Australian politics, society & culture

March 2016
Paul Sheehan’s story about the alleged gang rape of “Louise” led, eventually, to him being suspended by Fairfax. But how has a writer so reckless survived for so long at a reputable media company? A special report for the Monthly and Guardian Australia
Lessons from Louise: the story of Paul Sheehan and the Sydney Morning Herald
By Richard Cooke for The Monthly and Guardian Australia

The office of the Sydney Morning Herald has been a busy place since Paul Sheehan wrote his infamous piece on “Louise”. The column’s racially charged rape allegations have since unravelled. In the two weeks or so since it was published, it has yielded a video plea from the author to the subject, at least five separate apologies, a correction, a retraction, a press council complaint and an internal investigation by the editor-in-chief of the Herald.

March 2016
True crime and entertainment in Netflix’s ‘Making a Murderer’
The art of manipulation
By Anna Goldsworthy
Steven Avery
Sometimes, while giving workshops on life writing, I’ve had conversations that seem – at the very least – morally suspect. How much detail would best convey the marriage breakdown? Would it be preferable to start the story with the suicide attempt, or gradually build up to it?
Current Issue
The prime minister does not seem to be himself at all
Turnbull’s rightful place
By Don Watson
“All joy wants eternity,” Nietzsche said, speaking of woe and eternal recurrence. And, “we all get carried out in the end”, Paul Keating said, speaking of prime ministers. Politics affords joy to a very few and extinction to everyone.
The notorious island has been a site of incarceration, occupation and, now, “extreme gardening”
Gardening at Alcatraz
Sophie Cunningham
A few months ago I gave a talk to a group of primary-school students in Clifton Hill, Melbourne, about the fact that I am a volunteer gardener at Alcatraz, the famous island and former federal prison in San Francisco Bay. A forbidding rock, it sits high out of the sea, capped by a lighthouse and the imposing prison buildings.
Why is Australia planning so many new casinos?
Twelve of a kind
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.

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Today
The sad power of history
This is the Australia we live in
Sean Kelly

Germany’s embrace of migrants spawns rise of far-right leader “In the current tussle for the future of Germany, Frauke Petry is what you might call the anti-Angela Merkel. Where Ms Merkel, the chancellor, has welcomed refugees, Ms Petry, a rising far-right leader, has...

Hulk Hogan takes the stand in his sex-tape trial “Taking the stand as the first witness in his $100 million invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against the website Gawker, the former wrestling champion Hulk Hogan told a jury on Monday that he had been ‘completely humiliated’ by the public release of...

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The Nation Reviewed

Current Issue
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
Survival tactics in ‘The Revenant’ and ‘The Big Short’
We are all savages
By Luke Davies
“Is there even a movie here, or is the film just the by-product of a particularly masochistic film crew spending some time in the woods?” This question, posed by American film blogger Devin Faraci, of Alejandro G Iñárritu’s The Revenant (in national release), is not entirely...
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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