Yesterday, Senator Hollie Hughes shared a video of a man defacing Coalition election signage in Bennelong. ‘This is absolutely disgusting,’ she tweeted, ‘Australian democracy is strong and robust, but actions like this undermine it.’ In the video, the man moves gracefully down a fence line of signs, lackadaisically spray painting dicks over the bald head of Simon Kennedy, fully aware that he is being filmed, coolly indifferent. He moves like someone who has unburdened themselves of a nagging annoyance, li

The mainstream media’s coverage of the 2022 Federal election has been a disgrace to the profession of journalism and a stain on our democracy. From the opening day freakout about Albanese’s ‘gaffe’, to the Thursday-morning tantrum six weeks later when the Opposition leader suggested the media pack could go listen to Jim Chalmers talk about budget costings rather than follow him to Queensland, the media have behaved with all the grace and subtlety of rival gangs of goombahs arriving at a new pizza place to discuss security arrangements.

The upcoming federal election on May 21 is a critical moment for young Muslims to reflect on whether our political representatives have thoroughly engaged with the needs of our community and if any plans have been developed to address those needs.

It is hard to believe this election is coming not just at a time when global politics and the economy are in turmoil but when Australia has just emerged from the biggest social upheaval in peacetime. It might seem especially odd since Australia’s response to Covid was so utterly political. ‘Political’ does not just mean partisan political, although it did often descend to that, but political in the sense that there was a cast-iron certainty that of course government could stop Covid—it was just a matter of political will. The pandemic measures may have been proposed by public health officials… [Read more]

We’re excited to launch a new series of online reviews, edited by Cher Tan. You’ll find the first offerings for April and May below—watch this space for more excellent content soon.     Reviewed: Root and Branch, Eda Gunaydin by May Ngo “The first thing that strikes me about Root and Branch, Eda Gunaydin’s debut collection of essays, is her eye: what she sees and how she sees, and the way this is conveyed through exuberant writing that is at turns funny, sarcastic and dark. It’s the details here that matter. . .” Read More          … [Read more]

We’ve just had one of those lovely moments in the life of the nation where normally invisible truths are made manifest. In a welcome return to actual politics, the election campaign—so far, a miserable pantomime orchestrated by an image-obsessed prime minister conspiring with an easily led press corps, and more than half-helped by an Opposition scared to death of upsetting the horses—ignited around the issue of a wage increase for Australia’s lowest paid workers. The moment was like one those heist movies where the cat burglar breaks into the museum and sprays the air to reveal the invisible lines of… [Read more]

I’m glad the Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) has pledged that he’ll have another crack at passing his Religious Discrimination bill should the LNP get back in. It’s an important piece of legislation and for too long believers have been marginalised at work and at school or on the sporting field because they either subscribe to the wrong type of god or have dared to express their faith-based intolerance of other people’s lifestyles. I was in Jerusalem a few years back with an End of Days minister from Texas. His name was the Rev. Irwin Baxter Jnr and I say ‘was’… [Read more]

Ah-ah-ah-ah! The term ‘faux pas’ kept jumping out at me. Fou pa. Fox pas. Are there literary fox pas? Don’t think so. I know what you’re thinking: she’s sitting on her high horse. But horsey is dead, although I didn’t kill it—what I’m trying to say is that the notion of the ‘faux pas’ can come to exist in something like a binary, where conceptions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ run amok in the house of heaven and hell. There is one thing though … although I wouldn’t call a ‘faux pas’, more than it’s an outright wrong: and that’s fascism…. [Read more]

In early May, three weeks into his 2022 re-election campaign, Scott Morrison gave an interview to the Nine newspapers in which he warned of the dangers of a federal anti-corruption agency. ‘The unintended consequences of an ill-thought-through integrity commission, I think are very dangerous,’ Morrison said. If we are going to so disempower our elected representatives to do things about what is needed in their communities, then what is the point? We can’t just hand government over to faceless officials to make decisions that impact the lives of Australians from one end of the country to the other. I actually… [Read more]

The Coalition has no plan to fully fund public schools. There is not a single public school in the country that is fully funded, and the Morrison government will do exactly nothing about this if re-elected. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a public school anywhere in the country that is fully staffed, let alone fully funded. Some independent schools, however, which have fees upwards of $30,000 a year, are being overfunded by more than 200% on the dime of the public purse. Currently, public schools are only 88% funded. As the federal election looms, the extent of… [Read more]