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Editor's note
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For Australian art lovers, there is perhaps no better time of year than the summer. The collision of the weather and the art define the beginning of my year: the large scale outdoor events; the cool galleries to escape into; the long nights drinking and laughing outside theatres.
Three of Australia’s biggest (and best funded) multi-arts festivals have released their 2020 programs, and, as Caroline Wake writes, these programs tell very different stories about what the artistic directors think a festival should be. Sydney and Perth are both focusing on First Nations artists, new work, and local communities; Adelaide Festival is focusing on European imports.
Caroline asks intriguing questions: what can festivals do? Who are they for? And what is the place of these festivals in Australia today? There aren’t necessarily easy answers to these questions – but I’ll certainly be holding them in mind when I am picking what shows I will be seeing this summer.
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Jane Howard
Deputy Section Editor: Arts + Culture
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Top story
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Wesley Enoch’s Sydney Festival has placed First Nations people and artists at its heart.
Victor Frankowski/Sydney Festival
Caroline Wake, UNSW
Australia's three major summer festivals in Sydney, Perth and Adelaide give an interesting insight into how festival programming is changing – or not.
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“[The Westpac scandal] comes at a bad time for the government which has legislation before parliament to crack down on union behaviour that goes off the rails, and here you have business behaviour being even worse,” says Michelle Grattan.
Joel Carrett/AAP
Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra
University of Canberra VC Deep Saini and Michelle Grattan discuss this week in politics, and talk about what to expect in the last parliamentary sitting fortnight, which starts this Monday.
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Science + Technology
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Simon Lilburn, University of Melbourne; Philip Smith, University of Melbourne
Do you ever find you suddenly need to turn off the radio so you can concentrate on what you're doing? It's because you only have a finite amount of attention, for particular types of tasks at least.
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David Cook, Edith Cowan University
Twitter's proposed policy would result in the prolific spread of fabricated, but highly realistic images and videos. This could allow widespread misinformation on the platform.
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Politics + Society
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Keith Parry, University of Winchester; Eric Anderson, University of Winchester; Matthew Smith, University of Winchester
Rising Australian cricket star Will Pucovski is one of a recent trio of professional cricketers to take a break from playing to boost their mental well-being.
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Peter McPhee, University of Melbourne
People get angry far more often than they rebel. And rebellions rarely become revolutions. An expert on the French Revolution explains why today's protest movements are different.
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Cities
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Martin Loosemore, University of Technology Sydney; Bill Randolph, UNSW; Caitlin Buckle, UNSW; Hazel Easthope, UNSW; Laura Crommelin, UNSW
The difficulty of finding out about building defects creates an information deficit that threatens public confidence and stability in the apartment market. NSW has begun work on a solution.
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Malini Sur, Western Sydney University; Eric Kerr, National University of Singapore
The haze now engulfing Sydney isn't an isolated problem. Cities around the world struggle to manage the many sources of tiny airborne particles and the discomfort and illnesses these cause.
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Health + Medicine
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Brendon Hyndman, Charles Sturt University
A global report looking at physical activity among 11-17 year olds has found 89% of young Australians don't get enough physical activity. This puts us towards the very bottom of the pile.
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Helen Dickinson, UNSW
The government has announced several 'practical changes' to the NDIS. While these edge the scheme in the right direction, some impracticalities continue to underpin it.
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Arts + Culture
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Gay Hawkins, Western Sydney University; Ben Dibley, Western Sydney University
When the ABC began screening local wildlife television, it helped create a new environmental nationalism, implicating audiences in the survival of Australian animals.
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Camilla Nelson, University of Notre Dame Australia
Henry James called her a 'great, horse-faced bluestocking'. On the 200th anniversary of her birth, we celebrate George Eliot, a literary trailblazer with an endless appetite for ideas, living in a patriarchal time.
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Education
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Larissa McLean Davies, University of Melbourne
We compiled a list of the 15 most commonly cited books taught by English teachers we surveyed. It contains only two Australian writers, neither of which are Indigenous.
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Hilary Hollingsworth, Australian Council for Educational Research; Jonathan Heard, Australian Council for Educational Research
A new report out today shows parents are generally unsatisfied with the way reports cards communicate students' progress.
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Business + Economy
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Rodrigo Olivares-Caminal, Queen Mary University of London
A toxic mix of ugly politics and structural economic problems is threatening to tip debt over the edge.
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John Quiggin, The University of Queensland
From wage growth to renewable energy to religion, projections are being treated as predictions. We'd be better off insisting on genuine forecasts.
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Environment + Energy
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Giovanni Di Virgilio, UNSW; Andrew Dowdy, Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Jason Evans, UNSW; Jason Sharples, UNSW; Rick McRae, ACT Emergency Services Agency
Extreme fire risk will overlap with weather patterns to create fire tornadoes more often under climate change.
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Peter Christoff, University of Melbourne
In the same decade we are supposed to be cutting emissions under the Paris goals, our coal production is projected to increase by 34%.
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Featured jobs
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La Trobe University — Bundoora, Victoria
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University of Melbourne — Parkville, Victoria
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RMIT University — Melbourne, Victoria
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National Tertiary Education Union — South Melbourne, Victoria
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Featured events
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In store at Avid Reader Bookshop, 193 Boundary St, West End , Queensland, 4101, Australia — The Conversation
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Swanston Academic Building (Building 80), RMIT University, 445 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000, Australia — RMIT University
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RMIT University, The Green Brain, Building 22, Level 7, 330 Swanston Street Melbourne, VIC 3000, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000, Australia — RMIT University
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270 Joondalup Drive, Joondalup, Perth, Western Australia, 6027, Australia — Edith Cowan University
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