Dr Anne Pender is Professor of English and Theatre Studies at the University of New England. Her most recent book, Seven Big Australians: Adventures with Comic Actors, is published by Monash University Publishing. In it, Pender talks to seven of Australia’s most successful comedians about their lives and how they work. It is Pender’s thesis [...]
Now in his late-eighties, and listed by the National Trust as a “Living Treasure”, Geoffrey Blainey has now published the first volume of his memoires - Before I Forget. In it, he reflects on his humble beginnings as the son of a Methodist Minister and school teacher, one of five children, and a carefree childhood spent [...]
In 2019, the Morrison government tasked the Australian Law Reform Commission to review current legislation around religious freedom. This was in response to the recommendations put to the government by the findings of the Expert Panel into Religious Freedom in 2018. As debate continued over what the legislation might look like, Labor’s Senator Kimberley Kitching [...]
Australia’s immigration policies are the envy of other multicultural Western nations – recently having won the praise of the leaders of the UK and the USA. Some of the most significant changes to Australia's immigration system in recent years are going to take effect this year. The Hon David Coleman MP is the Minister for [...]
James Kirchick is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, journalist and author of The End of Europe: Dictators Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age [Yale, 2017] In an article for The Australian, published on 17 August 2019, James Kirchick wrote: “One of the most profoundly disturbing and perplexing phenomena in the Western world today has been [...]
Senator the Hon. Mathias Cormann, a Senator for Western Australia, is the Minister for Finance and Leader of the Government in the Senate. Senator Corman has been Australia’s Finance Minister since September 2013 – amid three changes of prime minister. His record is one of stability and progress for the Australian economy. In a wide-ranging [...]
The Hon John Anderson is a sixth-generation farmer and grazier from New South Wales, who spent 19 years from 1989 in the Australian Parliament. This included six years as Leader of the National Party and Deputy Prime Minister. These days, John Anderson is best known for his “John Anderson” blog – offering a range of [...]
Ian Macfarlane AC is an Australian economist and was Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, from 1996 to 17 September 2006. He has not let retirement end his endeavours, however, and is now the author of a new book, The Remarkable Australians, that puts together the stories of ten remarkable Australians who were once [...]
The Hon Joel Fitzgibbon is Member for Hunter & Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Resources. After watching his regional seat in New South Wales’ Hunter Valley come very close to a Labor loss, Joel Fitzgibbon has challenged his Labor colleagues to reassess the reasons they lost the 2019 election, raising the issue of Labor's large [...]
In 1838, eleven convicts and former convicts were put on trial for the brutal murder of 28 Aboriginal men, women and children at Myall Creek in New South Wales. The trial created an enormous amount of controversy because it was almost unknown for Europeans to be charged with the murder of Aborigines. It would become [...]
