Taken for a ride
Kate McClymont and Deborah Snow Janice Hardacre has never forgotten the odd conversation she had with her then colleague, Michael Williamson, 20 years ago.
All night dancing, not marching: Reclaim the Night myth debunked
Vince Chadwick, Brussels The International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women had almost everything: a bomb scare, stage invaders, hours of gruelling testimony, great music, claims of masturbation lessons, and a stand-off with the world's media. Everything, that is, except the thing for which this 1976 meeting in Brussels' Palais des Congres is so often remembered.
China frets as US counts debt fallout
Tom Allard and Philip Wen A sombre Barack Obama, framed by a portrait of Abraham Lincoln in the White House's State Dining Room, didn't sugar-coat it when he described the impact of the debt default saga on the US.
Defence all at sea on new submarines
David Wroe Submarines are the stealthy killers in maritime warfare. They are the queens on the chessboard, the strategic game-changers. Any country has to think long and hard about messing with another country that has an advanced submarine fleet. You can't be sure there isn't one sitting quietly off your own coast or waiting in hiding to sink your ships.
Is Melbourne too big for its own good?
Shane Green Sydney Road, Coburg, wears its remarkable ethnic diversity matter of factly, in the very rhythms of daily life. The shopfronts that line the road - Bollywood Fashions, Afghan Bazaar - provide the backdrop to footpaths populated by faces that bring life to this story: the Muslim father pushing the pram, two young African men sharing a joke as they hurry along. As if to officially declare its melting pot status, a banner around the corner shouts: ''Moreland Council welcomes refugees and asylum seekers''. This is the Australian story of a nation built on migrants and newcomers being played out in the everyday routines, joys and struggles of lives being forged in a new home.
Shorten calmed the madding crowd once, can he do it again?
TONY WRIGHT It was just another night in a pub in the tough little town of Beaconsfield when things turned ugly. It was to become a peculiar test for a union chief named Bill Shorten. Few know anything of the matter. It had to be settled quietly before things got out of hand.
India's girls pay the price for our fashion choices
Ben Doherty From the outside, they are not the dark satanic mills of Blake's dystopia. Almost uniformly, they are painted white and carry names such as Best, Casual and Classic.
Happy as a pig in perks
Tom Allard Tony Abbott, defiantly facing down the first major political challenge of his prime ministership, may well regret his decision to compete in the 2011 Port Macquarie Ironman.
Game v Film
Will video games dim Hollywood's star?
GARRY MADDOX Grand Theft Auto V is the fastest selling entertainment product is history. Can Hollywood compete?
Climate change controversy takes a philosophical turn
Nick Miller 'One of the big harms climate change is going to do is killing people. So ... how bad is that?'
Long haul for the short story as Alice Munro wins Nobel accolade
Susan Wyndham With Alice Munro's win, Canada matches Australia's one Nobel win by Patrick White.
Nation mourns as its Little Master prepares for final innings
Ben Doherty It was apposite that Sachin Tendulkar announced his retirement from Test cricket by letter.
The path of most resistance
Deborah Snow Malala Yousafzai's champion has been her father, from the moment she was born.
The small tales that weave a greater truth
Tony Wright Family always meant everything, even when there were head winds and crooked roads, and there had been plenty of those in this woman's long life.
The men and women who wrote the first rough draft of history
MARK BAKER Some would regard them as cardinal sins: journalists masquerading as Vatican luminaries, parading in Nazi-style monocles while grabbing the best seats in bars and - if the persistent rumours were true - reporting to their secret spymasters more often than to their editors and readers.
Archives reveal Japanese atrocities on Diggers kept secret
RORY CALLINAN When officials found human remains in an old Japanese medical dump in Papua New Guinea this year, they may have done more than locate two missing World War II commandos.
Different ball, but the game's the same for India's children
Ben Doherty A year on, Samvari is taller, healthier and the scars on her hands have healed. Twelve months ago, when Fairfax first met Samvari, she was 10 years old, stitching a football that was to be given away free to audience members at The Footy Show.
How mistaken identity and luck won on the day
Tim Colebatch In 2007, David Leyonhjelm, an agricultural consultant with a love of guns and finely hewn libertarian views, stood for Bennelong against then prime minister John Howard. As the candidate of the Liberty and Democracy Party (LDP), he came 12th in a field of 13. He won just 89 votes.
Germany's great saviour, or the mother of wasted opportunity?
NICK MILLER AFter eight years bad habits get worse, ambitious underlings get impatient, or luck runs out.
Time to unearth London secrets
ADAM CAREY Melbourne needs to follow London and find a solution to an impending rail capacity crisis.
Our passionate people of letters
Elizabeth Minter Desire to be heard and make a difference to society lies at the heart of most writers' motivations.
Back to basics
DANIEL HURST It's a vision of the future - grounded in the past. New Education Minister Christopher Pyne invites us to imagine classrooms where teachers return to old-school instruction - becoming more a deliverer of facts, less a convener of activity-based learning. He wants young readers to sound out words - and public school administrators to enjoy more of the freedoms of their private education counterparts.
Changing of the guard for border protection
David Wroe Angus Campbell, the government's pick to head up border protection, is tall and thin, with angular features and a mild speaking voice.
Remembering Jill: days of grief, shame and fear
Michaela McGuire Why we despised Adrian Bayley was far more clear-cut than why we cried for Jill Meagher.
The Vatican's holy warrior
DAVID MARR George Pell's parish was the big end of town. He was the prince of Catholic Melbourne.
To downsize or not: the rising cost of the great Australian dream
Peter Mares Is it time to change the policy mix to make Australia's housing more affordable and equitable?
Abbott's model to wreck a government may come back to bite him
PETER HARTCHER Tony Abbott is promising again and again that he will lead a 'methodical, measured, calm' government. But he's overlooking something. He's just finished writing a rip-roaring new guidebook on how to be a successful opposition.
The rights and wrongs of designer humans
Neil McMahon Designer babies - their gender, personality traits and skin colour potentially chosen by genetic testing - are a looming reality. But are we ready to confront this minefield of ethical issues?
Tough road ahead for rookie
DARREN GRAY He always paid the rent on time before he became a home owner with his wife. And when the landlord came to visit, the rental property was always clean and tidy. Out in the paddock and in the dairy with the cows at milking time, Victoria's likely new senator Ricky Muir was a diligent and capable worker. One who was punctual and trustworthy.
Walking on the wild side of Senate history
TONY WRIGHT As Australians digest a menu of new senators who appear as disparate as the crowd on a Saturday night at the Birdsville races, some of the patrons armed, it's worth remembering that the Senate has long produced wild surprises.
Hello happy voters
MATT WADE Everyone knows there's more to national success than gross domestic product numbers.
The great budget shuffle
Tom Allard and Peter Martin Rudd made the plea repeatedly in a blitzkrieg series of appearances late this week.
Lost in hype: five burning issues forgotten in the campaign
Daniel Flitton and Shane Green Winston Churchill called elections the indispensable education of a politician - and having lost and won a few, he was well schooled. Modern campaigners work tirelessly to shape the agenda, using relentless media appearances, shopping centre walks, stunts against carefully chosen backdrops and a blizzard of press releases to keep the message on the themes most favourable to their candidate and harmful to their opponents.
Salinger's secrets: the man behind the legend
Andrew Purcell 'I'd have this rule that nobody could do anything phony when they visited me.'
The fight for a forest paradise
MICHAEL BACHELARD Sumatra is the only place where orang-utans, tigers, elephants and rhinoceros are found together.
Beguiled by the beautiful, our obsession with the body has worn a little thin
Lionel Shriver The body is a card we've been arbitrarily dealt. Looking in the mirror, we recognise ourselves and don't.
Affluenza Epidemic
Tom Allard 'We can expect bitter conflict within our society, and unhappiness about our institutions.'
So bad they're good: films we love to mock
GARRY MADDOX The world's worst movies are so bad they're good again - and crowds are flocking.
Here comes the sun: power to the people
Ben Cubby and Peter Hannam Here's a bright idea: what if, instead of buying solar panels,companies put them on your roof free.
Fathers, stand up for your children, always
Sarah Smith * I had just finished work when my sister rang with the news that he was no longer conscious.
Careful what you say, the bins have ears
LUCY BATTERSBY Rubbish bins tracking pedestrians as they walk along the street sound like something out of a sci-fi movie.
Tenacious Milne walks the thin green line
SHANE GREEN On September 7, will the Greens remain the third force in Australian politics?
The evolution of Abbott
MARK BAKER It's just shy of 7 o'clock on a crisp winter's morning in Geelong. Tony Abbott is on his way to rescue the Great Ocean Road from the ravages of man and nature - or at least to rescue the seat of Corangamite from the ravages of Labor - with a quick photo opportunity and the promise of a $25 million handout.
Woeful waste or welcome change: leave scheme divides critics
MATT WADE The daily juggle of working parents, branded a ''barbecue stopper'' by John Howard more than a decade ago is still potent politics, as the 2013 election campaign shows.
Lights out at the house of power
TONY WRIGHT Opinion An angular figure looms out of the subtropical evening, a big moon casting its light on the Brisbane River. ''What's going on here?'' inquires Bob Carr, Australia's Foreign Minister, blinking at the swirl of people brandishing banners.
Me TV: the idiot box gets smart and personal
MICHAEL IDATO Two years after it launched its first line of commercial television transceivers in 1948, the Zenith Radio Corporation unveiled a device that would come to fundamentally alter the audience's relationship with the idiot box: the remote control.
On being Rudd
Deborah Snow On June 24, 2010, a first-term prime minister who'd won a thumping election victory two-and-a-half years earlier was cut down by his own party, without warning, in one of the most seismic events in Australia's political history.
High stakes as PNG's new strongman bets on asylum
MARK BAKER Early last week, at the height of the controversy over Australia's plan to permanently export its asylum seeker problem to Papua New Guinea and neighbouring Nauru, PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill decided to tackle some of his fiercest domestic critics head on.
Crimes at sea: the dark side of cruise ships
CHRIS JOHNSTON The Australian industry is dominated by a corporation, nicknamed ''Carnivore'' by its detractors.
As Cairo counts its dead, peace remains remote
RUTH POLLARD The smell of death hangs heavily in the air at Al-Iman Mosque in Nasr City. There are bodies as far as the eye can see and the blocks of ice laid on their chests to slow down the decomposition fight a losing battle with the intense summer heat.
