Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
Citizens, Aliens, Race and the High Court
The decision of the High Court of Australia in Love v The Commonwealth of Australia: Thoms v The Commonwealth of Australia on February 11 has gone straight to the pantheon of Australian folklore and journalistic obsession as if it were a High Court decision in some way establishing that Aborigines are entitled to immunity from ever being removed from Australia for whatever cause, an immunity which non-Aboriginal Australians do not share. This is not really what it establishes, and not really what it was about: but then Mabo v The State of Queensland (No.2) (1992) was not about Aborigines either, related only to native title of the Meriam people, Torres Strait Islanders, in the Murray Islands, on facts special to them, and has a claim to be the longest ever obiter dictum in Australian legal history. (It is worth adding that native title now exists under an enactment of the Commonwealth Parliament, as it should, and is not or no longer is a creation of opinion in the High…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins
