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Once upon a time, proud, multicultural Australia heard Pauline Hanson’s talking points and found them intolerable. Outside of that one uncle everyone avoids at the Christmas party, we’d collectively laugh at them. “Fuck off, we’re full,” wasn’t ever a sincere phrase. It was a mocking term, fake thick bogan accent and all, that was used…

Trigger warning: this article contains descriptions of an alleged sexual assault that people, especially victims of sexual assault, might find traumatic. Please exercise caution and care. As the weekend approached, Brittany Higgins might have hoped her 3-day ordeal in the Witness Box was nearing an end. It was not to be. Despite Brittany having spent…

Watching Bruce Lehrmann’s terrible, horrible, no good very bad days in the witness box at the start of his defamation case against Channel 10 and Lisa Wilkinson last week, one wonders if he was fully prepared for the difference between a cross-examination by Dr Matt Collins KC and a chequebook chat on Spotlight? Finally required…

The fairy tale that there’s an anti-authority streak, some anti-ruling class rebelliousness, running deep in the blood of Australians is as bullshit as Drop Bears. But way less fun. Ned Kelly, the Eureka Stockade, a jumbuck nabbing swagman… we even fancy ourselves a bit Mad Max. Yet in fact — and of course —we’re a…

In the four weeks of unprecedented human tragedy unfolding in Gaza after the October 7 attacks by Hamas, Israel has unleashed one of the heaviest and most concentrated carpet bombing campaigns in modern history, responding with a level of force that has shocked the world, making a mockery of proportionality, leaving those that justify or…

Throughout 2016 to 2018, telco giant Samsung Australia advertised a staggeringly expensive “water resistant” mobile phone. The phone could float around the pool, surf a wave and generally stand up to the most rigorous water fantasies any phone fetishist could imagine. Samsung’s absolutely fabulous water-resistant mobiles were marketed across all forms of social media, points…

For many, October 14 is already the distant past. Our dark times throw up dark distractions and the only fallout of the failed Voice referendum still preoccupying the political-media class is the impact it might have on the electoral fortunes of the Government. What does it say about the Prime Minister’s judgement, it ponders listlessly,…

As the missiles explode and the buildings turn to dust and the children are slaughtered in their thousands, you will be asked to believe that it is somehow justified.  Our tribe is fighting their tribe. This has happened before and it will happen again.   As refugee camps and hospitals are decimated, your mind will need…

Earlier this year, the panel on ABC’s Gruen spoke about a dystopian future in which gambling companies take the hundreds of millions of dollars a year they spend on TV advertising and instead start exploiting Australia’s inadequate gambling advertising laws to get TikTok creators to do sponsored content for teens. Scary stuff. But luckily that…

What is there to say one day out from Australia’s historic referendum on the Voice other than this instance of a nation examining its soul has been a wee bit fucked. There has been love and courage and truth and hope, yes, but the air is thick with bile and bullshit, and it will linger. …