A lot of commentators were keen to make comparisons between this British general election and the last one in 2017 and they were right to do so—to an extent. Brexit overshadowed both. All three parties, the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats struggled with its meaning and will continue to do so. At the heart of Brexit is a paradox. The Leave vote to take back control meant handing it back to a political class that wanted no such thing. Everyone says politics is about gaining power, but in the 2016 referendum all the parties in Westminster, except the small […]

In the early 1980’s when I was a reporter with SBS, I interviewed a notorious racist. Jack Van Tongeren was running for the Senate in Western Australia, and I spent an exhausting and depressing half hour in his living room, questioning and challenging him on his odious views about the evils of Asian immigration and other subjects. Ultimately, after a lot of thought and debate, we decided not to broadcast any part of the interview. We decided we would be more likely to provide free publicity for his campaign than expose it for the arrant nonsense it was. Several years […]

‘This isn’t a novel, this is a film. A film is life.’ Weekend (1967), Jean-Luc Godard   ‘I started to think that maybe there are times when mystery is more important than knowledge.’ ‘The Mystery Box’ (2007), J. J. Abrams   ‘How Can We Finish a Book, a Dream? … What happens at the end of a text?’ Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing (1993), Hélène Cixous   Last night I dreamt I was touring with a vaporwave[1] musician. In the dream, I was a VJ, or more specifically my job/reason for being on this tour was to perform […]

My father taught me how to read English long before any schoolteacher could. While I was too young to remember the process and how it was that I came to read, my mother tells me that most days during my toddler years Dad would prop me up on his thigh, and with newspaper in hand, he’d point to the various newspaper headlines; slowly reading both letters and words aloud, before encouraging me to echo his voice and actions. I can imagine my father’s Black hand and his utilitarian index finger pointing to the bold letters on the crisp and creamy […]