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
A Strategic Plan for the Current Australian Crisis
At the summit, true politics and strategy are one.
—Winston Churchill
To ride out the crisis that has engulfed Australia in 2020, we need an encompassing and convincing strategic plan. “Encompassing” because the plan must omit nothing relevant; “convincing” so that Australians can believe it.
This proposal begins by explaining the essentials of strategic planning. This art is not well understood. Clint Eastwood’s film Invictus is a superb exemplar. Several of this film’s scenes are therefore described below to convey the feel of true strategy.
The second part then offers the “first cut” of a strategic plan to guide Australia through its current crisis.
This essay appears in December’s Quadrant.
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At base, strategy planning is a matter of working out how to get from one situation to another—particularly when conditions are complex, or an obstacle is making things difficult. Strategy…
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
