Arts and Sport
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D.H.Lawrence’s Australian Climacteric
The Obscene Publications Act was promulgated in England and Wales on August 29, 1959. It paved the way for the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial in October 1960 that cleared Penguin Books of publishing an obscene article without literary merit even though the plot revolved around a sexual act that was felonious for heterosexual couples. Reading Continue reading »
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Heritage, justice and the future of culture
A crucial debate is taking place over the function of cultural institutions. The concerns of a rising generation about race, gender and historical justice have to be heard. But it’s equally important to defend heritage collections and the cultural achievements of the past. Continue reading »
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The erosion of The Age is like the erosion of society
Following its new owners excessive devotion to “entertainment news”, The Age has hit on a new recipe: curated stories to feed closed minds. Continue reading »
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Why do LNP Governments hate the arts and universities?
LNP Governments’ vindictive attitudes to the arts are obvious from the widespread cutbacks they have imposed on the sector. Ditto universities which have been forced to rely on overseas students to make up funding shortfalls and are then attacked for doing so. Continue reading »
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Exposing the Hidden Hand
Clive Hamilton’s new book Hidden Hand: “Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World” is a diatribe. We do not need this hysteria when we are trying to maintain a modicum of practical relations with the People’s Republic of China. Continue reading »
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William Barton: A voice from the heart
On 1 August didgeridoo artist-composer William Barton and violinist Véronique Serret brought their composition Heartland to online audiences via the Melbourne Digital Concert Hall. It is a work to resonate across Australia and around the world. Continue reading »
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Scott Morrison’s 21st century book burning
Prime Minister Morrison’s Coalition Government has committed $270 billion to militarisation, while universities, public broadcasters and the arts face devastation. The implications for Australian society are grim. Continue reading »
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Book Review: “Hidden Hand” – Exposing how the Chinese communist party is reshaping the world (The Conversation 10.7.20)
In Hidden Hand, China scholars Clive Hamilton and Marieke Ohlberg examine the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in Europe and North America in a similar way to how Hamilton dissected the CCP’s influence in Australia in his 2018 book, Silent Invasion. Continue reading »
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How the Powerhouse Museum was saved
In an extraordinary about-turn, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has announced that she will retain the Powerhouse Museum at Ultimo and build a new museum at Parramatta. Continue reading »
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Neoliberalism: Attacks on the ABC and academia are entirely logical.
Funding attacks on the ABC and the social sciences in academia by Scotty from Marketing: they fit perfectly with Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model. Continue reading »
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Australian Soaps to the Pacific – Good Diplomacy?
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade launched an initiative to send commercial (soaps) Australian television programs to stations in the South Pacific. This will do little to enhance vigorous and discerning projection of Australian news and values in the region. Continue reading »
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Faulty reasoning in BBC purge. Dealing with art and prejudice.
How will the BBC, other media organisations and theatre companies deal with plays that are clearly prejudicial, injurious and intolerant towards a particular group of people in the future? Continue reading »
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SUE BUTLER. COVID-19 language outbreak
A new environment requires us to produce new names so that we can identify its elements and come to terms with it. Every settler in a strange terrain goes through the process of naming plants, animals and geographical features. The social landscape altered by a pandemic required some linguistic landmarks. Continue reading »
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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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