Keywords: Quarterly Essay
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Warwick McFadyen
- 30 July 2024
Lewis Lapham's work was a rigorous autopsy of American culture, exposing the chasm between our pretensions and our realities. With a historian’s depth and a satirist’s wit, he illuminated the follies that sustain our collective delusions.
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ENVIRONMENT
- Julie Perrin
- 12 July 2024
In her new Quarterly Essay Highway to Hell, Australian climate scientist Joëlle Gergis pleads in language beyond the careful neutrality of traditional science-speak: ‘We need you to stare into the abyss with us and not turn away.’
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AUSTRALIA
- Barry Gittins
- 24 May 2024
In the latest Quarterly Essay profile of Peter Dutton, author Lech Blaine may well describe his work as character delineation, rather than character assassination. But we seem to be at an impasse in Australian market of ideas, and scorn gives greater bang for the buck than dialogue.
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AUSTRALIA
- Peter Mares
- 12 April 2024
1 Comment
The ABC’s recent Q+A housing special left many questions unasked and unanswered. Labor, Coalition and Green MPs all say they want more people to be able to buy their own homes. The most obvious way to achieve that would be to reduce the price of housing. Yet no politician will make that an explicit policy aim.
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AUSTRALIA
- Julian Butler
- 21 November 2022
If democracy relies on a shared commitment to reaching consensus, to making accommodations even as, and precisely because, I hold things dearly, sacredly, then contempt necessarily corrodes democracy. Others stop being moral agents whom I must value and seek to share public space with. How do we overcome this corrosive element in our common life?
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AUSTRALIA
- Melinda Tankard Reist
- 20 July 2022
2 Comments
Exposure to pornography has been linked to an increase in in sexually aggressive behaviour and adolescent dating violence. This mass, industrial-level grooming of our young is causing lasting damage to their social and sexual development and leading to even more women and girls being viewed as less human.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 06 May 2022
5 Comments
Whoever is Prime Minister after the election on May 21, he will need to address the question of Indigenous recognition in the Australian Constitution. This is the sixth election in a row when the question has been a live, unresolved issue during the election campaign. The patience of Indigenous leaders is understandably wearing thin. Trust is waning. There is still no clear path ahead. So where to from here?
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AUSTRALIA
- Barry Gittins
- 21 March 2022
6 Comments
Like the trusting frog, voters have in the backs of their minds the inkling that when a government achieves power, they lavish time, energy and resources on staying in power. Promises are non-core, or open to interpretation, or de-prioritised as new issues bob up to the surface.
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AUSTRALIA
- Barry Gittins
- 29 June 2021
27 Comments
We are all beholden to our story of origin and the systemic realities we are born into. Regardless, now and historically, politicians, preachers and pundits sporadically look to reintroduce the discredited dichotomy between the ‘deserving poor and the undeserving poor’. The embodiment of that second label, historically, has been the Jobseeker (Newstart) recipient.
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AUSTRALIA
- Jeff Sparrow
- 06 November 2019
27 Comments
I can't imagine how anyone could look at the Melbourne Cup and see a vision of the 'fair go'. On the contrary, much hostility to horse racing — this year's Cup attracted the smallest crowd since 1993 — stems from a perception that its rituals celebrate grotesque inequalities.
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AUSTRALIA
- Barry Gittins
- 13 August 2019
6 Comments
In Jensen's take, while Shorten expresses honest doubt and cites Christ's golden rule, care of his Jesuit educators, Morrison indulges in a marathon of spiritual self-indulgence. Morrison masterfully works right-wing media outlets, or is worked by them, with Alan Jones leading the PM through a radio interview 'like Simpson led his donkey'.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 26 June 2018
35 Comments
Just in time to arrest ponderous musings about Western Civilisation, up jumps Denniss' cheeky funeral oration for the neoliberal settlement. His target is the assumption that an economy based on unregulated competition between individuals will benefit society. He does not spend time arguing with the theory, but points to the results.
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