Tony Wright

Tony Wright

Tony Wright is Fairfax Media's associate editor and special writer. He has been based in the Canberra Press Gallery for 20 years, working for The Canberra Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Bulletin before joining The Age in 2007. He has written two plays and two best-selling books, was named Magazine Feature Writer of the Year twice, has won several UN Media Peace Prizes and has been a Walkley Awards finalist five times.

Dieting Clive Palmer finds poetic inspiration in Tim Tams, whipped cream

Clive Palmer, once a larger figure on the Australian landscape, has been on a crash diet in his post-politics period, dropping 30 kilograms or so, which sent him dreaming and, yes, writing some pretty out-there poetry about food.

Summonsed home: DFAT is trying to wrangle 113 Very Important Diplomats back to Australia.

$1.1m to fly diplomats home? Wouldn't cover a night at Monte Carlo

The Ad Hoc Ways and Means Committee at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is suffering the vapours as it attempts to wrangle 113 Very Important Diplomats, 113 cross-the-world business-class return flights, 113 hotel suites, an unknown number of splendid dining occasions, cigars, champagne, cognac and, naturally, limousines on demand, into a paltry $1.1 million.

"You did this to me, you said I would be right by Monday"

Parliament reduced to a Kyrgios-Tomic tennis match. Where's a bartender?

A week in Parliament House, Canberra, has similarities these days with a tennis match involving Nick Kyrgios or Bernard Tomic.

Thousands of generations on, universities target indigenous knowledge

Australia's indigenous people developed sophisticated knowledge systems for thousands of generations before the first university was created, Lilly Brown says.