Comment

If you are indeed giving aid and comfort to Vladimir Putin, a foreign enemy, are you not a traitor and are you not in blatant violation of article III, section 3 of the constitution?

Back in February, a meeting that resembled a Real Housewives reunion was being dissected, analysed and broadcast around the world. ‘This is going to be great television, I will say that,’ United States President Donald Trump announced to the gathered press pool at the end of the showdown.

Anthony Albanese has returned from his week of top-level meetings and high-altitude tourism in the Middle Kingdom – the first Labor leader since Gough Whitlam to admire the Great Wall of China after sharing the love with Beijing’s No. 1, in this instance Xi Jinping.

In the Shemot Rabbah, a midrash of the Book of Exodus, it is Miriam who intercedes in her parents’ despair and encourages them to have another child.

Recognising the extent to which the NACC has failed to live up to the expectations and assurances of the first-term Albanese government, it is time for parliament to refocus its operations and assess its leadership and staff.

Whitlam’s claim to ‘a mandate from the people to carry out all its programs’ is both a statement of political intent and a pointer to the role of ‘the people’ in the notion of the mandate. Seen in this way, the mandate is much more than simply an expression of electoral algebra.

The cockney rhyming slang, traditionally beloved of Australians, would have it that our old china plates in America are causing us more anxiety than our newer ones in North Asia.

Occasionally a sentence will arrive and through its gentle, balanced clauses, through the patience of its metre, it will suggest a fresh reality. The words will not be new but their force will be. It is in language, often, that a country finds its soul.

For me, the great Australian novel is Patrick White’s The Tree of Man. I am not the first to say this: the story of Stan and Amy Parker as they build a new home in the wilderness is an Australian Genesis story.

The Scandinavian countries punch like heavyweights in entertainment, while we, with a far larger population, are currently bantamweights. Australia needs to win back its reputation for gripping storytelling. We can, if we believe in ourselves and invest in that belief.