SYDNEY, Australia — One of the most quoted lines about Australia goes as follows: “Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people’s ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that […]
Read More
SYDNEY, Australia — Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia has proposed that the government impose stricter limits on immigration to control overcrowding in the country’s major cities. Population growth has played a major role in the country’s economic success, but people in Australia’s biggest cities are alarmed about an influx of immigrants, Mr. Morrison said […]
Read More
SYDNEY, Australia — Running out of gas is one of the most foolish things you can do, but I was guilty of it several times when I was a lean-living university student. That changed, though, when Hugh Jackman was hired as the attendant at my local gas station. He was older than me, clean-cut and […]
Read More
About 35 years ago, America began turning prisons over to the private sector. The idea was that private prisons would be better and cheaper than government-run ones. “The great incentive for us, and we believe the long-term great incentive for the private sector, will be that you will be judged on performance,” Thomas Beasley said […]
Read More
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea — Polio was vanquished by the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea 18 years ago. Now, as world leaders gather there for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting this week, polio has returned — on top of raging drug-resistant epidemics of tuberculosis, malaria and H.I.V., and deadly flash points of […]
Read More
Normally, I’d relegate news about Australia’s agricultural output to Links, but I thought this sighting was worth elevating to a post in light of Lambert’s discussion of the Jackpot and California’s fires yesterday. As you’ll see, the fall in Australia’s new grain deliveries is dramatic. Even when I lived in Australia from 2002 to 2004, […]
Read More
This article originally appeared on VICE Australia. Remember that brief period a few months ago when there seemed to be a whole bunch of drugs floating around in the waters off Australia? There was that boat full of coke that went missing in Papua New Guinea; those random packages that started washing up in Fiji; […]
Read More
It is staggering how much has changed for Los Angeles over the past six years. When I moved there in 2012, the city’s reputation was still overwhelmingly based on lazy clichés: that its supposed cultural vapidity carried over into its restaurants; that its Hollywood artifice bled into the lives and onto the plates of its […]
Read More
MELBOURNE, Australia — “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” a novel published in the United States by HarperCollins in September, tells the extraordinary tale of Lali Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, who was imprisoned at Auschwitz in 1942, and forced to tattoo numbers onto the arms of thousands of incoming prisoners. At the camp, Sokolov met a Slovakian […]
Read More
MELBOURNE, Australia — Imagine you are racing a car through a packed city center. You are in first place, only seconds from victory, when suddenly, a missile explodes and kills you. By the time you have come back to life — you’re playing a video game — you are far behind the fleet. But your […]
Read More
[Sign up for the Australia Letter to get news with context, conversation starters and local recommendations in your inbox each week.] SYDNEY, Australia — When Hollywood’s elite donned black at this year’s Golden Globes to raise awareness for the #MeToo movement, the Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush skipped the event altogether. Accused of sexually harassing a […]
Read More
TOPSIDE, Nauru — She was 3 years old when she arrived on Nauru, a child fleeing war in Sri Lanka. Now, Sajeenthana is 8. Her gaze is vacant. Sometimes she punches adults. And she talks about dying with ease. “Yesterday I cut my hand,” she said in an interview here on the remote Pacific island […]
Read More
SYDNEY, Australia — Australian military veterans recoiled at a government-backed policy that would allow them to board some commercial airlines ahead of other passengers, calling the move a political stunt that smacked of tokenism. The government announced over the weekend that Virgin Australia would offer priority boarding to veterans and also make in-flight announcements to […]
Read More
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex at Tupou College on October 26, 2018 in Nuku’alofa, Tonga. Photo: Chris Jackson (Getty Images) It’s that time again … we’re checking in with our favorite British royal bride (and now, mom-to-be) to see how things are progressing—style-wise, that is. She’s barely showing, but Meghan Markle is proving a long-held theory […]
Read More
Following highly publicized bans by the U.S. and Australian governments, Huawei has opted not to pitch New Zealand’s government on building the “core” of the country’s 5G networks, saying that “it’s not worth the hassle.” The Chinese company’s conclusion accompanies an apparent shift in its 5G bidding strategy, the New Zealand Herald reports, which will […]
Read More
SYDNEY, Australia — Liane Moriarty was still groggy, lying in her young son’s bed one morning, staring up at a poster for some Hollywood blockbuster, when her agent and publisher called with important news: “Big Little Lies” would debut at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. “It was a very domestic Liane […]
Read More
WASHINGTON — Shane Huntley has seen every form of state-sponsored cyberattack, first as an Australian intelligence officer and now as director of Google’s most advanced team of threat detectors. So when he was asked what surprised him the most about the 2018 midterm elections, his response was a bit counterintuitive. “The answer is surprisingly little […]
Read More
MELBOURNE, Australia — Scientists are warning that if human beings continue to mine the world’s wildernesses for resources and convert them into cities and farms at the pace of the previous century, the planet’s few remaining wild places could disappear in decades. Today, more than 77 percent of land on earth, excluding Antarctica, has been […]
Read More
SYDNEY, Australia — The Chinese military is expanding its collaborations with foreign universities, sometimes concealing its scientists’ military ties, according to an Australian report published Tuesday. The report raises questions about whether countries wary of China’s rising power are in fact directly contributing to its military advancement. In the past decade, the Chinese People’s Liberation […]
Read More
SYDNEY, Australia — In 1985, the Australian entrepreneur Paul Ramsay took a tour of Nottoway Plantation in Louisiana. So impressed was he with the luxurious “white castle” mansion and its grounds that he decided to buy it right there and then. In Mr. Ramsay’s hands, the property became a popular tourist attraction and resort. The […]
Read More