrors – he will do so not just as the representative of a particularly nasty strain of anti-Muslim prejudice but as a living... Continue Reading →
‘I was born with a natural disposition toward shallowness’ writes New York Times columnist David Brooks in his introduction to The Road to Character. As Brooks would be the first to admit, this isn’t a bad quality for a columnist to have: the demands of regular opinion writing are such that the big-name commentator is... Continue Reading →
It may surprise you to know (but then again it may not) that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were in favour of free trade. For them it was one of the glories of capitalism that it could move across the globe at will – transforming everything in its path, ripping up the past and tearing... Continue Reading →
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