Quarterly Essay is an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n periodical that straddles the border between magazines and non-fiction book

Book

A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...

s. Printed in a book-like page size and using a single-column format, each issue features a single extended essay of at least 20,000 words, with an introduction by the editor, and correspondence relating to essays in previous issues. It was founded in 2001.

Concentrating primarily on Australian politics in a broad sense, the magazine's issues have covered topics including profiles of Mark Latham

Mark Latham

Mark William Latham , an author and former Australian politician, was leader of the Federal Parliamentary Australian Labor Party and Leader of the Opposition from December 2003 to January 2005....

, to the U.S. military's failure to grasp the importance of tribal affiliation in Iraq, and the "cult" of the CEO.
Its small circulation of a few thousand copies belies the impact it has had, with many ideas in a number of essays impacting the wider public debates on those issues through their repetition in more widely circulated media.

Founding editor Peter Craven was sacked by the magazine's owner, property developer Morry Schwartz, in early 2004 over a dispute about the joint authorship of one essay, and, more widely, the magazine's future direction. Schwartz stated that while he had a vision of the magazine as more "political and Australian" whereas Craven was perhaps "more broad and internationalist".

List of Quarterly Essay editions

1. Robert Manne

Robert Manne

Robert Manne is a professor of politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.Born in Melbourne, Manne's earliest political consciousness was formed by the fact that his parents were Jewish refugees from Europe and his grandparents were victims of the Holocaust...

 - "In Denial - The Stolen Generations and the Right"

2. John Birmingham

John Birmingham

John Birmingham is an Australian author. Birmingham was born in Liverpool, England and migrated to Australia with his parents in 1970.-Early life and career:...

 - "Appeasing Jakarta: Australia's complicity in the East Timor

East Timor

The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, commonly known as East Timor , is a state in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island, within Indonesian West Timor...

 tragedy"

3. Guy Rundle - "The opportunist: John Howard

John Howard

John Winston Howard AC, SSI, was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. He was the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister after Sir Robert Menzies....

 and the rise of reaction"

4. Don Watson

Don Watson

Don Watson is an Australian author and public speaker.-Biography:Watson grew up on a farm in Gippsland, took his undergraduate degree at La Trobe University and a Ph.D at Monash University and was for ten years an academic historian. He wrote three books on Australian history before turning his...

 - "Rabbit syndrome: Australia and America"

5. Mungo MacCallum

Mungo Wentworth MacCallum

Mungo Wentworth MacCallum is an Australian political journalist and commentator.He is the son of Mungo Ballardie MacCallum , and Diana Wentworth a great granddaughter of the Australian explorer and politician William Charles Wentworth...

 - "Girt by sea: Australia, the refugee

Refugee

A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...

s and the politics of fear"

6. John Button

John Button

John Norman Button was an Australian politician, who served as a senior minister in the Hawke and Keating Labor governments...

 - "Beyond belief: what future for Labor

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

?"

7. John Martinkus

John Martinkus

John Martinkus is a print and television journalist renowned in his native Australia for his courageous reporting from conflict zones.He began reporting from Indonesian occupied East Timor in 1995 and set up base there permanently in 1998...

 - "Paradise Betrayed - West Papua's Struggle for Independence"

8. Amanda Lohrey

Amanda Lohrey

Amanda Francis Lillian Lohrey, , in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia) is a writer, and novelist. She completed her education at the University of Tasmania before taking up a scholarship at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. From 1988 to 1994 she lectured in writing and textual studies at the...

 - "Groundswell - The Rise of the Greens"

9. Tim Flannery

Tim Flannery

Timothy Fridtjof Flannery is an Australian mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist and global warming activist....

 - "Beautiful Lies - Population & Environment in Australia"

• Review - by Sue Bond, API Network

10. Gideon Haigh

Gideon Haigh

Gideon Clifford Jeffrey Davidson Haigh is an English-born Australian journalist, who writes about sport and business. He was born in London of a Yorkshire father and an Australian mother, and was raised in Geelong, Victoria.- Career :Haigh has been writing about sport and business for over...

 - "Bad Company - The cult of the CEO"

11. Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....

 - "Whitefella Jump Up - The Shortest Way to Nationhood"

• Interview with ABC
  Australian Broadcasting Corporation
  The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
  
   TV presenter Andrew Denton
  Andrew Denton
  Andrew Christopher Denton is an Australian television producer, comedian, Gold Logie-nominated television presenter and former radio host, and was the host of the ABC's weekly television interview program Enough Rope. He is known for his comedy and interviewing technique...
  
  
• Review - by Mitchell Rolls, API Network

12. David Malouf

David Malouf

David George Joseph Malouf is an acclaimed Australian writer. He was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2000, his 1993 novel Remembering Babylon won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, he won the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award in 2008, and he was...

 - "Made in England - Australia's British Inheritance"

13. Robert Manne

Robert Manne

Robert Manne is a professor of politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.Born in Melbourne, Manne's earliest political consciousness was formed by the fact that his parents were Jewish refugees from Europe and his grandparents were victims of the Holocaust...

 with David Corlett - "Sending Them Home - Refugees and the New Politics of Indifference."

14. Paul McGeough

Paul McGeough

Paul McGeough is an Irish Australian journalist and senior foreign correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald, specialising in Middle Eastern affairs....

 - "Mission Impossible - The Sheikhs, the US and the future of Iraq"

15. Margaret Simons

Margaret Simons

Margaret Simons is an Australian academic, freelance journalist and author. She is currently the media commentator for Crikey and has written ten books.-Career:...

 - "Latham's World - The New Politics of the Outsiders"

16. Raimond Gaita

Raimond Gaita

Raimond Gaita was until 2011 Foundation Professor of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University and Professor of Moral Philosophy at King's College London...

 - "Breach of Trust - Truth, Morality and Politics"

• Review - Quarterly Essay 16: Matilda by larrikin

17. John Hirst

John Hirst (historian)

John Hirst is an emeritus professor of history at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.-Books:*Australia’s Democracy: A Short History ISBN 978-1865088457*QE 17 'Kangaroo Court': Family Law in Australia ISBN 978-1863953412...

 - "Kangaroo Court - Family Law in Australia"

18. Gail Bell - "The Worried Well - The Depression Epidemic and the Medicalisation of Our Sorrows"

• Interview with ABC
  Australian Broadcasting Corporation
  The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
  
   presenter Eleanor Hall
  Eleanor Hall
  Eleanor Hall is an Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist and presenter of the World Today programme on ABC Local Radio. She has previously worked on American radio and television, and for ABC Television's 7:30 Report and Lateline programmes. She is based in Sydney.-References:*...
  
  
• Interview with ABC
  Australian Broadcasting Corporation
  The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
  
   presenter Richard Aedy
• Review by Patrick Cullen in The Program
• Response by Gordon Parker, Black Dog Institute

19. Judith Brett

Judith Brett

Judith Brett is a professor of politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.She was an editor of Meanjin, the Melbourne-based Australian literary quarterly in the 1980s, and was a co-editor of Arena Magazine in the 1990s.-Books:...

 - "Relaxed and Comfortable - The Liberal Party's Australia"

20. John Birmingham

John Birmingham

John Birmingham is an Australian author. Birmingham was born in Liverpool, England and migrated to Australia with his parents in 1970.-Early life and career:...

 - "A Time for War- The Rebirth of Australia's Military Culture"

21. Clive Hamilton

Clive Hamilton

Clive Charles Hamilton AM FRSA is an Australian public intellectual and Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics and the Vice-Chancellor's Chair in Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University. He is the Founder and former Executive Director of the The...

 - "What's Left? The Death of Social Democracy

What's Left? The Death of Social Democracy

What's Left? The Death Of Social Democracy is written by Australian Professor Clive Hamilton and was published as Issue 21 of the Quarterly Essay in 2006. In What's Left? Hamilton comments on topics written about in his previous books Growth Fetish and Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough...

"

22. Amanda Lohrey

Amanda Lohrey

Amanda Francis Lillian Lohrey, , in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia) is a writer, and novelist. She completed her education at the University of Tasmania before taking up a scholarship at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. From 1988 to 1994 she lectured in writing and textual studies at the...

 - "Voting for Jesus - Christianity and Politics in Australia"

23. Inga Clendinnen

Inga Clendinnen

Inga Vivienne Clendinnen AO is an Australian author and historian, anthropologist and academic.-Life and career:Born in Geelong, Victoria, Clendinnen graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1955 with a BA...

 - "The History Question - Who Owns The Past?"

• Interview with ABC
  Australian Broadcasting Corporation
  The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
  
   presenter Phillip Adams
  Phillip Adams
  Phillip Andrew Hedley Adams, AO is an Australian broadcaster, film producer, writer, social commentator, satirist and left-wing pundit. He currently hosts a radio program, Late Night Live, four nights a week on the ABC, and he also writes a weekly column for the News Limited-owned newspaper, The...
  
  
• Interview with ABC
  Australian Broadcasting Corporation
  The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
  
   presenter Paul Barclay
  Paul Barclay
  -Biography:Barclay was born in Melbourne, where he received his BA in media and politics. Since the late 1990s, he has worked as a radio presenter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Queensland, Northern Territory, and Victoria...
  
  

24. Robyn Davidson

Robyn Davidson

Robyn Davidson is an Australian writer best known for her book Tracks, about a 1,700-mile trek across the deserts of west Australia using camels. Her career of travelling and writing about her travels has spanned over 30 years....

 - "No Fixed Address - Nomads and the Fate of the Planet"

• Review by Arthur Lucas, University of East Anglia

25. Peter Hartcher

Peter Hartcher

Peter Hartcher is an Australian journalist and the Political and International Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. He is also a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based foreign policy think tank.-Career:...

 - "How To Win The 2007 Election"

26. David Marr

David Marr (journalist)

David Ewan Marr is an Australian journalist, author, and progressive political and social commentator. His areas of expertise include the law, Australian politics, censorship, the media and the arts...

 - "His Master’s Voice - The Corruption of Public Debate under Howard "

• Public debate, with ABC
  Australian Broadcasting Corporation
  The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
  
   presenter Phillip Adams
  Phillip Adams
  Phillip Andrew Hedley Adams, AO is an Australian broadcaster, film producer, writer, social commentator, satirist and left-wing pundit. He currently hosts a radio program, Late Night Live, four nights a week on the ABC, and he also writes a weekly column for the News Limited-owned newspaper, The...
  
  
• Review - His Master's Voice

27. Ian Lowe

Ian Lowe

Ian Lowe is President of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Professor of Science, Technology and Society and former Head of the School of Science at Griffith University, as well as an adjunct professor at Sunshine Coast University and Flinders University. In 1996 he was chair-person of the...

 - "Reaction Time - Climate Change and the Nuclear Option

Reaction Time (book)

Reaction Time: Climate Change and the Nuclear Option is a book by Professor Ian Lowe which was officially launched by science broadcaster Robyn Williams at the Brisbane Writers' Festival on 15 September 2007...

"

28. Judith Brett

Judith Brett

Judith Brett is a professor of politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.She was an editor of Meanjin, the Melbourne-based Australian literary quarterly in the 1980s, and was a co-editor of Arena Magazine in the 1990s.-Books:...

 - "Exit Right - The Unravelling of John Howard"

29. Anne Manne

Anne Manne

Anne Manne is an Australian journalist and social philosopher.Her 2005 book Motherhood: How should we care for our children? was short-listed in 2006 for Australian journalism's Walkley Award.She is married to Australian academic Robert Manne....

 - "Love and Money: The family and the free market"

30. Paul Toohey - "Last Drinks: The Impact of the Northern Territory Intervention

Last Drinks: The Impact of the Northern Territory Intervention

Last Drinks: The Impact of the Northern Territory Intervention is a 2008 Quarterly Essay by Australian journalist Paul Toohey. Toohey critiques the Australian government’s intervention in remote indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, which began in 2007, and aimed to protect indigenous...

"

31. Tim Flannery

Tim Flannery

Timothy Fridtjof Flannery is an Australian mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist and global warming activist....

 - "Now or Never - A Sustainable Future for Australia?"

32. Kate Jennings

Kate Jennings

Kate Jennings is an Australian poet, essayist, memoirist, and novelist.-Life:Jennings grew up on a farm near Griffith, New South Wales. She attended the University of Sydney in the late 1960s, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree with honours...

 - "American revolution - The fall of Wall Street and the rise of Barack Obama".

34. Annabel Crabb

Annabel Crabb

Annabel Crabb is an Australian political journalist and commentator who is currently the ABC's chief online political writer. Previously she has worked for Adelaide's The Advertiser, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Sunday Age and The Sun-Herald, and won a Walkley Award in 2009 for her...

 - "Stop At Nothing: The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull" (June 2009).

37. Waleed Aly

Waleed Aly

Waleed Aly is an Australian lawyer, academic and rock musician. He has been a member of the executive committee of the Islamic Council of Victoria and has served as the council's head of public affairs. He is a frequent commentator on Australian Muslim affairs. In 2008 he was selected to...

 - "What's Right? The Future of Conservatism in Australia" (2010)

38. David Marr

David Marr (journalist)

David Ewan Marr is an Australian journalist, author, and progressive political and social commentator. His areas of expertise include the law, Australian politics, censorship, the media and the arts...

 - Power Trip: The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd, June 2010

39. Hugh White

Hugh White

Hugh White was a U.S. Representative from New York.He was the grandson of Hugh White, the founder and namesake of Whitestown. White attended the common schools...

 - "Power Shift: Australia’s Future between Washington and Beijing" (2010)

40. George Megalogenis

George Megalogenis

George Megalogenis is an Australian journalist, political commentator and author.George is a senior feature writer for The Australian newspaper. He is also a regular on the ABC's political analysis program Insiders, where a panel discusses events in Australian politics.George spent eleven years in...

 - "Trivial Pursuit: Leadership and the End of the Reform Era" (2010)

41. David Malouf

David Malouf

David George Joseph Malouf is an acclaimed Australian writer. He was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2000, his 1993 novel Remembering Babylon won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, he won the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award in 2008, and he was...

 - "The Happy Life: The Search for Contentment in the Modern World" (2011)

42. Judith Brett

Judith Brett

Judith Brett is a professor of politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.She was an editor of Meanjin, the Melbourne-based Australian literary quarterly in the 1980s, and was a co-editor of Arena Magazine in the 1990s.-Books:...

 - "Fair Share: Country and city in Australia" (2011)

• Interview with Matt Smith

43. Robert Manne

Robert Manne

Robert Manne is a professor of politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.Born in Melbourne, Manne's earliest political consciousness was formed by the fact that his parents were Jewish refugees from Europe and his grandparents were victims of the Holocaust...

- "Bad News: Murdoch's Australian and the shaping of the nation" (2011)

• Interview with Matt Smith

44. Andrew Charlton - "Man-Made World: Choosing between progress and planet" (2011)

45. Anna Krien - "Us & Them: The importance of animals" (2012)