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
Manne on ABC radio
In response to my case in Quadrant Online that he had given a false account of Commonwealth government support for policies on “breeding out the colour” in the 1930s, Robert Manne appeared on the ABC radio program Late Night Live on Tuesday night February 2. Manne said he had a document that proved my accusations wrong. He read it aloud to interviewer Phillip Adams.
The document was nothing more than one he had used in 2001 in his Quarterly Essay, In Denial: The Stolen Generations and the Right, and whose existence I acknowledged in Volume Three of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. It was an internal memo from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Foreign Affairs in December 1938, which did not have the meaning Manne attributed to it in either his 2001 essay or in his ABC radio interview. This was the sole document Manne was able to provide in response to my charge that he failed to report:
(i) a cabinet decision in September 1933,
(ii) advice from the head of…
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
