Here’s my latest for ABC’s The Drum website, published yesterday. Australian politics has a strange ‘centre’ at the moment, and the dial seems increasingly to fall at the feet of Malcolm Turnbull. His presence on shows like Q&A results in both calls for him to reassume the Liberal Party leadership, and the suggestion he is an ALP member in disguise. Analogies […]
17 Mar
Comments Off on Call for papers: Historical Materialism Australasia mini-conference 2012
Following on from last year’s successful Capital Against Capitalism conference, this year will see the first official Historical Materialism Australasia mini-conference, to be held in Sydney on Saturday 21 July. Below is the call for papers. The website for the conference can be found here. The website for the Historical Materialism journal and book series can be found here. Historical Materialism Australasia […]
13 Mar
Comments Off on Is the ALP’s condition terminal? A crisis of social democracy
My latest piece for ABC’s The Drum was published yesterday. Here is the original text for your reading pleasure. Comments most welcome, and I will try to respond. A flurry of excitement gripped federal politics in the last fortnight — from Kevin Rudd’s failed challenge for the Labor leadership to the parachuting of Bob Carr into […]
17 Feb
Comments Off on On Finkelstein, the BDS, one-state solutions & the problem with Gandhi’s strategy
Palestinians cross over the Syrian-Israeli border, May 2011 I’ve had a chance to look at Norman Finkelstein’s recent controversial statements about Left strategy over the question of the BDS. Finkelstein, a brilliant critic of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, has for some time been highly critical of the international BDS campaign, in particular because he believes it […]
10 Feb
Comments Off on Is this what democracy looks like? The NSW Greens & the campaign against the BDS
The latest issue of The Monthly and my response in The Drum on Monday (here, reposted at Left Flank here) have stirred public interest in the sharpened political debates about the future of the Greens. On Thursday, The Australian ran a curiously subdued feature on the party by Christian Kerr that also pulled a lengthy quote the Drum essay. One area that deserves more […]
06 Feb
Comments Off on The Greens at the crossroads: ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ matter more than you’d think
‘Factional rifts, personal animosities and turf wars’ My latest article on ABC’s The Drum, looking at the politics and ideology behind the growing tensions in the Australian Greens, and why these debates matter. In the last decade there has been a dramatic reconfiguration on the Left of Australian politics. The ALP’s support has dropped to […]
01 Feb
Comments Off on With ‘friends’ like Western governments, the Arab Spring doesn’t need enemies
Protesters in Tahrir unfurl the flag of the Syrian rebellion This article first appeared on the ABC Drum website yesterday. One of the abiding images of the Arab Spring has been an aerial view of Tahrir Square in Cairo, brimming with thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of protesters. This image has returned most spectacularly on the […]
30 Jan
Comments Off on From Global Justice to Occupy Everywhere
Overland Journal has produced a special online edition, discussing the Occupy movement. Elizabeth has an article on the antecedents to Occupy in the Global Justice Movement and the Zapatista uprising.
26 Jan
Comments Off on Invasion Day
A number of myths have shaped Australia’s national identity in profound ways. The possibility of a vast inland sea saw many early settlers search the interior of the country unfruitfully, often meeting an untimely death. The kernel of this myth was a 1798 report to the Colonial Office by First Fleet botanist Joseph Banks: It […]
25 Jan
Comments Off on For the love of women’s liberation
Here is a link to my article on feminism, published yesterday at the ABC’s The Drum website. I don’t call myself a feminist. But some of my best friends are feminists.
20 Mar
Comments Off on Malcolm is not so in the middle