Australian politics, society & culture

April 2016
Helen Garner’s work collected in ‘Everywhere I Look’
Felled by grace
By Anna Goldsworthy

In one of the shorter pieces in her new nonfiction collection, Everywhere I Look (Text Publishing; $29.99), Helen Garner celebrates the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould: “JS Bach is God, as far as I’m concerned, and the pianist Glenn Gould was one of his major prophets.” She recalls the “jolt” she felt when a friend revealed the level of engineering that went into Gould’s recordings: “But – but – isn’t that a swiz?”

Current Issue
Why indigenous languages should be spoken in our parliaments
Mind our language
By Noel Pearson
Illustration
The electorate of Stuart, in the Northern Territory, includes the ancient homeland of the Warlpiri. The Warlpiri’s ownership of this region, and their language, predates the creation of this electorate, in 1974, by hundreds and probably thousands of years.
Current Issue
Australia’s food and wine industry is the next big thing in China
The dining boom
By Hamish McDonald
Wine distributors from China visit the Barossa Valley
Out on Cape Grim, waves roll in from 10,000 kilometres of unbroken ocean to crash at the north-western tip of Tasmania. This was where David Beca, chief executive officer of the Van Diemen’s Land Company, was showing me relics of the farming enterprise’s savage start.
We’ve seen this trick before
Fool me twice, Prime Minister?
Sean Kelly
Malcolm Turnbull today tried the same trick he played last week. Last week it involved political tactics, and it worked a treat. Today it involved actual policy, and I don’t think it quite came off. It certainly doesn’t deserve to.
Indonesia’s mass killings have been overlooked for 50 years
Rivers ran red
Robert Manne and Mark Aarons
 

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Today
Malcolm Turnbull’s not-so-big loss
The PM didn’t get what he wanted. That might not be a bad thing for him
Sean Kelly

The Panama Papers “A massive security breach shows how a global industry of law firms and big banks sells financial secrecy to politicians, fraudsters and drug traffickers as well as billionaires, celebrities and sports stars … The leak reveals the offshore holdings of 12...

The world thinks Australia should lift its anti-corruption game “Anti-corruption experts in the US and Europe have urged Australia to properly resource and empower its anti-bribery regime as Australia emerges as the ‘dumping ground’ for dirty money from Asia....

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The Nation Reviewed

Current Issue
Illustration
Solastalgia and the impact of the recent bushfires
Rupture in Tasmania
By Nicole Gill
“I have three questions for you tonight: Why are you here? What do these fires signify? And what can we do?”
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
Scott Ludlam
The Greens senator with mass appeal
Scott Ludlam goes viral
By Sam Vincent
DJ S-Ludz would rather you not call him that.
March 2016
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.
December 2015
Australia blurs the lines with Timor-Leste
Oil and water
By Mark Aarons
Robert Domm interviews Xanana Gusmão, October 1990.
My latest journey to Timor-Leste (East Timor) began on 16 October, the 40th anniversary of the murder of five Australian-based journalists in Balibo by Indonesian special forces. My first trip there was in March 1975, six months prior to their deaths. I was reporting for Radio...
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.
December 2015
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.

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Arts & Letters

April 2016
Still from Sherpa
The economics of Everest in Jennifer Peedom’s ‘Sherpa’
Blind obsession
By Luke Davies
“We need help here,” a panicked, crackly voice calls out on a two-way radio, over a black screen, in the opening moments of Jennifer Peedom’s Sherpa (in national release).
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 e
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...
March 2016
Rihanna’s ‘ANTI’ and Future’s ‘EVOL’
Songs for the 3 am
By Anwen Crawford
Rihanna
The Barbadian pop singer Rihanna and the Canadian rapper Drake have recorded three duets together. Each has been memorable, distinctive: the two performers encourage in each other a lucidity of feeling that suits them both, and their songs have pressed upon a tender spot where...
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?
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