menu_open Columnists

The Sydney Morning Herald

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Australians can’t stand sore losers. How did politicians miss the memo?

The growing complaint about the historic May 3 election isn’t only that our voting system is busted. To some, it represents a full-blown conspiracy.

latest 20

The Sydney Morning Herald

Shane Wright

Working less could be the answer to one of our biggest problems

If you feel like you’re struggling to be more productive, you might be right. But it’s probably also not your fault.

latest 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Millie Muroi

Was I wrong to ignore a pushy LinkedIn salesperson?

What this salesperson tried was a pretty common tactic. And you were well within your rights to do more than just ignore them.

latest 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Jonathan Rivett

Exhausted at work? This could be just the thing you need

Asking your boss to take extended leave without pay can be nerve-wracking. But that doesn’t mean you should avoid it.

latest 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Nina Hendy

Writers, I’m on your side - now here’s my list of complaints

Even as a forgiving reader, I have my quibbles.

latest 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Richard Glover

When the party machine wouldn’t listen, Sussan Ley paid attention, to me

My electorate told me that the Liberals’ working-from-home policy was a dud. Sussan was the only one who cared.

latest 2

The Sydney Morning Herald

Lucy Wicks

The Coalition break-up isn’t a divorce. They’re just sleeping in different bedrooms

Ley and Littleproud should note, a trial separation needs to be done right. Otherwise, you’re dragging around unresolved mess.

latest 4

The Sydney Morning Herald

Kate Halfpenny

Why silent Latrell Mitchell is still league’s loudest voice

The NSW and Rabbitohs star is catnip to modern media as he continues to wrestle with his place in rugby league.

latest 2

The Sydney Morning Herald

Dan Walsh

Why clean athletes will never be allowed to compete in the doping games

There is a reason doping is banned in organised sport. These Enhanced Games won’t end well.

latest 7

The Sydney Morning Herald

Darren Kane

This man designed the iPhone – now he’s trying to destroy it

While Steve Jobs was the visionary leader and inventor of the iPhone, Jony Ive was the person who made it sought after. Now he’s trying to take it...

latest 1

The Sydney Morning Herald

Matthew Field

Forget WFH, the future of work has a more pressing issue

If we want our work to feel like it means something, we’ll need to be extremely careful about the growing use of artificial intelligence.

latest 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Catherine Woo

Denial is hard to grasp in the city. In flooded Taree, it’s bewildering

The people most affected by natural disasters in Australia are represented by the people who are most likely to deny that human activity has...

latest 20

The Sydney Morning Herald

Malcolm Knox

Opera Australia’s in dire trouble. As a former CEO, I think I know why

There is no natural right to existence for a publicly subsidised company such as ours, so it must dig deep and identify exactly who and what it is...

latest 2

The Sydney Morning Herald

Craig Hassall

Shein and Temu are in the world’s crosshairs

Tariff walls are going up around the world to try to head off an anticipated surge of low-value Chinese exports seeking to offset the impact of...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Stephen Bartholomeusz

Australia’s inconvenient truth: Are we really in mortgage stress?

The prevailing narrative about high interest rates being a major culprit in the cost-of-living crisis is no longer passing muster – if anything,...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Elizabeth Knight

Trump gets a flying palace. Keating was doomed to a jalopy in the sky

It’s unwise to get between a political leader and a VIP jet. I discovered this long before the US scammer-in-chief, Donald Trump, began making...

yesterday 9

The Sydney Morning Herald

Tony Wright

Our etiquette rules need a makeover. Here’s what I’d do

Excuse me for interrupting, but may I have a moment of your precious time? Do you find that to be a well-mannered introduction or just annoying and...

yesterday 30

The Sydney Morning Herald

Kathy Lette

The Coalition believed it was Australia’s anointed leader - now it has no plan B

“Impasse” is among the multitude of French words that English speakers over the centuries have borrowed and repurposed. In English, impasse means a...

yesterday 20

The Sydney Morning Herald

Shaun Carney

Idiom or idiot? Google’s AI Overview is trying its best

Fine words butter no parsnips. A ludicrous phrase, though it’s true. Or real at least, listed in the Oxford and elsewhere. Maybe you’ve met the...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

David Astle

Boomers may dislike WFH, but they’re not the ones in the office

How old are you? Your answer has a surprisingly strong correlation to how you feel about one of the most vexing issues of modern workplaces: the...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Tim Duggan

My bad job interview went viral on LinkedIn, but I still don’t have a job

I recently interviewed for a job, and got rejected within the same week. Honestly, I was gutted. Partially because I thought I had kind of smashed...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Liam Heitmann-Ryce-Lemercier

I was stunned when NSW picked Max King. But he could be an Origin match-winner

To say that I was surprised by Max King’s selection for his Origin debut is an understatement. I was nothing short of shocked. But the more I...

yesterday 9

The Sydney Morning Herald

Andrew Johns

Enhanced Games; trashed reputation. A pox on your house, James Magnussen

Look, when it comes to sporting disgraces, you’re right: the pickings are singularly rich right now – and I don’t just mean LIV golf, organised and...

yesterday 20

The Sydney Morning Herald

Peter Fitzsimons

With the Coalition in disarray, Albanese’s on a collision course with the ‘real’ opposition

A friendly interview over a couple of beers turned into a social media success for Anthony Albanese when the prime minister walked into a pub...

yesterday 30

The Sydney Morning Herald

David Crowe

The NSW Mid North Coast floods are another warning things must change

We need rain. Rain’s coming. The heat’s coming. A change is on the way … Weather is the universal subject of the Australian bush. It welcomes,...

yesterday 4

The Sydney Morning Herald

The Herald&x27S View

‘No more questions’: Trump’s meltdown betrays sensitivity on Qatar’s ‘Air Force One’ gift

Washington: There is nothing unusual about Donald Trump snapping at a journalist. On Tuesday, Washington time, on Capitol Hill, he demanded to know...

yesterday 30

The Sydney Morning Herald

Michael Koziol

Biden was empath-in-chief. Can a divided country offer him empathy?

When former US president Joe Biden acknowledged his cancer diagnosis in a statement on social media, he included a photograph with his wife, Jill....

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Robin Givhan

Ange delivered like he always does. Spurs would be mad to sack him now

The cure for Spursiness has been administered. Finally. For the past two years, the patient has been in the chair, strapped in, squirming,...

yesterday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Vince Rugari

Musk turns away from Trump in bid to rescue Tesla

Having created havoc in Washington and turned Tesla into a toxic brand around the world, Elon Musk is now retreating from politics and has...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Stephen Bartholomeusz

We talk a big game on electric cars, but Australia is stuck in reverse

For all the robust enthusiasm, dinner party discussions, public policy debate and focus on climate change, Australians are embarrassingly behind...

previous day 8

The Sydney Morning Herald

Elizabeth Knight

Is it OK to want your team to lose? A Manchester United fan hopes for a Spurs victory

Right now, it feels like no one really understands me, except Natalie Imbruglia. Tomorrow morning, Manchester United, a team I have followed since...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Thomas Mitchell

Trump has sent bitcoin soaring. Is it the right time to invest?

Bitcoin is back in a big way. After a pretty miserable start to the year, the world’s most well-known digital asset has staged a sharp rebound. In...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Justin Lin

Donald Trump – a bigger problem than COVID and the GFC combined

By the Reserve Bank’s own words, Donald Trump is more of a threat to the global and domestic economy than the COVID pandemic and the global...

previous day 20

The Sydney Morning Herald

Shane Wright

Division is death and a dead Coalition can never win government

As the Liberal Party struggles to put its house in order following the May 3 election rout, junior is playing hard ball. The National Party’s...

previous day 4

The Sydney Morning Herald

The Herald&x27S View

Trump is washing his hands of the Ukraine problem, without quite saying it

John Herbst, a former US ambassador to Ukraine, says the summation of Donald Trump’s phone call with Vladimir Putin is simple: “Trump blinked.”...

previous day 5

The Sydney Morning Herald

Michael Koziol

Good food, good craic as bestselling author Marian Keyes gets real

Like most famous people, bestselling author Marian Keyes seems much smaller in the flesh, with a mane of jet-black hair and a flawless porcelain...

previous day 5

The Sydney Morning Herald

Margot Saville

‘I’m not a clown, mate’: Why winning the Europa League would be Postecoglou’s biggest achievement

Tottenham Hotspur’s season has existed in what Ange Postecoglou has described as two “parallel worlds”. Domestically, they’ve been atrocious,...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Vince Rugari

The battle for the soul of conservative Australia may have just begun

In the 1974 Queensland state election, the Bjelke-Petersen Country-Liberal coalition was re-elected in a landslide off the back of Gough Whitlam’s...

previous day 3

The Sydney Morning Herald

George Brandis

Sleepless nights, awkward texts and cheap shots. This is the psychological warfare of the ‘revenge game’

I can still remember both nights clearly – they were sleepless. The two nights before playing against the Bulldogs and then the Demons, both former...

previous day 4

The Sydney Morning Herald

Libby Birch

What the Cannes ‘nude dress’ ban really reveals

The 78th Cannes Film Festival’s sudden and last-minute ban on “nude” dresses isn’t about taste or tradition, it’s politically motivated and about...

previous day 2

The Sydney Morning Herald

Adam Geczy

Can I withdraw from my super to avoid the proposed $3m tax?

I’m confused about the proposed 15 per cent tax on unrealised gains in super for balances over $3 million per member. Given Labor’s strong election...

previous day 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Noel Whittaker

After 50 years, we’re back to the glory days of full employment

I promise I’ll stop talking about the surprising election result if you let me make one last point. There was a hidden factor that helps explain...

previous day 20

The Sydney Morning Herald

Ross Gittins

‘Unaffordable’: Why aged care costs are about to skyrocket

Australians in or facing retirement are in for a nasty surprise when it comes to the new cost of aged care being rolled out from July 1. Beyond the...

previous day 20

The Sydney Morning Herald

Rachel Lane

The Nationals were once feared. Now they merely stamp their feet

There was a time when the hard men of the Nationals – it was always men – struck mortal fear into Liberal leaders. They got their own way because...

previous day 2

The Sydney Morning Herald

Tony Wright

It’s a $US450 billion industry, and Australia is in prime position to become a player

On the same day last week, two important international news stories illuminated a coincidence of risk and opportunity for Australia. First, Reuters...

tuesday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

Peter Hartcher

God help those still working in nation’s construction sector

If this is what state and federal Labor’s clean-up of the nation’s construction sector looks like, God help those still working in it. It’s bad...

tuesday 2

The Sydney Morning Herald

Nick Mckenzie

If we want to be a more productive nation, we would do well to follow the British example

If you’ve ever wondered why Australians live more comfortably now than we did 50 years ago, you’ve pondered the history of “productivity”....

tuesday 5

The Sydney Morning Herald

Bran Black

Investors are chilled now, but Trump’s tariffs and debt will test them

The reaction of financial markets to Moody’s downgrade of America’s credit rating was instructive. There was an initial tremor, and then a...

tuesday 5

The Sydney Morning Herald

Stephen Bartholomeusz

There is something strange afoot at Australia’s biggest bank, and experts are stumped

In February last year, something looked weird about the skyrocketing Commonwealth Bank stock price. At $115 a share, its price had risen well above...

tuesday 6

The Sydney Morning Herald

Elizabeth Knight

Biden’s cancer diagnosis reminds us of his true achievements

The announcement by former US president Joe Biden that he has aggressive prostate cancer is the bitterest of ironies. The political leader who...

tuesday 10

The Sydney Morning Herald

The Herald&x27S View