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
Vale Geoffrey Luck: A Life Lived Down To The Wire
The news came this morning (Dec 22) that Geoffrey Luck, valued contributor and dear friend of Quadrant, had passed away in the night. Early in November he dropped me a note about some pieces he was working on for Quadrant Online. It concluded with this line:
“Now passed 90, on dialysis two days a week and a bit tired.”
Yet he continued at the keyboard to the end, defying illness and frailty and dedicated as ever to the now quaint notion that journalism, especially as done at the modern ABC, needs to have some relationship with fact and truth.
He filed his last piece for us only a week or so ago, written even as the sands were running down, and it figured prominently in the current week’s Monday newsletter to subscribers.
The article that comes first to mind, however, is Geoff’s first-person account of an incident as a student pilot that very nearly robbed the world of 70 more years of Geoff’s passionate curiosity, journalism and adherence to the belief that the truth shall set…
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
