“Ravel, the younger man, was always happy to admit Satie’s influence — especially harmonic — on his music and Satie was mostly pleased to hear it.” @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social @reaktionbooks.bsky.social

“It’s easy to forget that Australian governments tend to change not because the opposition has set voters’ pulses racing but because the incumbent has worn out its welcome. We’re talking about voters who elected Tony Abbott as PM with a seriously big majority.”

Me on One Nation’s recent poll surge, overseas counterparts, and the big fat potential disinformation weakness in our electoral system. insidestory.org.au/one-nations-...

““The hardest thing to reckon with about this whole rotten business is that it remains unresolved. Leveson left the inquiry with stern recommendations that weren’t acted upon, despite David Cameron’s promise to do so. Phase two of Leveson has never happened.” Jane Goodall reviews The Hack…

Time to clean out the stables. Reopen Leveson. #HackedOff insidestory.org.au/a-rollercoas...

I reviewed a new biography of the historian Asa Briggs, by Adam Sisman, for Inside Story: insidestory.org.au/now-down-to-...

“There’s a let-me-entertain-you spirit running through the movie that is sometimes expressed in dynamic, kinetic fashion, sometimes with cartoonish vigour, and sometimes through Anderson’s trademark needle drops.” Philippa Hawker’s review of ‘One Battle After Another’ and Anne Fontaine’s ‘Bolero.’

“Comparing the number of hours the typical British worker had to toil to buy particular goods and services, Coyle reports that the time required to finance a vacuum cleaner halved from 1990 to 2019, while the time cost of beef doubled.”

Also — to be honest, I felt the same way for a long time until I stumbled across this essay. It changed how I looked at all of this in a big way: insidestory.org.au/the-populist...

“Hunt is long gone, and these days the object of Sheridan’s besottedness seems to be Matt Canavan, the coal-revering Queensland LNP senator” Sez me insidestory.org.au/toxic-emissi...

Wonderful review of Road to October 7 (@versobooks.bsky.social) in Inside Story: insidestory.org.au/how-hamas-ha...

Excellent piece by @peterbrent.bsky.social re Price and "85%" Indian-Australian ALP voting figure nonsense. insidestory.org.au/what-was-tha...

Me on immigration as a political issue and Related Matters. Keywords: White Australia, Ruddock, Megalogenis, Trump, boats … insidestory.org.au/selling-immi...

The closure of Meanjin is real blow to the Australian literary community. We're sad to see the loss of another place where writers, thinkers, and culture-makers have a voice and platform. Our thoughts are with staff and contributors.

“Hal Wootten has often been called ‘brilliant,’ which of course he was, but his brilliance was more than a mental capacity. In the course of his life his intellect fused with boundless energy, growing confidence and broadening sympathies to form a distinctive compound.”

Wow! Inspiring article about an inspiring man. Well worth reading. What a legacy! insidestory.org.au/an-exception...

Traffic pollution in Australia contributes to more than 1,800 premature deaths per year, study estimates www.abc.net.au/news/science... #aushealth paper www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

“Centuries of marauding foreign invaders; poor infrastructure; organised crime networks; high unemployment — hasn’t Sicily suffered enough? Then along comes Netflix’s adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s 1958 classic, The Leopard…”

Very good. And even if they scored well, it would still be illegal and should never be countenanced. Acquisition of territory by force has been successfully made inadmissible since WWII. Read David Lewis on the brutal fascist regime in the occupied territories. insidestory.org.au/silent-terror/

Fewer births and a smaller population would be good for families and good for the world: my review of After the Spike insidestory.org.au/i...

Long read on realism, idealism, Russia and Ukraine. Review essay on recent (very good) books by @avindman.bsky.social and @edwardluce.bsky.social . @insidestory.bsky.social insidestory.org.au/a-dose-of-re...

insidestory.org.au/george-johns... In search of Shangri-La

Lovely review from @insidestory.bsky.social

“South Australia has one of the finest governments of the eighteenth century.” So said the satirist Tom Lehrer when the state government banned five songs he planned to sing at the 1960 Adelaide Festival. Ken Inglis reported on the controversy for the fortnightly magazine Nation.

Great piece on the bad things happening at my alma mater. insidestory.org.au/the-jewel-in...

First review essay discussing the book (by Linda Jaivin, also discusses How Tyrants Fall and China book Everyday Democracy): insidestory.org.au/how-to-resis... + 2 earlier reviews in @asiancha.bsky.social bv Sharon Yam‬ chajournal.blog/2025/05/28/m... & Nick Zeller chajournal.blog/2025/05/31/a...

Such an odd man. The essay makes clear the difference between being a conservative and a reactionary. #auspol

“If the biggest surprise of May’s federal election was its lopsided result, a secondary one was the extent to which the Coalition had guzzled down the Voice referendum Kool-Aid. Down to their bootstraps, it seems, they really believed the 60% No vote held great promise for the general election.”

“As former ANU chancellor Gareth Evans has argued, there is probably no finer or more enduring expression of the university’s nation-building charter than the Australian Dictionary of Biography.”

“Canberra’s Trump tactic has been to play nice, talk soft, cling to the alliance and try to ride out these years. The trouble with bowing the head in quiet prayer lies in the refusal to raise the eyes to stare at stark reality.”

“Any ANZAAS congress would do as a case study, but the one held in Canberra in 1939 seems as good as any because it falls at about the halfway mark of the congresses. Why not crack that one open to see what might fall out?”

“Stone was never convinced by Scott Morrison, so the Coalition’s defeat in 2022 came as something of a relief. Counselling readers against despair at the prospect of a Labor government, he immediately foresaw green shoots of recovery under Peter Dutton…”

'When Australians look for engaging, thoroughly researched and trustworthy biographies of their countrymen and women from every walk of life, there is no more reliable source than the ADB.' insidestory.org.au/the-jewel-in...

'jewel in the crown' & 'priceless project': 'Celebrated by previous vice-chancellors the Australian Dictionary of Biography & Australian National Dictionary are threatened by university cuts'. I'm one of the ADB's unpaid volunteers, proud author of 4 biographies insidestory.org.au/the-jewel-in...

I felt like the obituaries for John Stone neglected a significant part of his public life, so I put some old and new words together for @insidestory.bsky.social. insidestory.org.au/john-stone-p...

insidestory.org.au/keen-as-must... A wonderful weekend read! Thank you #Anne-MarieConde @insidestory.bsky.social @terriannwhite.bsky.social

insidestory.org.au/how-to-disap... this is a great article. Let me point out that major major structural reform has happened in our school system before. In the second part of the 19thC all Australian states abolished all state aid to private schools. #histed

Wrote about Zachary Leader’s book, Ellmann’s Joyce: insidestory.org.au/richard-ellm...

insidestory.org.au/how-to-disap... Wow. Best history I have read of changing funding in our increasingly privatised school systems. "Residual" schools are not *just* an educational problem. School refusal, youth crime etc are more expensive to fix.

Wonderful as ever from Patrick Mullins @insidestory.bsky.social insidestory.org.au/richard-ellm...

Linda Jaivin's book on the Chinese Cultural Revolution BOMBARD THE HEADQUARTERS! and Sheila Fitzpatrick's THE DEATH OF STALIN reviewed by Andrew Bonnell in Inside Story: insidestory.org.au/ghosts-of-di...

It’s been a hot (41C!) and fascinating week at the 4th UN Financing for Development Conference in Sevilla. I have written an article for @insidestory on what happened, and the implications of the US’s non-participation for wider global governance: insidestory.org.au/can-the-worl...

In marked contrast to governments in Australia, the British have tightened its official guidance for new oil and gas extraction projects. Informed by climate science and climate goals, the new rules couldn’t be more different from Albos woefully inadequate approach insidestory.org.au/britains-tou...

The UK's strong new climate test for proposed oil & gas projects casts Australia's environmental impact assessment laws in an unflattering light: my new piece in ‪Inside Story‬ insidestory.org.au/britains-tou... @uclspp.bsky.social @uclpolicylab.bsky.social @insidestory.bsky.social

“In its exploration of self-deception, complicity and surrender, The Director is a heady mixture of the compassionate and the unsparing, the tightly organised and the expansively imagined.” Philippa Hawker reviews Daniel Kehlmann’s latest novel @hachetteuk.bsky.social

Are pro-natalists living on the same planet? • John Quiggin insidestory.org.au/a...

‘Prime Minister Albanese is under mounting pressure over the lack of a Trump meeting,’ reports SBS News. Under pressure from whom? asks this old editor. Who said that? What is their name? News consumers need to be spared the subterfuge of journalistic passive voice.

“It seems more likely that we will continue to work in an environment where students are shortchanged, academics treated like children, university leaders dramatically overpaid, & the public gets less back than it should from its already dwindling investment.” insidestory.org.au/dropping-out...

“Fortunately for anyone fascinated by the inner workings of political parties, at least one of the sixty-plus people on the video conference call recorded it. The transcript of the almost-four-hour grilling makes for compelling reading.”

“What has gone wrong for Starmer? Labour MPs are offering three explanations, none of them giving much comfort to the beleaguered PM.”