We will probably know, let alone grasp, the obscure logic behind the Australian Electoral Commission's decision to cast aside utility and tradition when designing the ballot for October 14's referendum. Whatever the reason, what has been released for comment certainly deserves one: tear it up and start again

While textbook pages are devoted to Karl Marx, to socialism and the struggle of the working man, nineteenth-century liberalism is almost totally neglected. How is it possible to omit so much, remembering always that this excision is but one of many in the systematic stripping of the past