November 2014

The stain on Australia's soul: is Abbott ready to tackle Indigenous disadvantage? | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

Abbott’s pronouncements on Aboriginal Australia coincide with his waning political will to amend the constitution so it meaningfully recognises Indigenous Australians

On the way to government, Tony Abbott vowed he’d be a special prime minister for Indigenous Australians. He said:

It is my hope that I could be, not just a prime minister, but a prime minister for Aboriginal affairs. The first, I imagine, that we have ever had.

First Contact review: precious moments and epiphanies in reality TV that just might prove its worth | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

Six Australians have their first encounters with Indigenous Australia and push the red-hot buttons of race and fear and envy
• Monica Tan: I’m 31 and only had my ‘first contact’ with Indigenous Australia this year

Racism stems from ignorance.

And ignorance has many complexions. It can be naive. It can be willful.

Soldiers' real stories are the best defence against Remembrance Day conditioning | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

Our politicians ask us to imagine that our ‘fallen’ soldiers ‘sacrificed’ themselves for a higher cause. For many young men sent to the first world war, there was no happy, patriotic ending

This year, yet again, the keepers of our national myths will tell us that the soldiers of the “Great War” have passed from life into our collective memory.

Anzac and Gallipoli are the novelist's terrain as much as the historian's

Submitted by Paul Daley on

For too many Australian authors the Anzac centenary is little more than a marketing opportunity, but Steve Sailah’s A Fatal Tide is a subtle challenge to the mythologisers

I am deeply cynical about the plethora of books on Australia’s involvement in the first world war, Gallipoli in particular, that are flooding our bookstores as Australia marks what it parochially calls the Anzac 100 centenary.