Articles

A love letter to Canberra, I could have had no better muse | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

After more than 20 years living, loving and writing in Canberra, I spent my final night as I did my first

This is the last night when Canberra will be my permanent home.

I’ve spent it as I did my first, back in late 1993, alone in the same modest motel in the inner south (park anywhere, dinner until 8.30, free newspapers and checkout at 10am, sharp). There was bad stuff going on from a war I’d just visited, my personal life was a shambles and the only thing keeping me in journalism was the city I’d just arrived in.

The Armenians and the Warlpiri: two genocides that sparked a pilgrimage to the outback | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

Descendants of two disparate massacres on opposite sides of the world find common ground deep in the heart of Warlpiri country

History is often best understood outside of the books that record it, when it is experienced in the lands that staged it, by its actors’ descendants.

Can Indigenous culture ever coexist with urban planning?

Submitted by Paul Daley on

A new book examines what actually happens when urban planning meets the claims and struggles of Indigenous people in Australian and Canadian cities

In Australia the acknowledgement of Indigenous land ownership, of custodians past and present, is now pretty much mandatory at official functions.

“This is Indigenous land,” you’ll often hear a non-Indigenous speaker say, sometimes after a prominent Aboriginal person or Torres Strait Islander has spoken a welcome to country. “Always was, always will be.”

Thank you, Liz Jackson, for your candour and courage in facing a bastard of a disease | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

My father had Parkinson’s disease but never said the words. Liz Jackson’s decision to talk about it is heartbreaking, but remarkable for its humanity

“Parkinson’s disease” – my father never spoke these words before he died eight years ago from pneumonia associated with his decades-long endurance of this dreadful affliction.

My mother, who saw him through the worst of it until she could no longer do so, never said them. Neither did the doctors – not to his children at least.

'Lying in wait for your next chapter': the Sydney real estate nightmare | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

There’s a special place in real estate heaven (hell to the rest of us) reserved for people who write advertising copy to sell residential property

If you’re a Sydney real estate agent you might want to stop reading here.

Even though I’d really like you to finish it.

Related: A design-led property boom could help solve Australia's housing affordability crisis | Tim Ross

Abbott wants to be Indigenous affairs minister? Well, he ain’t qualified for the job | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

As the so-called, self-appointed ‘prime minister for Indigenous affairs’, Tony Abbott was hopeless and offensive. He shouldn’t be appointed minister

Well, you’ve got to give Tony Abbott’s supporters their dues for loyalty, I suppose. Inside and outside the parliamentary Liberal party they’re calling for him to be brought back into the fold as Indigenous affairs minister, echoing, apparently, the sentiment of the man himself.

Beersheba: we must keep an eye on how the story is told and interpreted | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

As the centenary of the last ‘great’ successful cavalry charge approaches, the battle is set to be wrongly evoked as testimony to the ‘special’ Israel/Australia relationship

It’s 99 years today since soldiers of the 4th Australian Light Horse Brigade took part in what is generally regarded as the last “great” successful cavalry charge.

So in a year we can expect the Australian – and Israeli – governments to go overboard on commemorating an event that has never received the considered national attention it warrants.

Why Australia Day and Anzac Day helped create a national 'cult of forgetfulness' | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

It’s beyond time Australia cast off these sturdy cultural crutches that both, somehow, define national birth

Australia Day and Anzac Day are months away.

But I’m getting in early. It’s beyond time Australia cast off these sturdy cultural crutches that both, somehow, define national birth, so we can discover who and what we truly are.

The Gweagal shield and the fight to change the British Museum's attitude to seized artefacts | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

Activists say symbols of resistance taken when Captain Cook’s men first encountered Indigenous people in 1770 must come home, and not just on loan

Almost 250 years ago, Captain James Cook and his men shot Rodney Kelly’s ancestor, the Gweagal warrior Cooman, stole his shield and spears, and took them back to England in a presciently violent opening act of Australian east coast Aboriginal and European contact.

Now Kelly is heading on a quest to the British Museum in London to reclaim the precious shield and spears on behalf of his Gweagal people.

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