Our right-minded friends storm the exits
The Prime Minister's curious facial twitch during the not-so-great
debate on Sunday evening set the radio talkback phone lines ringing
on Monday. Some people called it a spasm. Others thought he'd been
about to drop from a heart attack, says Mike Carlton.
Mother courage: honour should go to women who admit they're not coping
Women must learn to control their urges. For too long society has allowed women to get away with acting impulsively on certain drives as if it is natural and inevitable. The urge I am thinking of is the urge to mother, writes Lisa Pryor.
Tarzan of suburbia
The author Robert Bly celebrated masculinity in his book Iron
John but where does that leave us who are more domesticated? We
need our own book - Ironing John, writes Richard Glover.
You can't buy our souls for 20 bucks
I want my politicians to think like a mountain. I'm not joking. Aldo Leopold, the noted American ecologist who died fighting a bushfire in 1948, wrote an essay called Thinking Like a Mountain. He remembered back to his youth, when everyone killed wolves. So did he, writes Justin Monjo.
Warning: focus groups are addictive - just ask them
All politicians rely to some extent on focus groups. Why not? It's
the simplest and most effective way to gauge popular opinion; you
get your pollster to pay folks 50 bucks each to sit in a room with
some limp sandwiches and say what they think of you, says Annabel
Crabb.
Bad news for Pollyannas who peddle false hopes
In Australia it is taken for granted that we "battle" cancer. Some win the war and others "succumb after a long battle". If you accept the metaphor then it follows that bringing a sense of optimism to the battlefront is important. Having a positive attitude about victory is an essential item, writes Adele Horin.
PM clutches at fear of union straw man
Penny Wong was born in Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia. She came to
Australia, with her family, in 1977. She was eight years old. She
now has two university degrees, including honours in law, writes
Alan Ramsey.
- Alan Ramsey: Reef madness: the comfy chair that cost $1.77m
Suburbs attacked because middle-class hates plumbers in big houses
Sixty years ago this month something happened on Long Island near New York that was to help shape Australian cities. It deserves to be better known, writes Michael Duffy.
