Articles by Mark Buckley

 George Pell’s funeral in Sydney showed clearly the divisions within the Australian community at large, the Catholic Church itself, and the conservative side of politics. It was held in Sydney in 2023, and it was […]

It doesn’t matter whether you are a Catholic or not. George Pell is a success story. From humble beginnings to a Prince of the Church. You don’t have to be steeped in Roman theology to […]

 We, both Canada and Australia, value our immigrants, because we actually know that immigration brings economic success, and cultural diversity. We are both involved in trying to reconcile with the native peoples from whom we […]

Do not cull your books – you will regret it I started to cull my books recently. As old age approaches I routinely decide that I need to gain more space, and to really get […]

 There is a definite turning point in the quality and the humanity of Australia’s care for the elderly. The Aged Care Bill 1997 (Cth) was introduced as part of the new Howard Government’s 1996 Budget […]

If we attempt to compare Aboriginal land use with those of the early settlers, we should broaden the meaning of ‘land use’. We should move away from the narrow European notion of agriculture and horticulture, […]

From the Editor Some articles are worth bringing back from the archives because they belong to their time. Others are worth bringing back because, rather uncomfortably, they don’t. This piece was originally published on The […]

We live in dangerous times Back in 2020 I wrote about the ‘3 amigos’, consisting of Trump in the US, Johnson in the UK, and Morrison in Australia. The three of them were destroying their […]

Wolf Hall is a work of historical fiction. It is meticulously researched, but Hilary Mantel has allowed herself ample space, in which she has thoroughly personalised the figure of Thomas Cromwell. Thomas Cromwell, not to […]

Terra Nullius means “Land belonging to no-one” in Latin Most of us in the West still believe that the Jews were always in Palestine, from biblical times, and thus had a right to reclaim their […]

A short history of Gaza’s destruction Just when we thought Israel’s genocide was the final straw in Palestine’s tragic story, Donald Trump again exposes his own, and Netanyahu’s, disregard for standards of humanity. We must […]

We all know what happened on October 7, 2023. Hamas launched a savage and sustained attack on Israel. It was deadly and it was an attack on mainly unarmed civilians. It was certainly a surprise, […]

One of my daughters, a wise young head, when describing certain individuals of less than stellar intelligence, uses the phrase “he (or she) will never be Prime Minister”. It is a curiously descriptive phrase, because it […]