Australian politics, society & culture

January 2016
Kev Carmody at the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent, Sydney Festival, 17 January 2016
Flamin’ legend
By Anwen Crawford

Kev Carmody can do a lot with an acoustic guitar, and, it transpires, just as much without one. Before he appears in person on this warm Sydney afternoon, his audience gets a preview screening of Songman, directed by Brendan Fletcher, which will screen on the ABC later this year. The short film documents the making of Carmody’s most recent album, Recollections … Reflections … (A Journey).

January 2016
The new PM goes to Washington
Malcolm Turnbull: Still not Tony Abbott
By Sean Kelly
It is worth reminding ourselves, every now and then, how much has changed in the past few months – the main difference being that Malcolm Turnbull is hot, and Tony Abbott is decidedly not. 
January 2016
The Greens leader is at odds with his party on the risks of GMO crops
Di Natale vs the Greens
By Mungo MacCallum
Richard di Natale is the parliamentary leader of the Greens, and he is also a trained scientist. He is not the first in the position; the party’s founding father, Bob Brown, is, like di Natale, a qualified medical doctor.
David Bowie knew what to give away, and what to keep for himself
The man who fell to Earth
Anwen Crawford
There is a lot of saxophone on David Bowie’s latest, and last, album, Blackstar. Saxophone was Bowie’s first instrument – his father bought him a white Bakelite alto saxophone when Bowie, then David Jones, was 12 years old – but he didn’t play it on his own records very often. On Blackstar, he cedes the role to New York jazz band leader Donny McCaslin.
One mother’s campaign to fix overcrowding in Sydney’s schools
Schoolyard crush
Ceridwen Dovey
Steph Croft never set out to become a whistleblower. But in 2012 the financial analyst and mother of two teenagers began to realise something was going horribly wrong with schools planning.

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Today
Malcolm Turnbull: Still not Tony Abbott
The new PM goes to Washington
Sean Kelly

World’s oceans warming at increasingly faster rate, new study finds “The world’s oceans are warming at a quickening rate, with the past 20 years accounting for half of the increase in ocean heat content that has occurred since pre-industrial times, a new study has found. US...

The tennis racket “Secret files exposing evidence of widespread match-fixing by players at the upper level of world tennis can today be revealed … Winners of singles and doubles titles at Grand Slam tournaments are among the core group of 16 players who have repeatedly been reported for losing games when highly suspicious bets...

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The Nation Reviewed

December 2015
The last Aussie-themed pub in London
Gone Walkabout
By Celina Ribeiro
At the Walkabout pub in the Temple district of London, the busiest night of the week is Monday: Brazilian night. Two large Australian flags hang above the bouncers at the entrance ropes, and a road sign by the till reads “NO WORRIES. Official motto of Australians.” A faux-rustic sign points left to the Beach Club, but the party is to the right: the main room is populated almost exclusively by dark-haired, well-groomed South Americans.
October 2015
Brian & Karl make films that speak their own languages
Passion projects
By Sam Twyford-Moore
In 2011, a short film titled Skwerl, but published under the tag ‘How English sounds to non-English speakers’, was uploaded to YouTube by ‘Brian and Karl’. For three and a half minutes a young man and woman have a discussion over dinner in a completely nonsensical version of...
October 2015
Lee Lin Chin’s rise from SBS newsreader to queen of satire
Lee Lin’s double life
By Benjamin Law
It’s often said you should never meet your heroes, as they’ll invariably disappoint.
September 2015
How charities transform the clothes we throw away
The rag trade
By Delia Falconer
In 1813, as the Napoleonic Wars created a yarn shortage in Great Britain, a Yorkshire weaver called Benjamin Law worked out how to add rags to virgin wool to create an inferior yarn called “shoddy”.

Essays

December 2015
The Respect to Mehmetçik Monument at Pine Ridge, Gallipoli.
The creative memorialisation of Gallipoli
An Anzac myth
By Mark McKenna and Stuart Ward
“Could you explain to me this custom?” We had spent three days with our Turkish colleague, and by our final evening together in Çanakkale, on the eastern shore of the Dardanelles strait, the conversation had become more expansive.
December 2015
The strange life and tragic death of Julia the gorilla
In danger
By Anna Krien
In May 1982, Ineke Bonjer and Henk Lambertz, posing as a rich, childless German couple, borrowed a silver BMW coupé and drove up to a house in Westerlo, Belgium, that was surrounded by warehouses and security.
September 2015
On lifestyle diseases and quick fixes
Too many pills
By Karen Hitchcock
At a literary festival, during a discussion of how medicine reflects the values of the society in which it is practised, an interviewer asked me if I thought there would ever be a time when mainstream and alternative medicine would become “truly integrated”. We’d been talking...
October 2015
A British author’s complicated relationship with the island continent
Australia and I
By Will Self
When, early this year, I was invited to give an address at the Melbourne Writers Festival, I didn’t hesitate to accept – nor did I prevaricate when asked what subject I’d be tackling. Such alacrity on my part is uncommon: my writing room, at the top of my house in south London,...
October 2015
How long can Australia ride in the coal wagon?
Coal crash
By Paul Cleary
It’s raining cats and dogs in the gentrified Southern Highlands, two hours’ drive south of Sydney, and even though flood warnings abound and school pick-up time approaches, more than 300 locals file into the Moss Vale RSL to respond to a presentation about a proposed coalmine.

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Arts & Letters

December 2015
Words: Shane Maloney | Illustration: Chris Grosz
Rupert Murdoch & Kamahl
By Shane Maloney and Chris Grosz
Rupert Murdoch was 27 when he met Kandiah Kamalesvaran, a sensitive young Tamil on the dodge from the immigration authorities. Born in Malaya, Kamalesvaran had arrived in Adelaide in 1953, five years earlier, to complete his matriculation. He was now enrolled at university, jumping from course to course to maintain his visa status.
December 2015
Chris Bowen’s ‘The Money Men’ and the ideal treasurer
Ideas disguised as history
By Andrew Charlton
Young politicians write books about ideas; old politicians write histories. In the twilight of their careers, when their passion for politics is no longer absorbed by active service, many former ministers channel their energy into musty biographies or nostalgic memoirs.
November 2015
What makes a Bond theme song great?
For your ears only
By Anwen Crawford
‘Writing’s on the Wall’ is the title song to the newest James Bond film, Spectre, which is released this month. “I want to feel love / Run through my blood,” sings Sam Smith on the chorus, in a pained falsetto. Feel love? Colour me disbelieving. James Bond is a player, not a...
December 2015
The National Museum of Australia’s ‘Encounters’ and the politics of collection
Bringing them home
By Quentin Sprague
Dugong figure, Tudu Island, Torres Strait.
“The English took the place without consent.” Harley Coyne, a Noongar man in his late 50s, was speaking to me in early November from Albany, on Western Australia’s southern coast. His country, that of the Menang people, extends around King George Sound, the striking inlet that...
November 2015
Vanuatu’s Yakel people make their screen debut in Bentley Dean and Martin Butler’s ‘Tanna’
Married to the tribe
By Luke Davies
In 2013, fresh from finishing First Footprints, a documentary series about Australia’s Aboriginal history, Bentley Dean told co-director Martin Butler of his plan to live with his partner and young family in a “very different culture” before the kids started school.
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