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Volume 1 · Six essays · Out now

How Australia Undid Itself

Six essays on how a country with every advantage talked itself out of them, one sensible decision at a time.

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How Australia Undid Itself: Six Essays

Twenty-Seven Turnovers and a Wrist Wrap■They're Doubling Kendric■Borrowed ceiling■What Opening Night Can't Tell You■Cheap, Quick and Never Unsure■Twenty-Nine and a Half■The signature and the file■Twenty-Seven Turnovers and a Wrist Wrap■They're Doubling Kendric■Borrowed ceiling■What Opening Night Can't Tell You■Cheap, Quick and Never Unsure■Twenty-Nine and a Half■The signature and the file■

Four Sections

Pick a desk. Newest first inside each.
What this is

Rico Holt writes about how Australia undid itself, and who let it happen.

The Essays

Newest first. Start at the top.
A stylised illustration of a lone basketball on a dark hardwood court under an amber scoreboard glow, with a loose strip of white wrist tape unrolling beside it
01 · 2 min read · Lead essay

Twenty-Seven Turnovers and a Wrist Wrap

Toronto handed the Bulls the worst opening night in franchise history. The shooting was bad, the giveaways were worse, and the point guard was carrying something nobody mentioned.

Count the giveaways, not the threes.

 An empty basketball court at night with a lone ball near the three-point arc and two long shadows of unseen defenders falling across the floor027 min read

They're Doubling Kendric

Teams have worked out the champion's point guard. Sydney's coach says the fix is the men standing next to him. Melbourne on Sunday, with no Delly, is where that gets tested away from home.

Read it →An open blank ledger on an old oak desk with a sheet of tracing paper over it and one pencil line drawn across both, beside a brass caliper and a short stack of plain brass discs under a brass desk lamp034 min read

Borrowed ceiling

The ceiling has held in every year since 2003 except 2020 and 2021, when a 2020 law had lifted it. Debt still rose from 23 percent of GDP in 2012 to 41 percent in 2025, and this year's budget sets aside 19 rupiah of every 100 it plans to collect for interest.

Read it →An empty basketball arena before tip-off, a ball resting on the centre circle under warm house lights, with plain blank banners hanging in the rafters046 min read

What Opening Night Can't Tell You

A first night tells you who turned up. It has never once told anyone who lasts.

Read it →An old yellow spirit level, a black stopwatch and an ochre-toned ceramic mug on a worn timber workbench against a plain plaster wall053 min read

Cheap, Quick and Never Unsure

A new budget model gets more than half of a big knowledge test right. When it misses, it almost never says it doesn't know. I switched to it anyway, then read how the test is marked.

Read it →A metal whistle on a black cord lying on a polished basketball court063 min read

Twenty-Nine and a Half

Vegas doubts the Bulls, Caleb Wilson finally takes care of the ball, and the whistle is the number nobody is talking about.

Read it →A tied manila file, a fountain pen and a brass stamp on a timber desk077 min read

The signature and the file

Who made the decisions on resources, energy, water, farming and industry that shaped what Australians pay, and on whose advice? On Whose Advice is a year-long series that follows the signatures back to the file. Week one sets out the method, the eras and the scorecard.

Read it →
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