Elizabeth Farrelly is a Sydney-based columnist and author who holds a PhD in architecture and several international writing awards. A former editor and Sydney City Councilor, she is also Associate Professor (Practice) at the Australian Graduate School of Urbanism at UNSW. Her books include 'Glenn Murcutt: Three Houses’, 'Blubberland; the dangers of happiness’ and ‘Caro Was Here’, crime fiction for children (2014).
Most Australians are as unsurprised by skulduggery in the church as by double-dealing in government. It's almost like they expect it. Yet even that low bar has stumped the church of late.
Captain Fantastic, the new Viggo Mortensen release, may be the year's best cast and scripted film. It's also the worst named.
Simplicity won't save us - complexity is king.
"Bad egg" was always a metaphor, taken from the kind of biological rot that provided literature with the brimstone aromas of hell. Now it's more literal. The bad egg is one whose moral content is on the nose; an egg produced with cruelty.
You can bet your bottom dollar, whatever Dastyari was up to, others are also at the trough.
Last week the internet turned twenty-five. In that short time it has gone from novelty to necessity. But is it a good thing?
Normally, when a role becomes fashionable it becomes male – although perhaps it's the other way around; maleness makes a thing cool. Either way, roles that were menial and female - cook, seamstress, waitress, barmaid - become, when male-ised, glamorous - chef, couturier, barista and that bearded bar dude with so much attitude he thinks cocktail recipes are serious intellectual property.
We are at a crossroads regarding the Sydney of the future, and we must choose well.
For decades, belief in The Market as divine presence – guaranteeing fairness and quality and providing a universal template for everything. Now, at last, this is starting to reverse.
I write this as much in sorrow as in anger. What kind of culture refuses to value its own treasures?
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