In 1925 the Commonwealth statistician Charles Wickens, himself the son of migrant parents, likened Australia’s approach to immigration to a boa constrictor and its food. “We are in the habit of ...

Waging a “permanent contest” with China in the South Pacific, Australia is building new alliances and a new security system. Treaties signed with Island states are driven by fear and shock in Canberra ...

There are lots of reasons to believe Democrats are about to crush the midterm elections. Donald Trump’s average job approval is below 40 per cent, about five points lower than it was in the 2018 ...

Three hours into last Friday’s hearing of the parliamentary inquiry examining artificial intelligence, Nationals senator Ross Cadell asked a straightforward question about copyright. The answer he ...

For half a century, Eric Hobsbawm was a giant among historians. From his 1959 work on Primitive Rebels, which investigated “social bandits” (a term he coined) in pre-industrial societies, and his 1962 ...

Will the Australian parliament ever debate AUKUS? The latest opportunity came up in April this year, when the Albanese government released its latest National Defence Strategy; its text is yet to be ...

Earle Christmas Page, surgeon and rural-conservative politician, and Paul Hasluck, historian and Liberal politician, are the latest subjects in publisher Connor Court’s extensive Australian ...

In 2012 a Canadian man named Dennis Meads walked into an Alberta courtroom carrying a stack of papers he believed would change his life. Change was needed. Dennis was in the middle of a difficult ...

Work is not what it was. Does the office even still exist or has it been replaced by teams that could be anywhere? In republishing Moya Costello’s short novel The Office as a Boat a quarter of a ...

The sociology of education got off to a flying start in the 1950s and 1960s: against the prevailing assumption that kids got on well or badly at school according to their “ability,” sociology tracked ...

Books & arts Spoiled for choice Dean Ashenden 15 January 2026 How freedom lost its way National affairs Are we there yet? Dean Ashenden 28 March 2025 At last, the Gonski money — which raises a new set ...

Are you at a very Chinese time in your life? Or is there more to “becoming Chinese” than buying a Labubu doll, drinking warm water, hopping into a BYD electric car or even joining a group of Chinese ...