The frequency of catastrophes – why accurate language matters

The media’s misuse of the term ‘hundred year event’ gives the public a misleading impression of the true likelihood of major floods and other disasters.

Taking the pulse on immigration

Opinion polls show that most Australians think immigration rates have climbed too high, but more nuanced polling could help inform the government’s range of strategies to address this complex issue.

Reflections on the Voice Referendum

The dust has begun to settle after Australia’s contentious Voice Referendum, but amid the accusations of bad faith and ignorance, how many people on either side bothered to read or understand the report which laid out how the Voice would have worked, and the problems it raised or failed to address?

Looking beyond the referendum

Australians tend not to spend time contemplating their own navels, and despite vociferous advocates on both sides of the debate, the Voice referendum has failed to grab the attention of the Australian public. Whatever the result on Saturday, the media and the political class should shoulder their fair share of blame for this widespread lack of engagement.

Australia’s uncertain future

Australia has a rich but turbulent history and contemporary divisions between disparate generations, cities and regions, ethnic groups and social classes threaten to widen rather than close long-standing divides. In a major new essay, Bernie O’Kane reflects on the complex past, contested present and uncertain future of a land which will always be “vast, extreme, fragile and alone”.

Climate change and the precautionary principle

Why does the world continue to dither and debate rather than react and respond to the existential threat of climate change?

The hardscrabble lives of the selectors

In the second half of his family memoir, Bernie O’Kane explains the struggles of early farmers in Victoria, the trials of family life and the coming of mechanisation in the late 19th century.

The mystery and the legacy of Australia’s immigrant selectors

From 1860, a series of Land Acts in the Australian colonies allowed new farmers to select and buy some of the vast tracts of land controlled by squatters. The story of one family epitomises the struggles, heartaches and triumphs they endured to build the nation we call home today.

Down in the flood

We need an explanation not a scapegoat for the disastrous Maribyrnong River flood of October 2022 and effective action to ensure such events do not happen again.

The Maribyrnong River flood review

Just as ostriches were reputed to bury their heads in the sand to avoid seeing danger, so the Victorian authorities are refusing to confront the lessons of recent flood disasters in Melbourne.

We are Australian

Cultural, social and political analysis which divides people into antagonistic ethnic groups, rather than unite people under a national banner, do a disservice to the interrelated reality of modern Australian society.

Analysing the Maribyrnong River flood

The urbanised lower reaches of the Maribyrnong River in Inner-Western Melbourne experienced major flooding in mid-October, and lessons must be learned about urban development in the catchment given the prospect of future extreme weather events.