“Scarborough Fair” is what Ellen Stekert calls a “go around song,” one that is passed from singer to singer, down centuries, ...

If citizens don’t have confidence in their public services, at least on balance, they will be more reluctant to pay taxes and the extent and quality of services will spiral downwards. It’s worth ...

Does anyone remember “American carnage”? In his 2017 inaugural address Donald Trump portrayed a collapsing society, emphasising in particular the “crime and gangs and drugs” destroying America’s ...

When Albanese’s eviction legislation passed in June 2023, Russia asked the High Court to put the repossession on hold until it could rule on the legislation’s validity. Justice Jayne Jagot rejected ...

The importance of the clitoris to women’s sexual pleasure is a lesson that still has to be taught. Meanwhile, the “vaginal orgasm” that Freud invented lives on as the G-spot, a reportedly erogenous ...

At the annual Shangri La security dialogue in Singapore two weeks ago, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth didn’t just ask Australia to spend more on defence. He also unveiled plans for a new US ...

Right now, according to British political theorist Jonathan White, the future seems very close. Our time horizon is closing in. Crises press in on us, shadowing contemporary politics with an “air of ...

Judith Hermann has been writing critically acclaimed short stories and novels for almost three decades. Having burst onto the literary scene with the 1998 collection The Summerhouse, Later, she is ...

A few ordinary games as a defender with the Tasmanian Football League’s Glenorchy club ended any prospect I had of a footballing career. In those days, football was still a celebrated part of ...

“Private health insurance is in our DNA,” Tony Abbott declared back in 2012 when the Gillard government legislated to means test the private health insurance rebate, the government subsidy to ...