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
The Compassion of Captain James Cook
James Cook, the finest maritime explorer in recorded history, was among the victims of a massacre by First Nation peoples. His violent death and those of four marines protecting him, as well as the killing of another ten crewmen on his previous expedition, may be omitted from postmodern lists of historic massacres in the Pacific region. Nevertheless, what transpired on both occasions were massacres.
The first massacre occurred in New Zealand during the expedition of 1772–75. Recently promoted to Commander, James Cook was leading two vessels: his own ship the Resolution, and the Adventure captained by Commander Tobias Furneaux. Cook used them in tandem to explore and map the southern Indian Ocean and the South Pacific, searching for land at high latitudes while aspiring to approach the South Pole.
This essay appears in June’s Quadrant.
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By late October 1773 the ships had completed a first segment of their mission and looped back to New Zealand’s Queen…
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
