I’m sitting at a communal table in an inner-Melbourne cafe; from the back of the laptop opposite, a row of cryptic-looking cartoon characters—all heads, no bodies—are grimacing and mugging at me with odd-shaped mouths. A woman at the next table says ‘winter is coming’ and her companions laugh, because they are in on the joke. Out on the street, a child waiting for a tram is rendered a mere stick figure under his/her oversized, fluffy head-dress: yellow with big black eyes and rosy cheeks, instantly recognisable as Pikachu the Pokemon. And I wonder: what does it all mean, this ocean […]

If you’re not John Bolton, stop reading. This isn’t for you. Though if you could pass this on to John Bolton for me, that’d be great. Cheers. John, how are ya mate? I hear you’re trying to kick off another illegal imperial quagmire in the middle east again. Tut-tut John, you already have two wars on the side, you’re a greedy little bugger trying to kick off a third, who do you think you are, Burt Reynolds? Check your mustache and your privilege mate. Anyway, do you like movies? Clearly you see anyone hailing from anywhere east of east Connecticut […]

Tony Smith was re-elected unopposed as Speaker of the House of Representatives yesterday, the third time he’s managed it without an opponent. No-one’s done that since the first Speaker, Frederick Holder, between 1901 and 1909. Smith’s nomination was moved by Lucy Wicks, the Liberal member for Robertson, and seconded by Maria Vamvakinou, the ALP member for Calwell. Comity. Bipartisan support for a man doing a difficult job well. It was a hopeful sign for the opening of the 46th Parliament, which was otherwise greeted by a Daily Telegraph front page bellowing, ‘Give us what we voted for’. Civility and respect […]

It is a mini season of anniversary and memory. A major historical event, a personal re-connection, a television show.  Remembrance daring consideration of what we were and what we are now. The 1969 moon landing still resonates. It seemed to draw a hopeful line under two years of trauma—Vietnam, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy.  For this scrawler, they were also the years when the boy was emerging from childhood.  The memories are more complete, more rounded, although stunningly inadequate. As someone whose memories are structured around the triangulation or coincidence of residence, education, employment, relationships and current events, there is […]

Chronicling Donald Trump’s many flaws—as a man, as a husband/father/politician/businessman/actor/pizza hawker—has kept many of us (un)happily distracted for the past eight hundred or so days. As bountiful as that flaws list is, credit where credit is due: the man is an exceptional media manipulator. I draw no pleasure in complimenting him, but watching Trump lie and misdirect and conjure evermore distractions to whiplash media attention from one calamity to the next is something he’s disproportionately gifted at. Americans were pitched a showman, they voted in a showman, and surprise surprise, a showman now binges on cable news in the Oval […]

Franz Kafka’s A Report to the Academy is a short story, in the form of a first-person account voiced by a human-like ape who was shot and captured in West Africa then transported to Europe by ship in a cage. ‘Red Peter’ is driven to escape his cage, so he embraces the process and performance of becoming human, which includes learning to speak and behave like one of his captors. ‘Freedom was not what I wanted,’ he reports, retrospectively. ‘Only a way out; right or left, or in any direction; I made no other demand; even should the way out […]

In the 1997 film The Castle, the obvious-talking young narrator named Dale Kerrigan has a totalising faith in the promise of shared, familial love. Even the threat of potential house demolition, the material site of this ‘togetherness’, merely commits him further to the promise. Yet we only know this promise once it flickers; once it passes to unreliability. For Dale, this happens at two precise moments when he surveys his family sharing tender points in time. As if short-circuited, the wholesome scenes are dramatically cut in the film. Instead of warm fuzzies, all Dale can think about is his brother, […]

President Harry Truman attracted much enmity in the post-Roosevelt era of the 1940s. Sometimes it was based on little more than snobbery about his humble origins. More substantively, programs such as health-care reform incited the hostility of entrenched interests. Decades later, President Bill Clinton liked to say of his now-lionised predecessor: ‘My family supported Truman when he was actually president.’ The memorial service for Bob Hawke last Friday was a similar mix of reality, misremembrance and romanticism. The ingredients of political success remain both obvious and mysterious. It is now broadly acknowledged that Hawke led a highly competent government of […]