Painting Fakes

One of the prevailing myths of Australian history is that the European invaders who arrived after 1788 were the first to 'settle' the land.  In this story, the country's original inhabitants were nomadic hunter-gatherers, wandering randomly over the countryside plucking its riches without doing anything to create them. It's a myth that dies hard.  Our recent Prime Minister Tony Abbot (now, ironically, the government's 'special envoy on Indigenous affairs') loves to celebrate the wonders created by the arrival of the First Fleet. I guess our country owes its existence to a form of foreign investment by the British government in the then unsettled or, um, scarcely settled, great southern land. The arrival of the first fleet was the defining moment in the history of this continent. Yet over recent decades, historians have steadily chipped away at this myth.  Most Australians now know that Aboriginal people did not roam randomly, they travelled on a seas...

I turn 57 this week.  I'm at the stage of life where each birthday is not so much a cause for celebration, cake and presents, as a reminder of the passing of time. My father lived to 77, so if this is any indication I might have about 20 years of life left.  Of course I am healthier than my Dad.  He smoked, and was overweight, and he died of heart failure.  I don't smoke, am barely overweight, and ride my bike to stay fit.  So perhaps I might live longer.  Maybe I have 30 years. Then again, my Mum was also much healthier than my Dad.  She didn't smoke, and never carried an ounce of extra weight.  But she was cut down by a brain tumour, and died at the age of 71.  So who knows, perhaps I only have 14 years. Perhaps next time I go for a ride I'll get cleaned up by a careless motorist and die on the spot. No-one knows the day or hour of their death. This might sound maudlin and a bit creepy, but I don't spend a lot of time worrying a...

So, it seems that Scott Morrison is our new Prime Minister, less than a year out from the latest possible date from our next election.  This is hardly strange.  Each of our last four Prime Ministers has ascended to the post in exactly the same circumstances, unceremoniously booting their rival mid-term only to be booted just as unceremoniously some three years later.  The last PM not to lose their job this way, unless you count Kevin Rudd's mercifully brief second attempt at the role, was John Howard way back in 2007.  Old fashioned type that he is, he lost his job in the time-honoured manner by leading his party to a crushing election defeat and then retiring gracefully. In an immediate sense, each of these internal coups has been fuelled by dramas with opinion polls.  In each case, consistent polling over a number of months has shown that the government will lose power if it faces an election.  Mostly (especially with the switches to Rudd and Turnbul...

If you want a sympathetic, insiders introduction to Islam you could do a lot worse than Ed Husain's The House of Islam: A Global History. Husain is British-born of Bangladeshi parents, and grew up in East London.  After a youthful flirtation with Hizb ut-Tahrir and radical Islam, he returned to his parents' Sufi teachings and studied Islam in earnest, travelling to Turkey, Syria and Saudi Arabia to study under various Sufi divines and explore the origins of Islam.  In 2007 he co-founded the Quilliam Foundation , which describes itself as a counter-extremism foundation, and he also consults for the US-based Council of Foreign Relations.  In sum, he is a devout Muslim who is implacably opposed to extremism. In The House of Islam  he provides an inside look into the Islamic faith.  He aims to both enlighten Western readers as to what Islam should be about, and is about for the majority of Muslims, and to challenge the growing influence of Salafism in the Islami...

Shane Claiborne loves to quote his friend, the late singer and songwriter Rich Mullins, on the way Christians read the Bible.  Mullins used to say that it was as if we had highlighters for certain verses.  Jesus says, "you must be born again", so we must all be born again. But didn't Jesus also say, "sell all you have and give to the poor"?  Why don't we all have to do that too? Since I read that, the story of the rich young ruler keeps coming up in my reading.  It features in two of Walter Brueggemann's collected sermons, as well as in the first two of the Second Series of George MacDonald's amazing  Unspoken Sermons, where once again he is contrasted with Nicodemus. All this started me thinking.  Are these stories alternative visions of Jesus - one 'spiritual', one 'political'?  Or is there something that holds them together? The story of the rich young man is found in Matthew, Mark and Luke, with only slight variations.  He...

Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson has flooded our consciousness over the past few months.  Snippets of his talks keep popping up on my social media.  His book tour attracted national interest.  People on the right love him, those on the left hate him. None of this is accidental.  He has been carefully curating his public profile for years, posting prolifically on his Youtube channel, speaking publicly and making himself available to media outlets of all kinds.  He has a devoted following and earns a decent income from Patreon via donations from viewers of his long and complex videos.   His reputation is as someone who thinks deeply about the meaning of life and the significance of ancient mythology for the problem of Being.  However, he has been pushed into the mainstream in the guise of a champion of the Right courtesy of his embroiling himself in a rather strange and silly war in his university over the use of pronouns.  In the ...

For a short time, David Warner's Aussie cricketing mates called him 'The Rev', short for Reverend, after he announced his intention to moderate his combative on-field behaviour.  Over the last year that's gone out the window, and now he has been caught cheating  along with some other team-mates and banned for 12 months.  So definitely not 'the Rev' now.  Much less a prophet. Still, I can't help noticing the resemblance with Moses, the Hebrew stolen generation kid who ended up leading his people out of their Egyptian slavery. There's a lot to Moses' story but you could see it as a spiritual journey in four phases.  In the first, he is oblivious to his true identity.  Not that he is necessarily ignorant of his Hebrew heritage, but he has grown up in a high-status Egyptian household and can confidently look forward to a career in the Egyptian hierarchy and a comfortable, successful life.   In the second phase, he is awakened to the...