Welcome to Eureka Street
Looking for thought provoking articles?Subscribe to Eureka Street and join the conversation.
Passwords must be at least 8 characters, contain upper and lower case letters, and a numeric value.
Eureka Street uses the Stripe payment gateway to process payments. The terms and conditions upon which Stripe processes payments and their privacy policy are available here.
Please note: The 40-day free-trial subscription is a limited time offer and expires 31/3/24. Subscribers will have 40 days of free access to Eureka Street content from the date they subscribe. You can cancel your subscription within that 40-day period without charge. After the 40-day free trial subscription period is over, you will be debited the $90 annual subscription amount. Our terms and conditions of membership still apply.
Anzac Day and the living wounded
Are universities about to become a political priority?
The legacy of a Jesuit pope
In praise of Pope Francis
What happens when the west abandons foreign aid?
As we witness those wars that continue to rage, we might wonder, this Anzac Day, what were the effects on our First Nations people when their lands were first taken? We can now see only too clearly that it is difficult, if not impossible in the longer term, to defend one’s land when the invader has more powerful resources and shows no intention of negotiating peace.
This year has been marked by growing introspection concerning our culture. At the heart of the division between a conflictual and an eirenical view of public life lie different understandings of the value of human life and of what it means for human beings to flourish.
Francis was a pope prepared to blur the edges of doctrine, or at least its application, opening the doors of the Church to all those seeking love, mercy and forgiveness. He never doubted God’s capacity to love and forgive all who sought that love and forgiveness. He maintained the certainty, not of doctrine but of the simple piety of believers.
A cultural flashpoint disguised as a television drama, Adolescence has drawn comment from prime ministers and pundits, mothers and sons alike. Jack Thorne’s four-part epic, powered by Owen Cooper’s once-in-a-generation performance, turns a teenage murder accusation into both high art and a bracing reckoning with sex, violence, and the internet’s moral void.
Before heartthrobs became brand names, there was Richard Chamberlain. A matinee idol with the soul of a serious actor, he rose to fame as Dr. Kildare, sought after Shakespeare, and stole scenes from Gielgud. His legacy is a portrait of quiet yearning — for love, for truth, for artistic respect.
A growing number of female teachers in Australia are leaving the profession, citing daily sexual harassment from their own students. Fuelled by pornography and social media, the misconduct ranges from crude comments to deepfake abuse, raising urgent questions about safety, consent, and the culture festering inside today’s classrooms.
Vittorio ‘Vito’ Bianchi was small in stature, but a giant of a man who ruled over the Piccolo Bar café in Kings Cross for over 50 years. To live in the Cross meant that you knew Vittorio Bianchi. It was impossible not to.
Glide were an ’90s Australian band set for big things - a new documentary is a cautionary tale about how critical success doesn’t always translate into commercial success, and how the quest can lead to casualties along the way.
Portents, auguries, challenge my faith. A star shines over a publishing house. They have produced a book by a poet who has never written a word. Poetry bends, pretends, protects, its grand scope.
What makes a war just? Can any goal justify the deaths of tens of thousands, the bombing of hospitals, the starvation of civilians? As the devastation in Gaza deepens, these questions press harder. In a conflict marked by profound suffering, what moral, legal, or human standards can still hold?
In a move as nostalgic as it is economically incoherent, Donald Trump’s proposed global tariff hike promises to punish the world’s poorest nations while claiming to revive America’s rusted-out industries. But the math is dubious, the logic muddled — and the unintended consequences, as ever, potentially vast.
No one can predict President Trump’s next move on the global stage. But what appears to be chaos has a clear historical precedent, rooted in a long American tradition of swaggering, often improvisational power. In Trump’s hands, diplomacy is spectacle: alliances unravel, spectacle dominates and self-interest rules.
As Australia moves through another federal election campaign, a quarter of a million new voters in the nation’s outer suburbs remain largely invisible in political discourse. These are not marginal communities in the cultural or economic sense; they are the nation’s most dynamic zones of growth, diversity, and aspiration.
By any measure of moral progress, a society should be judged by how it treats those who are most vulnerable. Yet in Australia, people with disabilities continue to be treated not as citizens with equal standing, but as problems to be managed; an inconvenience to be contained within a labyrinth of bureaucratic delay and economic rationalisation.
When Holocaust survivor Jacob Rosenberg once spotted his friend's murderer in a Melbourne post office queue, he discovered that peace doesn't start with grand gestures, but quiet moments of letting go.
In a world that sees refugees and immigrants as a threat, disregards the victims of war, trashes the environment, rewards self-interest and cheapens religious faith, Pope Francis wept with those mistreated, pleaded their cause and radiated joy and hope.
As Australia approaches a federal election, the bishops have offered a statement of gentle encouragement themed around hope. Yet in its caution and generality, it raises questions about missed opportunities for moral clarity, national relevance, and a more engaged voice in public life.
As war rages, the climate suffers and inequality grows, the ancient idea of Jubilee feels newly urgent. Can an economy built on profit give way to one rooted in justice? Can the Church trade power for presence? Renewal may begin where the poor, the displaced and the earth come together.