Australia Politics

The Great Barrier Reef is dying. Extreme weather is becoming all too familiar. And the Coalition government is divided and paralysed. In this vivid, urgent essay, Anna Krien explores the psychology and politics of a warming world.

Buraadja provides a powerful account of the Liberal Party’s approach to indigenous affairs. The party’s record of successes and failures is frankly evaluated as an important basis for developing effective approaches to persistent problems.

In this perceptive, compelling essay, Katharine Murphy offers a profile of Anthony Albanese in motion – a piece about character, the balance of forces, and the mood of the nation. Are Albanese and his party up for change? Are Australians up for it? What does the new prime minister embody, if anything? Has the centre of the polity shifted, with the success of the Teals and the Greens? Where could – and should – the new government be ambitious?

Navigating the Spanish Lake examines Spain's long presence in the Pacific Ocean (1521-1898) in the context of its global empire. Building on a growing body of literature on the Atlantic world and indigenous peoples in the Pacific, this pioneering book investigates the historiographical "Spanish Lake" as an artifact that unites the Pacific Rim (the Americas and Asia) and Basin (Oceania) with the Iberian Atlantic.

When the hunters become the hunted, ex-CIA agent Jed Walker is the man you need. In 2011, Seal Team Six killed Osama Bin Laden. Now, four years later, someone is eliminating Team Six - one by one they are turning up dead. Jed Walker, ex-CIA, is an outsider back in the game. He's been chasing down a sinister group code-named Zodiac that the big guns - MI5, CIA, the Pentagon - have failed to eradicate. Walker follows the trail of bodies, uncovering secrets and making connections he's not supposed to make.

In Voyagers, the distinguished anthropologist Nick Thomas charts the course of the seaborne migrations that populated the islands between the Americas and the western coast of Asia from late prehistory onwards: firstly the colonization by speakers of Austronesian languages of the western Pacific littoral, from around 3000 BC, of the Philippines, Indonesia, Micronesia and Melanesia; followed by the later settlement, by Polynesian peoples, of Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Easter Island and eventually New Zealand, up to AD 1250.

Lovers of fine travel and adventure relish Scott Smith’s rich tale as a Peace Corps volunteer. Smith’s keen observations never sag in human interest as he confronts living on the edge of Pacific island paradise. It is a must listen for island lovers and anyone considering a journey to change the world or themselves.

In this dazzling report from the campaign trail, Erik Jensen homes in on the insecurities that drive Bill Shorten and the certainties that helped Scott Morrison win. He considers how each man reflects, challenges and comforts the national character. Who are Morrison’s 'quiet Australians'? What did Shorten Labor fail to see? And will fear always trump hope in politics? The Prosperity Gospel sheds new light on the politics of a divided nation.

Australian and New Zealand crime and thriller writing is booming globally. Neighbours that are siblings in spirit, vastly different in landscape, antipodean authors offer readers and listeners a blend of exotic and familiar, seasoned by distinctive senses of place, outlook, and humour, and roots that trace to the earliest days of our genre. Southern Cross Crime is the first comprehensive guide to modern Australian and New Zealand crime writing.

From a talented emerging writer comes a brave, honest, unforgettable memoir about mental illness, which breaks the silence and shatters the taboos to give hope to all those struggling to find their way through. One day Sophie Hardcastle realised the joy she’d always known had disappeared. She was constantly tired, with no energy, no motivation and no sense of enjoyment for surfing, friends, conversations, movies, parties, family - for anything. Her hours became empty.

Have you ever wondered if time travel is actually possible? Or where the Australian accent came from? Or what it feels like to have dementia? If you're an inquisitive person who likes to understand how things came to be the way they are, this collection of thought-provoking explainers from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald has got you covered. Explain That answers some of the year's - and life's - most baffling questions.

Blazing her trail at the dawn of the 20th century, Vida Goldstein remains Australia's most celebrated suffragette and social reformer. Her life - as a campaigner for women's rights and suffrage in Australia, Britain and America, an advocate for peace, a fighter for social equality for all and a shrewd political commentator - marks her as one of Australia's foremost women of courage and principle. In 1903 she became the first woman in Australia to stand for the Senate and the the first woman in the Western world to stand for a national Parliament.

In 1999, Sierra Leone was in the midst of a brutal civil war where mindless violence, vicious amputation and the rape of young enslaved women were the everyday weapons of bloody conflict. It was also where rebel soldiers snatched the young Aminata Conteh-Biger from her father's arms, then held her captive for months. After she was released, the UNHCR recognised that her captors still posed a serious threat to her safety. So, still in her teens, she was put on a plane and flown to Australia to start afresh as a refugee in a land she knew nothing about.

Detailing the development of the prison and its outlying stations, including its dreaded coal mines and providing an account of the changing views to convict rehabilitation, Convict-era Port Arthur focuses in on a number of individuals, telling the story through their eyes. Charles O'Hara Booth, a significant commandant of Port Arthur; Mark Jeffrey, a convict who became the grave digger on the Island of the Dead and William Thompson, who arrived just as the new probation system started and who was forced to work in the treacherous coal mines.

In a quiet Sydney street in 1937, a seven-year-old immigrant boy drowned in a ditch that had filled with rain after being left unfenced by council workers. How the law should deal with the trauma of the family’s loss was one of the most complex and controversial cases to reach Australia’s High Court, where it seized the imagination of its youngest and cleverest member.

In Loving Country, coauthors Bruce Pascoe and Vicky Shukurolgou show travellers how to see the country as herself, to know her whole and old story and to find the way to fall in love with her, our home. Listeners are encouraged to discover sacred Australia by reconsidering the accepted history and hearing diverse stories of her Indigenous people. The intention of this audiobook is to foster communication and understanding between all peoples and country, to encourage environmental and social change.

Where did the Right go wrong? With the departure of George W. Bush and John Howard, conservative parties in the US and Australia entered a period of turmoil. Foreign affairs, economics, the environment - all were issues to be avoided. Most profoundly, conservatives no longer seemed to have a compelling vision of the future - and arguably still don't. How did the Right end up in this state? How might conservatism renew itself?

In the September Quarterly Essay, Hugh White considers Australia’s place between Beijing and Washington. As the power balance shifts, and China’s influence grows, what might this mean for the nation?Throughout our history, we have counted first on British then on American primacy in Asia. The rise of China as an economic powerhouse has challenged US dominance in the region and raised questions for Australia that go well beyond diplomacy and defence....

In 2000, Rebekah Robertson gave birth to twin boys, George and Harry. But as they grew older, their preferences began to show, and by the age of three it was clear Georgie was drawn to anything that was pretty or had a skirt that could swirl. Before long Georgie began to insist that she was a girl and became distressed that she had to hide who she really was when she started school. Soon the bullying started, and she would come home in floods of tears, begging her mother to help her.

Australia is on the brink of momentous change, but only if its citizens and politicians can come to new terms with the past. In this inspiring essay, Mark McKenna considers the role of history in making and unmaking the nation. From Captain Cook to the frontier wars, from Australia Day to the Uluru Statement, we are seeing fresh debates and recognitions. McKenna argues that it is time to move beyond the history wars and that truth-telling about the past will be liberating and healing. This is an urgent essay about a nation’s moment of truth.