Australia

Since 1999, asking how many referendums Australia has had – then how many have passed – has been a pair of standard pub quiz questions. Everyone knew we’d had 44 since Federation in 1901 and only eight had ever passed. Well, questioners in pubs across the country will have to make a minor update. Australia has now had 45 referendums, for a meagre harvest of eight changes to its written constitution. The Voice to parliament has been voted down even more comprehensively than the Republic was in 1999. It lost in every state and one of the country’s two sparsely populated territories. If it were possible to kill it any

Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, urged his fellow Australians to take ‘the opportunity to make history’ today. And they did, but not in the way that Albanese had so fervently hoped. His government’s referendum, which aimed to change the country’s constitution to entrench an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advisory voice to Australia’s parliament and executive government, was defeated by a majority of voters in all Australian states. The final margin, 59 per cent to 41 per cent between Yes and No, was not just decisive. It was a landslide of resounding proportions, almost a mirror reversal of the polled support for the Voice as recently as April. The biggest

My partner and I have just returned from the most magical trip. As guests of Western Australia’s tourist board we’ve driven almost 1,500 miles across the top left-hand corner of the Australian continent. This is the north-west: a landscape like nowhere else on the planet. Three times the size of England, they call it the Kimberley. I had expected to find Aboriginal people living in these landscapes. They used to, for 60,000 years Starting from a town called Broome (easy to fly there) we made it overland to Darwin in the Northern Territory. We took about ten days in an all-singing, all-dancing Toyota camper van, sometimes sleeping under the stars,

The illicit moment of surreal euphoria from snorting a line of cocaine comes at a heavy price of misery and death for so many others – a dreadful toll that is plain to see on the streets of Sydney. The competition between criminal gangs for the city’s drug users has become deadly on a scale not seen in Australia for years. The latest victim, David Stemler, died in a hail of bullets in the early hours of Thursday. Stemler was the 23rd person to lose his life in Sydney’s drug wars over the last two years. Just why demand for cocaine has skyrocketed in Australia isn’t clear. It’s not as

Almost sixteen years after he lost office and his own parliamentary seat, former Australian Liberal prime minister John Howard is still an influential political figure. Idolised by the right and demonised by the left, when Howard speaks, Australians still take notice. When Howard spoke to the Australian newspaper to mark his 84th birthday this week, he told home truths as he sees them, in his trademark plain language style. The focus of Howard’s interview was the Australian Labor government’s drive to change the nation’s constitution to give Aborigines a race-based ‘Voice to parliament’. It is becoming clear that the Voice referendum will be lost or won only narrowly This would

In world sport, the Commonwealth games are a bit of a sideshow. In swimming and athletics, at least, they are seen as something of a mid-cycle training event for the Olympics. Australians, however, love the Commonwealth games. Not just because they are about friendly sporting rivalries and promote goodwill between the nearly 60 nations of the Commonwealth and Britain’s remaining dependencies. Nor because they are one of the few remaining institutions that justify the Commonwealth’s active existence.  But because Australia wins big, every time. With only England as a serious rival for intra-Commonwealth supremacy, Australian teams and athletes are guaranteed a shower of gold medals, in a way the Olympics

Huzzah! The momentous day has arrived at last: finally Britain can reap the Brexit benefits and enjoy some delicious free-trade Tim Tams. For today is the day the UK’s trade deal with Australia comes into force. Unfortunately it seems that not all our friends down under aren’t, er, quite so sold on the mutual benefits that this new trade deal will bring. Announcing the news this morning, Karl Stefanovic – the host of the Today show on Australia’s Channel 9 – seemed distinctly unimpressed by what the UK would be bringing to the table. Explaining that some British products would become cheaper as a result of the deal, Stefanovic exclaimed

Today in Sydney, Australia’s most decorated soldier, former Special Air Services corporal Ben Roberts-Smith VC, was found by a civil court, on a balance of probabilities, to be a likely war criminal, a murderer, a liar and a bully. Roberts-Smith is a huge man, towering over all around him. When he was presented alongside other Victoria Cross winners to the late Queen some years ago, he loomed over her by a good eighteen inches.  Can we ever fully understand what goes on in people’s minds in war? His reputation as a battlefield soldier was fearsome. The mere sight of him charging towards the enemy must surely have intimidated the Taliban

One hundred miles or so south of Sydney, lies tranquil Jervis Bay. On its shores, largely reclaimed by the bush, are the abandoned foundations of a large nuclear power station. When it was built in the late 1960s, it was intended to be the first of a network supplying nuclear-generated electricity to the eastern Australian grid. More than fifty years on, this is all that remains of Australia’s only attempt to establish a civil nuclear industry, every attempt since then to revive the possibility stymied by anti-nuclear activists and politicians lacking the courage to challenge them. Those doomed foundations symbolise the challenge to Australia to fulfil its central part of

In July and August, Australia and New Zealand are hosts of the 2023 Fifa Women’s world cup.   It could not be a better opportunity for the sport. Football in Australia at the professional level lags well behind Australian Rules and rugby league when it comes to profile and broadcast attention. And in New Zealand the round-ball game has a permanently uphill challenge to compete with the unofficial state religion, rugby. The tournament is therefore a huge deal for the two host associations, and the culmination of years of planning and hard work.  But it is still Fifa’s tournament, not Australia and New Zealand’s, and Fifa is a law unto

Traditionally, the reigning monarch has appeared on the lowest denomination of Australia’s banknotes. It is a practice that harks back to the pound notes of pre-decimal days. It was even maintained by the Reserve Bank when the one-dollar note was replaced by a gold coin in the 1980s, and the Queen took the colonial philanthropist Caroline Chisholm’s place on the $5 note. This was controversial at the time, but only briefly. Before long, the Queen’s place on the $5 note was fully accepted. This remained so until her death in September. Today, however, our central bank showed its tin political ear with its announcement that the image of the late

So, Novak Djokovic has won the Australian Open tennis tournament – again. Djokovic was never seriously challenged at any stage, beating Stefanos Tsitsipas in straight sets in the final. In winning his 22nd Grand Slam title, drawing level with Spanish maestro Rafael Nadal, Djokovic also had his revenge on Australia – and Australians. Australia is, of course, the country that deported him for being unvaccinated in 2022. As recently as last month, polls indicated that just one in three Australians wanted Djokovic to come back this year. This clearly motivated the Serbian star: he wanted to prove his detractors wrong and, in his eyes, he did. Djokovic hinted at his

Australia Day was once a big deal Down Under, but in recent years the annual celebration has been somewhat muted. Take the Australian Open, currently running in Melbourne. The organisers have dedicated days throughout the tournament for a range of causes: there has been a Pride day and a day celebrating indigenous art and culture. But although the semi-finals are being played today, on Australia Day itself, there will be no recognition of the country’s national day. ‘We are mindful there are differing views, and at the Australian Open we are inclusive and respectful of all,’ Tennis Australia said in a statement. Tennis fans aren’t the only ones missing out: