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The Sydney Morning Herald

Breaking news from Sydney, Australia and the world. Features the latest business, sport, entertainment, travel, lifestyle, and technology news.

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Featured Writers

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Petra Stock

Petra Stock is an award-winning freelance journalist, specialising in science, technology, education and climate change. Her portfolio includes news, magazine and online features, explainers, investigations and podcasts, with stories published …

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Hannah Vanderheide

I'm a freelance journalist, copywriter, and actor, and a mum to a perfect little maniac named Finn. I'm also a disability and rare disease advocate, eating disorder survivor, and wellness …

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Louisa Hearn

Versatile media expert with extensive experience creating high-impact content

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Daniel Lo Surdo

I am a highly skilled writer with a track record of breaking agenda-setting stories spanning politics, health, education, crime, sports and international affairs. I’ve covered stories from NSW and Federal …

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Heidi Vogt

Writer Editor Journalist

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Cherie Gilmour

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Latest Articles

In a fat-phobic world, Ozempic is hardly the easy way out

Imagine living in a body that is, by overwhelming consensus, regarded as wrong. Imagine being told your entire life that you need to change it. Imagine trying everything humanly possible to do that, only to wind up exactly where you started, or worse off. Now, imagine there’s a drug that, …
By Hannah Vanderheide
• The Sydney Morning Herald

China’s ‘counter-historians’ challenging the Communist Party

POLITICS Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and the Battle for the Future Ian Johnson Allen Lane, $55 In 2012, I took a five-week bullet-train tour of China’s East Coast. Hoisted on pylons, I soared above the fields and villages of old China, to the surging cities of a bold new country. …
By Kurt Johnson
• The Sydney Morning Herald

I’m teaching my child not to have a best friend

It’s crazy how quickly your child powers through noteworthy stages. In utero, they grow from a grain of rice to a grape, to a rockmelon. Then they’re born, and before you know it, they’re rolling, crawling, running, learning your real name isn’t Mum. Suddenly, they’re four years old and entering …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

A new book about Bridget Jones, but not that Bridget Jones

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is no greater love than that of a romance writer for their genre, which is especially true in the case of The Other Bridget by Rachael Johns, one of Australia’s most productive novelists. In Rachael Johns’ latest romance her main character, Bridget …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Tyson Yunkaporta’s book bristles with revelation

“There is certainly magic in the world, but it only works when you don’t try to control it and scale it.” says Tyson Yunkaporta in Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking. Tyson Yunkaporta worries that Indigenous knowledge will be appropriated and exploited. To prove this point he posits …
By Kurt Johnson
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Why are doctors still telling women with endometriosis to become pregnant?

One of the first times endometriosis was mentioned in Australian media was in a 1949 article in the Catholic Weekly. Doctors in the piece prescribed pregnancy as a treatment for “one of the most crippling of female diseases”, which they claimed was suffered by women who didn’t have kids young …
By Gina Rushton
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Sorry Frozen, but it’s time children let it go once and for all

Dear Frozen, happy 10th anniversary. Disney, can we have something new now? The time has come to let it go. I know I’m treading on thin ice here, weighing in on a film for which I’m not the target audience, but let me explain. As we arrive at this anniversary, …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

I demand my kids hug their grandparents. Am I a bad mother?

Though it’s an increasingly controversial stance among those who subscribe to the gentle parenting movement, I make my children hug their grandparents. To some, enforcing my two young kids these kinds of rules is considered to be on par with sending them to Neverland Ranch for a sleepover. Our “child-focused” …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Flights, cameras, action: Anthony Albanese travels to a restless China

Feminists, the LGBTQ community and liberal students have all been targeted by the Chinese Communist Party as it clamps down on groups that may threaten the increasingly hardline ideology of President Xi Jinping. “Once again, entertainment is not superficial, behind it are real-life scars,” wrote one user on Chinese social …
By Minyue Ding
• The Sydney Morning Herald

How AI forces us to look inwards at our own minds

“At the heart of artificial intelligence is a fundamental deceit,” claims AI doyen Toby Walsh, in Faking It: Artificial Intelligence in a Human World, his fourth book on the subject. The con starts at the name. AI is not true intelligence. It does not arrive at conclusions (or outputs) through …
By Kurt Johnson
• The Sydney Morning Herald

I’m stuck in recruitment hell. How do I keep my head above water?

Due to a serious illness in a colleague’s family, I’ve become responsible for recruitment at a small company that is growing rapidly. I’m trying my best, but this is a whole new world for me, and I’m barely keeping my head above water. We are getting good responses to the …
By Jonathan Rivett
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Sobriety is your choice. Stop preaching that it should be mine

Most of the time I’m simply cosplaying as a responsible adult. Like many Millennials, I’m increasingly startled by the suggestion that I’m now genuinely a grown-up, though seeing my childhood 90s fashion return to vogue renders it pretty hard to ignore. There are myriad ways in which I fall short. …
By Hannah Vanderheide
• The Sydney Morning Herald

After 14 years, I left the disability sector. Money alone can’t fix its problems

A few months ago, I left the disability support industry that I had worked in for 14 years behind. Despite finding the work hugely rewarding, supporting a young family on the industry’s wages was becoming harder, so I made the difficult decision to leave. Among the 222 recommendations the disability …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Forget a female David Brent – give women original characters

I am all for the matriarchy. In the words of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt theme song: “Females are strong as hell.” When done well, a female-led TV show or film can do justice to the complexities and diversities of women’s stories. But when it comes to gender-flipped reboots, like Australia’s …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

‘Do you know how many followers I have?’ Dodging influencers in Bali

Bali has many reputations. Kuta, once the centre of the tourist universe, is in decline having never recovered its pre-COVID glory when hordes of Bintang-singleted Aussies staggered through the Hard Rock Cafe foyer loaded with pirated DVDs. In the last few years, attention has shifted west to Canggu, into influencer …
By Kurt Johnson
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Why couples should split the bill on the pill

There are all kinds of jobs involved in heterosexual sex. Some are more fun than others. But it’s women who have long been tasked with outlaying the time and money to facilitate a baby-free-bang. Yes, much like domestic chores, the mental load, child-growing and subsequent rearing, pregnancy prevention is typically …
By Hannah Vanderheide
• The Sydney Morning Herald

The ‘recovering teacher’ who’s written a portrait of small-town teacher life

“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth,” Doris Lessing famously said, and Gabbie Stroud’s move into fiction with Things That Matter Most is a testament to this. Stroud, who calls herself a “recovering teacher”, has written much on the ongoing teacher shortage, including her brilliant …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

It’s great that your child loves Spider-Man and Elsa, but they have no place at Book Week

It’s that time of the year when two words strike fear into the hearts of parents who couldn’t papier-mache a boat to save their lives: Book Week. Last year, during a frenzied costume rush, I found myself embroiled in a debate with my three-year-old about why an Elsa (from Frozen) …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Life is dark and absurd. No wonder kids shows celebrating this are winning awards

My toddlers adore Teletubbies. As soon as the show’s baby-faced sun-God rises in the sky, they go off like a frog in a sock. The Teletubbies plod on-stage with their dead eyes, weird noises, and anthropomorphic vacuum cleaner, and I silently categorise the various controversies surrounding them over the years: …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Should grandparents be paid for childcare or should Nanna do it for nada?

The best part of being a grandparent is getting to hand them back, right? Well, it doesn’t always work that way. Picture it: you’ve finally managed to retire, you’re settling into a new pace of life and the next few decades are shining ahead of you, gloriously golden. Then your …
By Hannah Vanderheide
• The Sydney Morning Herald

How dog-sharing became a solution to ‘pandemic puppy’ problems

Natalie Hollenberg Stal’s dog lives around the corner from her, her husband and two children – but he’s still very much part of their family. “When we drive past his house – when he’s with his owner – my two-and-a-half-year-old will scream ‘Bear’,” says the hypnotherapist and coach. For the …
By Amy Fallon
• The Sydney Morning Herald

From silkworms to sculptures, the strange side hustles are keeping Australians afloat

A record number of Australians are now working a side hustle to make ends meet. While most pick up an extra bartending, food delivery or carer shift, others have turned to unique avenues to bring home a secondary income. Kate Reynolds’ voice-over acting side hustle has enabled her to take …
By Kate Reynolds
• The Sydney Morning Herald

My toddler is constantly misgendered. It may be the best thing for him

It’s curious how confidently strangers use “she” or “her” when referring to my son. They clock his wild curls, growing unopposed for a good two years, and they’re immediately certain – long hair must mean girl. My son is two. He has naturally taken to ball sports, outside play and, …
By Hannah Vanderheide
• The Sydney Morning Herald