In 2020 Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel inspected the taken-for-granted idea of “merit” and concluded that perhaps it’s not such a good thing after all. Now another member of the American ...

Books & arts Finding the right words Zora Simic 16 November 2025 Accusations that her grandmother was a communist spy or a fascist collaborator — or both — sent Lea Ypi back to Albania and into her ...

National affairs Are we there yet? Dean Ashenden 28 March 2025 At last, the Gonski money — which raises a new set of questions Books & arts Dizzying paralysis Dean Ashenden 17 October 2024 Two ...

From Port Moresby’s founding early last century — when it was little more than a dozen corrugated iron shacks, a tennis court and McCrann’s tin-shed tavern — to the sprawling city it is today, Papua ...

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago, the world’s attention has focused on what quickly became a grinding war of attrition, with its endless drone and missile ...

Nations are built with pens and brushes not just hammers and nails. They exhibit their character in what they say about themselves as much as what is said about them. — Bruce Pascoe, Convincing Ground ...

Moree might be booming thanks to cotton and other crops, but many of the benefits haven’t yet reached the local Aboriginal people, the Kamilaroi, who comprise at least a fifth of its 9000 people.

Does Australia need more federal politicians? Special minister of state Don Farrell (and hence prime minister Anthony Albanese) seems to think so. Farrell included the idea in the terms of reference ...

The most striking observation in Dean Spears and Michael Geruso’s new book, After the Spike, is summed up by the cover illustration, which shows a world population rising rapidly to its current eight ...

Given the torrential rainstorms that battered the Brazilian city of Belém as COP30 concluded a couple of weeks ago, it wouldn’t be strictly accurate to say that the dust has settled on the latest UN ...

Christian Swegal’s Sovereign (Amazon Prime) moves with quiet inevitability towards a terrible conclusion. Tense, difficult and deeply confronting, it is an emotionally precise film. This is tragedy ...

During their train journey from the Sydney docks to internment in Hay in 1940, a group of Dunera boys witnessed an incident that would be recounted more than once to the authors of this book. A ...