Aboriginal children today have the same life expectancy as white children in 1900. Yet most Australians can’t understand why there was an uprising in Sydney this year.

Australia, once the land of the “fair go”, has collaborated with Guantanamo more closely than any other western government and is guilty of human rights abuses of its own.

In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger returns to his homeland, Australia, and described the social regression of a once proud liberal democracy and says that the flag-waving “values” of the neo-con prime minister may be coming unstuck in Guantanamo Bay.

Behind the glamour of Australian sport, black footballers, including whole teams, are often dead before 40, writes John Pilger.

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the latest phase of East Timor’s struggle for independence, which, in the 1990s, he went undercover to report. One of the world’s newest and poorest states now faces the overweening power of its vast neighour, Australia. Once again, the prize is oil and gas.

In a column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes another ‘day of mourning’ for the first inhabitants of his homeland, Australia, which for many whites remains a secret country behind the neo-conservative bluster of John Howard’s government.

In his latest article for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the remarkable servility of John Howard’s government in Australia to the Bush administration – Howard is known as Bush’s ‘deputy sheriff’ – and how this is eroding the country’s freedoms.

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger touches on the life behind his public face. “I am a swimmer,” he writes. From his childhood on Australia’s famous Bondi Beach to a career that has taken him to many places the opposite of benign, Pilger has swum through, as he puts it, “the difficulties”.

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger catches a ghostly tram to returns to where he grew up in Australia, the scene of his first encounter with the brutal, though enjoyable world of newspapers.

In his latest article for the New Statesman, John Pilger reports from his homeland on Australia’s hidden empire – a ‘sphere of influence’ that stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to East Timor and Afghanistan. The arrival of a new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, offers important continuity.