Australia

Walking a lap of the North Pacific island of Nauru would take you three and a half hours. One kilometre inland, you would glimpse the republic’s phosphate mines. Living hundreds of kilometres from anywhere must sometimes feel like incarceration for the 10,000 or so Nauruans. What makes the republic seem even more prison-like is the way it is used by Australia as a detention and processing facility holding over 800 mostly Iranian asylum seekers. As fellow Commonwealth members, we should be concerned about this dot in the Pacific, and the way that Australia is off-shoring facilities there. Nauru is used by Australia to distance itself from the human face of

An Aussie rules footballer was apparently in trouble for having set fire to a dwarf who had been booked to entertain the team at an end of season party. Clinton Jones saw the diminutive Blake Johnston capering around and, being a half-wit, couldn’t resist applying a gas lighter to his backside. Whooooof, went the dwarf. Quite rightly Jones has been carpeted by bosses and forced to pay compensation. Too few people understand that dwarves are highly flammable – and some will actually explode if exposed to a naked flame. If you are being entertained by a dwarf it is a good idea to spray them with a fine mist of

The Economist magazine is beginning to look a lot like the Guardian, the New York Times and the Age in Melbourne: its editorial pages are so dripping wet that one has great difficulty in turning them. How else to account for this endorsement of the Australian Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for re-election on 7 September?  Labor’s ‘decent record’ in recent years, it argues, makes it the best party to face the challenges of the future. Yet this is a government that has turned a $20 billion surplus it inherited from John Howard’s Coalition in late 2007 into a whopping budget black hole and rising national debt. A

It was pretty dark. Darker, in fact, than it had been when the players were hauled off for bad light earlier in the test. Darker, too, than it had been in Manchester when Michael Clarke objected to the umpire’s decision to halt play on account of the light. But so what? Was there any evidence that continuing to play would constitute an “obvious and foreseeable risk to the safety of any player or umpire, so that it would be unreasonable or dangerous for play to take place”? That is what the laws demand; it remains a mystery why this is not the standard umpires actually use. The England batsmen did not think conditions

Thumping Australia is grand; thumping Australia without playing well almost feels like cheating. But in a good way. This is where England find themselves today. The Ashes are safe for another few months and England have not had to be very good to keep them. Which is just as well, frankly, since even though they are unbeaten in 12 tests England are not quite as good a side as they like to think they are. They are good enough to defeat these hapless Australians, however. The Australians are basically New Zealand in disguise. Like New Zealand they are a side good enough to get themselves into good positions but not

Today, February 28th 2013, is the 80th anniversary of the conclusion to one of the finest – and certainly the most controversial – test series ever played. Eighty years ago today, Wally Hammond and Bob Wyatt put on 125 for the third wicket as England strolled to an eight wicket win at Sydney. This capped a remarkable winter for the tourists and sealed a crushing 4-1 series victory. It remains one of English cricket’s greatest foreign triumphs. Rarely before and rarely since has pure theory been so completely matched to the needs of applied cricket. No wonder Douglas Robert Jardine is still remembered as arguably the finest captain to ever

With the Don at three and Keith Miller inked for the all-rounder’s role at six there are only two open spots in Australia’s all-time middle order. It is a measure of Ricky Ponting’s greatness that no-one doubts he’s a sensible, worthy contender for one of those places. You may prefer the claims of Clem Hill, Charlie McCartney, Stan McCabe, Neil Harvey or Greg Chappell, but Punter is undoubtedly part of the conversation and only a fool would scoff at including him in this Fantasy XI. That’s how good he was. In England I fancy there’s sometimes a tendency to forget how fine a batsman Ponting was and instead place a

I have little to say on the subject of the, er, colourful scandal that has been entertaining Australians lately. The Speaker, one Peter Slipper, has been pushed to resignation following accusations of sexual harassment and, well, much else besides. However – and no matter what you think of her politics – there’s much to admire in the manner in which Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister, sets about Tony Abbott, the leader of the opposition. Anyone who admires the cut and thrust of parliamentary theatre and debate will enjoy these 15 minutes. Mr Abbott does not look best amused. But then he’s just been carved to pieces so he wouldn’t would