Australian politics, society & culture

March 2016
Crown Sydney image
Why is Australia planning so many new casinos?
Twelve of a kind
By David Neustein

Whale migration is set to have a significant impact on the character of Australia’s cities over the next few years. This elusive breed of mammal, the VIP international gambler – or “whale”, as it is called in casino circles – is known to wager millions a night on games of baccarat or blackjack. No less than 12 huge projects aimed at ensnaring these players are being planned across ten Australian cities, with a total expenditure of more than $15 billion.

February 2016
The most perfunctory of checks would have shown Paul Sheehan’s allegations were almost certainly untrue. But he couldn’t help himself.
A tissue of lies: Paul Sheehan and “Louise”
By Richard Cooke
“When she gave me verifiable facts, they were verified,” wrote Paul Sheehan, in the article that was teased on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday morning.
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The dominance of baby boomers is becoming total
The boomer supremacy
By Richard Cooke
Mike Baird, the premier of New South Wales, can’t have been prepared for this. Two months ago he was probably the most popular politician in Australia, presenting a wet Liberal surfer persona that gelled with the state’s better nature. There were travel concessions for asylum seekers.
Public health and personal responsibility
Germ welfare
Karen Hitchcock
In my first year of medical school we had a term of lab-based microbiology specifically designed to make us hyper-vigilant about germs. The teacher knew she had to make it personal if she were to have any chance of switching us from walking instruments of germ warfare into safe, sterile clinicians.
Just how innovative is the Turnbull government’s innovation package?
The start-up whisperer
Nick Feik
If innovation and economic reform could be achieved by sunny proclamation, Australia under a Turnbull government would be sitting pretty. Agility would be our paradigmatic virtue, ideas our major export.

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Today
Abbott’s big gamble
The former PM lost some skin this week. He doesn't care
Sean Kelly

China’s National People’s Congress: What you need to know “Each year, some 3000 of China’s most powerful officials descend on Beijing for about 10 days of parliamentary pageantry known as the National People’s Congress. While the country’s top legislature is constitutionally...

Cardinal George Pell says investigating paedophile priest was not his responsibility “Pell says when a schoolboy complained to him about paedophile Brother Dowlan, ‘He just mentioned it casually in conversation, he never asked me to...

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The Nation Reviewed

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Illustration
What eels do when we're not watching
Slippery migrants
By James Bradley
There is a small crowd of people by the ponds in Sydney’s Centennial Parklands, tossing bread to the clamouring waterbirds, when the dark form appears. It glides upwards with a lazy, powerful motion to swallow one of the crumbs before disappearing back into the murk. A young girl takes a step back. Her mother smiles. “It’s just an eel,” she says. “There are lots of them in here.”
February 2016
The language of menus
Degustation Laconic
By Aaron Timms
At LuMi Bar & Dining, a newish harbourside restaurant beloved of Sydney’s crisp white shirt dining set, a carefully stubbled chef presents a dish of crab meat, highlighted, he explains, with puffed rice. Puffed grains are a favourite ingredient of LuMi’s Italian head chef,...
February 2016
How do emergency services respond to the LGBTI community?
Cultural hazards
By Jenan Taylor
In a classroom at the Victorian Emergency Management Training Centre on the northern outskirts of Melbourne, 17 students stand in an untidy teardrop pattern around a series of cards set out on the floor.
December 2015
Nick Schlieper illuminates a Shakespearean tragedy
Lighting the king
By Darryn King
The State Opera of South Australia 2004 production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen began with almost three minutes of utter darkness. The pesky glow of seat markers and air-conditioner LEDs had all been painstakingly obscured or extinguished.

Essays

Current Issue
Nowhere near Hollywood
By Louis Nowra
There is a special sort of loneliness about sitting in a cinema on your own. Over the past year, I have frequently found myself watching an Australian movie as the sole member of an audience and, on three occasions, with only one other person in the cinema. Once the lights go down, it can be an uncomfortable, even spooky, feeling of detachment.
Current Issue
Alan Moorehead, Australia’s forgotten literary giant
Notes on a disappearance
By Thornton McCamish
Every book lover knows the thrilling experience of discovering a writer whose work changes the way they see the world.
November 2015
On the road with the irrepressible Nick Xenophon
Joker  in  the  pack
By Anne Manne
Nick Xenophon’s small white car is stuffed with what looks like rubbish. I climb in and immediately conclude that his famous refusal to ever invite journalists to his house is probably wise. The independent senator for South Australia absent-mindedly hands me an empty take-away...
December 2015
The strange life and tragic death of Julia the gorilla
In danger
By Anna Krien
Julia at Melbourne Zoo in 2011.
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. Rene Corten, a tall, handsome man, somewhat ill at ease, was...
December 2015
Why have we failed to address climate change?
Diabolical
By Robert Manne
Unless by some miracle almost every climate scientist is wrong, future generations will look upon ours with puzzlement and anger – as the people who might have prevented the Earth from becoming a habitat unfriendly to humans and other species but nonetheless failed to act

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Arts & Letters

March 2016
Trumbo image
Doing the right thing in Jay Roach’s ‘Trumbo’ and László Nemes’ ‘Son of Saul’
Black lists
By Luke Davies
The television series Breaking Bad is held in high regard for many reasons. Over five seasons spread across six years, it attained the quality of a Greek tragedy. The writing sparkled. The cinematography dazzled (literally – it was shot in sun-baked Albuquerque, New Mexico). Even minor characters were beautifully drawn and came with rich inner lives.
February 2016
Convergence and contradiction at the NGV’s ‘Andy Warhol / Ai Weiwei’
Double happiness
By Julie Ewington
Everyone asks: why Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei? Together?
December 2015
Paul Mason’s ‘PostCapitalism’ and the future of economics
What comes next?
By Scott Ludlam
Supermarket in Oregon.
Paul Mason’s PostCapitalism (Allen Lane; $49.99) is an almost absurdly ambitious work. Parallel histories of Western industrial development, economic theory, the labour movement and the evolution of technology serve as the foundation for Mason’s principal thesis: that capitalism...
February 2016
Stravinsky’s works, collected
The last of his kind
By Andrew Ford
Modern composers are no longer famous the way Igor Stravinsky once was. From our century, indeed, it is hard to comprehend the extent of that fame. Just as Picasso was modern art, so Stravinsky was modern music. Like Picasso, Stravinsky lived a long life (they were born a year...
December 2015
Five days with David Foster Wallace in ‘The End of the Tour’
Close encounter
By Luke Davies
Early in James Ponsoldt’s small but oddly luminous The End of the Tour (in limited release 3 December), writer David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) is hypothesising about his work and world view to a Rolling Stone journalist as they drive through the snow-cover
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