81a/Photolibrary via Getty Images

So although Sydney was on tornado alert yesterday and Adelaide is having a heatwave of over 40oC predicted this week, what is a given in Australia are the people.

Listen. I hear you. You're a few pounds heavier than you like. I completely understand how you feel. Isn't it amazing we can see the beauty in our best friends, sisters, mothers, and aunts without the slightest thought to their flaws... but can obsess for hours on our own imperfections?

Ximagination

I thought choosing a name would be the fun part of parenting, apart from the construction phase. But some parents get so stressed about finding a name for their newborn they end up calling each other names.

Fairfax Media/Peter Stoop PAS

Lights flashing, sirens blaring, it's 8.54 am and I'm in the back of an ambulance hurtling its way through traffic on the Monash Freeway to the scene of an accident. Truck vs. motorcyclist. The early information doesn't sound good.

Hero Images via Getty Images

So here's the big idea I think will shape 2016: sleep. That's right, sleep! How much and how well we sleep in the coming year -- and the years to follow -- will determine, in no small measure, our ability to address and solve the problems we're facing as individuals and as a society.

KatarzynaBialasiewicz via Getty Images

Every January I go homeless for a week. It is a challenging and exhausting experience that gives me an insight into the realities facing the poverty-stricken. I don't do this for fun or to mock, but to inform and spread an understanding of modern Australian poverty.

PhotoAlto/Milena Boniek via Getty Images

The solutions aren't difficult. We just need the motivation, regulation and coordination. The alternative, in today's Wild Wild West of Internet of Things development, is a runaway increase in security nightmares. It is better to set the standards now and ensure a safer cyber world for our children and ourselves.

Photofusion via Getty Images

All I could see in those little black numbers was the degree I would not be studying, my five year plan not even falling apart but simply, unequivocally vanished. However, far more deeply etched into the woman I am today, are experiences I had in my final year of school that had nothing to do with my academic achievements.

abadonian via Getty Images

Hooray, December! A time for work Christmas parties, end-of-year school concerts, days at the cricket and holidays at the beach. So many Instagram-worthy moments. But wait just a tinsel-hanging second -- have you got consent to take or post that photo?

Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

I am guessing this is probably not the last time I will say the wrong thing, or say something the wrong way.

Vstock LLC via Getty Images

We will exacerbate an intergenerational deficit unless we lift our sights and face up to the question of what sort of society we wish to bequeath. What is the nature of the capital are we bequeathing to future generations?

Mehmet Hilmi Barcin via Getty Images

Last year, we couldn't face festivity. What we had to face was huge and cold, the hardest thing we'd ever admitted: our cherished younger daughter, the quirky little girl who made the wonky angel, was lost to us.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The "crazy" is everywhere. The question is whether, after the fear subsides, the varying political forces will return to "business as usual" as if nothing fundamental has changed in French politics.

John Abbate via Getty Images

It's high time for Federal and State Governments to take action to deliver housing market outcomes that actually house people. The combined annual cost (or national loss) of the capital gains tax concession and negative gearing is around $7 billion. This in itself should drive pressure for reform.

Andrei Spirache via Getty Images

The Counting Dead Women campaign is an admirable, desperate effort by an inspirational group of people to highlight the savagery that widely exists behind closed doors in our community. Yet my mother, and thousands like her over the years, will not be counted among the 78.

Yuichiro Chino via Getty Images

Mental illness is the greatest threat among the non-communicable diseases to the Australian and global economies over the next 20 years.