There's always been something deeply disturbing about the Abbott government's attitude to women.

I believe in the verb, not the noun - I am not a writer, but someone compelled to write.

God gets the great stories. Novelists must make do with more mundane fictions.

History, like journalism, is ever a journey outwards, and you must report back what you find and no more.

Among many other reforms, Australians pioneered the secret ballot and universal suffrage.

I realised that if I wished to write about the dark and not allow for hope, people would recognise it as false - because hope is the nub of what we are.