Comment

LATEST COMMENT

Turning up the heat on youth detention

Youths being isolated and strapped to mechanical chairs and six boys being tear-gassed at the Don Dale Youth Detention ...

The controversy surrounding the Northern Territory's Don Dale Detention Centre reminds me of the frog in the saucepan story, the one that compares what happens to the frog when the water in the saucepan is left to slowly simmer with what happens when the heat is suddenly turned up high.

Why we don't need a royal commission into banks

ANZ, Westpac and now National Australia Bank are all caught up in the ASIC's "rate-rigging" investigations. What about ...

Labor's demand for a royal commission into banks is a popular call. But what does Labor actually want to achieve with a royal commission? What is the problem it is supposed to fix?

Why less sex for millennials is good thing

Unleashed and undressed: many undergo a sexual awakening at university.

Older generations always seem to fret about the sexual behaviour and romantic lives of the younger crowd. In the 1920s, there was alarm when boys stopped visiting in the parlour and started driving girls around in what one newspaper called "a house of prostitution on wheels." This worry paled in comparison to the panic evoked by the rowdy sexual revolution that began in the late 1960s.

Why not go straight to a treaty?

<p>

There are, at elections, the things people believe they're voting for, the things they are actually voting for but don't realise at the time, and the stories we all tell about it afterwards.

Is the Olympic brand starting to ring hollow?

Sunrise or sunset: People walk past the Olympic rings as the sun rises on Copacabana beach.

The International Olympic Committee will be challenged by the issues around doping and the administration of the Rio Games as it endeavours to restore some credibility to its brand during the next two weeks.

Turnbull's best chance for a stable government

Turnbull's best chances for stable credible government will come from dealing with Labor.

All the signs are that an enlarged right-wing cross bench will create new tensions, dragging Turnbull's party in unhelpful directions, and emboldening hardline conservatives to re-litigate the case to scrap section 18c, and argue about climate change science.

It's one for the birds

A beautiful Autumn morning in Canberra. A sulphur crested cockatoo plays in the water in Telopea Park.

I have a torrid history with birds. It started when I was young and owned a budgie called Nicky, who was a nice-enough budgie until I found her rigid upturned body in a breeding box.