A New Era: What the US Midterm Results Mean for Women

On the rainy, blustery Saturday morning before election day a bus idling in Union Square collected volunteers who had signed up to campaign for Mikie Sherrill. The bus, which seats 50, had just one spare seat when it pulled out into the stop-start fifth avenue traffic and headed over the bridge into Jersey. There was a broad slice of New York on the bus, men and women, young and old, a variety of ethnicities. They chattered quietly about seats to watch and whether there was any chance to flip the Senate and take back both houses from the Republicans.

Out the window the passing trees turned from the early-Autumn greens in the city to the deep-Fall hues of rust, sunshine and scarlet. The streets widen, the houses spread out. The bus stopped and the canvassers filed off to get their assignments and begin spreading the word.

A Real Buzzkill

It would have been dark. Pitch black. June 15, 2012 was mild and dry on the corrugated dirt road leading off the Princes Highway. The afternoon temperature had hit a high for the month, creeping up to 19.5 degrees — the close of a beautiful winter day in Batemans Bay.

It’s not clear who they hit first, but by the time the killers appeared, dusk would have settled, making the dirt roads that wind through the Kioloa, Boyne and Benandarah state forests and the Murramarang National Park difficult to navigate for anyone unfamiliar with their twists and turns. Over the course of that night the killers struck at least 10 times, leaving millions dead.

Bees keep a tidy schedule. They’re up early, they work hard all day, and as night falls they’re tucked up in bed.

There’s no chance then that they would have seen the killers coming. 

Shock and Ore

The Brisbane River undulates like a muddy snake through the heart of the state capital – a murky brown from dawn to dusk, by night a glittering jewel reflecting the lights of the city skyscrapers in its opaque depths.  As it winds around the cliffs of Kangaroo Point, past the dry docks that mark the start of Southbank’s parklands, and rushes towards Victoria Bridge the Queensland parliament is there on the right, buffered by mangrove swamp and 1970s freeway.

This stretch of the river up to the Grey Street Bridge takes in some of the most enduring physical markers of Joh Bjelke Petersen’s National Party rule in the Sunshine State. There’s the brutalist concrete architecture of the performing arts complex, state library and museum, the hardened city arteries of the Riverside Expressway, and the imposing tower of the parliament, built to house during sitting weeks the travelling MPs from far-flung corners.  

Doctors and Nurses Fed Up With Australia’s Asylum Seeker Policy are Speaking Out

The fate of asylum seeker children brought to Australia for medical treatment hangs in the balance as they await a High Court decision that could change their lives. Doctors say the children should not be returned to offshore detention, and that it is akin to torture.

One 5-year-old boy currently in Australia for treatment was reportedly raped on Nauru, and is terrified of going back.

Beaten by the Language Barrier

FOR some international students, passing their university course is worth offering their body. Desperate to up her grades, one student proposed such a deal with her lecturer.

"This is an offer that will change her life in terms of her potential in the future in her society or whether she could get married at the right level and everything else. Because that's how important [the grade] was for her," a Deakin university academic is quoted as saying in a state Ombudsman's report tabled in Parliament last week.

Gradual Thawing as Fragile Case Fell Apart

On July 9, the third day of the hearing, Rita Theophanous began to look relaxed. She appeared to be gaining confidence as the evidence against her husband, Theo, was tested.

Her demeanour that day was a far cry from her stony face and closed stance three days earlier when she sat seething as the case against her husband was outlined to the magistrate charged with deciding whether he would stand trial for rape.

Ann was Asleep When Her Ex-Husband Broke In and Shot Her

Ann O’Neill has a confident, warm demeanor and a genuine interest in the people she meets. When I arrive alone to a function at the Prime Minister’s traditional Sydney residence, Kirribilli House, she is the first person to approach me and strike up a chat.

We talk about the house, the view, her trip over from Perth – the simple pleasantries of small talk. A little while later, O’Neill is introduced to the room by Lucy Turnbull, who is hosting the event as a brand new ambassador for the national organisation tackling violence against women and children, Our Watch.

O’Neill has joined Our Watch as an ambassador as well.

She steps up to the podium to give a brief speech, one she had told me lightheartedly earlier that she hadn’t really prepared for.

I’m Just a Broadway Baby

On a sweaty Saturday afternoon in late August 2012, I am in New York City with my father. We head down three flights of stairs to see a show The New York Times has recommended. Its run has been extended twice, and the cast has changed since the review. The small, subterranean theatre is full. The show’s terrible. The tiny cast can’t hit the right notes, and the jokes fall flat. Twenty minutes in a man with a satchel slung over one shoulder edges out of his row and escapes through the door — which is directly to the left of the stage. There can’t be a person in the room who didn’t see him go.

At interval, having managed to fend off the worst bouts of boredom-sleep we emerge blinking into the foyer. “What do you think?” My father asks tentatively. 

Universities Go Down Path of Campaign Funding

Two years ago Melbourne University quietly embarked on a campaign to raise $250 million. More than $80 million has been collected, and by October, the university expects to have more than $100 million locked in.

Monash University has already hit that milestone, with more than $110 million in the bank - more than half of the $200 million they hope to collect as part of the Monash+ push instigated in May 2008.

Fund-raising is big business for universities as they move to supplement government funding with annual donations and major campaigns.