'This issue of Australia's most awarded quarterly is about making sense of the populist moment we are living in and includes essays about building a conscience, climate-change deniers, obstructive bureaucracy, religious cults and the enduring kindness of strangers.' (Publication summary)
Only literary material within AustLit's scope individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:
Grooming the globe: Denying fairness, complexity, humanity by Julianne Schultz
The restorationist impulse: Hankering for the old ways by Rodney Tiffen
I am building a wall a poem by Joshua Ip (Singapore)
So you want to rule like an autocrat?: A six-step guide to putting your country first by Paul Ham
What isn't there: The insidious creep of fear by Maggie Tiojakin (Indonesia)
Poking mullock: The populist party, one nation and political jokes by Michael Winkler
Rush to judgement: Stigmatising the homeless in Nowra by Bronwyn Adcock
When everybody does better: Building a movement for change by Phillip Frazer
Discontents: Identity, politics, institutions by Dennis Altman
The remixing of peoples: Migration as adaptation by Cameron Muir
Signs of life a photo essay by Tasos Markou
The men in green: Political posturing and disaster relief by Tom Bamforth
Sound, drums and light: The foundations of outsider environmentalism by David Ritter
Missing pieces: Journalism, integrity and mental health by Andrew Stafford
Held on trust: Rights, institutions and freedom of speech by Justin Gleeson
Marooned in uncertainty: Negotiating an island of ambivalence by Sanaz Fotouhi
Rise Again by Eliza Vitri Handayani (Indonesia)
Impossible things: Science, denial and the Great Barrier Reef by Lisa Walker
Killing bold: Managing the dingoes of Fraser Island by Rowena Lennox
People are kind: Mapping a global network of caring by Linda Neil
'I couldn't move. Curled up paralysed at the bottom of the stairs I just wanted the screams to stop. My brother couldn't stop his cries and my dad wouldn't stop hitting him with the belt. I shrank as small as I could and did nothing. I can still hear my brother's screams, even now. To my eternal shame, I was so glad it wasn't me.' (Publication abstract)
'It was the 21 March 2002. The subdued beauty of an autumn afternoon in Toowoomba. Cool enough to be winter. Dying light and green leaves. A yellow dome glowing in the western skies.' (Publication abstract)
'I first visited the Netherlands in 2002, just after the Dutch had kissed goodbye to their beloved guilders and embraced the euro. The atmosphere was one of excitement. This progressive and liberal country was, together with other European Union members, embarking on an audacious and ideological project. I immediately wanted to participate, in whatever way I could. Eight years later I got my chance. I moved to Amsterdam and started work for an international bank that had been bailed out by the Dutch government as a result of the GFC. An anti-Islam politician had just won twenty-four seats out of a hundred and fifty in the federal election and questions around Dutch identity were eating into nightly chat show schedules. A paragon of 'Dutchness' was about to arrest public attention, and it had nothing to do with windmills or tulips. I came face-to-face with it during my first November in the city.' (Publication abstract)
'The day after the news filled with Hilary Clinton's pneumonia diagnosis, I found the Al-Salaam restaurant closed. I looked up and down my local stretch of Changi Road, wondering where else I could get some breakfast roti, and quickly gathered this wasn't a normal Singapore weekday. A large crowd - Malays, Indians, Arabs, others - was leaving the local mosque. A hawker centre was dense with patrons eating noodles with conspicuous unhurriedness. Families strolled along a canal leading down to the beach.' (Publication abstract)
'I voted Benoit Hamon. What can I say? I have always voted for the Parti Socialiste candidates at presidential and legislative elections, and at local elections when candidates were known to belong to the party. I’ll vote Macron in the second round.' (Introduction)