The weakness with which the doctrine of separation of powers is applied in Australia has the practical effect of substantially removing any obstacle to the legislative growth of the executive government. Fairly described as an ‘elective dictatorship’, it is therefore no wonder so many of our basic rights can be ignored and violated. If you think that is an acadamic abstraction, two words: Covid lockdowns
<strong>The long read</strong>: Andrew Wylie is agent to an extraordinary number of the planet’s biggest authors. His knack for making highbrow writers very rich helped to define a literary era – but is his reign now coming to an end?
Andrew Motion Something old made new: The Iliad in Emily Wilson’s muscular and moving new translation, the first by a woman, is truly what it claims to be – a version for our time (Norton, £30). And something new made immediate: Hannah Sullivan’s second collection of poems, Was It For This (Faber, £12.99), ambitiously extends