menu_open Columnists

The Sydney Morning Herald

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

The childcare crackdown is welcome, but this is no time for a victory lap

If 2025 was the year the childcare sector faced a reckoning, then 2026 should be a year of action. A litany of failures and a lack of transparency...

latest 6

The Sydney Morning Herald

The Herald&x27S View

Voters thought Albanese was weak on Bondi. Now he risks being seen as tricky

Anthony Albanese’s plan to brazen out calls for a royal commission into antisemitism in the wake of the Bondi terrorist attack was always flawed....

latest 6

The Sydney Morning Herald

Parnell Palme Mcguinness

Greenlanders tell ‘absolutely insane’ Trump what they really think

Nuuk: The people of Greenland have a simple message for Donald Trump: no deal. On the streets of their capital, Greenlanders dismiss the US...

latest 6

The Sydney Morning Herald

David Crowe

We have $1.2m in super. Should we try to qualify for the age pension?

My wife and I disagree about whether we should adjust our assets to qualify for a part age pension. I’m 67 and still working full-time on a good...

latest 7

The Sydney Morning Herald

Paul Benson

Flowers in the gutter. The father is not alone

I am picking up sodden scraps of decomposing plastic, from a gutter, by the side of the road. It is the middle of the day, hot now, and I still...

latest 6

The Sydney Morning Herald

Alexandra Sangster

Starc, Head and Carey were outstanding, but they weren’t why Australia hammered England

The problem with my Best Combined XI from the 2025-26 Ashes is that it only has VI players in it. Travis Head opens the batting, and then we have...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Malcolm Knox

The official temperature was 42 degrees – but western Sydney felt as hot as 55 degrees

If you didn’t know otherwise, you might think Box Hill was abandoned. Not a single person was sighted in the north-west Sydney suburb on Saturday...

yesterday 30

The Sydney Morning Herald

Anthony Segaert

The inside story of the booze-fuelled Ashes tour that divided Stokes and McCullum

The morning after England’s sucker-punch of an opening Ashes defeat in Perth, Brydon Carse was sitting at a riverside cafe with his teammates Zak...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Nick Hoult

Brendon McCullum’s latest absurd claim should spell the end of his tenure

An alarming sign of Brendon McCullum’s attitude to coaching England came on the Adelaide outfield, where, with Australian players uncorking the...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Oliver Brown

My love letter to ye olde postie … Will he mind if I email it?

In a world first, a seal has broken on one of the pillars of public life. Denmark’s PostNord, the Danish equivalent of Australia Post, has ceased...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Jo Pybus

The 7 things I’ll never do again: my reverse-bucket list

Now that I’ve reached middle age, when the time I have left to me is dwarfed by the time I’ve squandered in unproductive activities like having a...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Margot Saville

As a stubborn PM dug in, one Jewish leader had his ear

After 15 innocent people were gunned down at Bondi Beach on a Sunday afternoon, a Hebrew word came to Peter Wertheim’s mind: teshuvah. Often...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Matthew Knott

This $30bn investment is a form of gambling. But young buyers love it

There are plenty of unusual things people buy with the expectation that they will be able to sell them for more in the future. Among these “...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Millie Muroi

Six surprising habits only the happiest retirees get right

Ask anyone in their 50s or 60s how they picture their retirement, and you’ll usually get a vague image of “more freedom”, definitely “more travel”,...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Bec Wilson

Three strategies to put $500 back in your pocket every month

They say the average New Year’s resolution lasts 11 days – and guess what? It’s January 10. So it’s just about time to forget any vague overhaul...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Nicole Pedersen-Mckinnon

The new world disorder where might is right

Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. The security of the old world order is being blasted away with every airstrike to...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

David Crowe

Albanese has acted at last but attacking commissioner is Trumpian

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s decision to call a royal commission into the Bondi Beach shootings is a belated recognition of the community’s...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

The Herald&x27S View

When it comes to violence against protesters, this administration has a track record of lies

Washington: The more you watch the chilling video of an ICE officer shooting Renee Nicole Good dead in Minneapolis, the more you can’t help but...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Michael Koziol

The Lachie Neale saga and the one big question

Former AFL WAG Amie Rohan was on my radar at the gym weeks before we spoke. I clocked how one minute she’d be deadlifting hilariously heavy bars,...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Kate Halfpenny

From a ‘seaming viper’ that got Travis Head, to the MCG’s two-day stinker: The best and worst of these Ashes

It was hardly a vintage Ashes series, but there was still much to celebrate – and plenty to poke fun at – over the past six weeks. Here’s our...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Daniel Brettig

If Tony Abbott is welcome at Adelaide Writers’ Week, Randa Abdel-Fattah should be too

“Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression,” wrote the great Jewish-American writer Saul Bellow, “if you hold down one...

previous day 30

The Sydney Morning Herald

Richard Flanagan

With the Ashes secured, now it’s time to start regenerating this Australian side

If building a winning cricket team were simply a matter of examining statistics, we could give the job to a computer and let algorithms dictate the...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Greg Chappell

Politicians shouldn’t decide who appears at writers’ festivals. It’s a dangerous path

“Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression,” wrote the great Jewish-American writer Saul Bellow, “if you hold down one...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Richard Flanagan

My dream share house turned into a bucket-filled nightmare. It wasn’t a leak

It was 1999 and it wasn’t just the ’90s that were coming to an end. My uni friends were leaving campus life, cutting their hair and moving into the...

previous day 5

The Sydney Morning Herald

Damien Nowicki

Albanese has lost face and given ground. Ley should follow suit

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s decision to call a royal commission after the Bondi attack is a huge concession to cap a politically damaging...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Natassia Chrysanthos

Trump has pulled the US into a joint venture with a leftist kleptocracy

Russia and China are the net beneficiaries of Donald Trump’s gunboat plunder of Venezuela and the insouciant betrayal of the country’s democratic...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Four things you can do without to make 2026 less stressful

There’s a strange comfort in adding things. We add goals, habits, productivity hacks, subscriptions, responsibilities and expectations, hoping that...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Donna Mcgeorge

To make sense of the Venezuela attack, look to the hotter heads around Trump

What exactly is this? It’s not regime change because, having unleashed a military raid to snatch Venezuela’s president from his bed, US President...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Waleed Aly

Has Rachel Ward ‘let herself go’? No, she just looks her real age

We like to tell ourselves that we’ve evolved when it comes to ageing. That we’re more enlightened. Kinder. More accepting. Rachel Ward, in a still...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Melissa Hoyer

England will not change until this arrogant regime is dismissed

England’s three wise men turned out to be the Three Stooges. Brendon McCullum, Rob Key and Ben Stokes sold a lie for three years. McCullum and Key...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Geoffrey Boycott

I don’t want a reference from my terrible boss. What do I tell hirers?

I recently left my job after my team leader went out of their way to sabotage my career by not including me in important meetings with clients,...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Jonathan Rivett

Working from home this summer? Avoid these five common traps

There’s something uniquely Australian about trying to finish a report while watching the ocean through a holiday rental window. January arrives,...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Roxanne Calder

The sacred relics of the beach holiday (feat. Kellogg’s Variety Packs)

The British Museum once held an exhibition called A History of the World in 100 Objects . The idea was that these objects – sometimes humble,...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Richard Glover

Thinking of quitting your job? You might regret it by February

It’s time to get back to work. It might be this week, next Monday, or even in a few weeks as the kids head back to school, but there comes a time...

thursday 20

The Sydney Morning Herald

Tim Duggan

A heartfelt farewell to end one of the most meaningful careers in Australian cricket

Bowled through the gate by off-spin, a form of bowling about which he has been brutally sceptical, Steve Smith shook himself out of his bubble of...

thursday 20

The Sydney Morning Herald

Malcolm Knox

England never recovered from Perth, and neither did this Ashes series

With a cover drive to the fence and a clenched fist of celebration in the middle of the SCG, Alex Carey brought the 2025-26 Ashes series to a close...

thursday 20

The Sydney Morning Herald

Daniel Brettig

The Ashes fifth Test day four recap: The cold facts behind Boland’s 282-ball bid for revenge

For four years, not at all unreasonably and surprisingly successfully, England and Joe Root effectively put a big red bullseye on Scott Boland....

thursday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Dan Walsh

The new TVs vying for your living room (and wallet) in 2026

Las Vegas, Nevada: Every year, TV manufacturers promise revolutionary picture quality. Usually, it’s marketing speak, but this year at the Consumer...

thursday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

David Swan

Two wildly varied reports of the same incident reflect the two Americas of our time

Washington: Twelve months of escalating tensions on the streets of various US cities have now led to a sad, predictable result: an American citizen...

thursday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Michael Koziol

Ashes player ratings: The stars, standouts and those with reputations in tatters

Even allowing for a nervous day five run-chase in Sydney, Australia’s dominance of the Ashes was emphatic. Here’s how every player on both sides...

thursday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Andrew Wu

I know how to lower road deaths, but politicians aren’t listening

We have just endured another year of rising road fatalities. NSW recorded its deadliest year since 2017, with 355 lives lost in 2025 – up sharply...

thursday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Raphael Grzebieta

Keeping money from your partner? Why you could be onto a good thing 

There are some secrets that should never be divulged to any human being other than your bank manager. How much you fork out on hairdressing, for...

thursday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Rowan Pelling

Loyalty over common sense: Stokes’ decision-making contributed to England’s woe

Ben Stokes must sometimes feel like a modern Atlas, the man condemned to hold up the sky for eternity. So oppressive is the burden of propping up...

thursday 1

The Sydney Morning Herald

Oliver Brown

A paean to the Sydney Cricket Ground Test

Beneath beautiful clear blue summer skies, the Sydney Cricket Ground looked the perfect venue for the New Year’s Test as the final act of the Ashes...

thursday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

The Herald&x27S View

Albanese finally met the mood. If only he’d done so weeks ago

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was emphatic about one thing as he stood in his courtyard on Thursday afternoon to announce a major reversal in his...

thursday 7

The Sydney Morning Herald

Natassia Chrysanthos

This new Netflix show is righteously unhinged and clever with its dumbness

Intermittently in this murder-mystery, Tessa Thompson’s Anna Andrews delivers solemn, narration. “The most dangerous thing we do is lie to others,”...

thursday 7

The Sydney Morning Herald

Craig Mathieson

Anti-Zionism does not have an issue with what Israel does but its very existence

Last weekend, I was in Sydney for a 48-hour visit, three weeks after the massacre at Bondi. My son and I went to the beach. Bondi is not merely...

thursday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Tammy Reznik

ScoMo’s China blues comes back to bite our beef sector

Australian beef producers like billionaire Gina Rinehart should not have taken it personally when China wrecked their New Year’s Eve parties with...

thursday 2

The Sydney Morning Herald

Colin Kruger

The mood on Iran’s streets seems to be desperation rather than hope

“I hope all of us in the streets can remove this evil, lying and criminal regime from the cycle of politics and decision-making forever. May the...

thursday 1

The Sydney Morning Herald

Kylie Moore-Gilbert

The tab for MPs living away from home in their own homes

Less than a month after the controversy over travel entitlements for families of parliamentarians exposed the threadbare political sense of many...

thursday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

The Herald&x27S View