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
COVID-19: Where Are We Going?
In an article in Quadrant Online in January this year, twelve months into a pandemic with a level of devastation unknown to our generation, I described Australia as an island nation, isolated in an artificial and unstable bubble from a sea of COVID-19 causing 15,000 deaths across the world each day. At that time Australia was recording a daily count of ten new cases of COVID infection, with only three deaths in the preceding three months. Yet at least the first half of the nightly news was all COVID-19 while the “experts” who filled our screens found the post-truth world a comfort zone.
The political imperative was zero tolerance for COVID-19, which, taken to extremes with lockdowns, gave political capital but at a cost of compromising broader health challenges and considerable economic damage. The plan appeared to be maintenance of a COVID-free environment within controlled borders, backed by strict hotel quarantine and public health principles, until the pandemic has…
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
