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Violence in Charlottesville in U.S. Virginia this week between neo-Nazis and anti-racism groups is a symptom of resentment over social change, how history is remembered and the heroes communities decide to celebrate or reject. In Virginia the clashes were sparked by heated debate about the future of a statue of Confederate General, Robert E Lee. "It was erected at a time when there was this rising myth of the glory of the south, the white nationalist south," says local councillor Kristin Szakos who has sought to move the statue from the public square, prompting outrage from the far-right. "Lee was a symbol of all that was good in pre-war southern society - meaning slavery, white people had dominance and economic power," Szakos told the ABC. Hours after the Charlottesville violence, anti-racist protesters in North Carolina toppled a Confederate statue there - pulling it to the ground and stomping on it. White nationalist organisers see themselves as defenders ...

Suddenly, Canberra appears awash with real play spaces. One's just opened at my local primary school complete with tunnels, a dry creek bed and undulations that children clamber around, and play games that they create rather than have created for them. Being an unfenced public school, it shares the space with the neighbourhood after school hours and on the weekends, making the school more secure. At nearby Ainslie Primary School there are now two so-called 'play pods' - shipping containers packed with things such as milk crates, crutches and loose wheels. The contents are neither entirely safe nor totally dangerous. With children as young as six about to be subject to national tests on what they've learnt, play has never been more important. Unlike tests in which there are right answers, undirected play is open, not closed. It allows children to develop their own rules and to learn at their own rates. It actually helps them become smart. Play, unmediated by ru...

The burnt out shell of London's Grenfell Tower is a tragic reminder of the important role of governments in ensuring people are properly housed. Outsourcing or weakly enforcing standards leads to calamity. Grenfell Tower was clad with highly combustible foam and aluminum, chosen because it was cheaper. The building had no sprinkler system or evacuation plan. The residents were mostly poor. Under pressure, British Prime Minister Theresa May conceded that "for too long in our country, under governments of both colours, we simply haven't given enough attention to social housing". "This itself is actually a symptom of an even more fundamental issue," she said. "In this tower just a few miles from the houses of parliament, and in the heart of our great city, people live a fundamentally different life, do not feel the state works for them and are therefore mistrustful of it." In Australia we are chronically short of public and social housing. We ...

Why is it that the louder a Christian politician talks about their faith the more conservative they seem to be? Cory Bernardi, who split recently from the Liberal Party, is among those who have come to epitomise the idea of a Christian politician, arguing that Australia is and should remain Christian. One Nation's Pauline Hanson said repeatedly before last year's election that Australia was a "Christian country", although in her maiden speech as a senator she also noted that its government was secular. Bernardi cites the constitution as evidence that Australia is Christian and Nationals senator John Williams wants the Lord's Prayer to be part of the school system. But there are many more Christian politicians I have been talking to who think very differently. Recently elected West Australian Liberal MP Andrew Hastie, a former air services officer, says he gets "uncomfortable when people start calling Australia a Christian nation". "I think t...

It came as a surprise earlier this year to see a full-page advertisement by a Canberra private girls high school boasting about the academic success of its high achievers. Each student was shown with her Australian tertiary admission rank score and the name of the university she was accepted into. (Private schools don't have the field to themselves. A number of public schools have better results, and at least one parades them on its website.) I know schools have always been competitive, and I know ATAR scores mean something, but in a month in which thousands of Australian students sat their national literacy and numeracy tests, it's worth asking whether more tests and a greater emphasis on test results actually harms us. An Australian National University lecturer told me recently about a number of first-year students who were so worried about attaining high marks they were paralysed and unable to start assignments. "This is the time of their lives when everything s...

In a glass case in the modern conflicts and Middle East galleries at the Australian War Memorial hangs a gold-plated assault rifle, an AK47 issued by Saddam Hussein to one of his personal guards. It was "discovered" among a cache of gold-plated weapons (the explanatory plaque says) by the United States 101st Airborne Division in Kirkuk, and given to an Australian major-general visiting US headquarters in Northern Iraq. Patrick O'Hara says it's "war booty". He is a former volunteer guide and before that a long-time education officer at the memorial who has resigned in disgust. "Charles Bean designed the memorial to allow people to try to understand what Australian soldiers went through during war. It was designed to show the ugly reality of war. It wasn't meant to be political, gloating or a trophy cabinet," he tells me. O'Hara loves and respects the War Memorial "and all that it is meant to represent" but he sees the display...

The idea of lament feels strange as it is ancient. There are images of it in biblical times, of people wailing and gnashing their teeth. It feels like the season for wailing now: wailing about the demise of positive politics, about political strategy trumping real solutions and about the early death of human rights. Haven't there always been things to wail about? Yes, but now we live with unceasing streams of media exposing us to the world's pain as never before and an ugly kind of tribal politics that makes resolving differences seem impossible. Song is a place to go, to sit with lament and to release it. Canberra's Chorus of Women sprang out of a deep lament in 2003 as prime minister John Howard took Australia to war in Iraq, despite an overwhelming majority of Australians opposing it. About 150 women, not then a formal group, broke into song in the marble foyer of Parliament House. They cried in unaccompanied song for the people of Iraq, the inevitability of deat...