I take Robert Manne’s word for the proposition that the predominant mood among Australian people in our times is against “boat people” (‘Comment: Asylum Seekers’, September 2010); but I question the ...

Lisa Pryor is a journalist and writer. She has worked for the Sydney Morning Herald as a columnist, opinion editor and investigative reporter.

If Nicolas Rothwell is to be believed (‘The Blast Zone’, September 2010), the Aboriginal people of the Western Desert may as well pack their bags and move to the suburbs of Perth (or at least ...

How a novel’s opening line reflected the author’s dissonance as a teenage reader, and remains an apt tribute to the enduring power of fiction Recently I was chatting with a niece, and we got into a ...

Dr Karen Hitchcock’s article on obesity was a huge breath of fresh air (‘Fat City’, March). This subject has been examined intensively in the lay and scientific press in the past decade but the ...

Kate Wild is a Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist and author. Her book Waiting for Elijah examines the fatal police shooting of a mentally ill man in New South Wales. In the face of ...

Andy Griffiths is one of Australia’s most popular children’s authors.

What to me seems the most challenging question in Australian history receives commonly a very confident answer. What effect did the convicts have on our national character? Answer: they made us an ...

Luke Goodsell is a critic and editor who has contributed to the ABC, SBS and the Melbourne International Film Festival.

Early one morning, when he was running Three Ways Roadhouse at the lonesome junction of the Stuart and Barkly highways in the Northern Territory, Jon Jenkins strolled out to turn off his sprinklers in ...

Somebody told me that Burkhard Augustin Hase, the young German magician who has married an Australian and come to live in Melbourne, was doing a few gigs at the Butterfly Club next door to South ...

In 1967, when La Trobe University was brand new and underpopulated, John O’Brien, an Irish historian with a wild and feverish laugh, told us about the enemy within. It was not for anything the ...