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The Crucible: Open justice in Australia

Marta: Truth and illusion, George; you don’t know the difference. George: No, but we must carry on as though we did. Edawed Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf Edward Albee’s 1962 play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, rips down a compulsive response in the human psyche: hysteria. What is worth believing? So too did Arthur…

The Centre Does Hold

There all the barrel-hoops are knit, There all the serpent-tails are bit, There all the gyres converge in one, There all the planets drop in the Sun. – W. B. Yeats, Supernatural Songs, IV 'There' The Brown Betty teapot’s older than the Hills Hoist and twice as stubborn. Five generations of paddy women, and decades of…

When Amateur Hour Met Happy Hour: The Balter Story

Where’s Currumbin? What does it have to do with brightly coloured beer? Angus Taylor’s economic beer theory? A ‘Kerrupt-flip’? Be patient ’til the last. In 2022, on a surf trip to the Pacific, I first came across Bede Durbidge. Bede – a former WSL veteran of a decade and decorated Pipeline Master – told…

Are We Witnessing the Decline of Feminism?

Is this still what we fought for? That’s the question that seems to hang quietly behind so much of the cultural discourse right now. From album covers to courtrooms, from social media trends to political movements, feminism feels at once everywhere and somehow nowhere at all. Its language has been adopted, repackaged, and monetised to…

Aithrí

In Her Name Mary Magdalene is posited as Christianity’s exemplar of repentance, the apostle of Christ, the faithful woman, freed of seven demons. Worthy of hymnal adoration, and biblical heralding… but the rankle, the blister, the problem was she was robust, energetic. A prostitute. None of which were revered in the picture of the Christian…

So What?: Deconstructing the common rhetoric and shame surrounding casual harassment

I was five years old when a boy took hold of my shoulders behind the water fountain without warning and pressed his lips against mine. The common rhetoric I often encounter as an indirect response is that of “so what?”; essentially, how can such a trivial act lead to tangible detriment to the woman? I…

Fascism’s Insidious New Mutation: How gym bro influencers, the alt-right pipeline and Netflix’s viral show ‘Adolescence’ are connected

After watching Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory, the politically astute and the ignorant alike sat up in their seats – it was a final, overwhelming announcement that fascism is back in. The EIU's 2024 Democracy Index resoundingly supported this proposed democratic backsliding, reporting a historical low with 130 of 167 states registering stagnation or decline…

Straight to the Courtroom: Castle Law in Australia

It’s the vibe of it. It’s the constitution. It’s Mabo. It’s Justice .... Darryl Kerrigan, The Castle Growing up, your parent or guardian might have kept a baseball bat, a knife, or some sort of object hidden in the house that they could use as a weapon in the case of a home invasion. The…