3 days ago · Books, ideas, current affairs and culture from a (mainly) Australian perspective

Jan 28, 2025 · In the national gloom of Gradgrind schooling policy, South Australia is a flicker of light. The Malinauskas government came to office in 2022 promising a “we’re different” approach to schooling. By the end of that year, after much consulting, reviewing and surveying, it released a …

Inside Story is an independent, non-profit magazine featuring analysis, commentary and reporting by leading writers and researchers from Australia and beyond. Editor: Peter Browne Contributing editor: Peter Mares Publisher: Mark Baker Inside Story Publishing Pty Ltd, PO Box 1170, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia • ABN 40 617 195 230 We acknowledge and pay respect to …

Jan 17, 2025 · The common invocation in Western media of a “populist wave” encourages observers to imagine that there is some single driving force propelling the various manifestations of populism seen around the globe in recent years. In fact, populism is a political language and style adaptable to a wide array of circumstances. In most democracies most of the time, there is a substantial reservoir of ...

Jan 28, 2025 · When he was invited to work for Gough Whitlam in September 1967, Race Mathews was thirty-two, a teacher and Education Department speech therapist, married with three children. He’d been active in the Labor Party and served on the local council in the outer-eastern Melbourne suburb of Croydon. As ...

Dec 9, 2024 · After a distinguished career in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Geoff Raby has become a consultant and widely published commentator on the dovish side of the debate about China’s ambitions. His latest book, Great Game On: The Contest for Central Asia and Global Supremacy, a readable and thought-provoking mixture of history and musings on geopolitics, is enlivened by vignettes of ...

Nov 22, 2024 · In the old Chief Secretary’s Building, a sandstone relic of colonial New South Wales not far from Circular Quay, an episode in the state’s more recent history is being picked apart. In what is now a venue for judicial inquiries, a succession of retired policemen have testified this year about their role in events forty-five years ago. …

Some institutions have as their very mission to shape understanding of political memory. That is true of the National Archives Australia. Its eventually unsuccessful legal battle with Jenny Hocking over release of the Palace Letters is a reminder of how reliant we are on access to original documents if we are to undertake honest, well-informed appraisal …

Donald Horne, citizen intellectual A compelling biography captures the trajectory of the man who named the lucky country, writes Frank Bongiorno Buckle and strain In probing the shortcomings of George Orwell’s biographers has Anna Funder fallen into traps of her own, asks Patrick Mullins Stolen moments Caught between their home villages and the city, a generation of Chinese migrant workers ...

For much if not all of Australia’s history, the foreign ministry has been a place where over-talented cabinet colleagues and defeated leadership rivals can be parked in the hope they find the job an interesting enough distraction from bread-and-butter, vote-winning domestic policies. They might even impress the foreigners too. It is usually a one-way street. In the decades since 1945, Billy ...