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“This year’s campaign, with both major parties aware they may have lost at least a third of the electorate, is not conducive to big ideas.” Karen Barlow on gambling reform, climate change and the policies missing from the election.

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The Dutton camp seem to have missed the fact that pre-poll voting began on Tuesday, writes Paul Bongiorno. "It is simply mind boggling that they had not released their major policies before people began casting their ballots."

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Every year, Cinema Reborn brings a brief yet densely packed festival of recently restored movie treasures to Sydney and Melbourne. The festival always casts the net wide, introducing unexpected, overlooked or rediscovered gems. A case in point is Tokyo Pop...

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You can read in many places about the disproportionate representation of Aboriginal people in prisons in Australia. 'Blak In-Justice' will give you more than that: a visceral understanding, an emotional understanding and a powerful explanation.

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Editorial: The only talent Family First's Lyle Shelton has shown is for losing. He runs as a husband and a failure. The difference this time is Liberal preferences. Peter Dutton’s Coalition is listing Family First and One Nation at the top of its how-to-vote cards.

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"Autumn brings its own bounty of fruit and vegetables to my world." Annie Smithers shares a recipe that highlights seasonal fruits and how to make the best crispy-skinned duck.

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"There are obviously significant problems in arguing violence is inherent within Aboriginal culture. The first is that it truly doesn’t get more offensively eugenic than this. The second is that it offers no value to violence prevention efforts."

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“We will cooperate when we can, disagree when we must and engage in our national interest.” As Trump’s trade war rages on, the Australian government in caretaker is now describing the US in the same terms it uses for China.

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“We all have appointments with the past,” wrote W. G. Sebald. It’s a statement that’s at once casual and ominous, and could serve as a fitting epigraph for Kate Grenville, who has made a career of retrospective trips into Australia’s colonial history.

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"The likeliest result on May 3 will be a small majority for Labor, but it will almost certainly be the last victory for a hegemonic party." Barry Jones on an historic election.

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"Pa was in his 30s when he signed up. My grandmother was scared and furious. She had three little kids and they lived on a remote Aboriginal mission," writes Stan Grant. "'What has this country done for us?' she asked him. 'Because it is our country', he said."

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A huge draw for The Studio is its countless cameos, with a host of stars joyously depicting themselves in an unflattering light. Olivia Wilde plays herself as a self-important auteur and loveable Ron Howard is a vindictive prick who you don’t want to cross.

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Anthony Albanese says, “there’s more to do”, On gambling advertisements, welfare, and housing, he’s right – but refuses to say what or when. In a campaign where voters want vision, both major parties are falling short. Karen Barlow reports.

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A terrible part of the experience of pain is that it is profoundly interior, and, because of that interiority, communicating the truth of it relies as much on the good faith of the listener as it does the narrative and language capacity of the teller.

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"For an already jaded demographic of young voters, climate change isn’t a hypothetical, and broken promises will only drive us further away from traditional party politics," writes Grace Tame. "Older generations are no longer the dominant voice in the debate."

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Exclusive: As the Bureau of Meteorology struggles with budget blowouts and its $866 million computer upgrade, news emerges that it was considering charging researchers to access critical climate data.

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Mike Seccombe on Peter Dutton’s decision to preference One Nation after decades of principled distance between the parties. “All these years later, the Liberal Party has embraced the person who it once excommunicated.”

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Jason Koutsoukis follows the trusts and companies to reveal how much Peter Dutton and Angus Taylor are actually worth.

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The AEC reported that half a million people rushed to vote within the first 24 hours of the pre-polls opening. In the past this was a sign that Australians wanted to change the government. The published opinion polls suggest the exact opposite.

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“Cecil William Henry Grant was Black with a good streak of Irish,” writes Stan Grant of his grandfather. “The Dreaming and the blarney. He kept by his bedside the works of Shakespeare and the King James Bible. Cecil was a Rat of Tobruk.”

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"Artificial general intelligence is the most profound change we’ve faced, and our approach can’t be built on fear.” Author, and technology oracle Jeanette Winterson on forty years at the forefront of fiction and what she sees coming:

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Paul Bongiorno on the campaign’s final week: “A trifecta of unmissable interruptions has made Peter Dutton’s task of winning the election in just seven days’ time a seemingly impossible mission.”

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You could be forgiven for speculating that Dutton has done a Scott Morrison and appointed himself secretly to all portfolios – he has made all the so-called policy announcements in this election campaign himself, writes John Hewson.

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“My voice gave everything away," says Paul Capsis. "I didn’t know how to make people not look at me. As I got older, later in high school, I became more defiant. A lot of that was the courage I got from reading about Janis Joplin."

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History, our high-school teachers remind their students, is not the past. Rather, it is the study of the evidence – primarily written evidence – that remains of the past. As the availability of evidence and the focus of historians changes, so does history...

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“We are expected to believe that this extraordinary haziness on issues central to who should lead the country is somehow exciting and full of promise,” writes John Hewson “It isn’t. It’s simply nothing.”

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"On Anzac Day I stand in the darkness before dawn with my fellow Australians, and in that shared sacred space we do not glorify war but honour the sacrifice of those who believed some things are worth fighting for," writes Stan Grant.

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New fiction, by Molly Short: The screen door in the kitchen squeaks as Saoirse steps in. Water runs down her body and onto the boots. Someone is squeezing my heart. I stare at the boots with dread. Dad says to use “dread” about something bad about to happen.

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"If I was young now, I’d call myself a non-binary person," says Paul Capsis. "The truth of the matter is, that’s exactly what I am. But at my age, I’m personally tired of the titles. I want to get on with being in the world.”

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In 2019, then opposition leader Anthony Albanese said: “We don’t need a culture of secrecy. We need a culture of disclosure. Protect whistleblowers.” After three years in office, however, Labor has a mixed record on fixing Australia’s transparency crisis.

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“We are expected to believe that this extraordinary haziness on issues central to who should lead the country is somehow exciting and full of promise,” writes John Hewson “It isn’t. It’s simply nothing.”

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“For many weeks we’d talk about the book he was reading or about the Collingwood Football Club with which he seemed engaged in a volatile relationship of admiration and disgust. And then he told me about taking Samuel Beckett to a game of cricket.”

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“It astonishes me that the fervent opposition to American nuclear warships so prevalent in Fremantle and environs during the 1980s is so greatly diminished. Today it is limited to essentially online activity, or small-scale physical protest.”

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A review commissioned by the Liberal Party after the 2022 election found that a decline in support among women was a decisive factor in their loss. The report outlined ways the party might win women back. But three years on, that hasn’t happened.

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While headlines on the so-called tobacco wars focus on firebombings, extortion and gangland jealousies, skyrocketing government taxes on tobacco have long been fuelling the fire behind the scenes.

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“Even when I was young, I just felt like people didn’t have the right to try and make me feel bad about who I am, and I feel the same way now,” Paul Capsis says. “I’m very much like my mother now, I’m very outspoken. If you mess with me, I’ll confront you.”

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Jeanette Winterson has lived her writing life at the cutting edge. Her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, won the Whitbread Book Award for best first novel in 1985, making her the first woman to do so. She was 26 years old.

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Editorial: “I used to be a policeman a long time ago. You’ve got a get out of jail free card.” This is Dutton’s world view in nine words. It is the reason he has no policies. It’s not about what you can achieve but what you can get away with.

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"If I was young now, I’d call myself a non-binary person," says Paul Capsis. "The truth of the matter is, that’s exactly what I am. But at my age, I’m personally tired of the titles. I want to get on with being in the world.”

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A full parliamentary term after promising to end income control, the “suffocating” and “humiliating” policy continues for almost 30,000 people, Rick Morton reports.

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Peter Dutton’s 20-year-old son has said to the media that he is “saving like mad” for a house deposit. But it seems Dutton may have failed to anticipate the obvious follow-up question: would he help his son with a deposit?

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“One of the things that I've done in this campaign, unlike my opponent, is I do unscripted stuff.” An exclusive interview on Anthony Albanese’s plane:

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A full parliamentary term after promising to end income control, the “suffocating” and “humiliating” policy continues for almost 30,000 people, Rick Morton reports.

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"If neither old party wins a majority, the weeks after an election are the crossbenchers’ most powerful time in the whole period of government." Former Australian Greens leader Bob Brown on negotiating in a hung parliament.

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Despite a pledge to end "a culture of secrecy" and usher in "a culture of disclosure" before it took office, the Albanese government’s term will end with more secrecy provisions in federal law than ever before, writes Kieran Pender.

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Editorial: “I used to be a policeman a long time ago. You’ve got a get out of jail free card.” This is Dutton’s world view in nine words. It is the reason he has no policies. It’s not about what you can achieve but what you can get away with.

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Victoria's billion-dollar tobacco wars are an extravagant campaign of extortion, firebombing, murder and gangland jealousies. With rival gangs agitating for market dominance, countless mum and dad shops are subject to extortion rackets.

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“Long lists of accusatory questions drawing a long bow land at about 2pm almost every day, replete with quotes from Liberal senators, demanding a response within hours,” Simon Holmes à Court tells The Saturday Paper. “It’s such a transparent campaign strategy.”

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Labor's campaign launch was tightly and professionally put together, writes Paul Bongiorno. The Liberal launch was a lacklustre affair by contrast. One seasoned Liberal official described it as the “most uninspiring campaign” they had ever worked on.

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Bri Lee on Peter Dutton and the Coalition’s women problem:

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