Non-fictionAs subjects of late capitalism, we’ve become inured to the amoral cynicism inherent in relentless corporate marketing; yet both the good faith of our human nature and the susceptibility of our lizard brains ensure that we also remain receptive... In 2020, the disjunction between AGL’s public relations and the truth of the company’s business practices was highlighted and ridiculed in the public realm, ending in a court case of profound significance on Australia’s twisted road to belated action on climate change.

EssayIT’S A HOT Australian twilight, some years ago now, and I’m among a couple of hundred people who have gathered in the forgettable, sanitised space of a function centre conference room to talk about the future of life on...

ReportageTHE TWO MEN stand knee-deep in river water the colour of pickled cucumbers. ‘My name is Dick Arnold and I’m here with Rob McBride for this really sad bloody shot here…’ Dick, closer to the camera than Rob, wears a grey...

EssayNOBODY LOOKS VERY comfortable. There are four faces, angled inelegantly, only one inclined to engage with the camera, the attached bodies mostly submerged in a hot, foaming tub. There are two men and two women. The picture is from...

EssayIN MY LATE-TEENAGE years, I found myself for a time hovering on the border of bogandom. In those long-gone days of the mid-1980s, the bogans of Perth’s foothills could be identified by a clear dress code: flannelette ‘x-brand’ outer...

Some ProvocationsAUSTRALIA WAS A nation established behind walls. The outward barriers of racially restrictive immigration, Commonwealth defence, and the desire for an inwardly free trade system protected by external tariffs, were the imperatives for federation. Within the protected economy of...

EssayBEFORE I WAS born, my family arrived in Western Australia from Europe and moved into a ramshackle brick house on three-plus acres in Kelmscott, then a semi-rural locality on the outskirts of Perth. The property featured an orchard that...

EssayIN THE CITIES and the suburbs of the affluent world, the fish are waiting. Across the cold counters of supermarkets and specialist costermongers, fillets lie translucent on the ice, sparkling like champagne; effete king prawns in pretty pink piles,...

GR OnlineWhat's wrong with a bit of space? What's wrong with the possibility of being able to get to a beach and get onto the beach? The opportunity of going for a walk in a national park less than an...

Non-fictionIT IS FRIDAY morning in a moderately busy, inner-suburban Melbourne supermarket and I am standing a little awkwardly in the cosmetics aisle, completing a television news interview about something that is happening in the store. It is a fine day...