The Kazakh president thought he’d been palmed off with second-rate visitors, but the vice-regal Australians eventually got under his guard ...

“You who are seated here today will be China’s elites tomorrow,” declared the middle-aged party secretary at my senior high school. Alongside hundreds of other first-year students at one of the top ...

Books & arts Dispirited voters Glyn Davis 30 October 2025 Political dejection creates disengaged citizens, says a new synthesis of psychology, sociology and political science ...

Since 2006, the Economist Intelligence Unit has measured the quality of democracy in 167 countries and territories across the world. Its last index, for 2024, was published in February. Over the past ...

Five genre-bending drama series made keenly anticipated returns to television this year, all of them meeting expectations convincingly enough to ensure a further season. Clearing the hurdle for ...

In early October, Britain’s justice secretary and deputy prime minister David Lammy was booed and jeered when he attended a vigil for victims of an attack on a Manchester synagogue the day before. One ...

Around 40,000 years Before Present, during the last ice age of the Pleistocene, explorers walked from Wilson’s Promontory, the Australian mainland’s southern-most projection, to northeast Tasmania, ...

Books & arts Roaring back Jane Goodall 30 March 2024 A major new series about the postwar world poses the inevitable question: has the cold war returned? Books & arts Twilight of the Golden Age? Jane ...

National affairs Pharmaceutical warfare Lesley Russell 24 March 2025 How far will the Trump administration follow Big Pharma in targeting Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme? International ...

Essays & reportage John Howard’s masterful blunder Graeme Dobell 29 May 2025 He achieved his goal, but Australia’s alliance-led march to Iraq lacked a vital ingredient Books & arts Chill winds Graeme ...