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Joh Bjelke-Petersen

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Street life in Fortitude Valley, December 2025.

My suburb has a reputation for sleaze. But now Sydney and Melbourne want to emulate it

I’ve seen things here I wouldn’t tell my mother about – but this place has an incredible history – and an exciting future.

  • Matt Shea

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Sussan Ley, David Littleproud and Bridget McKenzie

It’s a mess of Titanic proportions on the Coalition’s ship of fools

The Nationals shoved all around them out of the way as they fled for the lifeboats.

  • Tony Wright
Tony Wright in his travelling days in the early 1970s.

I wanted to hitchhike to Sydney. The pill-gobbling truckie had other ideas

The truckie’s plan in case the pills weren’t sufficient was that I had to stay awake to prod him in the ribs if he started nodding off. He wouldn’t share his amphetamines.

  • Tony Wright
Composite image of Whitlam and 4ZZZ test broadcast, both 1975. (Square format)

‘Where’s our transmitter?’ How the Whitlam dismissal nearly silenced radio 4ZZZ

The birth of Queensland’s first community radio station 50 years ago was a story of insurmountable odds meeting implacable effort – and a few cunning tricks.

  • Nick Dent
New details have come to light about US influence on Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s role in the fall of Gough Whitlam

‘She heard an extraordinary plot against the government’: The call that would haunt Winsome Nash

For 50 years, a family kept a secret about events leading up to a cataclysmic moment in Australian politics. Now they are going public.

  • Peter Rees
The gastric brooding frog, which gave birth to live froglets out of its mouth, went extinct shortly after it was discovered.

The premier, the poet and the fight to save a frog

It’s a story almost too preposterous to believe, starring a group of uni students, an infamous state premier, a legendary Australian poet and an extinct frog that gave birth by vomiting its young.

  • Andrew Stafford
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The concessions do not apply to detached homes and are dependent on how much construction has been completed when contracts are signed.

Brisbane crane index shows shift to residential ... for now

Brisbane’s latest crane count shows a 12 per cent increase in the number of cranes punctuating the city’s skyline.

  • Cameron Atfield
Dead Kennedys in 1983 (L-R): Klaus Fluoride, Jello Biafra, D.H. Peligro and East Bay Ray.

Joh’s cops arrested their drummer ‘because he was black’. Forty years on, these punk icons are back

The Dead Kennedys’ 1983 visit to Brisbane is the stuff of legend. Now, fans are abuzz once more as the punk pioneers return.

  • Nick Dent
Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

Texas governor orders arrest of Democrats who fled Trump-backed gerrymander stoush

In one of the many US states where partisan gerrymandering is the norm, Democratic lawmakers left Texas to avoid debate on a proposed electoral map. So Republicans issued warrants.

  • Michael Koziol
Liberal leader Sussan Ley and David Littleproud of the Nationals.

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

If the existing split in the Coalition moves beyond a difference about policy, the self-destructive consequences will be devastating.

  • George Brandis