Submitted by Paul Daley on
The passage to Indigenous enfranchisement has been fraught and hard-won in incremental steps but the status quo in 2016 should give us all pause for thought
Submitted by Paul Daley on
Most cities are indigenous, insofar as they are built on the lands of dispossessed first peoples. Paul Daley, Guardian Australia’s leading voice on Indigenous history, explores whether a city’s ‘indigeneity’ is just a matter of population – or if culture and equality count just as much
Submitted by Paul Daley on
The blunt Tasmanian, running for the Senate again, tells of her ‘chaotic’ days in Clive Palmer’s party, her relief that the Pauline Hanson comparisons have stopped – and why she prefers Clinton to Trump for the White House
The last embers of daylight dance in silver streaks over the gunmetal grey of Bass Strait, out there to the left as we snake up the highway towards Devonport. A distant tanker marks the meeting of leaden clouds and horizon.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
Health services, job losses and infrastructure are among hot-button issues in the diverse electorate that swings with changes in government
bellwether: The leading sheep of a flock, with a bell on its neck.
– Oxford dictionaries
I’m very relaxed about the decision I made and how it might affect this electorate
I said, after I eventually lost, I felt like a jilted lover
Submitted by Paul Daley on
Rural Australia is being progressively hollowed out of its people. Will it be reduced to a vast mechanised place of scant human habitation?
These cows are in no hurry. Each just meanders to the dairy, all rolling hindquarters, swishing tails and loping heads, the blue-black and tan Rorschach ink-blot patching of their hides vivid against the washed-out Australian summer light. They stop as they please along the way. Chew cud. Moo. Drop pats. Moo again. They nudge the soft earth or a companion before snorting and continuing on up through the paddocks to the shed.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
National Reconciliation Week is testimony to the hope and aspiration of many Australians that Indigenous lives and cultures should be celebrated – but the reality tells a less hopeful story
The 25th National Reconciliation Week – an event seeded with admirable optimism that relations between Australia’s first peoples and non-Indigenous Australia can one day be bridged – ends on Friday.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
Sorry Day is an important if not yet sufficient moment of symbolism. Australia has a lot more to do to. And that means a treaty first, recognition second
For the 18th year in a row Australia is commemorating National Sorry Day.
It has grown from the May 1997 Bringing Them Home report to federal parliament about the stolen generations of Indigenous children often forcibly removed from their parents.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
How does Australia want to be seen and to see itself? The attacks on our national institutions, the arts and science limit our ability to answer that
Australian cultural identity is balanced at the edge of a cliff.
This country’s scientific advancement, its artistic communities and the national institutions that curate its stories and make it possible to tell new ones are buckling under what can only be seen as ideologically driven federal government funding cuts.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
The Italian-born architect who died on Monday aged 95 never lost sight of the fact that successful buildings have to serve both humanity and landscape
The old man stood before the expansive windows with his arm extended.
He shut one eye and, with a hand remarkably steady for that of a 91-year-old, traced with his finger the northern bank of Lake Burley Griffin, glittering down there in the autumn sunshine.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
Sometimes I told abusive coaches they were out of order, but was roundly shouted down – after all, whose side was I on?
Tim was a psycho soccer dad.
As I stood beside the pitch all those winter Saturdays in Canberra, the frozen grass crunching underfoot, the chill wind belting through my ski jacket, I heard stories about what a monster this guy was.