On 14 October, my attention will wander between three unconnected stories as they unfold in real time. I will be in New Zealand on that general election date. Polls indicate the Labour government will be replaced by a centre-right coalition. But the peculiarities of the electoral system make election results and the outcome of post-election Continue reading »
Arts and Sport
The second highest grossing film in the world in 2021 barely got a mention in the Australian press. It was co-directed by three acclaimed filmmakers, cost close to US$200 million to produce, made $1 billion, and was nearly three hours long with a sequel of equal length. It ran briefly at the Event Cinema in Continue reading »
Over the 50 years since Patrick White’s Nobel Prize, the progressive cultural nationalists, who borrowed White’s honour, challenged a tired old elite, and then generated a new cohort of tired old elites. They had broken with Britain, but embraced America and its fantasy of the universal progressive empire that dare not say its name. The Continue reading »
The last week in September saw the much delayed (due to Covid) opening of the 19th Asian Games. This event which is held on a four-year cycle involves participants from 45 nations, and perhaps unsurprisingly given the enormous populations in this part of the world sees a larger number of athletes taking part than even Continue reading »
Increasingly I keep finding myself singing, even humming or whistling the old Graham Nash song, ‘Military Madness,’ sometimes hardly aware that I am doing so. ‘Military madness is killing my country Solitary sadness comes over me, War, war, war, war, war, war.’ Of course Australia has always been obsessed with war. While still ‘opening up Continue reading »
Of the proposition that he was the greatest there can be no doubt. Ronald Dale Barassi, 87, was the most prominent name in our great indigenous game for 70 years. The numbers can’t be disputed: 17 grand finals for 10 premierships. “17410” was the number Barass put under his signature. Of course, it adds up Continue reading »
Internationally-acclaimed Indigenous artist Richard Bell’s latest ‘Pay the rent!’ installation at the Tate Modern in London goes to the heart of some of the intractable problems of Australian white settlement. The notion that rent is owed challenges the legitimacy of the claim by the British crown to own Australia, since no treaty was ever made Continue reading »
For the first time since the US achieved global domination economically and militarily after WWII, the military industrial complex and Biden administration fear the rise of China. They have decided that it must be crushed. The US, NATO and its compliant states have whipped up a frenzy of fear and loathing for the Chinese. This Continue reading »
Elite sport is something of a sacred cow. To criticise it is to risk being considered unAustralian. So while Premier Andrews’ announcement that Victoria would not host the 2026 Commonwealth Games was not a wholesale critique of elite sport, I am happy to take up the baton. While Premier Andrews’ announcement that Victoria would not Continue reading »
Europeans endured two world wars in the 20th Century. Surely they have no wish to begin the 21st Century with a third. Johann Sebastian Bach died in Leipzig in 1750. Two hundred years later, Leipzig, the musical capital of Germany, was behind the Iron Curtain. The Berlin Airlift, the detonation of Russia’s first atomic bomb Continue reading »