Australian politics, society & culture

April 2016
The Drones
Gareth Liddiard on The Drones’ ‘Feelin Kinda Free’
Australian ugliness
By Anwen Crawford

Early on 1 December 1948, a man was found dead at Adelaide’s Somerton Beach. His pockets contained cigarettes, matches and chewing gum, but he had no wallet, and his clothing tags had been removed. The man has never been identified, and, though a 1949 coroner’s inquest entertained the possibility that he may have been poisoned, the cause of his death has never been determined.

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 recall
April 2016
Older workers are stifling the progress of their younger colleagues
The grey ceiling
By Jennifer Rayner
I first became aware of the “grey ceiling” when I was working as a researcher at one of Australia’s more self-important universities. At our faculty’s weekly seminars, the white-haired professors would saunter in and sit around a stately boardroom table.
Why indigenous languages should be spoken in our parliaments
Mind our language
Noel Pearson
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.
Australia’s food and wine industry is the next big thing in China
The dining boom
Hamish McDonald
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.

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Today
Shorten could actually win this thing
For the first time, Labor are looking like a chance
Sean Kelly

Panama Papers: Iceland PM Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson resigns “Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson resigned on Tuesday, becoming the first casualty of leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm which have shone a spotlight on the...

Australia’s urban boom “Sometime over the next three months, Sydney’s population will reach five million. If Melbourne keeps growing at its current pace, by 2020 it too will have five million residents – and it won’t stay that size for long … Since the start of this millennium, Melbourne’s population has grown by...

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The Nation Reviewed

Current Issue
Illustration
Artist Jan Senbergs prepares for his NGV retrospective
Life’s work
By Quentin Sprague
Jan Senbergs sits surrounded by the ephemera of his life’s work: folders of correspondence, press clippings, catalogues and plastic sleeves of 35mm slides that document his five-decade career as a painter.
March 2016
Internet access in jails
#PrisonLife
By Oscar Schwartz
Illustration
At 7.57 am, while eating breakfast, I receive a WhatsApp notification. It’s a message, 16 seconds long. “Hello, my friend,” a man says in a sonorous voice. It is hard to pin down the accent, but if I had to guess I would say Egyptian. “First of all, uhhh, I don’t know you,” the...
February 2016
Fledgling musicians hit Girls Rock
Loud, quiet, loud
By Anwen Crawford
It’s a hot Monday morning in Canberra, and there’s a new band in town. The Screaming Moths are Trinh, 11, on vocals; Sienna, 12, guitar; Abby, 10, drums; and Tash, 12, bass.
February 2016
A day at Christmas Island’s Lizard Lodge
Every lizard counts
By Nicole Gill
“We’ve got a runner!” A blue-tailed skink the length of a birthday candle sits atop a stack of sticks and rocks, which in turn sits on top of the lizard’s perspex tank.

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
John Blaxland’s ‘The Protest Years: The Official History of ASIO 1963–1975’
Spies like Oz
By David McKnight
Following David Horner’s The Spy Catchers, John Blaxland’s The Protest Years (Allen & Unwin; $49.99) is the second volume of The Official History of ASIO.
December 2015
Rupert Murdoch & Kamahl
By Shane Maloney and Chris Grosz
Words: Shane Maloney | Illustration: 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,...
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?...
February 2016
The Triffids’ ‘Born Sandy Devotional’ 30 years on
One of the great Australian albums
By Anwen Crawford
Thirty years ago this month, Perth band The Triffids released their fifth single, ‘Wide Open Road’. It remains not only The Triffids’ best-known composition but also one of the most beloved of all Australian popular songs.
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