On the Climate Frontline: Talking to survivors of the Northern Rivers catastrophe

Arena Quarterly no.15

David Ritter

Sep 2023

Accounts are visceral and distressing: of last moment escapes through windows and scrambled rescues from rooftops; of witnessing raw destruction and surreal chaos; of the terror of children, the aged and vulnerable; of the horror and the pity of drowning animals.

Reflections on the Novorossiya War

Arena Quarterly no.15

Gray Connolly

Sep 2023

A conservative and realist appraisal of Russia’s invasion and Ukraine’s chances

A Culture of Remembrance?

Arena Quarterly no.15

Andreas Pohl

Sep 2023

Erinnerungskultur, or culture of remembrance, conveys the idea that the memory of Germany’s past needs to be permanently woven into both its political and its everyday culture.

Still Fighting the Frontier Wars

Arena Quarterly no.15

Brian Burkett

Sep 2023

Taking a thoroughly Orwellian approach, Katter’s Australian Party’s ‘Newspeak’ produces a twisted white supremacist discourse that easily forgets the killing times.

The Regression and the Valkyries

Arena Online

Guy Rundle

28 Sep 2023

Three years after COVID gave the world a first reminder as to just how many, and how blithe, assumptions our current global arrangements were based on, the eruption of an old-fashioned land war appears almost unseemly in a high-tech era.

Australia’s Sub-Sovereignty: AUKUS, ANZUS and our Subservience

Arena Online

Alison Broinowski

28 Sep 2023

Australia’s history is replete with missed opportunities for asserting sovereign independence, for peacefully relating to our region, for sustainable development and for conciliation between settlers and Indigenous peoples.

Rupert Murdoch: Permanent Overlord

Arena Online

Binoy Kampmark

28 Sep 2023

Murdoch’s open letter to employees is a fabulous reminder that totalitarian empires are not merely to be found in the public sphere.

PODCAST: Setting the World on Fire: the new nuclear push

Arena Online

Alison Caddick, Darrin Durant, Dave Sweeney, Karina Lester, John Hinkson

28 Sep 2023

An audio recording of the Arena public discussion hosted by the Institute for Postcolonial Studies (IPCS).

Settler Nationalism and Progressive Discourse

Arena Quarterly no.15

Dan Tout

Sep 2023

Even searching accounts of Australia’s founding can’t resist the assimilationist logic they expose.

The Unfinished Business of 1967

Arena Quarterly no.15

Marilyn Lake

Sep 2023

Treaty and Voice were being spoken of from the moment the referendum was won.

From the Archive

Green Pathways to a People’s Future

Arena Quarterly no. 1

Adam Bandt

‘Fire’ may be an appropriate way to think and talk about the climate-change emergency, not just because we are literally dealing with a burning world but also because it does not bring with it the concerns associated with ‘rule by emergency’.

From the Archive

The Tip of the Democracy-Sinking Iceberg

Timothy Erik Ström

There is a curious and seldom-told backstory and parallel story to the high-profile Cambridge Analytica scandal, one that makes the notorious firm seem like the tip of the democracy-sinking iceberg.

The Aukward Situation

Arena Quarterly no.15

Mitchell Welch

Sep 2023

Excuse the strain, we’ve been roundly Amerified. Our tastes, waistlines, the secular statehood of our core antagonisms; all have given up the canestalk for lashings of fructified corn.

We Have A Voice: It’s Not Listened To

Arena Quarterly no.15

Michael Mansell

Sep 2023

I might shudder at the thought that after all that has happened to Aboriginal people, the best remedy on offer is an advisory body.

Editorial: Many Faces of Colonising Power

Arena Quarterly no.15

Alison Caddick

Sep 2023

How will the Voice, if it comes into being, handle the further deracination of Culture in the hands of sympathetic technocrats, used as a tool itself of enlightened governance of Indigenous people and their aspirations?

Notes of an Arrernte ‘Undecided’

Arena Quarterly no.15

Celeste Liddle

Sep 2023

A Yes vote won’t change whose constitution it is, a no vote won’t take the struggle back decades....

Automating the all-about-me: On Apple’s new Mental Health App

Arena Online

Mark Furlong

7 Sep 2023

AI that seeks recognise, interpret and simulate human emotions may or may not be a pseudo-science, but it certainly is a jostling field that should be critiqued as a commercial rhizome.

Letter from London

Arena Quarterly no.15

Gerry Simpson

Sep 2023

This is all very complicated for the Left. How might we distinguish a pacific left-wing move to end the war through negotiation from a cold-blooded Kissingerian realism.