Category: Quadrant

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. In churches across the country, priests will admonish the faithful to “remember that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.” These words offer a salutary reminder of what awaits all of us. “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” In

There has been press coverage lately of a poll conducted by Australian National University regarding attitudes to this summer’s bushfires. Given the politicisation of the fires there were no surprises. The poll claimed to have found only “27.3 per cent of respondents reported that they were confident or very confident

My first car in Australia was a clapped-out Ford Zephyr which died very quickly and which I had to have towed away for scrap as no dealer would accept it as a trade-in. My second car was an FB Holden Ute which, although tired too, served me well in Sydney

There’s no great mystery about what Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s net-zero-by-2050 emissions announcement last weekend will cost. The answer: trillions galore. How do I know? Because Dr Brian Fisher, former head of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, who has no political allegiance and no vested interest, last May in the

Music tells a story, not in word, but in tones and rhythm that move us along a path to somewhere else. Words also move us from one place to another, and their rhythm and tones can inspire a melody to join them. The story of how a piece of music

In mid-2000, Victorian foresters were among Australia’s first contingent of forest fire specialists sent to the US to help fight several huge wildfires. Upon returning, they regaled bemused stay-at-home colleagues with stories of so-called ‘campaign fires’ of monstrous size and duration. Apparently, despite huge industrial-scale fire suppression efforts featuring large

It is undeniable that the Australian bushfires of 2019-20 were some of our worst. The terrible number of lives lost and properties destroyed exposes this reality. This morbid arithmetic is reinforced by the profound heartache not felt by Australians since the 2011 Queensland floods and the 2008-09 Victorian bushfires. As

The great parade was winding its way through Sydney streets. Huge crowds had gathered all along the route – crowds bigger than on Anzac Day, bigger even than for the Mardi Gras. They were anxious to cheer along the yellow-jacketed heroes of the volunteer fire-fighting services, who had sacrificed so

The Priests’ Sacristy of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne gets its name from the fact that it is where the priests robe and disrobe before and after Mass. Priests are normally part of the Sunday ceremony and the final procession out of the cathedral. They return to the priests’ sacristy

Have you ever wondered how to play the Climate Game, or game the climate? If so, look no further than a remote research station on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, a submarine-shaped office tower on Geneva’s Avenue de la Paix and an international media pack determined to ramp

The Aboriginal establishment has clearly demonstrated that a visceral antipathy towards Andrew Bolt far outweighs any moral or ethical considerations regarding the fraud Bruce Pascoe,  accepted as one of their own, has visited upon them. Perhaps we can now concentrate on the more important aspect of the Bruce Pascoe Affair

It’s a worthy saying, “Do not speak ill of the dead”, but I’ll make an exception for Dr Rajendra Pachauri. The chair of the IPCC for 13 years, to 2015, died at 79 last Thursday, January 13, of heart problems. He bugged out of the IPCC abruptly when a 29-year-old