In Israel, as in Australia, colonisation is the context without which nothing else makes sense. The Israeli state depends on the dispossession of Palestinians, and so, by its nature, will constantly create and recreate violence, just as the Australian settler state did.

For the left – who have long been trying to surpass the limitations of liberal capitalism – it’s somewhat disingenuous to go along with this ‘dark times’ charade and pretend that the collapse of the bourgeois world order isn't entirely desirable.

This feels like a formative moment of consciousness – the realisation that we are all now more vulnerable, and that this is the time to form broad and deep networks of our own while also demanding the full protection of the state we have contributed to. Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini – your strength does not come from you alone, but from the strength of many.

Settler Australian society and its politics belong to the flattening global story of neoliberal economics. A story and a society which is destroying the material conditions of that singularity.

On 5 January, around 150 fascists and far-right sympathisers gathered in an anti-African migrant rally on St Kilda beach. The event was organised by well-known extremists Neil Erikson and Blair Cottrell and was also attended by Senator for Queensland Fraser Anning. The ABC was criticised for using the term ‘far-right activist’ in the lead up to the event, with others suggesting that ‘extremist’ was a more suitable term. There has been debate over whether those who attended should be described as ‘Nazis’.

Despite its impressive scope, and obvious personal investment, Griffiths’ much-praised book fails to uns­ettle. It re-affirms the role of science and knowledge, provoking the question of a standing unsettlement between colonial settlers and the original inhabitants of the Australian continent.

People often ask me about Australia. It doesn’t matter where I happen to be. There seems to be no end of interest in the massive but tiny country that Paul Keating once memorably described as ‘the arse-end of the earth’. Over the eight years that I have been working as a foreign correspondent, however, I have noticed the nature of the questions changing. They have become more political, lined with disappointment at best and subtle condemnation at worst.

Shorten described Turnbull as ‘an advocate of great intellect and eloquence and as someone who came to parliament, relatively late in life, because he was driven by the desire to serve.’ It was all rather… chummy. So much for the supposedly fierce opposition between the two leaders and their parties; so much, indeed, for the notion that politics is fundamentally divided along lines of conflict (most notably, the conflict between capital and labour).

All we knew about this new job on the remote cattle station we were heading to was that there was a general store, a few living quarters (for staff and stockmen), and two Indigenous communities just ten kilometres away. My friend’s comment was naïve, possibly – ‘Surely they won’t be racist,’ she said cheerfully, ‘not if they’re all living together so closely.’

Could Australia be the only nation where, when we’re asked to name our ‘greatest leader’s’ key to success, we say: ‘he could certainly scull a beer’? The national broadcaster’s new two-part series, The Larrikin and the Leader, is (yet another) lush tribute thrown at Hawke’s aging feet. But all this might be yet another sign that we’ve too long had the beer goggles on when it comes to Bob Hawke.

Earlier this year, the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) issued a directive that under the national construction code, building sites will not be allowed to display ‘images generally attributed to, or associated with an organisation, such as the iconic symbol of the five white stars and white cross on the Eureka Stockade flag.’ This seems like a good time to remember what the flag meant at its inception, and that its contemporary meaning is in fact deeply contested.

Clive Hamilton, well known for his books on global warming, has tackled a different topic in Silent Invasion: China’s influence in Australia. He claims that China’s Communist Party has gained so much influence in Australia that it’s ‘taking over’. The book is worth reading for one reason at least: the light that it sheds on the beliefs, goals and methods of John Hu’s ‘Australian Values Alliance’.

The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 was designed to keep Australia white via the administration of a dictation test in any European language. Because no prior notice of the chosen language was given, the test was impossible to pass. Dutton’s test was not quite so blatant in its discriminatory intent, but the level of English it required (IELTS level 6) would nevertheless have excluded almost everyone other than native speakers.

Australia wasn’t perfect in 1989 by any means, but something approximating that could be imagined. However, there was a change of emphasis, as if the toss of a coin had landed on the side of economics instead of people. We could find our own way, or we could copy the US and the neoliberals. We chose the latter, via Margaret Thatcher.

On 4 September, workers in Dili were busy erecting a series of congratulatory billboards – one featured a stock photo of Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop – to celebrate the conclusion of maritime boundary negotiations with Australia in The Hague. Later that day, feted leader Xanana Gusmão was paraded through the streets as he returned home from his role as head negotiator.

From the outset, white settlement of Australia met Indigenous resistance. Until the establishment of policing after 1810, and the development of case-specific punitive ‘settler’ parties and expeditions, and the use of special-purpose militarised ‘police’ units, resistance was quelled by the military.