
Unfinished Business
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 […]

A Partiality For The Truth
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 […]

What I’m Reading
‘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 […]

What I’m Reading
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 […]
Essays

The Beast Is Us
I have not read William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, a text many meet in high school literature class. Despite this, I thought I knew the plot through cultural reference. There was that Simpsons episode, where the Springfield yellow school bus goes off route and sees the kids stranded on a deserted island.
Fiction

Public Transport in Macadamia
My boys think it’s uncool to get a lift home from school. They’d rather be on the bus with the others, standing in the aisle with their earphones in one ear and their school bags over one shoulder. Sometimes they try to walk home but I’m worried they’ll hurt their backs, carrying all those books.
Memoir

Sex, Vaginismus and Reality TV
I consider myself somebody who watches a lot of reality television. Married at First Sight was once my chosen poison, and it is exactly as it sounds: a juicy social ‘experiment’ where, according to objective compatibility standards, two individuals are coupled, only to meet for the first time at the altar.
Poetry

#Computation
A reworking of Ezra Pound’s ‘Salutation’ for the 21st Century
O generation of the absolutely online
And absolutely connected,
I have seen fisherpeople on YouTube,
I have seen them with their unreliable internet,