A post by Kos Samaras caught my eye this morning. It's been sitting with me all day and I thought I'd better quickly write something to get it out of my head. He wrote: "The first politician who has an honest conversation with Australians about
And, once again, material politics melts into air... Argh. I'm so unsurprised. But I'm still so disappointed. Left populism, if not directed with great care and passion towards material campaigning, towards working on the ground to improve people's lives, swiftly gets caught up in
The return of the bogong moth migration has been a hot topic in my circles recently. I imagine many of yours, too. In many of the conversations, we've acknowledged how we're clinging to this bright ray of ecological optimism, hoping desperately that it's a
Shoebridge over troubled Waters? A huge earthquake in environmental politics happened in Australia today. And no, I don't mean the change in Greens leadership. Important as this event is - and I wish Larissa Waters all the very best with her health and David Shoebridge and Steph Hodgins-May
A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of chatting for I think the third time with the folks on the Sustainable Hour podcast. Previously, I'd talked with them about politics, and about my book. I don't think any of us were quite prepared for
On the transformative experience of being on country "What started as a task to stop a mine has evolved into a quest for freedom for my clan with the now 5 year old Autonomous tribal clan estate of Waddananggu." Gurridyula (Coedie) MacAvoy Time moves differently on country. When
Brief thoughts on letting go of the centre's hold And if he finds himself yearning For his throne on the silly side Nothing wrong as long as he's learning Going for a walk under the lovely blue sky, trying to wrap my head around the various
On stopping to love the flowers in a world on fire I'm riding home from a meeting. My mind is bouncing around between what we just discussed that I need to get on with doing and some annoying bureaucracy I have to push through so I can get
They've all come to look for America "Kathy, I'm lost", I said, though I knew she was sleeping I'm empty and aching and I don't know why What do you get for the Empire that has everything, on its 250th
A spore-radical transformation (with apologies to Kafka) Mushrooms were popping up all over the city the morning Elon Samsa awoke to discover he was The Beatles. He was John, Paul, George, Ringo, and George Martin, too! He was the strawberry and the fields. He was a hundred trillion Pennies
On stepping outside and rejoining the world It took me a while, years ago, to come to grips with Audre Lorde's famous dictum that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house". Investing so much of my life, my time, my
"It's more powerful than a legally binding agreement" I have just had the immense privilege of spending the last week in the Yarra Valley on a Global Optimism Climate Leaders' Retreat led by Christiana Figueres - for six years the world's top climate negotiator
Posted below is my submission to the Antisemitism Royal Commission. I have thought long and hard about publishing this. I have decided to do so partly because I hope it will encourage others to make submissions. While I am deeply troubled by the highly fraught process that brought us here,
A transformative, liberatory political act of collective refusal and creation. This is a lightly edited transcript of a presentation I gave last night to the Degrowth Network Australia (insta here) as part of its webinar series on Pathways to Degrowth. Thanks so much to the Degrowth Network Australia for inviting
Thinking about One Nation with the help of Rebecca Solnit (and Hannah Arendt) For [many people], the present seems to be perpetual, unchanging, unyielding, offering confidence or despair that the future will be like the present, a conclusion that seems to be drawn from the lack of recognition that the
Ben Roberts-Smith has finally been arrested for war crimes. If our laws and institutions are to have any meaning, then serious breaches, egregious breaches, high-profile and horrifying breaches must have repercussions. The seeming impunity of Ben Roberts-Smith, who has only today been arrested for war crimes the
On seeking direction in a directionless world Moments in time. Movement in time. Movements in time. As we spun past the autumn equinox, the darkness lasting noticeably longer each morning and edging closer each evening, the burst of winter weather turning the screws on my arthritic joints, I spent much
On language, coercion, and action "it is as though we were caught in a maze of abstractions, metaphors, and figures of speech in which everything can be taken and mistaken for something else, because we have no reality, either in history or in everyday experience, to which we can
A short post tonight because I can't go to sleep for thinking about this. I need to write some thoughts to help my mind slow down. And you get to read it. If you choose. Feel free. French President, Emmanuel Macron, standing in front of a nuclear submarine
On practising "soft skills" for a hard future Opposition education spokesperson, Julian Leeser, has apparently decided that the most important issue to weigh into on tertiary education right now is abolishing group assignments.* Funnily enough, I actually went to uni with Julian, at UNSW law school way back
Wonderings on the echoing implications of our relationship with death When I die, compost me. Put me under a tree - a snow gum, if possible - and let it feed. Let the mushrooms and their mycelia unmake me into morsels, into molecules becoming free to become something otherwise. Consider this a
💚 Zohran and Zack 💚 Is there a symbolism we can find in the fact that these two excitingly energetic, righteously angry, charmingly smiling outsiders shaking up global left politics both have names starting with Z?* Does it mean we've reached the end of the line? That, after this, we
On sitting in discomfort or seeking simple solutions It's hot. It's hard to think when the heat is so intense. And we need to think. We need to think through some painfully hot challenges. Challenges to which there are no simple solutions, no shortcuts. And the
On the gothic absurdity of the geopolitical circus and the sovereignty salsa Far be it from me, who at primary school was forever "Tim Hollow Head", to make jokes about people's names... But Nick Cave is touring, and this blogletter is named for a Cure song.