“The Liberal Party has had three powerful leaders, in Menzies, Fraser and Howard. But Howard was the only really transformational one. He turned Australian conservatism in a way it had never gone before.”
A decade after the fall of the Howard government, Australia remains unable to escape or undo the insular and unfair policies it enacted.
News
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Exclusive: How the Greens failed me over rape
“Here I was, trying to communicate to a female progressive leader that I had been sexually assaulted within the scope of her organisation’s duty of care, and having it insinuated that I had asked for it.”
A former volunteer for the ACT Greens details how the party failed to believe or support her following a sexual assault by a colleague.
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Murdoch and the royal commission
As recommendations from the child abuse royal commission are swept aside by senior Catholics, The Australian newspaper continues its unwavering support for the church.
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“A group of federal Queensland Nationals are now planning to rebrand themselves as more distinctly National and run a separate campaign at the 2019 federal election. ”
Speculation of paybacks and game-playing within the Coalition leaves Malcolm Turnbull with an uneasy pathway into the new year.
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“One of the stories of the year has been the serial exposure of powerful men abusing women. It is – or we hope it to be – a watershed moment. It is a moment that has revealed not so much individual aberration but systemic rottenness.”
In a year that shone light on systemic failures and abuse in old institutions, we ceded more control of our lives to new institutions claiming utopian ideals. The year in review.
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President Trump: A year in the strife
Trump's tax bill. Ramaphosa elected ANC leader. Capital punishment abounds.
Opinion
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Jane Caro
Religious school discrimination
“A country that permits and encourages private religious schooling should understand that such schools will expect to discriminate in their student admission and teacher employment practices in favour of those who are members of their faith communities, and they have long been able to do just that. In the case of schools, at least, given how much public money they receive, the question is not how much more leeway churches should get to discriminate but the opposite.”
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Paul Bongiorno
Spoiled for Joyce
“Joyce’s ham-fistedness, if not vindictiveness, in also sacking Queenslander Keith Pitt from the frontbench has precipitated a new threat to the government’s majority. An angry Pitt has told colleagues he is seriously considering moving to the crossbench. Those who know him say that, unlike his colleague George Christensen, Pitt is not a person of idle threats.”
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Gadfly
Ding Dong! Merrily on high-vis
’Tis the season of “killer toys” that allow obscure ministers for consumer affairs to show their magnificent plumage. The New South Wales minister for fair trading is someone named Matt Kean and he had all his feathers fully fluffed with an announcement that “the annual yuletide safety blitz continues to sweep through retail stores”.
An insider’s outside view
A new podcast from Schwartz Media
Join Richard Denniss, The Australia Institute’s chief economist, as he tackles Australia’s most important political and economic issues in a new weekly podcast.
Find The Lucky Country on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
Letters & Editorial
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Editorial
The Australian Belligerence
It should be called the Australian Belligerence. This belligerence is the refusal to accept our history, the loutish impulse to mock the reality of what happened. There is no strong argument to celebrate Australia on January 26. But the Australian Belligerence holds on for fear that to question this date would be to question the mistruths on which their power is based.
Culture
Theatre director Elizabeth LeCompte
As Elizabeth LeCompte’s theatrical take on a controversial 1971 debate about women’s liberation heads to the Sydney Festival, the director talks about art and feminism, then and now. “We thought [The Town Hall Affair] was too urbane and distant for most people to be interested in,” she says plainly, but “things just broke around it”.
Horne Prize: The Limit of the World
“‘Here’s what I want to know,’ he says. ‘How did my mother and father get together?’ He used to know this story. But I can tell him again, and I am about to begin when the nurse on the afternoon shift comes in to wash his feet, dress his sore toe, rub moisturiser into his feet and calves and shins, replace and pull up his compression socks. ”
In Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Call Me By Your Name’, Timothée Chalamet provides an outstanding portrait of a swooning teen’s sexual awakening.
“Upon setting foot in the Robin Boyd-designed house – his last, she tells me – I better understand why she was keen to reschedule. We stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows and look out at the creek, full from the previous week’s deluge. The landscape leading down to the water is speared with stately eucalypts, and even leaf litter on the roof sounds thunderous. ”
Food
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Roast turkey with mustard mayonnaise, bacon and sage
“This is the most foolproof way I have found of cooking a turkey for Christmas. In this recipe, I try something festive without the struggle of wrestling a whole bird, usually too large for the oven. I’ve taken a fillet, wrapped it in streaky bacon to make up for a lack of fat, and roasted it gently to maintain moisture and flavour. ”
Life
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An exhibition at the National Museum of Australia preserves the ancient stories of Indigenous elders for future generations.
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Sharing a garden with an animal companion can bring additional joy to the life outdoors. But thought must go into pet-friendly plantings.
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Sign of lacrosse: Sarah Mollison, 30, lacrosse player
Australian women’s lacrosse team vice-captain Sarah Mollison on giving back to the sport she loves.
Books
The Quiz
1. Who plays Winston Churchill in the upcoming film Darkest Hour?
2. An ocelot is what type of animal?
3. Is a fricassee fried, stewed or roasted?
4. Which Christmas carol features the lyrics: “O star of wonder, star of night / Star with royal beauty bright / Westward leading, still proceeding/ Guide us to thy perfect Light”?
5. In golf, what is the name for a second chance at a shot?
6. What is the largest and most populous island in the Philippine archipelago?
7. What is five-eighths as a percentage?
8. The Khyber Pass is a mountain pass near the borders of which two nations?
9. Cyathea dealbata, the unofficial floral emblem of New Zealand, is more commonly known as what?
10. Who led the project to develop the first atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project?
11. What does a cruciverbalist enjoy solving?
12. What is the name for the soldiers responsible for the safety of the Pope and the Vatican?
13. In which Shakespeare play do the characters Prospero, Miranda and Ariel appear?
14. What is the most well-known zip code of the Los Angeles suburb of Beverly Hills?
15. Which company this month struck a $68 billion deal to buy a portion of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox?
16. What is the pH of pure water?
17. Where in the human body is the tibialis anterior muscle?
18. Tamil is an official language of which two countries?
19. Which director links the films Victoria & Abdul, The Queen and Dangerous Liaisons?
20. What gives tonic water its distinctive flavour?
21. Who was named Time magazine Person of the Year for 2017?
22. Who was Australia’s prime minister from March 1983 to December 1991?
23. Name the author who was the first female director-general of MI5.
24. Blue Nude is a 1907 work by which artist?
25. What is one-third of four score and 10?
26. Name the captain of the England Test cricket team.
27. What date will Triple J’s Hottest 100 air in 2018?
28. What protein is the major component in hair and nails?
29. Military and political leader Simón Bolívar was born in which South American country?
30. Delft pottery comes from which country?
31. Which university is older: Oxford or Cambridge?
32. According to the proverb, many hands make what?
33. The Hagia Sophia basilica is in which city?
34. How many republics made up the former Soviet Union: (a) 10, (b) 12, (c) 15, (d) 21?
35. Inigo Jones is famous in which field?
36. A maggot is the larval stage of which insect?
37. What was Australia’s first national park, proclaimed in 1879?
38. In which country was the zika virus first identified?
39. The Flyte family feature in what novel, first published in 1945?
40. Which 1988 film ends with the line: “If this is their idea of Christmas, I gotta be here for New Year’s”?
