Our Politics After 'No'

‘Politics After No’ is the theme of the special section of Arena, our Autumn 2025 issue. We’re starting a discussion on the theory and discussion underlying the politics of Australia, after the ‘No’ vote in the Voice referendum. Has a distinctive period ended? Is there a need for radical rethinkinking of the theory and practice of indigenous and non-indigenous relations here? We begin with a debate about the ‘settler-colonial’ approach that has been so influential in formulating ‘radical’ and left strategy, with Dan Tout, Lorenzo Veracini and Jordan Humphreys debating it out, and Guy Rundle asking some unsettled questions about unchallenged assumptions in this new period. This is the start of a debate that will continue and widen in future issue.

We’ve also got an assessment of the gondola crash of Australian culture in the Gaza era from Simon Cooper, Renate Klein on why the left must question the new popularity of surrogacy, why the BRICs won’t build to a new monolith, land clearing and the last koala cull, the great Kathleen Fallon on love zombies, Dave Sweeney behind the Coalition’s nuclear push, the best review yet of the work of Melinda Cooper, and much more.

Editorial: Breakings

So if the world suddenly appears to be ‘crazy’—the default term used by clueless press galleries and mainstream political commentators—it is because its most visible elements are being re- or de-constituted at its deepest level, with effects both global and local.

Arena Quarterly issue no. 21, 2025

Title	Author	PagePg.
Editorial
Breakings	Guy Rundle	1
The Nation
Peter Dutton’s Fissional Politics The Coalition is converting nuclear policy to culture war	Dave Sweeney	3
Australian Culture’s Death in Venice? Undermining of high culture aspirations, by both market and progressives, makes its political co-option inevitable	Simon Cooper	6
Mind Your Headspace Critiquing the role of retail psychotherapy in the ‘mental health crisis’	Mark Furlong	9
A-Listers and Baby-Makers The Return of Surrogacy?	Renate Klein	12
Knights Without Amour Gyms, muscle work, the culture of narcissism and the hard Right	Jack Hynes	19
The World
BRICS in a Fall? The United States, China and the World	Oliver Villar	23
Writing
Love Zombie The definitive heterosexual erotica	Kathleen Mary Fallon	30
Environment
Burgering Off Koalas A tour of clearing zones being sacrificed for agribusiness and a burning planet	David Ritter	34
Poetry
A Poem is a Talisman	John Falzon	39
Making Tracks: Settler Colonialism and Politics After the Referendum
Settler Colonialism in the Twenty-First Century Rethinking basic approaches after the referendum debacle	Dan Tout	41
The Rush that Has Now Ended? Capitalism, class analysis and Indigenous politics	Jordan Humphreys	51
The Long March to This Place? Settler-colonial approaches have evolved as Marxism and the Left have reframed the world colonialism made	Lorenzo Veracini	56
Some Unsettled Questions on Theory and Strategy Something ended with the referendum. New ideas are needed for new strategies	Guy Rundle	62
Society
The Dole in a Time of Plague COVID, the politics of poverty and new possibilities	Anthony O'Donnell	66
Reviews
The Great Fire Sale of the Future Counterrevolution, by Melinda Cooper, and Discounting the Future, by Liliana Duganova	Scott Robinson	73
Body of Work Transsexual Transgender Transhuman, by Jennifer Bilek	Caroline Norma	79
Booknote: Dark-Land: Memoir of a Secret Childhood, by Kevin Hart	Valerie Krips	80

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Our Politics After 'No'

Editorial: Breakings

Arena Quarterly issue no. 21, 2025

Contents

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