September 2021

Magazine

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September 2021

Retreat from Kabul

Roll out the pork barrels

Sister acts

The pandemic and the shrinking of Australian politics

Rather than prompting reform, the COVID emergency has hardened the major parties’ neoliberal ideology


The Monthly Essays

The pandemic and the shrinking of Australian politics

Rather than prompting reform, the COVID emergency has hardened the major parties’ neoliberal ideology

Dismembering government

New public management and why the Commonwealth government can’t do anything anymore

Sister acts

The life and times of activist Sister Brigid Arthur


The Nation Reviewed

Retreat from Kabul

America’s failure in Afghanistan and its contempt for Australia as an ally

Roll out the pork barrels

Why politicians love being caught rorting in their electorates

The agony and ecstasy

Clinical trials in Perth will study the use of MDMA to treat PTSD and addiction

Return of the devil

Tasmanian devils may soon be returning to the wild on the mainland


Vox

The orchid eye

The strange and beautiful world of orchids and how they’ve seduced us

Owl

Arts & Letters

A shock of renewal: ‘Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings’

The transcendent works of the modernist who regarded herself not an artist but a medium

Desire’s conspiracies: ‘The Right to Sex’

Philosopher Amia Srinivasan’s essays consider incels, consent and sexual discrimination

The meanings of production: ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You’

Novelist Sally Rooney returns to the dystopia of contemporary life while reflecting on her own fame

True to form: ‘No Sudden Move’

Steven Soderbergh’s Detroit crime movie is another formal experiment with commercial trappings



Noted

‘Harlem Shuffle’ by Colson Whitehead The author of ‘The Underground Railroad’ offers a disappointingly straightforward neo-noir caper set in the early ’60s By Declan Fry

‘Beirut 2020’ by Charif Majdalani The Lebanese writer’s elegiac journal captures the city’s devastating port explosion By Helen Elliott


In Light of Recent Events

Let’s explore our urban bushlands