July-August 2015 Volume Volume Lix, Number 7-8, No. 518
Bordering on the Hopeless
An Honourable Estate?
Vale, Peter Coleman, Great Man of Letters
The Challenge of an Islamic Reformation
Same-Sex Marriage: Where We Go Next
Clashing Symbols
Contents
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Sensing weakness in the West, the absence of conviction and resolve, illegal migrants of all kinds pour into Europe. More drown. The problem gets bigger. And worse. Nations can only be generous if they feel secure. Australia has absorbed that lesson. The international community ... not so muchJuly 9, 2015
8 mins
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Parenting and child-care payments cost many millions of dollars, giving governments a large stake in the stability or otherwise of families. Would it not be sound policy for the state to deem de facto couples subject to the same rules of separation as divorcing, formally married couples?July 23, 2015
7 mins
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When Sydney University awarded Peter the degree of Doctor of Letters, its citation acknowledged his contribution “to the intellectual life of Australia and to its world of letters for more than fifty years”. True as those words were, they remain an understatementApril 1, 2019
7 mins
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali argues that reason, not blind adherence to Islam's sacred verses, must guide Muslims to a better way. While her optimism is admirable, those who share her convictions would do well to recall that, if Europe is her model, the process was neither quick nor yet completeAugust 11, 2015
29 mins
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In our continuing culture war against the equality-mongers who seek to destroy our culture and society, we must now seek allies among married gays and lesbians and, where possible, recruit them to the conservative cause. Once a group has been included in the social order its members have much to loseJuly 15, 2015
12 mins
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Labor's enduring and tragic delusion, encouraged by admirers such as those who put together the ABC's recent Killing Season series, is its utter faith that it managed the economy with aplomb, did not overspend and navigated the GFC with a sure and steady handJuly 21, 2015
12 mins
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Indigenous problems endure not because Aborigines lack a race-based national assembly, but because a vocal cadre of leaders cannot look beyond grievance, history and victimhood to embrace the competitive and technical challenges of the twenty-first centuryJuly 30, 2015
16 mins
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Britain’s problems with Scotland and the EU have a common origin: an ancient constitution ill-adjusted to our democratic age. The solution: federalism at home, intergovernmentalism abroad and, most of all, the manifestation of a national will to effect much-needed changeAugust 25, 2015
25 mins
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The politically convenient illusion that a coherent United States of Europe might be nudged into being paved the way for the financially convenient delusion that a single currency would see the Euro Zone stable, secure and surging ahead. The turmoil in Greece puts pay to that notionJuly 3, 2015
23 mins
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Why did so many embark on leaky boats, rather than present themselves as ordinary economic migrants? Because they have no marketable skills, little education and no jobs waiting for them upon arrival. What many do boast is a troubling insularity borne of loyalty to fundamentalist IslamJuly 25, 2015
17 mins
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The ordinary business of economic life goes on quite separately from forensic examinations of its innards. And it can be made reasonable sense of by anyone of inquiring mind provided theory does not obfuscate reality. Unfortunately, Keynesian obfuscation is pervasiveAugust 13, 2015
18 mins
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For about a century after 1215, and about a century […]July 1, 2015
42 mins
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Celebrating Magna Carta’s birthday is inevitably a complex and even […]
July 1, 2015
15 mins
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As a Labor politician Dr Bert Evatt defeated the plan […]
July 1, 2015
16 mins
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When those on the left deliver their sermons on the threat of global warming and the need to do something about it, they accept the allegedly science without question. In doing so they elevate a misplaced faith in what they would term rationality above reasonJuly 28, 2015
9 mins
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Muggers are prowling Central Park once more while public nuisances shake down New York's motorists and crime soars. Welcome to the increasingly bruised Big Apple of Mayor Bill de Blasio, his progressive agenda -- and the inevitable resultsJuly 6, 2015
11 mins
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It was my great misfortune to be marooned in the vest-pocket nation before chronic electrical-supply problems were fixed. Now that an abundance of electricity has brought even indoor skiing to the sweltering kingdom, I look back on an experience that only a carbon-phobic Greens voter might envyAugust 8, 2015
16 mins
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John Carroll’s memoir in the May issue of Quadrant has […]
July 1, 2015
21 mins
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When the the Tate declined to purchase Lotte Laserstein's 'The Roof Garden,' the explanation was a bland dismissal of the work for not being “modern” enough -- a perfect example of the deleterious consequences in making modern a stylistic criterion of worth, rather than a word which relates purely to periodJuly 12, 2015
16 mins
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In the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, at that […]
July 1, 2015
17 mins
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Although he has lived in Sydney since 1967 (when he […]
July 1, 2015
17 mins
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Madonna was spotted texting during Act Two—the light shining up […]
July 1, 2015
11 mins
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Twelfth Night concerns itself with the well-being of human lovemaking. […]
July 1, 2015
9 mins
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Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier—perhaps only—lady private detective, deals on a […]
July 1, 2015
11 mins
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It is strange how topics for novels run with the […]
July 1, 2015
6 mins
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What is Blackhat and why don’t most of us know […]
July 1, 2015
7 mins
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When Gottfried Heinrich Bach was born, Johann Sebastian Bach and […]
July 1, 2015
8 mins
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November 1928. We’ve all just emerged from the examination hall. […]
July 1, 2015
6 mins
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One hundred years ago this month, the six-day Battle of Lone Pine came to an end on the Gallipoli Peninsular. All these years later, the ghosts of those long-gone Diggers face an enemy even more implacable than Johnny Turk, as Meryn Bendle chronicles in his latest bookAugust 24, 2015
17 mins
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Australian Dictionary of Biography 1966 to the present, 19 volumes […]
July 1, 2015
15 mins
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The Tears of the Rajas: Mutiny, Money and Marriage in […]
July 1, 2015
12 mins
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Unholy Fury: Whitlam and Nixon at War by James Curran […]
July 1, 2015
9 mins
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Charles: The Heart of a King by Catherine Mayer Ebury, […]
July 1, 2015
10 mins
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A nation worthy of the name can have but one authentic day to celebrate and affirm its unity. Here's a heartening impression drawn from the last time I marched: Asian families whose little kids bore crayoned messages on sheets of white card. 'Thank you' was what they saidApril 25, 2018
8 mins
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Of Petals and Poets Kyoto Spring The waka poets […]
July 1, 2015
2 mins
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Blondi Eva Braun preferred her Scottish terriers, Negus and […]
July 1, 2015
2 mins
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Epitaph for a Poet You didn’t hide your talent But […]
July 1, 2015
4 mins
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Climate Change Rain rushing over roof tiles, lush grass […]
July 1, 2015
4 mins
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The Shrieking of the Spirits These children are possessed […]
July 1, 2015
3 mins
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Telephones Those upturned rectangles, cramped red huts neighbourhoods once […]
July 1, 2015
2 mins
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Decalogue 1. When I was ten I believed ten […]
July 1, 2015
5 mins
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Pomegranate Its name suggesting stability, yet here is one […]
July 1, 2015
1 mins
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Winter Burning It’s the wrong phase of the moon […]
July 1, 2015
1 mins
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Lost in Translation “Every now and then”, Thought the […]
July 1, 2015
1 mins
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Flight of the Minstrels Dromana, January 2015 The old […]
July 1, 2015
1 mins
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This Chartered Accountant He knows the odour of himself […]
July 1, 2015
2 mins
