👑🚫🇦🇺❓I've just spent two years co-chairing the Australian Republic Movement: reframing the national conversation, getting the house in order, hitting global headlines with an unexpectedly rock'n'roll campaign (happy birthday, king!) and plotting the future. 🗳️ Let's go: republic.org.au/ncstatements26

Great big congrats to all the arts people honoured today – including Bianca Beetson, Janice Florence, Elaine Chia, and the great Gerald Murnane, who's now an AO. Here's Eli McLean's superb interview with Gerald: lnkd.in/gpMCpwvG And here's everyone who's been honoured today: lnkd.in/g7TzvUiw

His tenor saxophone, endlessly inventive and seamlessly melodic, earned him two Grammys and a place among the jazz greats. We remember the life of Sonny Rollins

This extract about Chris Masters is amazing. Detailed, thoughtful, powerful. It’s also heartbreaking. Good work Andrew Dodd Matthew Ricketson Their new book on Murdoch out June 30. www.smh.com.au/national/i-k...

Rain and Rachmaninoff.

“This is not a wishlist. It is the simple implementation of legal obligations. Australia wants to be a good international citizen. This is how it can be that.” Clarity and authority: Chris Sidoti, Member of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The good people at the Bureau of Communications, Arts and Regional Research have released a detailed analysis of cultural and creative employment: an interim report providing preliminary estimates ahead of adopting a new occupational classification framework www.infrastructure.gov.au/cultural-and...

End the veto.

Think big in under 80cm³! Entries are now open for the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize. www.woollahragallery.com.au/Artists/Wool...

This Mabo Day, we launch Pearling Elders ⚓️🐚 Marking the 90th anniversary of the 1936 Torres Strait maritime strike, this free exhibition features powerful portraits by Wayne Quilliam and oral histories celebrating the resilience of Zenadth Kes seafarers. #MaboDay #PearlingElders #WayneQuilliam

“For three decades after 1945, Australia experienced something genuinely exceptional – shared, broad-based prosperity. That period is over and we are returning, more or less, to the historical norm.” A must-read by the sharply incisive @kossamaras.bsky.social: www.thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2026...

"We have records of our ancestors here, and the lived experience of my mother's generation, my grandparents' generation, my great-grandparents' generation" —Yagara Elder Gaja Kerry Charlton:

No amount of adverse publicity seems enormous enough to deter brands who are unaware of the Streisand Effect to stop becoming its latest case study www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...

Some words I wrote for the recent National Cultural Policy consultation.

Erin Brockovich has been fighting evil corporations that pollute the environment for so long that there was a Hollywood movie about her starring Julia Roberts back in 2000. It's a bad sign for the AI industry that she is now on the anti-data center bandwagon.

Early-career journos! Next Tuesday the good people at @melbournepressclub.com and SYN Media present top tips from award-winning Guardian Australia justice and courts reporter Nino Bucci, AAP court reporter Tara Cosoleto, and ABC designer-developer Alex Lim: www.melbournepressclub.com/the-edit-how...

Catch the excellent Az Dastyari from Western Sydney University talking Australian cultural diversity against the rise of One Nation on ABC 7.30 right now!

It’s easy to connect the politics behind axing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert; it’s less straightforward to join the dots on why so many Australian talk shows are gone. From last July, here’s my response to the initial announcement that Colbert was axed: estheranatolitis.net/2025/07/20/a...

"What if there was a Special Economic Zone for cultural infrastructure?" 👏👏👏 The Counterfactual Cities symposium is on this evening at RMIT Design Hub: designweek.melbourne/event/counte...

Full marks to the good people of Northcote Social Club for their chef's-kiss-level accessibility info: northcotesocialclub.com/accessibility/

Our vocab for detecting AI – “a litany of “not x, but y” sentence structures… words such as “delve”, a profusion of em dashes… “vague, soft intensifiers” such as “quietly powerful” and “deeply transformative”” – is, ironically, enhancing our capacity to critique: www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...

The Imagining Home Conference is on this week: designing homes for people with disability that are safe, dignified and supportive imaginemore.org.au/the-imaginin...

Do you suppose he realises that it only looks that big on Mercator projection? www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/w...

"There is a difference between feeling uncomfortable and feeling unsafe." There was nothing in Jayson Gillham's introduction, argues his barrister, which would have made the reasonable person feel unsafe in the literal meaning of those words. Follow the live stream: www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5bq...

Tomorrow!

The Ambassador for McDonalds brings screen-ordered minimum-wage production-line food to the country that invented hospitality:

Let it be known, dear Reader, that I have the hiccups SEND HELP unrelated: happy Melbourne Design Week

Join me on Monday afternoon 18 May with my professor hat on for the RMIT School of Design Amplify>>Future Policy Design workshop as part of Melbourne Design Week: designweek.melbourne/event/amplif...

Only just remembering that, six months ago, to give future me a little moment of glee, I made today’s dentist appointment for two thirty

Who ever imagined that one day a plucky wog like me could rise to the ranks of Journalist and Other Writer Not Further Defined

A national cultural policy speaks with a powerful voice. My submission champions the nation-building work of centring artists in policy-making, expanding how we understand cultural infrastructure, and supercharging the intergovernmental work of embedding it: estheranatolitis.net/2026/05/14/s...

Yaaaaaaaay Lee Lai! Utterly thrilled: www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...

Welcome, Gellung Warl! Meaning tip of the spear in Gunaikurnai, Gellung Warl is the new body created through Australia’s First Treaty: gellungwarl.org/we-are-gellu...

Rest well, Kumantjye Cavanagh. Learning from you was an honour, as was publishing your work in the Meanjin Papers. Its rhythm makes your voice something we'll always be able to hear. Look out for Uncle's book, soon to be published by Running Water Community Press. meanjin.com.au/meanjin-pape...

A happy Refresh the Budget Page night for all who observe

Following the ground-breaking British comedy Love Thy Neighbour – which its rightsowners consider too racist to show, despite it boldly redressing everyday racism – an Australian series transplanted Eddie to argue not with Aboriginal neighbours but a white Dutchman: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

“Writing isn’t just the production of sentences – it’s the training of endurance by way of sustained attention… learning what one thinks by attempting to say it… the value lies not only in [what’s] produced but in the transformation that occurs during its making.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

"The Australian government temporarily withdrew from the OECD’s most recent literacy study for data security reasons, instead opting to conduct its own “Survey of Adult Skills in Australia”. However, that survey has since been outsourced to a commercial polling company, Roy Morgan." Sorry, what?

Greek-Australians! Are you young? Or are you old? But not in between? Because if you are either old or young, you can apply for a fully-funded culture and language tour so you can Greek it up for the next long or possibly short chapter of your life: www.greekcommunity.com.au/news/hospita...

From utopian fantasies to “basically nobody under 40 right now expects good things to happen ever again”: the excellent @theshufflediary.bsky.social sets out an insightful history of a future which needs debleakification stat www.crikey.com.au/2026/05/08/f...

That Attenborough bloke knows how to have a good time

Melbourne Writers Festival starts tonight! So many fine writers to meet and timely conversations to be had. See you there— mwf.com.au

I'm reading — well, I'm supposed to be clearing out my office, you know how that works — and I come across this phrase: "No longer and not yet." Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Twenty years already since the wrong Guy was taken straight from the BBC foyer to a live-to-air tv interview when the poor bloke was actually there to apply for a job: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/06/b...

Fellow people with disability! The Victorian Government wants to hear from us by 17 July to inform the next State Disability Plan and Victorian Autism Plan 2027–2031. We can contribute by filling in an online survey, uploading a video, or writing a submission: engage.vic.gov.au/disabilityplan

“Of the 300 professional artists who responded, 57% were considering leaving Greater Sydney, and 80% had colleagues who had already left. You could see why.” The always insightful Ianto Ware on alarming trends for Sydney’s arts scene:

As the philanthropic arm of Copyright Agency, the Cultural Fund supports projects that benefit authors, visual artists, publishers and creative organisations. Explore what’s being supported: buff.ly/IYiiIHR

A founder of Netscape, former Democrat, now adviser to Trump, reveals a fantasy of total control over the ethics and the science of knowledge in a comically long AI prompt demonstrating absolutely zero understanding of how deeply implicated he is in undermining the future of public knowledge itself.

The King’s visit to the US “underlined our strange constitutional arrangements” and reaffirmed Australia as “a country without an effective head of state”. Superb piece by the excellent Dennis Altman: johnmenadue.com/post/2026/05...

Is anyone else noticing just how poor the @theguardian.com @australia.theguardian.com subediting has become? Perilously low quality – the worst in its proud history. Spelling errors, rogue punctuation, sentences that grammar forgot. So depressing.