The Latest From Christopher Heathcote
SBS promotes New Gold Mountain as showing the plight of Chinese on the gold fields from their perspective. However, according to those I spoke with from Ballarat’s Chinese Library, that view is not shared by descendants of Chinese gold seekers. They are disconcerted by SBS’s depiction of their history
Aug 25 2024
19 mins
Was Kenneth Clark an enlightened tastemaker who backed modern English painting and sculpture? Posterity has judged him favourably. Still, three decades after his death, as English modernist art is relegated to the chronicle of history, popular perceptions need to be tested. Did he support genuine talent?
Aug 15 2024
39 mins
The council meeting was in the Melbourne municipality of Brimbank, but it might have been just about anywhere parish-pump potentates push the latest wokery while applying the gag to ratepayers who might object. That residents should sit mute as their betters hand down edicts -- in this case not to observe the nation's birthday day -- was not to be doubted, for three burly security guards stood ready to enforce the public gallery's silence
Dec 16 2023
4 mins
The Healing Foundation has $632 million in programs, all funded by the Australian taxpayer. For such a sum you might expect a medical specialist in Aboriginal health on the board or in senior management, but you would disappointed. Instead there are weasel words, flurries of psychobabble and the exaltation of inherited victimhood
Aug 23 2023
16 mins
She was always busy: the phone never stopped ringing at the Realities gallery, and people were steadily coming in. Figures like the painter John Brack or the art historian Patrick McCaughey visited to see the month’s show, and there were identities like Len French and Brett Whiteley. Sometimes even Sid Nolan would drop in
Aug 12 2023
15 mins
In recent decades escalating disapproval has been directed at the […]
Jul 31 2023
22 mins
Contrary to the promotional ads, Insight's big question, 'Has political correctness gone too far?' was not addressed. Nothing was said, for instance, about the cancelling of Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer and Israel Folau, nor was there discussion of the wokesters' campaigns to revoke civil honours awarded to Margaret Court and Bettina Arndt. What viewers did get was a fine lesson in the modern Left's talent and appetite for bullying
Jun 26 2023
18 mins
Much as in a Soviet-style museum, what ought to be unbiased expert information has been corrupted to support a political line. The museum's website entries, 'Tear it Down' and 'Whose History' are prejudiced, inaccurate and at points untrue. Yet there they are for all to see, brazen repudiations of everything a museum should be
May 01 2023
14 mins