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

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.

Polls are no substitute for leadership because, at its very essence, leadership is about giving people what they don't already have - a sense of vision, inspiration, or even an adequate grasp of a particular subject.

Universal literacy was a 20th-century goal. Before then, reading and writing were skills largely confined to a small, highly educated class of professional people.

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

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

The copycat effects of media violence, similar to those previously attributed to westerns, radio serials and comic books, are easy to exaggerate.