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Inside Story | Current affairs and culture

• Politics & policy


• Victoria’s unexpected minority
• 03 September 2010

• In Victoria, Steve Bracks’s minority government transformed a knife-edge win into electoral longevity and parliamentary reform, write Brian Costar and David Hayward


• South Australia’s cabinet experiment
• 03 September 2010

• Minority government in South Australia produced a novel solution that challenged the way the Westminster system has worked in Australia, writes Norman Abjorensen


• Rob Oakeshott: Why I became an independent
• 25 August 2010

• In this interview with Terry Lane, first broadcast on ABC Radio National’s The National Interest in 2002, Rob Oakeshott discusses why he joined the Nationals, and why he left

• Essays & reportage


• Remembering refugees
• 20 August 2010

• The parties are making promises like there’s no tomorrow and policy like there’s no yesterday, writes Klaus Neumann


• Safe Labor? On the ground, Denison isn’t so straightforward
• 05 August 2010

• This Tasmanian seat might hold a surprise for Labor and the Coalition, wrote Natasha Cica during the campaign


• The rising tide of border security
• 28 July 2010

• Border security has complex effects, many of them unanticipated, some of them pernicious and potentially destabilising, and some of them irreversible, writes Peter Chambers

• Europe


• Labour’s leadership marathon reaches Manchester
• 11 August 2010

• Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd almost overnight. In Britain, writes Frank Bongiorno, the leadership transition is taking quite a lot longer


• Party patriotism
• 18 July 2010

• The World Cup is over, but it left a tentatively flag-waving Germany divided and unsettled, writes Daniel Nethery in Berlin


• Peace or ceasefire?
• 01 July 2010

• Is the thaw in relations between Poland and Russia sustainable? The Polish presidential election campaign and recent trends in Russian foreign policy highlight the key factors in play, writes John Besemeres

• Asia & the Pacific


• Thailand’s bad men and the challenges for Abhisit Vejjajiva
• 27 August 2010

• Thailand has dropped out of the headlines but the long-term struggle for political control continues, write Andrew Walker and Nicholas Farrelly


• Uneasy neighbours
• 19 August 2010

• A disputed border continues to fuel tension between China and India, but there are also good reasons for better relations, writes Louise Merrington


• The US reads the riot act to Pakistan
• 29 July 2010

• Will Pakistan continue its longstanding policy of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, asks Sandy Gordon

• Reviews


• Playing the game
• 18 August 2010

• CINEMA | Sylvia Lawson reviews The Ghost Writer and Animal Kingdom


• A close reading of North Korea
• 05 August 2010

• BOOKS | There’s something very different about North Korea. James Reilly reviews a partly successful attempt to understand why


• Arguing for peace
• 22 July 2010

• DOCUMENTARY | Sylvia Lawson reviews Hope in a Slingshot, which isn’t to be screened on the ABC

• The Americas


• Is it all over for climate change policy in the United States?
• 29 July 2010

• Not quite, writes Michael Jacobs. But the battle will be a tough one


• García’s Peru
• 21 July 2010

• Australia’s embassy is reopening in Lima because Peru’s internal conflict is considered to be over. But the impact of the violence lives on, writes Elizabeth Bryer


• Legacy on the line
• 20 July 2010

• Barack Obama’s policies are starting to fall into place. So why is his approval rating so low, asks Lesley Russell

• Media


• The copyright cops
• 15 July 2010

• When it comes to the prices they pay for copyrighted music, Australian consumers are being stung everywhere from the gym to the pub, writes Ben Eltham


• Nine-tenths of the law
• 03 June 2010

• Sydney’s media moguls took off the gloves on a winter’s night in 1960 – and the Packers lost, writes Rodney Tiffen

• From the archive


• Will Robin Hood ride again?
• 26 March 2010

• Pressure is growing for a small but potentially very effective global financial transactions tax. But where is Australia in the debate, asks Ross Buckley


• We aren’t refugees
• 30 June 2009

• For people on Kiribati and Tuvalu facing increasing climate pressures, the description “refugee” has too many negative connotations, write Jane McAdam and Maryanne Loughry

• Podcasts


• “If you can reach that point of almost nonchalance in playing, that’s a different level of creativity again”
• 30 June 2010

• John Bell talks to Peter Clarke about acting, King Lear and the Bell Shakespeare Company


• Digging up a scandal
• 18 June 2010

• The story of how two journalists unearthed the Securency scandal shows what would be lost if newspapers stop funding investigative journalism. They talked to Peter Clarke

• Africa & the Middle East


• Gaza: symbol and flashpoint
• 10 June 2010

• Can the Obama administration, bogged down in Afghanistan, rise to the challenge, asks Sumantra Bose


• A taste of democracy on the Nile
• 06 May 2010

• Amid preparations for Sudan’s controversial election last month, Xan Rice met a Sudanese man from Sydney who was looking well beyond election day

• The economy


• Reclaiming our financial sectors
• 22 June 2010

• The Australian government should swing its support behind the growing international campaign for a banking levy, writes Ross Buckley, and then it should join the push for a financial transactions tax


• Euclidean economics
• 16 March 2010

• Kelvin Rowley profiles the leading figure in postwar economics, Paul Samuelson