A couple of months ago I went on a date with a man from France. As we were talking, I thought to myself, ‘Avoid the burqa conversation, Michelle, avoid the burqa conversation.’ I must have jinxed myself because then, all of a sudden, we were having it: the burqa conversation.

A chart hung above the chalkboard in Mrs Brandie’s classroom, written in the patient, legible hand of a primary school teacher. Black marker on white card, two columns: name, weight – Anwyn Crawford, 34 kg.

For a student of history, Noel Pearson seems to devote an awful lot of time to forgetting the past. In a landmark speech in 2000, in which Pearson signalled his transition from land rights activist to conservative power broker, he unloaded on the evils of passive welfare, blaming hard-won human rights for ruining black lives.

The Global Street Party on 16 May 1998 was one of the first internationally coordinated manifestations of the counter-globalisation movement. With people dancing, marching and cavorting through streets around the world, it provided an early indication that something new was happening in politics.

During 2009 I was the fortunate recipient of a Copyright Agency Limited grant to meet with small independent publishers in the US to discuss the state of the industry. As a small press publisher from Melbourne, I was looking for something to indicate that people were tired of the mall-like sameness of the publishing industry, the stranglehold of large retails chains and the domination of media conglomerates.

A sugar glider is being dragged outside by two cops. It has just dumped a pile of woodchips inside the Victorian Treasury Office and yelled, ‘Stop woodchipping the water catchment, Brumby!’As you might have guessed, this is no ordinary marsupial. Rather, it’s an activist in costume, an activist with a sense of humour – an activist with the guts to cross the thin blue line, to challenge the police, fight for a cause and make the government look silly.

The PEN/Macquarie Anthology of Australian Literature has attracted ill-judged criticism from reviewers who would have preferred a treasury of great writing rather than the comprehensive picture that this collection gives us of 225 years of Australian writing. The new Cambridge History of Australian Literature, on the other hand, has been received much more calmly.

We might be moved, outraged or excited by a particular work of fiction, but it barely seems possible to imagine a novel that could change the way we envision the world or the way we live in it. What we have lost, and what Bolaño’s work seems to have rediscovered, is the sense that literary texts can shape, rather then merely reflect, the consciousness of the culture in which they circulate.

Supporters of Australian cinema have had a mixed experience recently. Last year, we were able to enjoy some of the finest films that this country has produced but we also had to endure the ongoing attack upon the industry by commentators accusing Australian cinema of ‘doom and gloom’, not being escapist enough, not attracting large enough audiences and not making enough money at the box office.

Despite repeated predictions of their decline, the Australian Greens have strengthened their grip as the third force in politics. They are currently running at 10–12 per cent in national polls and have a membership of almost 9000, with around 150 local groups and branches.

Paul Kelly is the ultimate insider: editor, journalist, historian, commentator. How does he combine these roles? And how might we explain his relentless rise? What does this story tell us about politics and letters in contemporary Australia?

A wonderful collection of students wearing jeans, tights, leather jackets, miniskirts, caps and suits sat squashed onto sprung vinyl seats or cross-legged in the aisles. Some were there because they’d heard about our proposed sedition and didn’t want to miss the excitement. Others – ALP supporters, mostly – wanted to voice their opposition but thought our support for the NLF over the top, liable to drive people away from the movement. A few sat goggle-eyed, along for the ride but with little or no idea what was about to happen.

They tell me I sound like a cranky old Luddite. The blogosphere, they explain eagerly, is like a vast salon, full of voices and ideas keen for your attention, full of musings on books, films and public events, full of passionately held opinions and lively discussion – exactly what a writer needs. They make it sound like Paris in the 1920s – a creative ferment, testing my capacity to keep up. But the closer I look, the harder I find this to swallow.

The woman across the aisle from me on the train was reading a newspaper. She squinted at the picture on the cover, chuckling to herself. I leaned over to see what she was smiling about. Her eyes met mine and she quickly folded the paper in quarters, turned it over on her lap and stared out the window.

While technical proficiency has remained consistent within the scene, storytelling has improved markedly. Though you can still find an emphasis on dunny humour (which, to be fair, saturates all of Australian society, not just animation), Australian animation has grown up. Gone are the too-cutesy anthropomorphised objects, animated to voyage on a discovery of self-awareness.

A key difference between the Australian military’s relations with the media and the American model is that the ADF neither needs nor wants the media to tell its story or endorse its credibility. It is, then, little wonder that we are so ill-informed about what the ADF are up to in Afghanistan.