February 2016

I wish I could have told my father he wouldn't suffer. But I didn't and couldn't | Paul Daley

When I think of Dad, it’s his awful death my mind fixes on. That’s why I’m so glad Andrew Denton has started a new conversation about death and dying in Australia

It is eight years almost to the minute, as I write, since my father died.

By middle age, most of us have had at least one parent die. We’re lucky if we haven’t lost both or, indeed, a sibling or too many friends.

Love him or hate him, Peter FitzSimons gives republicanism a megaphone

The writer and former Wallaby is a shameless networker and has brought fresh energy to the campaign to ditch the monarchy in Australia. But the debate on any replacement – even among republicans – has a long and dangerous road ahead

A French visitor with whom I was talking Australian history recently asked: “What will Australia be when it grows up?”

Our major cultural institutions are in crisis – and our history is being militarised | Paul Daley

The impact of this latest round of cuts to the National Museum of Australia and five other national cultural institutions should not be underestimated

What price do we put on a nation’s memory? And what should that memory recall?

These questions are central to a crisis that is facing a number of Australia’s national cultural institutions as a federal government so-called “efficiency dividend” bites.

Battle for bark art: Indigenous leaders hail breakthrough in talks with British Museum

Exclusive: Artefacts sacred to Victoria’s Dja Dja Wurrung people could be exhibited next year in Australia – a move activists hope could one day lead to their permanent return

The British Museum, long intransigent on repatriating treasures such as the Parthenon marbles to their original owners, has entered detailed negotiations with a Victorian Aboriginal clan about potentially returning its sacred artefacts from London.

We'll never Close the Gap until we start again with Indigenous policy

Every year it’s the same story: some minor improvements in the lives of Australia’s first peoples. The big picture doesn’t change though: dismal failure

It’s Close the Gap time again.

On Wednesday federal parliament will respond to the eighth annual Closing the Gap report on this country’s attempt to narrow the appalling disparities between the quality and duration of Indigenous lives and those of other Australians.