state capture on ‘rules to reality’ podcast
In mid February I spoke to Simon Katterl on the underrated ‘Rules to Reality’ podcast.
21 February 2022
field notes
the scourge of state capture
We are increasingly aware our politics have been captured by lobbyists and industries, so what can we do about it?
1 February 2022
defiance
‘The Activist’, they called it. Recruit half a dozen social justice campaigners and save the planet–type people and make them compete against each other in a reality TV format for US media conglomerate CBS.
20 January 2022
the end game
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is slowly dying in a UK prison, as the US maintains its fight to have him die in theirs – but there is hope.
1 August 2021
show your working: making full circle at ‘kill your darlings’
Show Your Working is a regular column exploring how some of our favourite writers get things done. This month, we take a peek into the writing routine of former senator turned author Scott Ludlam.
5 May 2021
full circle on late night live
Grateful for the chance to speak to Late Night Live legend Phillip Adams right after launching Full Circle.
5 May 2021
the road to wattle
A couple of friends are admiring a two-foot section of steel pipe with an odd reverence; encrusted with welded spikes of rebar and scrap metal, it clearly has an important part to play in whatever is being done here.
4 May 2021
strike wave
A concept so old it comes to us in a dead language: divide et impera. The original phrase is attributed to Philip II of Macedon as he played Greek city-states off against one another in the fourth century BC. In ancient Greek, διαίρει καὶ βασίλευε; in English, divide and rule. A favoured tactic of emperors and dictators from Caesar to Bonaparte to Mao, it is also a staple of the modern workplace.
4 May 2021
julian assange could walk free if we seize the moment
For the first time in more than a decade there’s cause for hope.
27 March 2021
repressing the truth
First published in ‘A Secret Australia,’ December 2020 Every act of repression offers a choice between retreat or defiance, fear or anger. In the comfortable West for as long as I’ve been alive, that word – repression – was crafted as something distant. Repression was something unleashed in Eastern Europe, or Tiananmen Square, or the back blocks of Nairobi. It was something that advanced and civilised democratic nations stood against, buttressed by the human rights instruments they had drafted after the defeat of fascism in the 1940s. Like most fairytales, this origin story has taken grains of truth and warped them into unrecognisable form. For decoding these myths of the powerful and distilling the grains of truth into something legible, our collective wellbeing depends on publishers, and journalists, and truthtellers.
9 December 2020