“Only a fool would single out a couple of books from a longlist for consideration without knowing if they’ll go the distance, but I want to single out a couple of books from the longlist.” Michael Williams on a fool’s mission with the #BookerPrize longlist mnth.ly/jWRM8mk

.@monique_hurle and Maggie Munn (they/them)🇵🇸 on criminal responsibility: “Raising the age and reducing early contact with the criminal legal system is significant because it could have had an intergenerational impact on ending the mass incarceration of First Peoples.” mnth.ly/KvaRsxr

How the disk-flicking Canadian board game crokinole is bringing a diverse inner-Melbourne community together | Ceridwen Spark Read now. mnth.ly/mdyqrIx

.James Bradley visits one of the country’s massive landfill sites to understand the dangers of how we deal with millions of tonnes of waste Read now. mnth.ly/BA1zJcO

The price parents pay for their children’s education has become the key measure of a school’s quality, and this approach is costing us all. mnth.ly/X2Pmfyw

“What does disadvantage mean? Line up two schools beside each other, then look at the difference in educational attainment...” mnth.ly/6VefRWd

“It’s good because you banter, you play a game, you chat, you share even personal things. Over time, I think when you start sharing more personal things, the connection becomes bigger.” Suburban crokinole club member Mauri talks to Ceridwen Spark mnth.ly/6kGSDy5

Why doesn’t government go hard on waste policy? “It just doesn’t make sense. These are easy political wins. It’s almost risk-free politics.” | James Bradley on waste mnth.ly/hM3lDwp

“The three men would play fictionalised versions of themselves forming a band, fighting for the right to speak their mother tongue and facing off against the police, the school, and a Republican paramilitary faction.” Brodie Lancaster on #Kneecap mnth.ly/DoIbhJb

.@monique_hurle and Maggie Munn (they/them)🇵🇸 on criminalising children: “The evidence is overwhelming that children under 14 cannot understand and comprehend the consequences of their behaviour … such children do not have the capacity for criminal responsibility.” mnth.ly/Qrm9YEr

“It can feel as if schools are treading water, fixed in a reactive loop and they are mostly staffed by people who come from other places and will soon return to them.” Martin McKenzie-Murray on teaching in the Kimberley: mnth.ly/sgyxUEX

“In 2019, then prime minister Scott Morrison called the Dominion Movement ‘un-Australian green criminals’ Then opposition leader Anthony Albanese called them ‘vegan terrorists’.” Katherine Wilson on the protections from activism afforded the meat industry mnth.ly/oTX3EMt

“A 2021 survey by Choice found 18 to 34 year olds twice as likely to be vegan as the average Australian, and that one in 10 meat eaters overall would consider becoming vegan in the next five years.” Katherine Wilson on changing attitudes to eating animals mnth.ly/BIItz98

Malcolm Knox began his career as a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald, back in the 90s. Since then he has written more than a dozen books of nonfiction and has been publishing fiction since 2000. The First Friend is his seventh novel. mnth.ly/CjTWgkZ Allen & Unwin

.James Bradley on the dangers of landfill: “This process, which can continue for decades, generates heat – the interior of a landfill is typically between 60 to 90 degrees – as well as large amounts of liquid in the form of highly acidic leachate.” mnth.ly/DezTObt

Stephen Romei on Gideon Haigh’s memoir ‘My Brother Jaz’: “He reopens the ‘windows into my soul’ that closed following his brother’s death. He confronts the person he became, and still is, due to that shuttering.” mnth.ly/grlpSkq

“The ABC also broadcast FTP footage of ‘thumping’, a lawful method of killing scrawnier piglets by lifting them by their hind legs and smashing their skulls against a concrete floor.” Katherine Wilson on farm animal abuses mnth.ly/Bm2zswv

Katherine Wilson on what drives animal welfare activists: “Delforce believes that if Australians knew about farm conditions and practices, and if we could only witness the sentience and suffering of farmed animals, we’d never consent to consuming them.” mnth.ly/p8AXWhg

Overwhelmingly, Australian students who come from backgrounds that require additional resources are attending schools with the fewest resources. Meanwhile, the children from the most advantaged backgrounds are attending the most well-endowed. mnth.ly/y1YnWOg

Social segregation within Australia’s schooling system has become so ingrained it’s affecting our broader society. mnth.ly/P2N206x