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Keywords: A Secret Australia

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Courting: An intimate history of love and the law

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 19 April 2024
    1 Comment

    Love is a creature of its time, and so ideas, attitudes and conduct of affairs of the heart change and evolve as time passes. Courting explores breach of promise cases in Australia from 1788 until the 1970s, and in doing do, documents the development of Australian society from a penal colony to a free and much more individualistic one.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Searching for the truth about a wartime massacre

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 15 March 2024
    3 Comments

    Two books about a 1942 massacre of Australian nurses were released last year. One is reliable, the other is notable for factual omissions. If we leave something out, are we then guilty of censorship? Alternatively, if our truth-telling offends someone else, what is our justification for so doing?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    40 Days: Generosity

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 March 2024

    Generosity is most heartwarming when it is a habit. We see it in people whose first inclination is to give something to a beggar, to stop and listen to a hard luck story, to think first of persons affected by war and economic crises and only secondly to policy, to welcome people into their homes and to go out of their way to help.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why the choice revolution let us down: In conversation with Mark Considine

    • David Halliday
    • 28 February 2024
    1 Comment

    The main purpose of government is to promote the welfare of its people. And yet over the last few decades, through numerous inquiries, it’s become clear that the Australian government has failed to provide services for the Australian population as well as might be expected. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Can debate ever do harm?

    • Holly Lawford-Smith
    • 02 February 2024
    1 Comment

    How can we make progress on the question of whether debate can do harm, and if it can, whether that’s a sufficient reason to suppress particular debates? Or should we adopt a ‘no debate!’ approach to particular topics ourselves?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2023: In conversation with Helen Garner

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 04 January 2024

    Arguably Australia’s most celebrated living author, Helen Garner has built a reputation as a fearless and unapologetic writer whose work has remained fresh and relevant for over 45 years. We sat down with Helen to explore the challenges of confessional non-fiction, her fondness for church, and her commitment to unsparing self-analysis. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Who loves longer? In conversation with Richard Flanagan

    • Michael McGirr
    • 01 December 2023
    2 Comments

    Flanagan’s new book, Question 7, a beautiful and profound reading experience. It is a deeply personal memoir, a net woven from many threads. It traces the fine lines that link stories across time and around the world.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Diamond Jubilee

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 22 June 2023
    2 Comments

    'Ten Pound Poms' adjusted from the harsh British winter to the austere migrant hostels of 1960s Australia. To mark the 60th anniversary of her own journey, Juliette Hughes recalls the trials and transformations, and the small moments that offered a glimmer of hope for the future. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Not a stockbroker

    • Julian Wood
    • 24 May 2023

    They knew secret restaurants where / You had to knock at a little door with a hatch. And they rose each day at six sharp to train / Before striding into glass towers, And one of them, she said, had read Proust / And told her it was ‘great’, Only he (or she) / Pronounced it ‘Prowst’ like Faust / And all his envy turned to air.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The magic of Dessaix's Abracadabra

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 28 April 2023
    2 Comments

    While our lives plod along in an ordinary groove, the great writers astound us and lift us on to another plane. The state of reading, Dessaix believes, is one of intense attention: in every true reading of literature in adult life, we revert to that early attitude of plasticity and innocence before the text.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The book corner: Finding light in a shadowed world

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 February 2023

    In Shadowline, Uwe's attempts to understand himself and his relationships through theoretical patterns are inevitably uneasy, but his diary entries reveal a man dedicated to personal growth and learning.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In conversation with Helen Garner

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 17 February 2023
    3 Comments

    Arguably Australia’s most celebrated living author, Helen Garner has built a reputation as a fearless and unapologetic writer whose work has remained fresh and relevant for over 45 years. We sat down with Helen to explore the challenges of confessional non-fiction, her fondness for church, and her commitment to unsparing self-analysis. 

    READ MORE