Opinion Archive

With the Summer Olympics and accompanying sunshine just a memory, hostile grey skies and relentless rain are an appropriate setting for the ongoing race row that’s accompanied the English football season. After last year’s high profile racial issues, there are new allegations …

Since President Barack Obama was elected to a second term, Americans have been logging in from all 50 states to petition for secession from the union, a spectacle that is baffling people worldwide. A White House website, We the People, allows constituents …

 Ricky Gervais is one of my favourite comedians. He’s quick, insightful, and his accent is entirely unmistakeable. Like Simon Pegg, he excels at comedy, and yet hides an amazing ability to pull drama out of the hat, before launching back into the …

I was sitting on the couch with some real friends ready for our weekly dose of Friends on TV when the phone rang. I answered. After a long pause, a voice whispered: “Leave him alone, leave him alooone.” The voice was soft …

I admire Sam Harris, I really do. I disagree with him on almost every level, by the way, but I do really and truly admire him. This weekend just gone, Harris kicked off the 2012 Sydney Festival of Dangerous Ideas with his …

My driver’s licence was suspended last November 2011 and my property seized in September 2012, all because I refused to pay into the Victims Compensation Levy for the Australian crime of riding a bicycle without a helmet. Two weeks ago, after a …

Alan Jones has done it again. In his very own Mitt Romney moment, the vitriolic shock jock was caught on tape telling a private function that Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s father “died of shame”. Twitter is abuzz with outrage at a story …

When Ken Henry’s Asian Century White Paper appears, it can be expected to urge more ‘Asia-literacy’ for Australians, more people-to-people exchanges with Asian countries, less impediments to trade and investment, more collaborative research and development, more transparency in government, and less tape …

Nearly two million people a year die of AIDS due to lack of funds, writes KELLY NICHOLLS.  As world leaders gather in Washington DC this week for the International AIDS Conference they will face the stark reality that we are only reaching half the …

As the London Olympics 2012 regaled the world with a spectacular opening ceremony this morning that as usual celebrated the power of sport to bring nations together, India and Pakistan prepare to re-build their fragile relationship through cricket. But as Joseph Rana …