Democracy’s Enemy Within
As attacks on the façade of the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House finally come to an end, it’s easy to miss that attacks on the institution itself have been going on for years—but they haven’t come from violent mobs. They come from the Australian Government itself. For many years, the Museum has been a leading observer of the global decline of trust in democracy. In response to ‘the lowest level recording of public trust and satisfaction with Australia’s democratic arrangements and set against the global rise of debased semi-democracies,’ in 2018 the Museum established a research partnership […]
AUKUS, and the Complex Art of Giving Defence
It was just another day in Australia’s arms race. In January, as the Omicron variant swept across Australia, infecting hundreds of thousands and placing hospital systems in NSW and Victoria under unprecedented strain, Defence Minister Peter Dutton announced a multi-billion dollar arms deal with the United States. Australia would be buying more than 100 M1A2 Abrams tanks from the United States, plus some whizz-bang bulldozers. The cost? $3.5 billion. Not bad in the middle of a pandemic. Wags on social media made jokes about whether they came with rapid antigen tests. The tank purchase is just the latest in a […]
Things Fall Apart …
At first it was catching COVID that scared me. But now, it’s how quickly everything has collapsed. Apparently, some part of me still believed that here in Australia, when it came down to it, governments would step in and protect us. All the evidence is against this belief, of course, but sometimes we hang on to irrational ideas just so we can get on with our day. Right now, I’m letting go of that belief. Because today we’re faced with a situation where an already existing, cheap-to-produce, simple-to-distribute technology that we need to keep us safe and which it was […]
Sydney Festival: ‘Progressive Except for Palestine’
At the end of yet another year in which the State of Israel has continued to entrench its settler-colonial, apartheid regime over the Palestinian people, Palestinian activists and artists are confronting yet another egregious example of the violent and dehumanising politics of ‘progressive except for Palestine.’ Sydney Festival, one of Australia’s most established and iconic annual cultural celebrations, has refused calls by Palestinian artists, activists and their supporters to divest from the Festival’s ‘Star Partner’ sponsorship with the Israeli Embassy in Canberra. This sponsorship is being used to support a Sydney Dance Company production of Decadence in the Festival program […]
Essays
Capital
The biggest difference between Australian Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal people is their relation to capital. The land, the spirit and the economy were, and are, one entity for Aboriginal people. She is called Mother Earth. We believe that we come from Mother Earth and will return there and so our relationship with each other and all matter on the Earth is that we are related through the reality that we have and will keep sharing our atoms with all generations of plants, animals and earth.
Fiction
The Man Who Loved The Persimmon Tree
I first saw him in the port of Chongqing, in a navy-blue overcoat, hurrying on the wharf towards the Yangtze River ferry. He held a valise in one hand and clutched a book to his chest with the other. I stood by the rails on the upper deck and watched until he vanished in the melee of passengers crossing the gangway.
Memoir
Eye Contact
Outside my kitchen window, beyond the chicken-wire fence, two ravens hopped about under a lightning-struck eucalyptus tree, circling one another with blackened twigs jutting out of their beaks like they were children playing at swords. In Norse mythology, Odin, king of the gods, would send a pair of ravens to Earth, their names Huginn (thought) and Muninn (memory), here to spy on us humans and report back.
Poetry
Water
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