Tasmania presents something of a political conundrum. In May 2023 its Liberal government fell into minority with the defection of two members, John Tucker and Lara Alexander. Premier Jeremy Rockliff ...

Washington’s ambitions in the region aren’t going unopposed. Among the groups challenging the dominant narrative of the Micronesian islands as “the tip of the spear” for the US military in the western ...

Books & arts Alone like a finger Nick Haslam 13 June 2025 It was writing that “separated me from everything,” says German writer Judith Hermann in a captivating collection of biographical essays ...

To be fair, the state department is no stranger to budgetary pressure. Towards the end of the cold war, without a clear antagonist, Washington “let its diplomatic muscles atrophy,” as former secretary ...

Celebrated by previous vice-chancellors, the Australian Dictionary of Biography and its fellow national project, the Australian National Dictionary, are threatened by university cuts ...

If the biggest surprise of May’s federal election was its lopsided result, a secondary one was the extent to which the Coalition had guzzled down the Voice referendum Kool-Aid. Down to their ...

There’s a story about Hubert Parry, King Charles’s favourite composer, hearing Arnold Schoenberg’s atonal Five Orchestral Pieces Op. 16. It was in 1914, two years before Parry composed “Jerusalem” to ...

To really understand a regime, it seems, you need to see inside its political prisons. And in recent years, a succession of intelligent Australians has unwillingly performed that service and written ...

Australia’s new communications minister Anika Wells had some big files in the in-tray she inherited in May. Among the most pressing was the future of free-to-air TV. Her predecessor, Michelle Rowland, ...

Books & arts The art of disagreeing Jock Given 23 August 2021 “We should be civil with those we don’t know, and aim to know them well enough that we can be uncivil,” argues a new book From the archive ...