Bardon has largely remained in popular consciousness as the synonymous hero and martyr of the art movement’s origin story. But a new biography is unravelling the myth, and the madness, behind the tale

Warning: This story contains images of and references to Indigenous Australians who have died

Like many foundation stories, the white Australian narrative about the birth of the globally celebrated Western Desert Aboriginal “dot painting” movement is steeped in myth.

For decades it has gone like this. In 1971 a young, eccentric middle-class art teacher from Sydney, Geoffrey Bardon, arrives in the remote assimilationist Aboriginal settlement of Papunya, 250km west of Alice Springs.

Social media amplify the worst excesses of what passes for public discourse, while some media outlets foment polarisation

If the increasingly vituperative tenor of our public discourse, online and verbal, has fully trailed America’s into the murky dungeon of political violence with the appalling alleged attack on Helen Haines, Australia’s political class has only itself to blame.

Amid outpourings of concern from across the political spectrum (including from people who have fostered considerable vicious personal animus online and in the parliament) for the gravely injured and much-respected member for Indi, it is blindingly evident that the political square has long been utterly incapable of self-regulation.

A proposal to livestream the killing of Nidal Hasan by firing squad opens a window ever wider to the Trump administration’s complete moral vacuity

More fool me! Here I was thinking nothing that America’s Trump administration could do or say, no matter how politically and morally bankrupt, no matter how venal or violent, was capable of shocking me any longer.

Then I woke to today’s news that one of the Trump cabinet’s bigger boofheads – the uber Christian nationalist, crusader-fantasist and “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth had announced that America would have a public firing squad execution of murderer Nidal Hasan.

Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist

I am hanging on to a product that makes people I loathe more super-rich while they trash the world

There is so much talk of all the lonely people in the world right now that the pervasive state of loneliness is being called an epidemic.

I don’t think that is an overstatement. I see loneliness around me all of the time. Everywhere. Not just in the faces of rough sleepers who look up at passers-by in the hope of finding eye contact and a little empathy – but also in the faces of those who rush past avoiding them, their heads wired or aired to their phones.

I met Harris before his crimes came to light. Even then I sensed his public image was a facade

I’m not convinced by the old adage that we should never meet our idols because they are bound to disappoint us. I’ve never wanted to approach human exceptionalism quite so cynically.

Yes, I’m acutely, painfully conscious that the world is replete with terrible events and bad people. But I’m counting myself fortunate that purely by dint of birth I live somewhere (and I don’t just mean my neighbourhood) where human capacity for kindness, generosity and, yes, civility, are not the exception.

Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist

Australia’s obsequiousness to Trump’s America has gone way beyond the national interest

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After mounting an illegal war with Israel against Iran without consulting traditional allies, Donald Trump, man-baby leader of the free world, is now throwing a grand tantrum because once reliable old friends won’t clean up his global mess.

Even by the standards of a US administration characterised by the constant redefinition of shark-jumping, the US-Israeli geopolitical madness of the past month – and the last week in particular – has stretched relations with historic partners, not least Australia, to snapping point.

Writers, activists and politicians on the books they turn to for wisdom and perspective – and to restore their faith in human nature

Australia is mired in grief, anger and division over the horrific act of antisemitic terrorism in Sydney. The attack in Bondi has reverberated internationally, tragically bookending a year that already challenged humanity, hope and the future of the planet.

Indeed as 2025 ends it is defined by yet more abject and ignoble political, economic, technological and environmental derelictions of dire proportions.