Abbott in royal-land gets curiouser and curiouser
PETER FITZSIMONS It wasn’t just what the Prime Minister said, it was the way he said it. At the reception for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at Parliament House on Thursday evening, Tony Abbott was effusive enough to make Sir Robert Menzies blush. But here’s what got me.
Hillary Clinton and the fake baby conspiracy
ANNABEL CRABB The best thing about American politics is that it almost always makes you feel better about ours. Even our most hotly-disputed conspiracy theories usually have at least a spidery skein of truth to them.
We're all Nazis when it comes to animal rights
SAM DE BRITO We assume we are superior to animals and we can thus do with them what we like.
People power dominates in battle of brands
MATT WADE 11:13pm Like most people, I can instantly identify hundreds of logos, sometimes even by a single letter or a fragment of the company's icon.
Helplines need money to save young lives
Rachel Worsley National Children’s Commissioner Megan Mitchell has called for submissions to an Australian Human Rights Commission inquiry into intentional self-harm and suicide by children.
The ghosts of acquaintances and lives past
CHARLES WATERSTREET 11:45pm How long do you leave a dead friend on your contacts list on your phone?
Getting tough on crime isn't cheap or simple
KIRSTY NEEDHAM 12:45am It is crunch time in the law-and-order debate in NSW. The "marshmallow" attorney-general has been dumped; his department ditched and renamed "Police and Justice".
Ageing is no ticking time-bomb
William Bourke Our ageing population presents serious economic challenges. Right?
To insurers, not every life has an equal value
CATHERINE ARMITAGE An unnamed Silicon Valley tech tycoon has set a new Guinness World Record for the world’s biggest life insurance policy worth $US201 million.
Property price guides - the search for honesty
You’ve fallen in love with a house. The agent has told you it’s in your price range. You’ve paid for a building and a pest inspection. The auction day arrives but the house sells way above the guide the agent gave.
APRIL 27
Letters to the Editor
Joe Hockey, when will the end of the ‘‘age of entitlement’’ extend to the upper end of town?
Let no one name him Marmaduke
Mike Carlton For a long while there we believed that Neville Wran was corrupt. It was taken as read: Nifty must be bent, as NSW premiers had been so often and ever would be.
Time to celebrate the losers
Richard Glover People think Game of Thrones is grizzly, but it has nothing on Australian history as taught to generations of Australian kids. For inclusion in the history syllabus, you have to die a miserable death.
Tough task in higher learning
PETER HARTCHER With the tertiary education sector facing challenges on a range of fronts, huge change is afoot.
PM must persuade the motormouths
JACQUELINE MALEY Opinion Little is known about Senator-elect Ricky Muir, of the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party, beyond his self-evident enthusiasm for motor vehicles.
Factional menace may rear its head again
SEAN NICHOLLS One of the keys to Barry O'Farrell's success as a leader of the Liberal Party lay in an extraordinary meeting he organised not long after the 2007 election.
Good journalism ruled by head not heart
JULIA BAIRD Attacking journalists is hardly a new phenomenon. It's been a blood sport since the 19th century, when, not coincidentally, the rise of the press coincided with the rise of democracy in the West.
Wran's lowest ebb a high point for journalism
Jonathan Holmes The lowest point in former NSW premier Neville Wran’s political career, he told the media on the day he retired in 1986, was "that wretched royal commission".
Six degrees of separation of the week's news
PETER MUNRO From Attorney-General George Brandis to Canadian pop star Justin Bieber, here's this week's six degrees of separation.
The hidden costs of shopper dockets
On face value, the fuel discounts that big supermarkets offer motorists seem a good deal.
Column 8
‘‘You have got it wrong in your correction of the crossword in Thursday’s Herald,’’ nitpicks Ken Sanz, of Bass Hill. ‘‘The answer is not wrong, as it fits. The clue is wrong."
26 APRIL
Letters to the Editor
Rather than older people being required to do the heavy lifting in Joe Hockey’s budget deliberations, would it be too much to ask that he abide by one of the criterion of a civilised society.
Gallipoli not the only war to define Australia
Gary Foley As an Aboriginal person who had family serve in World War I, I am acutely aware that there are many Aboriginal families who had relatives who fought at Gallipoli.
The role of narrative in Anzac Day
Michele Bruniges It was almost a century ago when my grandfather answered the call to serve "King and country" and enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force.
Deaths at sea swapped for annihilation on land
RICHARD ACKLAND With every passing day, news from the asylum seeker front line gets darker.
We're all in the waiting room on health policy
Stephen Leeder Since coming to power last year, the federal government has not offered the community a health policy or even a story about what it intends to do. Instead, we are saturated with pronouncements that healthcare as we know it is unsustainable.
Clive Palmer's jive seals his party's fate
MARK KENNY Opinion Parties built around a strong individual rarely succeed and never last.
Curious notion of Australia's 'birth' at Gallipoli
John Hirst The first Anzac Day passed unremarked in Australia. Australians did not receive a good account of the Gallipoli landing until two weeks later when they read a report in their morning newspapers by an English war correspondent.
Maybe we don't need race laws
GAY ALCORN In May, 1997, I covered a One Nation meeting in Geelong. Protesters heckled and jostled the mostly older Australians who had come to form a branch of Pauline Hanson's party.
Striking the right (re)balance in Asia
HAMISH MCDONALD Barack Obama’s grand vision for America’s place in the so-called Asian century still remains a work-in-progress, or less charitably a policy in search of substance.
Time to escape straitjacket of risk avoidance
Gary Humphries Last week authorities in Portland, Oregon, made the startling decision to drain a reservoir of 140 million litres of drinking water.
A day for some mature reflection
Today the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attend an Anzac Day ceremony at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. They will lay a wreath in honour of those who sacrificed their lives and limbs for their country.
Column 8
"Regarding recent items on stonemason's errors," writes Barry Heywood, of Runaway Bay, "my wife has three great-uncles buried in a cemetery in the Hawkesbury area, side by side."
APRIL 25
Letters to the Editor
Let me apologise to Joe Hockey for becoming a burden to the country as I reach retirement age. I am sorry for having private health insurance so as not to be a burden on the public health system.
In the Herald: April 25, 1912
Brian Yatman New zoo site announced, underground tramways mooted, and photographer kicked off beach
Neville Wran's urban legacy a blight on Sydney
ELIZABETH FARRELLY "We have lost a great mate," ran the headlines. No doubt it's true. But Neville Wran's death, sandwiched as it was between our two defining acronyms, ICAC and ANZAC, should also remind us just what mate culture has cost Australia, Sydney in particular.
Time is almost up for Queen Elizabeth
PAUL SHEEHAN Once upon a time, during the visit of a new, young and good-looking Queen Elizabeth, making the first visit to Australia by a British monarch, the outpouring of curiosity, celebration and support was so great.
Time to consider US-style university system
Fred Hilmer The recent Facebook post by Education Minister Christopher Pyne querying whether Australia’s higher education system could include US-style colleges was interesting to say the least.
When prolonging life becomes too cruel
Peter Saul The banal but terrifying truth is that we are all destined to die. Though death is unchanging, the way we will die is different now from at any time in history. Unrecognisably so.
It is the Turks who should be celebrating
Jonathan King As Australia gears up for next year's centenary of our favourite battle, Gallipoli, we should spare a thought for the first Australian to fall in WWI killed - not at Gallipoli - but in France.
A fairer legal system for sexual assault victims
Annelise Roberts Sexual assault is an important issue - one that personally affects millions of Australians, and which has a flow-on impact on every community.
We should shoot horses to protect alpine
Bruce Jacobs The alpine regions of Australia’s Snowy Mountains are a world treasure. Above tree-line, a profusion of colourful wild flowers dot the grasses, bogs and mosses.
The republic cause is receding
Nicholas Reece With the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge winding up their trip to our southern land it is time for a bit of straight talk amongst we Australians.
Compassion needed in end of life decisions
Recent United Nations figures showed Australia’s life expectancy at birth has reached 82 years, equal fourth longest (with Italy) behind Japan, Hong Kong and Switzerland.
APRIL 24
Letters to the Editor
When my 82-year-old mother had been suffering from congestive heart failure for more than a year, she gasped that she wanted an ambulance, demanded to be taken to hospital and there stated that she refused all treatment.
Column 8
"Late last year the Belvedere Amphitheatre area in Centennial Park was beautifully renovated, and a grand and expensive-looking slab of stone with carved inscriptions was installed."
In the Herald: April 24, 1848
Brian Yatman A list of grievances for Her Majesty; done for "furious riding"; and a Bengal tigress on display
Sleepless nights until Manus nightmare ends
Ben Pynt In my day job in the construction industry, I specialise in alternative dispute resolution in the thriving gas pipeline sector in Western Australia. By night though, I get to follow my true passion as a human rights advocate.
Smart cities have good public transport
MATT WADE Sydney could pay a high price for its lousy public transport.
Highlights
Forget democracy, we need something new
Ten years ago, in 2004, I decided to jump off the merry-go-round of political party fund-raisers. I found both the main course and the political offering equally unappetizing.
Is the end of "cheap China" imminent?
There are fears that China’s current slowdown might panic the government into yet another big wave of stimulus with the emphasis on indiscriminate state-connected expansion.
Passing of a reformer and political giant
We take much for granted in NSW. For most of the state's citizens under the age of 30, it will come as a surprise that many of the legal rights, community services and public assets that enhance their daily lives did not exist before they were born.
A hangover of epic proportions
Mike Carlton: Tasting Notes: The 1959 Chateau d'Icac. Celebrated vigneron Nick Di Girolamo has excelled himself with this rare and striking Premier Grand Cru.
Hockey's new trick: cutting is really spending
As the storm clouds gathered in 2008, Labor was told to spend the lot.
Barry O'Farrell's lapse no reason for the guillotine
Paul Sheehan: What? The resignation of Barry O'Farrell has opened a gaping conceptual hole. It seems disproportionate. A bottle of wine and a memory lapse does not seem enough for the guillotine.
Generation Jobless at risk of becoming reality
The latest youth unemployment figures show more than 257,000 young Australians are unemployed.
Time to put the ATAR to the test
Adam Spencer: Last year more than 250,000 people applied for places in the hundreds of degrees offered by Australia’s 39 universities.
Bob Carr, former Minister for Nothing
Peter Hartcher: If Abbott indulged himself in a Downunder Downton Abbey of lords and ladies, Carr’s new diary reveals a Don Quixote figure, where the great struggles and heroic deeds take place in his imagination.
Royal Botanic Gardens masterplan: a vision not so splendid
Paul Keating: The Sydney Botanic Gardens and Domain, while a gift from governors Phillip and Macquarie to the people of Sydney, is of its essence, a gift of nature.
Reshaping the West: Sydney's challenge
A land of opportunity awaits if policymakers rethink western Sydney's jobs, childcare, transport and planning needs.
Lessons for Millers Point from Albanese's mother
Evicting a community of long-time public housing residents of Millers Point will leave Sydney a poorer and less diverse place.
Tony Abbott has gone barking mad
Mike Carlton:"Abbott !" said the Queen sharply. "Off the sofa, please. Sit there by the fire with Thatcher and Blair."
The whitest piece of proposed legislation I've encountered
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about George Brandis’ now infamous comment this week that Australians “have the right to be bigots” is that it was so unremarkable.
Hypocrisy adds insult to injuries
Richard Ackland: If he can't stand the heat, Andrew Bolt shouldn't fan the flames of public opinion
Here's some feminist advice, Mr Abbott
Anne Summers: I want to congratulate the PM on his feminist conversion and also to give him some advice.
Time to act on domestic violence
In the shadows behind the curtains, in the black of night. In the murky depths of despair, desperate to escape.
