The demise of Brangelina is the beginning of the end
The gossamer-thin membrane that separates real life from Celebrity Fantasy Island was rent irretrievably asunder on Tuesday.
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A message to Mike Baird: stay strong on greyhounds
Here's hoping Premier Mike Baird does not back down on his ban on greyhound racing.
A non-idiot abroad: Malcolm Turnbull presents an Australian story
An increasingly sure-footed Malcolm Turnbull spent last week in New York and Washington jawboning legislators about two complicated challenges nipping at the sovereignty of the modern nation state and its collective conscience: protectionism and irregular migration.
Remarkable 10 year surge in support for marriage equality
Support in 2004 was only 38 per cent.
Ripped off by regulation
Australians who have private health insurance insure are paying through the nose, and it's not because the insurers are greedy
Why credit card interest rates are so high
If the Reserve Bank's official cash rate is 1.5 per cent and you can borrow for a home at 4.4 per cent, why are credit rates as high as 21 per cent?
How New Zealand does income support better than Australia
What comes to mind when you think of revolution?
Birth certificate reform a change for the better
What is it about the equality debate that causes some of our elected parliamentarians to say the most absurd things?
The hardest words for an author to write
Writing book acknowledgments can be so fraught. It should be a moment of triumph, cheer, relief. But there are so many potential pitfalls – forgetting people, sounding like a tosser, omitting crucial research assistance, sounding like a tosser, being excessively sentimental and sounding like a tosser.
Lost souls cling on to false promises
It's easy to make promises to voters when you'll never be in a position to deliver them.
Our trees are wiser than our leaders
Simplicity won't save us - complexity is king.
Government's welfare crackdown more lazy than the 'bludgers'
It may come as a surprise to many new mothers, as they gaze into the eyes of their new small love and recover from the gross physical assault of birth, to learn that they are actually bludgers.
In tune with one another
You can read this as a book about the music industry. You can read it as a book about the mysterious synergies of art. Or you can read it is a book about the non-erotic love that can exist between men. It is a theme which arises in sport where it is quickly reduced to clichés and thereby belittled. This book is much more like the real thing.
A cat's life: finding meaning in furballs and extruded fish by-products
All I've ever done is eat, sleep, lick, repeat, with a toilet break between every 'sleep' and 'lick'. Is that any kind of lasting legacy?"
Let's stop driving blindly on Muslim stereotypes
Pauline Hanson asked how to determine "the good Muslims from the bad Muslims." You meet them. They are currently very, very keen to make contact with us. As a starting point I recommend a coffee and a tour of the Islamic Museum. Once you've made friends, everyone feels safer. It's a win-win.
So where's the moral outrage over Peter Scully's execution?
Scully's crimes are beyond comprehension; he has forfeited what it is to be human.
The health 'insurance' that isn't
We're lucky Australia's public healthcare system is so good.
Sick of hearing about old age? Just you wait
"Advanced" Western society doesn't seem to treat its elderly all that well. It would pay us all to reflect on that.
Tact and nuance needed on Muslim immigration debate
Immigration debates and recessions have this in common – sometimes you just have to have them.
Promising away the budget
The ACT's main parties have become desperately spendthrift.
Australia is on the cusp of a dangerous crisis
The Western world this week crossed a threshold into a new intolerance. Australia, which has been spared the worst of the economic and social disarray of the US and Europe in the last decade, nonetheless seems to have crossed the ugly threshold too.
Kipper royale for one
If only I'd been a good mother and cooked thyme semolina instead of canned peas.
Malka Leifer: Accused principal must be brought back to Australia
Eight years on, the situation is a tragedy and a travesty.
Welfare solutions looking for problems
Australia's targeted social-service payments are far from costly.
Lacking a Plan B, Turnbull will need Shorten
The biggest concern about the plebiscite is the huge emotional toll it could take on young people seeing the legitimacy of their identity debated on the national stage.
The five things on which all Australians can agree
We live in such divisive times, so let's celebrate the things about which we can all agree. Like the awesomeness of giant wombat monsters.
Population growth and the tram: If you don’t build it, they’re still coming regardless
If Canberrans can't afford a tram, who could?
Your rights to a medical second opinion
Have you ever had the feeling that your child is sicker than the doctors think? Is your gut telling you there's something more sinister than what the doctor or nurse has diagnosed or recommended, but you just don't know how to approach the situation?
PSOs on stations - a derailed policy
Some government policies are smart, some may be unpopular but wise, there are those that appear to be good ideas at the time and then there are those that are simply spectacularly stupid.
In Passing
Padraig Duggan, Deborah S. Jin, Dorothy Cann Hamilton