Actually, I can't imagine anything more tedious than a perfect person, especially if it was someone who also demanded perfection from me.

The thing we need most is each other.

With increasing frequency and growing vehemence, you hear people saying they are ashamed to be Australians.

But the rule seems to be that the bigger and more life-changing the decision, the less it will seem like a decision at all.

It's Australian to do such things because, however uncivilised they may seem, it's human to do them.

Yet in our enthusiasm for the idea that everyone should be able to read and write fluently, we may be missing a crucial point: in today's culture, finely honed literacy skills are simply not as important as they once were.

A strangely reflective, even melancholy day. Is that because, unlike our cousins in the northern hemisphere, Easter is not associated with the energy and vitality of spring but with the more subdued spirit of autumn.