Cut the crap about arts funding, just grant us access: @burgewords comments on #ArtsBlackFriday

Australian artists will never be silenced by cuts to funding. MUCH is being made of this week’s wholesale cuts to arts funding in Australia. We knew it was coming, it’s shocking to witness, but does it mean anything to the average Australian artist? Well, if you’re an independent Australian artist, probably not. There is a simple […]

LGBTI versus Christians, an unnecessary war: @burgewords comments on #SafeSchools

This is not a suffering competition for martyrs, it’s a legislative process taking place in a secular nation. THE Turnbull government has no firm plans for a public vote on marriage equality. We only know it’ll be ‘after the election’, an Abbott three-word slogan for ‘on the never-never’; and that it will be a non-binding, […]

Hanging on a red herring: @burgewords reviews #PicnicAtHangingRock

The answer to what drew Miss McGraw to follow the girls up the rock that timeless afternoon was always there, it’s just that others decided we were not prepared for it. FORTY years since the premier of the Peter Weir film, it’s time for Australians to realise that Picnic at Hanging Rock has kept us […]

The making of a #MarriageEquality advocate: @burgewords extract

IRELAND’S yes vote for marriage equality kicked a rainbow-coloured goal for LGBTQI people around the globe, and while the major Australian political parties fight for ownership of the ball, this extract from an upcoming non-fiction podcast and book by MICHAEL BURGE is a reminder of how far we’ve come. Marriage, like a seed, was planted within me […]

Burning issues for @TonyAbbottMHR: @burgewords #CreatingWaves on #DirectAction

CLIMATE change efforts in Australia have become a matter of simple mathematics. With the Coalition’s Direct Action Bill in place just this week, after a deal struck with the Palmer United Party and Senate crossbenchers, Australia is now attempting to reduce its carbon emissions by 5 per cent by 2020. It’s official: we’re trying, and […]

The man who dismissed dismissal: @burgewords #CreatingWaves on #GoughWhitlam

Gough Whitlam got conservatives in Australia on the move in the late 1960s and they have never stopped running. IT took me almost half my lifetime to work out what I owe Gough Whitlam. The second son of a NSW grazier and a nurse from Sydney’s north shore who gave up her career to have kids, I was […]

Secrets of a Hollywood king from Kiama: @burgewords #CreatingWaves on Orry-Kelly

JUST about everyone I knew as a kid went to Kiama for the school holidays. Apart from its famous blow-hole, through which the ocean mysteriously forces a geyser-like spray to the delight of tourists, there is nothing extraordinary about this sleepy town which has all the caravan parks, bait shops and holiday rentals of every town […]

The Aussie who loved and left us: @burgewords #CreatingWaves on Sumner Locke Elliott

  Expats often get a bad name, perhaps because they heed the bogan’s call to ‘love’ or ‘leave’ our shores, but Elliott had the courage to do both. ALL this talk about progressive thinkers packing up and leaving Australia, if we don’t love what’s happening politically in our country, brings to mind the ones who actually went through […]

It’s too late for #MarriageEquality in Australia: @burgewords #CreatingWaves

IN April 2013 Guardian Australia journalist Gay Alcorn declared the culture war was over for marriage equality and confidently asserted that after “a year or two” LGBTQI couples would bask in the same connubial rights as straight Australians. She declared the debate “interminably dull” and credited lobby group Australian Marriage Equality’s (AME) latest pitch for support – […]

Voyage to the new news world: @burgewords #CreatingWaves on online media

Margo Kingston asked me to kick-off a new series on No Fibs about the experiences of citizen journalists working with professional journalists in online media. Here is my response. A WEEK after the 2013 federal election I was driving to my casual sub-editing job on a Fairfax weekly newspaper when I let a brilliant photo opportunity go. […]