opinion
health
law & crime March 10, 2021
Why our media and politics fail trauma survivors
Media commentators were quick to attack mention of a widely read self-help book in the dossier of Christian Porter's accuser. But the science of trauma is complicated, and we lack the nuance needed to understand it or its treatments.
law & crime February 27, 2021
Craig Kelly’s fulsome praise of Scott Morrison as Kelly quit the Liberal Party this week was akin to the Mafia sending roses to its next victim. Kelly said he sincerely hoped Morrison would “go on to be one of Australia’s greatest and longest-...
law & crime February 20, 2021
When bad news is dominating the headlines, the best solution for a prime minister is to eclipse it with good news. How fortunate then for Scott Morrison that he was able to finally announce on Tuesday that the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine had been...
health December 19, 2020
In March, researchers from the University of Melbourne and the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity presented stark pandemic modelling to the federal government. Made public on April 7, it showed that “an unmitigated Covid-19 epidemic...
environment December 19, 2020
Big holes in the Coalition’s pre-election bucket list
As the year like no other draws to an end, the challenges and crises it presented have highlighted the nation’s strengths and dramatised its weaknesses. Facing up to these realities will be particularly daunting for our political leaders as they...
environment November 7, 2020
Palaszczuk’s one day, and also the next
You may not have noticed, and that was the whole idea. The moment it was clear Labor’s Annastacia Palaszczuk had won a thumping victory in the Queensland election, Scott Morrison disappeared from view. The prime minister, who had spent a week on the...
media September 26, 2020
The media’s Covid-19 contrarians
I bought John Kehoe a coffee in 2016, when we were both in Washington, DC. Too late now for a refund, and there was, as far as I can remember, no hint of any latent Oedipal drive behind his small talk, nothing to indicate that on April 9 of this...
health September 12, 2020
The wheels fall off Morrison’s bus
Scott Morrison emerged from last Friday’s meeting of his national cabinet a defeated leader. His hastily constructed vehicle to co-ordinate a coherent response to the coronavirus pandemic crisis had fractured. The prime minister announced that the...
health August 22, 2020
Inquiry sinks ministerial responsibility
Any notion that ministers, state or federal, are responsible for anything much appears sunk in the wake of the Ruby Princess. And the ramifications are significant for the quality of our democracy and what we as citizens can rightly demand of our...
law & crime August 8, 2020
Policing as part of the national psyche
There are two striking aspects of Australia’s response to coronavirus: the first is that it’s being increasingly led as a police issue, and the second is that this is happening while the rest of the world works to reform and curtail police powers...
health August 1, 2020
Aged-care failings hurt Morrison
Scott Morrison went into disaster management mode this week as the coronavirus pandemic came awfully close to home, both personally and politically. The “catastrophe”, as his political opponents described it, was the Covid-19 outbreak spreading...
