General News

Imagine if the question we will all be asked at the referendum on 14 October was being asked just about you: Would you want to be consulted before decisions were made about your future?

It may or may not be a well-known fact that the Uluru Statement From The Heart has a beautifully subtle, double meaning. The first and most obvious one is that this one-page statement is an invitation to Australians, an invitation to listen and understand Aboriginal Australians in a way that comes from their heart. Rich…

Preambles being all the rage, before we begin I’d like to acknowledge how painfully Australian it is that the Prime Minister announced the date of the referendum – ostensibly about whether we should listen to Indigenous people – almost immediately after photo-oping in a personalised Rio Tinto shirt, a mining company that was recently urged…

During his rise to power in 1930’s Germany, Adolf Hitler’s inner circle had a major problem – their leader was an unpalatable weirdo. A peculiar, solitary figure who lived alone, had manic temper outbursts and scowled at cameras, Hitler was quite the spin doctor’s challenge.His inner circle formulated a plan to only have Hitler shown…

The Labor national conference has a deep historic legacy, having shaped some of our young nation’s most consequential policy decisions. Despite diligent efforts to quell the detractors and instil a sense of unity, the conference couldn’t avoid public rancour bubbling up over the half-a-trillion dollar target that is AUKUS: Australia’s largest military spend since the…

Deep down, on some fundamental – even spiritual – level, most of us are aware that watching Channel Seven is an unfortunate thing to do. This is a universe of infinite wonder and only finite moments with which to absorb it, so none of us should ever watch Channel Seven lightly. It is a mind…

Climate denial has always been cretinous, deadly and irresponsible, but today, right here, right now, it requires Morrisonian levels of cognitive dissonance, a toddler’s inability to link cause and effect, a rotten sold soul, and an unwillingness to look outside the window and believe your own stupid fucking face. That Rupert Murdoch employs so many…

In its year-and-a-bit of government, after a decade of playing the small target in Opposition, senior members of the Australian Labor Party have tried their hand at rapprochement with an innately hostile corporate media. From a secret meeting with Rupert Murdoch in the early hours of its term, to its clear strategy of attempting to…

Is there anyone in Australia paying attention to the federal Liberal Party apart from Canberra coke dealers and those men who post stale bottles of piss to Family Court judges? #NotAllAngryMen Because it was all happening for their glorious Liberal leader last month when the party released a farm-to-table Youtube video for the man who…

A world drowning in misinformation, depression, existential isolation, conspiracy cults, wellness circuses, creeping fascism, resurgent white supremacy, and the degradation of humanity’s collective attention span isn’t exactly crying out for more social media. That’s like turning to booze to deal with a drinking problem. Or capitalism to fix the climate crisis. You see this thing…