The German Ward, a new novel by Australian author Pip Williams

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The German Ward, a new novel by Australian author Pip Williams

1 October 2026

Adelaide Hills, South Australia, based author Pip Williams‘ third novel, The German Ward, was published recently. Her debut, The Dictionary of Lost Words, and second, The Bookbinder of Jericho, were set in Oxford, England, prior to, and during World War I, and share a few characters.

While The German Ward is a separate work, some events also occur during World War I:

France, 1915. An English nurse and German doctor fall in love. He is a prisoner of war; she has never cared for rules. Their love is visceral and urgent, forbidden and doomed, and it would have gone unrecorded if not for a series of drawings found more than a century later.

At first the drawings seem insignificant, but the woman who finds them glimpses moments of intimacy and can’t look away. The images become part of a puzzle she wants to solve: who were the lovers, what became of them, and what story of war was the artist trying to tell?

Williams is presently travelling across Australia until late November 2026, should you be interested in hearing her talk about her work.

com.au, net.au domain name rule changes costly for Australian small businesses

30 September 2026

.au Domain Administration (auDA), the organisation that administers top-level domains in Australia, is proposing changes to the rules governing the registration of .com.au and .net.au domain names.

If the changes are adopted, people wishing to hold a .com.au or .net.au domain name will need to have a registered business matching the .com.au or .net.au domain they wish to use.

For example, so I can continue to hold disassociated.com.au (which redirects to disassociated.com), I may need to register a company in the name of disassociated. At the moment, all I need is an Australian Business Number (ABN), which is in my name, not disassociated’s.

ABN’s are free, while, at the moment, a registered business name costs forty-seven dollars (AUD) for a year, or one-hundred-and-eight for three years. Forty-seven bucks a year doesn’t seem excessive, that’s about the same cost as eight cups of coffee.

However, many small Australian businesses are using numerous .com.au or .net.au domain names. The requirement to potentially hold numerous registered business names, in order to license the associated domain names, stands to send expenses sky-rocketing for local small businesses.

Many small businesses in Australia, usually operated by sole-traders — people working alone — sometimes supply any number of goods and services, and each might have its own domain name.

Someone operating, say, twenty businesses, will find themselves paying over seven-hundred dollars a year, if they pay the fee for three years at a time to register their business names.

Even that may not seem much, particularly if revenues are reasonable, but overseeing numerous registered business names stands to increase the administrative workload for small businesses.

And that’s before we get to trademarks, which might also be needed to qualify for a .com.au or .net.au domain name. The cost of an Australian trademark starts at two-hundred-and-fifty dollars. Running numerous small businesses online now begins to look incredibly expensive.

The proposals are intended “to support trust and confidence in com.au and net.au for the benefit of the Australian community.” In other words, curb fraudulent and other undesirable conduct. This is something I think all Australian small businesses would understand.

But what of people who have been legitimately using Australian domains for, in some cases decades, as I have? It doesn’t seem right that small businesses operating online, who have been doing no wrong all this time, should suddenly have harsh, and burdensome requirements, imposed on them.

To date nothing has changed, and auDA says there will be consultation once they finalise draft licensing rules. But if you are a .com.au and .net.au domain name holder, and concerned by the changes, you might want to consider signing the petition opposing the proposed policy changes.

Vale Terry Denton, illustrator of Treehouse children’s book series

23 September 2026

Australian illustrator and author Terry Denton died on Monday this week, aged seventy-six.

Denton collaborated with Melbourne based author Andy Griffiths for over twenty-five years, and are perhaps best known for the Treehouse series of children’s books. Together they produced eleven titles in the series over twelve years, between 2011 and 2023.

Well, the Australian government could pay writers for work scraped by AI bots

21 September 2026

The Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, appears to have watered down a commitment to compensate Australian creatives whose work is being copied by AI companies. In a speech given at the University of Sydney, in July this year, Albanese undertook to enshrine, in law, copyright protection for all Australian artists and writers:

Australian writers, musicians, artists and journalists must retain ownership and control of their work. Our laws will spell that out, plain as day. An artist’s creative endeavour is their work and their property. No company should use Australian books, music, art or news to build or train AI without the artist’s control.

Online content, which includes the work of bloggers among others — and surely low-hanging fruit in the eyes of the AI companies — now seems to sit in a separate category. Under new proposals, when it comes to accessing work published online, AI companies only need to negotiate with enough copyright holders, not all:

AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic would be allowed to train their models on online content without paying its creators as long as they struck deals with enough rights holders, under one copyright reform plan put forward in government documents seen by the ABC.

How to interpret that? If enough copyright holders agree content they published online can be used to train agents, it sounds like AI companies can use any content they can find. But what is the precise definition of enough copyright holders in the first place? Only the big players, the large media outlets? Will independent, smaller, publishers be pushed aside?

The policy revisions come as a result of concerns AI companies have that they will be breaking copyright laws. This might mean they will withhold investment in Australian AI infrastructure, something the Australian government does not want.

I’m not sure how many Australian creatives, particularly independents publishing content online, are surprised by the apparent change in the government’s position.

Like others, I wondered how the AI companies, who have considerable political clout, would react to being dictated to in such a fashion. Particularly as they’ve been able to help themselves to whatever material they can get their hands on for several years anyway.

Of course the Australian government still has the option to compensate local creatives themselves, and be seen, to some degree, to be keeping their word to uphold copyright protection. Skim off some of the tax take from the AI companies, and give a little to Australian writers and artists, whose work has been gratuitously plundered.

But, in case you thought I was serious, no, you can be sure that’s not going to happen.

A Piece of Red Cloth wins 2026 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction

18 September 2026

A Piece of Red Cloth, written by Leonie Norrington, Djawundil Maymuru, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, and Djawa Burarrwanga, has been named winner of the fiction category in the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for 2026.

Australian works of literature are recognised annually across six categories: Australian history, children’s, young adult, poetry, non-fiction, and fiction. A full list of recipients in all categories is here.

About The Souffle, a film about homelessness by Jacob Hazeldine

17 September 2026

Here’s something I only discovered recently: someone can still be homeless, even if they are not sleeping rough, or on the street. Couch surfing, living in temporary or emergency accommodation, and boarding houses or caravan parks, are also considered forms of homelessness in Australia.

This even though a person has a roof over their head for the night.

Connor van Helsing (Instagram link), a resident of Darwin, in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), has experienced all forms of homelessness, including sleeping rough.

van Helsing has collaborated with Australian filmmaker Jacob Hazeldine (Instagram link), to bring his lived experience of homelessness to the big screen in About The Soufflé (trailer).

In terms of rental accommodation, the NT comes second only to Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales (NSW), in terms of cost.

This means a single person in the NT, earning only the minimum wage, is presently priced out of the rental market. And if people here don’t have friends or family they can call on when something goes wrong, they may all to quickly find themselves homeless.

About The Soufflé, which was filmed on a shoe-string budget of just fifteen-hundred Australian dollars, premiered at the Darwin International Film Festival, last week, on Friday 11 September 2026.

I’m not sure if the film will screen outside the film-festival circuit, meaning it may be hard to see in cinemas, but perhaps it be available through streaming instead.

My Feed My Way will make Instagram feeds overwhelming says Adam Mosseri

14 September 2026

Ange Lavoipierre, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), quoting Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram (IG):

“If you go to a chronological feed, it ends up getting overwhelmed with content from companies, brands, and publishers. Creators get drowned out, and then your friends get drowned out even more.”

These are the words of the Head of Instagram. Can it be Mosseri has no idea how the platform he oversees, works?

Australia’s proposed My Feed, My Way laws give local IG users a choice. They can either see content posted only by the people they follow, in their main feed, or elect to see what the algorithm presents.

If IG users choose to only see what the people they follow publish, how is anyone supposed to see what is posted by “companies, brands, and publishers”, if they’re not following them?

Of course creators — a dubious use of the term in the first place, given the quality of some of their content — who sit squarely in the companies, brands, publishers, and influencers category, will be drowned out: that’s the idea.

As for friends, how do they “get drowned out even more”, if they are the only people an IG user follows? Their content is the entirety of what anyone opting for the “friends only” feed will see. With the possible exception of ads, I imagine.

But if someone is only following two people, both of whom maybe only post something twice daily, how could they feel their feed was overwhelming?

Mosseri is clearly unhappy with the proposed My Feed, My Way laws.

So displeased that he seems to be losing sight of what’s what. He continues to believe the platform is not addictive, while also conceding IG “is too complicated”. In saying that, Mosseri is trying to suggest adding a button somewhere, giving users the choice of what they see, will clutter — clutter even further — IG’s interface.

The last time I looked at the IG app, before deleting it from my phone, there was an option to select “following” or “favourites”. In theory, choosing “following” meant someone would mainly see posts only from those whom they followed. This was only somewhat effective though, provided another option, “snooze suggested posts”, was enabled.

Suggested posts, being content by the aforementioned companies, brands, publishers, and influencers, were slipped into an IG member’s main feed, if the algorithm deemed this was somehow of interest. But the “snooze suggested posts” setting only did so for thirty-days at a time.

Disabling suggested posts also required drilling down through several levels of the settings menu to find. Indeed Mosseri is correct when he says IG “is too complicated”. The Australian government proposal aims to make this a one-step, lasting, action.

Mosseri can take consolation though from Anika Wells, the Australian communications minister, who thinks, as I wrote last week, most IG users will stick with the algorithm:

“The reality is that lots of people will want to choose the algorithm.”

Anyone hoping an unintended, or unspoken consequence, of the My Feed, My Way laws, would result in people spending less time looking at screens, will be disappointed.

But to each their own. I spend quite a bit of time using my phone, while say on a public transport trip. Typically I’ll be reading or sending emails, organising work schedules, or reading news.

And I’m often grateful for the chance to do so during so-called downtime, as it leaves time for doing nothing later on. But I don’t look at any Meta social media/network apps, as I removed them.

But I’m still at a loss to recall what I used to do on a train trip during the pre-smartphone era. Likely I starred out the window and daydreamed, something I still do once I’ve finished using my phone.

Proposed Australian laws allow social media users to opt-out of algorithms

9 September 2026

It’s almost enough to entice me back onto social media. But not quite.

The Australian government is proposing to give local social media users the choice to opt out the algorithms that determine the content they see.

If the laws eventuate, social media companies will be obliged to allow their members to only see content posted by the people they follow, if that’s what they choose.

Anika Wells, the Australian communications minister, thinks however most social media users will elect to keep the algorithm. It seems to me, seeing the content of only those they’re following might feel like going cold turkey for some people, who are accustomed to non-stop algorithm content.

The proposed new laws, which are currently being considered by the Australian parliament, will also compel social media companies, search engines, and AI chatbots, to withhold “harmful” content:

For Australians aged under 18, platforms must take steps to prevent content that promotes eating disorders, misogynistic content, pornography, glorification of crime, bullying and abuse, and any other material that could inflict “serious harm” on children.

In relation to adults, the harms are confined to existing crimes including child abuse, sexual violence, menacing or harassment intended to cause serious harm, support for terrorist organisations or encouraging suicide.

Some people are concerned these provisions may result in curbs on free speech, given the communications minister will have the power to add to the “harmful” content categories.

As of the time of writing, I’ve not heard reactions from the big tech companies to the proposed laws, but I doubt we’ll be waiting long.

Taxis in Australian capitals will be driverless by 2036

1 September 2026

That sounds like a bold claim. But such vehicles are already transporting passengers in Chongqing and Wuhan in China, and a number of cities in the United States.

Australian entrepreneur Tim Kentley Klay, who several years ago designed a self-driving car that didn’t have a steering wheel, nor foot pedals, says people would rather ride in a driverless vehicle which he describes as being “clean, private, and safe.”

In writing this post, I see my word processor app calls out the word “driverless” as a typo, something I’ve since corrected. It may not have been a “proper” word a decade or two ago, even though experimental driverless cars have been around for some time.

But “driverless car” was included on the 2016 longlist (PDF) for Macquarie Dictionary’s “word” of the year, though it didn’t make it through to the shortlist.

If the streets of Australian capital cities are to be awash with short range driverless taxis by 2036, it’s time for the word driverless to be reconsidered as a word of the year.

Is a comeback nigh for the tradie to CEO cappuccino?

18 August 2026

A few years ago I did an online coffee quiz. Highly scientific no doubt. My taste in coffee was — because I’m primarily a cappuccino drinker — adjudged to be “entry level”. Nice.

I occasionally partake of other varieties, like short black or piccolo, but they’re just a little light on coffee (and froth, and chocolate). I was surprised though to lean that Millennials, and Generation X coffee drinkers, are said to be ordering more capps recently. Gen X gets a few things right.

An article in The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Food section, with a headline proclaiming “cappuccinos won’t give you street cred” is pay-walled — an article about cappuccinos pay-walled, what can I say? — but you can catch the gist on Good Food’s Instagram page.

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Australia, coffee, trends

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