The NBN was a great success, now what?
During lockdown our newly minted broadband network enabled much of our workforce to work from home. Australia’s economic output barely dipped. What’s the next big nation-building idea?
Columnists
Asking the big questions of Australia
We’ve been linked together for 84 years so it was about time that I was granted an exclusive interview with our beloved country. Here’s what I learnt from the place we call home.
Young women are shunning the pill … and I don’t blame them
Soon after losing my virginity, the pill muted all my wildness and irregularity, controlling my physiology in a way I didn’t quite trust. I’m not a fan – and thousands of women are with me.
Work from Blacktown, Ballarat… or Bali?
Australians, the inventors of seachange and treechange, are fusing work, with leisure and lifestyle. I see a world where both aspirations connect to deliver an even better quality of life.
How Crocodile Dundee blew up my radical talk show idea
It was to be a talk show, but with a difference: all guests would be as deceased as Python’s parrot, played by actors and repeating verbatim all the wild things said while they were alive.
We’re not used to heroes in real life anymore
At the upcoming Russian election, Alexei Navalny’s courage will be everywhere, in people’s minds. He is Russia’s conscience now. By dying, his legend roars through a vote he could never have won.
What a ride: I can’t seem to get out of McLaren’s last V8 supercar
Talk about going out with a bang. McLaren’s final V8 is a 331km/h heartstarter that makes a hell of a lot of noise but … where’s the door handle?
My mum’s notebooks are a piece of social history
They were among my late mother’s most prized possessions and itemise the weekly costs of running a family home in the 1950s and 1960s.
Is there a crate of marble appendages in the Vatican’s cellars?
Before either the ailing Pope or your columnist dies, it seems timely to return to a lifelong interest of mine.
How to hoon on a frozen Swedish lake | WATCH
When I was invited to drive a new Polestar EV on a frozen lake in Swedish Lapland, I glibly assumed it must be safe. | WATCH THE VIDEO
Would you describe Amal Clooney as ‘homely’? Her husband George did
The label has connotations of mousiness and mumsiness, the little housewife and little lady, balls and chains and trouble and strife. And we’re talking Amal Clooney here.
Is this BMW the Taylor Swift of cars?
I admit that BMW’s X5 xDrive50e M Sport is technically brilliant. But like many modern cars, it leaves me cold.
Every time a friend dies, I face a dilemma
Recently I’ve lost two friends named John. And the contacts on my phone already contain a dozen other ex-Johns. Should I delete them, as life has? Your views would be appreciated.
The new creed being embraced by post-Covid retirees
Here is a generation of retirees who regard Covid’s border closures as having ‘taken’ two of their remaining good years. And they’re doing something about it.
How a CD player reminded us of who we were, once
A device from decades ago recently came back into our home and unlocked the Chap and I into a past life.
This EV is the first Renault I’ve driven in years
Renault no longer makes the kind of fizzing firecracker sporty turbocharged Meganes that I like, because it’s rushing towards being a fully EV company by 2030. Let’s take a look at the Megane E-Tech.
I climbed aboard this Porsche and nearly had a heart attack
Why are modern cars always in a flap about something? I started up this Porsche Cayenne S and was instantly met with a barrage of bongs, beeps and flashing warning lights.
The vape industry must be outlawed, for our kids’ sake
The most vulnerable cohort of our nation are blatantly targeted. Where’s the champagne flavoured vape? The Scotch whisky one? Crickets, of course. The industry knows what it’s doing.
My love of words was born in the Catholic Church
Here is an institution with a language that is evocative, spiritual and, at times, more than a bit scary. Or at least that’s what I thought as a kid in the 60s.
This car has everything — including a great left hook
I know I should be old enough to know better and admit I am fully aware that I have an unfeasibly large head – but I still blame the doors on the BMW X6.
Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/columnists/page/9