Arts and Sport
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Beethoven and the ABC Classic 100 Countdown – A not-to-be missed event
On the weekend of the 7 and 8 June, ABC Classic will be conducting its Classic 100 Countdown for 2020. Being the 250th anniversary of his birth, it is devoted to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. Continue reading »
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JUDITH WHITE. Cultural recovery in a globalised world
With international travel at a standstill, arts organisations are grappling with the dilemma of future programming. There is no lack of local work to showcase – but what about international connections? Continue reading »
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JUDITH WHITE. Trainwreck at Carriageworks
The collapse of Sydney arts and entertainment centre Carriageworks has sent tremors through the besieged arts sector; but it also shows up the deep flaws in the NSW Government’s cultural policy, and is fuelling demands to halt its disastrous $1.5 billion plan to relocate the Powerhouse Museum to Parramatta. Continue reading »
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KIM WINGEREI. My week with Malcolm and a faltering democracy.
Otto von Bismarck (in)famously said: “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable – the art of the next best”. It is a sentiment I abhor. Continue reading »
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JUDITH WHITE. The Australia Council latest funding – the arts betrayed.
The latest round of The Australia Council funding, announced on 3 April, marks a new level of government interference in the arts. The council was never meant to police the arts on behalf of government, but under the Coalition that has become its function. Continue reading »
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GREG LOCKHART.- Quarantined in the Jazz Age
A friend mailed me recently to ask if I was well and safely distanced socially. He also pasted the following letter and asked me if I’d seen it. I hadn’t. Continue reading »
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MARK BUCKLEY. Booing is for babies.
In VFL/AFL football there is a time honoured tradition of the crowd being vocal during matches. Most of the watchers know the game, many have played the game, or aspired to do so. Continue reading »
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MARK BUCKLEY. Rita Hayworth via Graham Green
I started to cull my books recently. As old age approaches I routinely decide that I need to gain more space, and to really get rid of what I will never get around to reading, sort of like “use it, or lose it”. Continue reading »
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JUDITH WHITE. Whatever happened to Whitlam’s vision for the arts?
In 1972 Gough Whitlam’s election campaign promised “to promote a standard of excellence in the arts, to widen access to, and the understanding and application of, the arts in the community generally, to help establish and express an Australian identity through the arts and to promote an awareness of Australian culture abroad”. Continue reading »
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HANNAH PIERCE & MADDIE DAY. State and territory governments are taking on alcohol marketing
NSW and Tasmania are lagging behind the other states and territories in restricting outdoor alcohol advertising but no jurisdiction is taking action to restrict alcohol advertising in sports stadiums. Continue reading »
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TONY COADY. Bouncer barrages, Bodyline and the Laws of Cricket Revisited
In Pearls and Irritations ( September 2, 2019) I wrote about the way that the long-standing intimidatory bowling of bouncers in international Test cricket is both clearly in conflict with the Laws of cricket in spite of being widely practiced, relished by most commentators, and ignored by umpires. Continue reading »
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DAVID SHEARMAN.-Doctors urged to engage with water policy concerns and a timely review
he climate and health emergency must remind doctors and the community that water is one of our life support systems and its scarcity in Australia will bring human misery, displacement of individuals and towns, and failures in food production. Continue reading »
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MEREDITH BURGMANN. No Black Man …
A bunch of decrepit old Australians had a particular interest in South Africa’s astonishing win at the World Cup in Yokohama last week. As a delighted and inspirational black captain, Siya Kolisi raised the Webb Ellis trophy high in victory, some of us had teary eyes. We are some of the survivors of a bunch Continue reading »
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David Walker’s Stranded Nation
Professor David Walker’s Stranded Nation: White Australia in an Asian Region is a work of great and very readable erudition, which does something new: places Australian cultural, political and diplomatic history in its regional context at the time of Asian decolonisation. Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. ‘Things you learn along the way’.
Occasionally friends suggest to me that I should write my autobiography. Ruefully I explain that I wrote ‘Things you learn along the way’ twenty years ago. The book sold about 8,000 copies but as far as I know is no longer available. The book covers many aspects of my life: The early days as a footloose Continue reading »
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TONY COADY. What price intimidation?
The recent serious injury to Australia’s outstanding batsman Steve Smith caused by a ferocious bumper from speedster Jofra Archer in the Second Ashes Test at Lords should have raised concerns about the status of cricket’s law against intimidation. I discuss why they and similar incidents didn’t and why they should. Continue reading »
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JUDITH WHITE. NSW arts policy officially in ruins
Arm’s length funding of the arts is the hallmark of a government attempting to work in the interests of the people. It prevents the arts being used as a political football, and together with peer assessment fosters the development of creativity. It was the founding principle in 1946 of the Arts Council of Great Britain, Continue reading »
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“We asked for footballers, but we got people instead.” (with apologies to Max Frisch)
It is said that if we misunderstand our history, we won’t solve today’s problems. Much in The Australian Dream– the new film about the booing of AFL star Adam Goodes and its aftermath – reminds us of the need for truth-telling, including the policies of indigenous extermination and “soothing the dying pillow.” Continue reading »
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JOHN BROWN. How Quickly They Forget – But I Don’t.
Some years back, one of my proudest acts as a Minister for Sport was that I introduced about 10 pieces of legislation into the Parliament to the benefit of sport which were the first pieces of legislation including the word sport introduced since Federation. One of the better pieces of this legislation was a taxation Continue reading »
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Booing is for Babies
In VFL/AFL football there is a time honoured tradition of the crowd being vocal during matches. Most of the watchers know the game, many have played the game, or aspired to do so. Many who watch, or listen, know the intricacies of the game, and how demanding and merciless it can be. Continue reading »
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The cup that slipped: Here are some cricket lessons my country of citizenship can teach my country of origin (Times of India 3-8-19)
As an Indian, after the semi-final loss in the Cricket World Cup, an old refrain from a 1948 song entered my head: ‘Ek dil ke tukde hazaar huye’ (one heart shattered into a thousand shards). As a Kiwi, after the final’s loss, came the second line: ‘Koyi yahan gira, koyi wahan gira’ (some fell hither, Continue reading »
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GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. Vale Evan Williams
No Australian adorned the professions of politics and journalism like Evan Williams. He was much more than a beautiful writer. He was a beautiful man, who brought a shining light and grace to thousands of lives. He died a few days ago. Continue reading »
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KATE McDOWELL. Together or not in the performing arts.
The way the performing arts is funded in Australia hasn’t changed since the 1990s, but the Australian cultural landscape has changed dramatically. Continue reading »
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GRAHAM ENGLISH. Virtue signallers, the left wing, and the politically correct
I try to follow the advice of one of my old teachers that if you cannot write as well as Jane Austen or one of the greats you can at least aim to be intelligible. Avoiding clichés and popular catch phrases is always a good start. Continue reading »
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ANDREW FROST. Alternative Histories, the ANZAC legend re-imagined on canvas
The assumption of ANZAC as the foundation of conservative Australia has been used to mobilise popular sentiment into dubious alliances in wars of questionable purpose. In this context, Rodney Pople’s latest exhibition, Shell Shocked, has urgency. His paintings are a vehicle for questioning more than a century of myth-making. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL THORN. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept – sports’ addiction to alcohol, gambling and junk food advertising.
No ad breaks, declares Fox Sports of its coverage of the Boxing Day cricket test in Melbourne. Well none, if you don’t count the scoreboard endorsements, perimeter branding and other in-game adverts promoting one brand or another. All of them impossible to miss. Continue reading »
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CLAIR WILLS. Prodigal Fathers (The New York Review of Books).
More than twenty years ago, writing about Roy Foster’s Modern Ireland, Colm Tóibín recalled what it was like to study history in Ireland in the 1970s—to be on the cusp of the revisionist wave, questioning all the old narratives. “Imagine if Irish history were pure fiction,” he wrote, “how free and happy we could be! Continue reading »
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MICHAEL MULLINS. Abstract thinkers living in bubbles.
During the Christmas break I read Rick Morton’s One Hundred Years of Dirt, which is one of the more acclaimed Australian memoirs published during 2018. It details the wretched life he’s led and also challenges the culture warriors of the left and the right. Speaking about politicians as well as journalists, he says: ‘We don’t Continue reading »
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ROBERT KUTTNER. The crash that failed.
Review of “Crashed: How a decade of financial crises changed the world” by Adam Tooze, Viking. The historian G.M. Trevelyan said that the democratic revolutions of 1848, all of which were quickly crushed, represented “a turning point at which modern history failed to turn”. The same can be said of the financial collapse of 2008. Continue reading »
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