It’s finally here: a radically new technology of reading. The hypertext wasn’t quite that. It was a way of connecting texts to one another, weaving them into a larger whole – potentially as vast as the culture itself.

One of my favourite genres is the ‘intellectual clique novel’. In these stories, talented outsiders are drawn into small, elite groups whose insularity is enthralling yet dangerous.

I was up late reading Kathy Acker – the dead, unredeemable, beautiful Kathy Acker, the only writer who makes me feel that writing is the most important thing in the world, the most savagely political thing there is.

The worst sin any artist can commit is to refuse to be bought. In the crude rhetoric of self-interest that dominates contemporary politics, this sin has potentially become blacker still. If you argue, as Rupert Murdoch does, that the market is a transcendent moral force, then any artist who refuses its values exhibits the worst form of moral turpitude.

Wolf Creek 2 is Greg McLean’s sequel to his notorious 2005 debut. It has impacted national film culture in a number of significant (although not totally surprising) ways. Without doubt it is more violent and vicious than its predecessor, a perversely admirable feat considering Wolf Creek became a frequently cited example of ‘torture porn’.

The winning entry is Jessica Hart’s ‘Land Mountain’. Jessica is to be commended for two very strong poems, with ‘Nouveau’ also being highly rated by the judges. Both her poems were striking in their sophistication and elegant use of language.

‘The Age of Entitlement is over.’ The words were Joe Hockey’s, delivered to an audience of ‘friends’ at the Institute of Economic Affairs London on 17 April 2012. Twenty-two months later, the new Treasurer explained that not only was the age of entitlement ‘over’ but ‘the age of personal responsibility’ had now ‘begun’..

In January 1974, Valerie, my fourteen-year-old half-sister, was taken to a Victorian police station, charged with being ‘exposed to moral danger’. She had been punched in the face at a party, and a doctor who had attended to her injuries reported concerns about her welfare to the police. According to the sole surviving piece of documentation, Valerie was delivered to the remand section of Winlaton Youth Training Centre.

As a queer Indigenous person, I watched the debate around his comment with a lot of discomfort. Non-indigenous people love to watch Mundine mess up. But even more they love watching Indigenous people fight each other publicly, especially if the topic is culture. The thing that struck me the most in the fallout was how Mundine’s framing reversed my own understanding and experiences: my Indigenous community has always loved and nurtured me as a queer and gender-diverse member, but the queer community has always found it hard to let in Aboriginal voices. The same can be said for queer history and queer theory, both of which struggle to recognise the violent colonial epistemology from which they emerged.

One of the artworks currently on show at the Biennale of Sydney is Bosbolobosboco #6, by Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson. It was made in collaboration with the Sydney-based group Refugee Art Project, which since its founding in 2010 has run art classes inside detention centres and organised exhibitions and publications for artworks made by asylum seekers. Safdar Ahmed, a founding member of Refugee Art Project, describes Bosbolobosboco #6 as ‘a biomorphic sculpture which resembles a living entity, comprised seemingly of skin or bone.

One after another, democratic rights and entitlements appear to be slipping through our fingers. The contours of democratic regimes are gradually transforming, taking increasingly authoritarian shapes. New laws, institutions and ideologies replace old ones as we grope our way through the changes, naively using old concepts as if they still held their meaning. In truth, democratic talk is becoming an empty discourse, one devoid of substance. The liberal democratic regimes that were assembled during the twentieth century are being gradually dismantled.

Even in times of economic boom, writers found it difficult to get paid for their labour – despite the ASA establishing industry rates for non-staff writers. That being said, it’s clear that the situation is now particularly dire. The ASA and the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the two organisations representing writers and their professional interests in Australia, suggest ‘minimum’ rates: they recommend, respectively, $892 and $925 per 1000 words, for both print and online publication.

Wind tore through the darkness, and rain was beating down in heavy showers, the night one of the Sicilian wood-carters came to the door of Ryan’s Hotel and hanged on it so that its shrunken panels rattled. Michael had shut-up at nine o’clock; bolted the windows and barred the doors against the wind and rain.

‘So, what’s the report from your sector, Hector?’ asked Laylene, the night supervisor. As usual, she gave no indication that she noticed the rhyme in her question. Her unsmiling face radiated, as usual, blankness. Hector saluted precisely, as usual. He knew that small talk was not necessary.

A couple of weeks after I started my new job, a woman from the office took a shine to me. Her name was Wanda and she was the payroll lady. She had some Polish blood in her somewhere along the line and she understood a few words of my language. She had a nice, round, pleasant Slavic face. I liked faces like that.

They come in through gaps around the pipes, and under doors and windows that don’t close tightly enough. Their heads are wide and flat, their skin translucent. When my daughter manages to catch one, she runs her finger from its nose to its tail, slow and rhythmic. The lizard trembles with its own heartbeat.

There has, in recent years, been a push to rescue various ‘lost’ writers from obscurity. And yet the short story is a literary form deeply embedded in its time. Much of the energy that has sustained Overland throughout the years derives from its contemporaneity – its commitment to the urgent, emerging or marginalised voices of its day.

The environment we create Is a ladle of particulates, A spoon feeding us

When the kitten with a dislocated limb is euthanised, you’ve stopped reading my blog, my sister refuses the call, a bargirl on the south side of Sydney is being shagged,

‘Order has been restored ... breakfast has been served.’ – Scott Morrison when interviewed after a riot on Manus Island And what did you eat for breakfast, Mr Morrison –

Airport of the future. Devoid of take-offs, landings. Derelict hub. The passenger era having followed the strip-lights to the exit. Heat of steel, glass. Kids barefoot on tarmac. The encampments were quick to spread here. Spaces once open.

The green strip of land projecting low from the bay is signalled by the figures of four tall pines: these sentinels can be sighted for guidance

you may choose any one of the following combinations death, disability and unemployment, disability and unemployment,

Desire consumes me in this, a dream: I’m flat on my back ’neath the tower of David.

We blunder through each business meal. to watch big business make its case A Mark so many came to feel

forty-three West Papuan men women and children five weeks in wild seas in a traditional double outrigger canoe drifting four days without food or water

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On the one hand, imperial titles and bottles of Grange; on the other, austerity and cutbacks. There’s nothing subtle about the Right’s program today. That’s partly why the Left struggles to respond: too often, we’re wrong-footed by the sheer brazenness. The environmentalist Bill McKibben describes humanity as ‘running Genesis backward, decreating’. No wonder we hesitate to acknowledge the awful reality: a tiny handful of the super rich preferring planetary devastation to any diminution of their privilege or power.

There is a false opposition drawn in many conversations between what is supposedly traditional or ‘core’ Left thinking and these tricky new-fangled ideas about privilege and intersectionality. But the best parts of the Left have always been founded on self-determination, on oppressed peoples’ naming of struggles and speaking truth to power. Nothing about this is new. It’s not additional or peripheral.