The budget debate we really need to have
The Age This newspaper broadly welcomed the commission's view that the health, education and welfare systems require an overhaul.
Health 'solution' will cost more, long-term
MAY 3 There is a wealth of evidence that preventive health is more cost effective than treating.
Abbott's F-35 stealth fighter jet pledge gives local manufacturing a lift
David Wroe The founder of the Melbourne manufacturer Marand learnt his trade at the city's Holden plant. Now his company is making carbon fibre and titanium tails for what is promised to be the most formidable fighter plane the world has seen.
China's watchers for the motherland
John Garnaut This week Fairfax Media reported that China was building covert networks of informants at leading universities in Melbourne and Sydney to keep tabs on ethnic Chinese lecturers and students. The Chinese consulate in Sydney denounced the report as ''totally groundless'' and bearing ''ulterior motives'', while reminding Australia that China has become its largest source of international students.
Avatar Sweetie exposes sex predators
Kristen Schweizer Sweetie looks much like other unfortunate young Filipinas. Just 10 years old, her user profile shows she spends her days online fielding requests from men who offer her money to perform sexual acts in front of a webcam. When she logs on, invitations pour in - ''Are you a working girl?'' or ''I'm into girls your age'' - from strangers keen to get her into a private show via Skype or Yahoo Messenger.
Hockey hones his budget razor
MATT WADE It's become an autumn ritual in national politics. As the trees turn yellow in Canberra, treasurers recycle a well-worn narrative of budget pain. They speak of tough calls, difficult choices and the need for sacrifice if the nation's books are to balance.
Royal couple thwart Australian republic movement
Damien Murphy So many photo opportunities, so many dresses. At times the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's visit seemed a variation on Paul Hogan's tourist pitch: ''Throw another royal on the barbie''.
Parkville College kids learn to escape chaotic lives
JOHN SILVESTER Parkville College is an exclusive, invitation-only education facility where the cost per student dwarfs even the most prestigious private school.
The Anzac evolution
TONY WRIGHT Hanifi Araz, a big man from the city of Canakkale across the Dardanelles from the Gallipoli Peninsula, saw the future in the early 1980s, and he wanted to be part of it.
Grange affair a hard act to swallow
Deborah Snow, Sean Nicholls A throw-back to old-fashioned courtesies helps bring down a premier.
Oh, the horror! Primal fears lurk behind desire to wake in fright
KIM ARLINGTON Would you willingly spend two hours with a sadistic serial killer? Thousands of Australians have.
Boston's rubber ducks carry a kindness message and start a movement
Melanie Eversley One woman's attempts to cope with the Boston Marathon bombing has led to a social movement.
Pioneering woman Kanchan Chaudhary Bhattacharya on rise in India's circles of power
Jason Koutsoukis 'I'm here to fight for you, to fight the endless circle of corruption, and to do development.'
Amid the law and its jungle
JOHN SILVESTER It must be strange to voluntarily spend your working days dealing with the violent, the drug-affected and the dangerously disturbed. And yet this story is not about subeditors, but an equally peculiar group - criminal lawyers.
Election in India the biggest event in history
Jason Koutsoukis On May 16, 12 million public servants on loan to India's election commission will conclude the biggest organised event in human history: the 2014 general elections.
Rwanda genocide anniversary sheds light on horrors of bigotry
Tony Wright Ariver of humanity. Half a million people, more than twice the entire population of say, Geelong, trudging along a single-lane road, their belongings balanced upon their heads or strapped to bowed backs. There was a dark poetry to the name of that border road: Avenues des Poids Lourds. Literally, the Street of Heavy Loads.
Free speech gives government a licence to eavesdrop
NOEL TOWELL In an office in the Immigration Department's Canberra headquarters in early 2011, a public servant was hunched in front of a computer monitor experimenting with something called Radian6.
Letters
Applying uniform laws and putting nature first
The question must be asked: Do any of our governments care about nature?
How to handle China and not be broken by it
Australia can, at the margins, encourage China to uphold abiding principles that foster human rights, peaceable relations and world trade.
To shoot or not to shoot, the question remains for police
John Silvester When the demons in Wayne Joannou's mind finally escaped, the endgame was always going to be ugly.
Letters
End links with banks investing in fossil fuels
The divestment movement offers one significant way to act in the face of climate change.
Will Clive Palmer's splash cash work in WA Senate race?
Rick Feneley, Heath Aston He says he will control the balance of power. Rick Feneley and Heath Aston go looking for clues to Cliver Palmer, via his dinosaur park
Norrie has won a victory for all people neither male nor female
PAUL BIBBY 'As soon as my certificate comes through from the registrar, I'm heading right back there to get married.'
Jane Austen descendant Caroline Knight comes to grips with her history
LINDA MORRIS It's a ridiculous thing, you tell yourself, to seek out a resemblance to Jane Austen in the face of a woman who is her great niece, five generations removed. The one portrait of Austen is based on Cassandra's prim spinster-ish sketch of her sister in Georgian bonnet, and was, as Caroline Knight notes, extending a warm hand, never considered a close likeness anyway.
Indonesian poll's predilection for the pretty and the pragmatic
MICHAEL BACHELARD One-time nude model, polygamist and schlock horror movie actress Angel Lelga smiles for the camera as a succession of poor women move in to be photographed in her orbit. They are standing in a village in Central Java, and Angel's high-fashion headscarf is incongruous among the chickens and dust of the rice belt.
The Age
Baseline sentencing is rank populism
The Napthine government is imposing populist demands for retribution on the courts.
March 29
When the colour white defines 'normality'
Waleed Aly made me realise that I am a 'person of colour', the colour being white.
Pedophile support programs challenge community hatred
DANIELLA MILETIC Since her husband's release, Barbara has campaigned for treatment for child sex offenders in Australia once they get out of jail.
Life is not so sweet when policies don't make cents
TONY WRIGHT It's little wonder a whole generation remains suspicious of smartypants in the Treasury.
Locked in a war of words to define free speech
GAY ALCORN Fredrick Toben always insisted he wasn't a Holocaust denier because you couldn't deny something that never happened.
Secrets and fears behind the Manus Island veil
MICHAEL GORDON Key witnesses to the attack on Reza Barati have not been formally interviewed.
The Age
The bucks stop with Minister Guy
Given the potential for financial windfalls, planning must be completely free of influence.
A message packing punch
John Silvester It is so easy to beat up on kids these days. They are stupid, lazy, drug-addled, violent and selfish.
Air-safety lessons we need to learn
TOM ALLARD Two weeks into the search for MH370, it has been one of the most puzzling and chaotic aircraft investigations on record. While multiple leads have gone cold, there are five lessons that should be learnt to fix the apparent - and sometimes shocking - weaknesses in the global air-safety regime.
All joy and no fun: Jennifer Senior explores the ups and downs of parenthood
Andrew Purcell All parents love a good whinge. It's one of the chief benefits of membership in the world's least exclusive club. And who can blame us?
Abbott fiddles while Manus burns
MICHAEL GORDON As preparations were completed for Friday's ceremonial welcome for Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott in Port Moresby, including the 19-gun salute, a procession of asylum seekers was appearing before a judge in a courthouse on Manus Island and describing life without hope.
How can we laugh in the face of evil?
MARTIN FLANAGAN With parody rants featuring the dicatator still popular online, I wonder: why is Hitler so funny?
Never an idol moment on showbiz treadmill
DANNY KATZ Just under 1 million viewers tune in for the debut of Australian Idol Master God-Like Deity.
Past planning problems are present predicaments in Melbourne
SHANE GREEN Film from 1954 shows most the problems facing Melbourne then are still relevant today.
March 22
Sleepy coastal towns are now just part of suburbia
Neither the Liberal nor Labor parties seem to have a plan to prevent coastal suburban sprawl.
John Howard's man falls from grace as Arthur Sinodinos steps down
Kate McClymont, Jonathan Swan and Michaela Whitbourn How did squeaky clean Liberal icon Arthus Sinodinos get messed up with the now notorious Eddie Obeid in the NSW corruption inquiry?
The Age
The West must hold firm against Putin
Leaders need to maintain their courage and not vacillate, even as Russia ups pressure.
A war of words over words that wound
MICHAEL GORDON The most revealing exchanges about Prime Minister Tony Abbott's plan to remove legislation that makes it an offence to 'offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate' people on the grounds of race or ethnicity came after the panel that vigorously debated the issue on the Q&A; program left the ABC's studio on Monday night.
Festivals nothing to write home about ... until the next time
Danny Katz The life of a writer is a very glamorous, sexy one. If that writer is Kim Kardashian.
My old friend is found in translation
MARTIN FLANAGAN Reading unpublished manuscripts can be a tedious occupation, which ends in polite evasions.
Statues that have lifted and divided Melbourne
LAWRENCE MONEY A once-feted Melbourne mural now stands as retail wallpaper behind two super-stores.
March 15
Labor conflicted due to role of mining industry
Opposition's inability to expose the sham that is Coalition climate policy is a disgrace.
The Age
Child protection crisis demands action now
The scale of this problem and its implifications do not seem to be fully appreciated.
Road trip to the moon takes us far beyond our horizons
TONY WRIGHT Amate and I took a trip to the moon a couple of weeks ago. We rode our motorbikes.
The mystery of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370
Tom Allard, Lindsay Murdoch The mining engineer turned to his wife and handed her his wedding ring and his watch.
