‘Chaotic’: Paralysis at the heart of Kevin Rudd’s office
In the commentary pages of The Australian, John Howard’s government was criticised as ‘reactive’ but Kevin Rudd’s administration was seen as dysfunctional.
In the commentary pages of The Australian, John Howard’s government was criticised as ‘reactive’ but Kevin Rudd’s administration was seen as dysfunctional.
The image of Hanabeth Luke’s selfless help to an injured Tom Singer became etched on our memories in this challenging decade, along with moments of Olympic glory, a fire truck dwarfed by furious flames and Schapelle Corby facing Indonesian justice.
In the 2000s, an inferno ripped through Victoria, Kevin Rudd became prime minister, and the war on terror began. Where were you for each of these events?
The swashbuckling Bill Leak entered the cartooning scene at The Australian in the 1990s in the era of Hawke, Hewson, Howard and Hanson. That combination makes a cartoonist very happy.
Ear-stud-wearing former ‘party boy’ Shane Warne stunned the cricket world when he took out England’s Mike Gatting at Old Trafford with what became known as the Ball of the Century. Relive the glory here.
Patrick Stevedores’ sacking of 1400 workers was the start of all-out industrial warfare, backed by a government that wanted to break the Maritime Union of Australia’s waterfront power. But in the middle were ordinary workers.
By the turn of the millennium, gigs will be obsolete, as will CDs, and we’ll all be getting our kicks from interactive computer concepts and feng shui classes. Iain Shedden disagreed. But how right was he?
Columnist and former editor Frank Devine gets right to the point on Pauline Hanson’s divisive maiden speech in parliament: it has the ‘weight of a whisper’.
The Australian’s editorial was run off the front page, a rare occurrence and a sign of the masthead’s commitment to the republican cause in this country. We republish it here today for this masthead’s 60th anniversary.
Photographer Ray Strange noticed something out of the ordinary when prime minister John Howard lifted his arms in front of a pro-gun crowd as he campaigned to bring in more restrictions. It was a sign of how heated the debate had become after the Port Arthur massacre.
The 1980s were a gift with targets galore. International public figures included Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. In Australia, Bob Hawke emerged as the symbol of celebrity larrikinism.
Plenty of investors took a hit when share markets crashed globally in 1987, but an even greater pain was felt in that big casino known as the Sydney Futures Exchange
Millions of bleary-eyed Australians sat glued to their TVs to witness one of sport’s greatest moments — and got a free pass from the PM to take a sickie.
This film’s purpose is original, daring and important: it is to ‘explain what Gallipoli means to Australia’s history and our understanding of ourselves’.
‘John’, who once worked for The Australian, was Sydney AIDS sufferer No. 20. He spoke to our reporter to explain his disease and society’s reaction to it.
After serious political and social change in Australia in the 1960s, the attraction of rebellious leftist ideas danced into the 1970s. Our cartoonists found this era both dangerous and funny.
The god of earthquakes has a connection with the dry and dusty landscape of WA, given the land-shaking impact that Poseidon had on Australian sharemarkets in 1970.
In the 1970s we saw intoxicating tennis and anti-apartheid protests as South Africa’s Springboks toured. Students of the form guide, however, had their mind on just one thing: that ‘intellectual Everest’, the next Melbourne Cup.
Massive crowds flocked to watch Queen Elizabeth open the Sydney Opera House in 1973, but there was one person missing: the building’s architect Joern Utzon. Or was his ghost a guest?
If we are not driving down our average roads, we are walking around with our eyes on the ground. In 1975, The Australian asked why the ambitions of Australians didn’t extend beyond sport.
Political history moved fast in the 1970s, with the first Labor prime minister for decades, Gough Whitlam, being ousted in a constitutional crisis, and terror arrived on our streets. We look back for The Australian’s 60th anniversary.
The 1970s were dramatically changing times. These pictures summarise these seismic shifts and show the way The Australian’s photographers bore witness to history.
Cartoonists Bruce Petty and Aubrey Collette took a running jump into the newly established national masthead and fitted right in to the rebellious mood of an optimistic post-World War II political vision.
One of our most eminent historians also proved to be an expert on the future when he wrote about the fortunes of mining in December 1969, just before the great market bust.
Boxer Lionel Rose became world champion, Dawn Fraser stunned with an Olympic threepeat – and then was banned – while Peter Norman’s sprint silver in Mexico was overrun by a Black Power salute. The Australian’s sport coverage in the 1960s was never dull.
The first woman to be appointed to a chair at Sydney University, Leonie Kramer, had a balance other women might have envied. When interviewed by The Australian in 1968, she had just enjoyed ‘a nice vacation making jams and preserves’.
The Australian has always stood for impartial, independent thinking. In the 1960s, we published the forthright views of maverick one-armed expeditioner Jock Marshall.
The Australian trawled its archives to find the most arresting images from six decades of journalism. These pictures, from war in Vietnam to Bart Cummings with a Melbourne Cup winner, all appeared in our pages.
This decade was a time of fractious debate. Young protesters found lungs on the Vietnam war; a prime minister went missing; and people landed on the moon. We look back at the decade for The Australian’s 60th anniversary.
Chaice Grant was on his first sea voyage when he spotted a yacht in distress – hundreds of kilometres away from land. What happened next?
Johnny Banjo escaped a crocodile’s jaws of death after minutes of wrestling for his life. After poking the crocodile in the eye, Banjo grabbed his shirt and a loose can of beer before legging it on land. As it turns out, crocs are fast there too.
They lost their home in the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires. Just a few days later, Vivienne and Ian Kroehn were expecting their first child. What happened next?
Fifty years ago The Australian reported a young Sydney woman had been arrested and jailed in Greece for having her boyfriend stay in her apartment. We’ve tracked her down to hear her story.
Marlene Dayman was 14 at the 1964 Tokyo Games. But after marching at the opening ceremony, she was banned from competing. When you give a teen a ‘life sentence’, how do they turn out?
Our special series shows how The Australian covers the nation, with six senior writers tapping into the big issues from remote Western Australia to the Queensland coast.
George Goyder’s Line was the one certainty farmers could count on in a heartbreak land where dust devils dance among the early settlers’ broken dreams. But what happens when even that constant fails? Can human ingenuity and perseverance hold out against climate change?
The land will be vastly altered: solar panels on the flats, wind turbines on the ridges and new high-voltage towers connecting it all, but the residents of these towns have more pragmatic things on their minds than rural scenery.
Logan Saltmarsh is worried. But it’s not schoolwork or bolshie big kids unsettling this 12-year-old; it’s Tanya Plibersek. In fact, the whole town of Strahan is on edge.
Not quite the Truman show, in this town educated families live in big houses, send their kids to new schools, push babies around in pram brigades and literally dance in the streets.
As we count down to The Australian’s 60th birthday, readers have their say on our special reports on the birth of a national paper, the highs and lows of the 60s, and a very different era for women.
In a closely-choreographed feat of logistics, a national newspaper coordinated out of Sydney comes off the presses in Adelaide and is trucked three hours’ overnight to be on hand for this veteran newsagent by 4:30am.
As this masthead prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary, early staff members recall the excitement of a young national daily newspaper.
Rupert Murdoch set out in 1964 to start a national daily newspaper that could be read the same day across our ample continent. And he drew that first staff 60 years ago from all its corners.
Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/60thanniversary