Nation Review
was an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n Sunday newspaper, which ceased publication in 1981. It was launched in 1970 after independent publisher Gordon Barton

Gordon Barton

Gordon Page Barton was a quixotic Australian businessman and political activist.He was born in Surabaya, Java, Dutch East Indies of a Dutch mother and Australian father...

 bought out Tom Fitzgerald

Tom Fitzgerald

Tom Fitzgerald or Thomas Fitzgerald, Thomas FitzGerald may refer to:* Tom Fitzgerald , American soccer coach from Florida* Tom Fitzgerald , retired ice hockey player for the Boston Bruins and other teams...

's Nation publication and merged it with his own Sunday Review journal. Nation Review featured contributors such as Michael Leunig

Michael Leunig

Michael Leunig , typically referred to as Leunig, is an Australian poet, cartoonist and cultural commentator. His best known works include The Adventures of Vasco Pyjama and the Curly Flats series...

, Bob Ellis

Bob Ellis

Bob Ellis is an Australian writer, journalist, film-maker and political commentator. He was a student at the University of Sydney at the same time as other notable Australians including Clive James, Germaine Greer, Les Murray, John Bell, Ken Horler, and Mungo McCallum...

, Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....

, Phillip Adams

Phillip Adams

Phillip Andrew Hedley Adams, AO is an Australian broadcaster, film producer, writer, social commentator, satirist and left-wing pundit. He currently hosts a radio program, Late Night Live, four nights a week on the ABC, and he also writes a weekly column for the News Limited-owned newspaper, The...

, Richard Beckett aka Sam Orr, Mungo MacCallum

Mungo Wentworth MacCallum

Mungo Wentworth MacCallum is an Australian political journalist and commentator.He is the son of Mungo Ballardie MacCallum , and Diana Wentworth a great granddaughter of the Australian explorer and politician William Charles Wentworth...

, John Hindle, Francis James

Francis James

Alfred Francis James was an eccentric Australian publisher known for being imprisoned in China as a spy.-Early life:...

, Patrick Cook

Patrick Cook

Patrick St. John Cook is an Australian cartoonist who is probably best known for his output in The Bulletin, Australia's weekly news magazine...

 and Jenny Brown aka Zesta (now Jen Jewel Brown). The paper was self-styled 'The Ferret', fancying itself 'lean and nosey'.

Nation Review was aimed at Australia's new urban, educated middle class, providing mocking political commentary, off-beat cartoons, iconoclastic film, book, music and theatre reviews, and food, wine, and even motoring columns. The paper's satirical tone matched the style of Australian university newspapers like Honi Soit

Honi Soit

Honi Soit is the student newspaper of the University of Sydney, first published in 1929 and produced by an elected editorial team as part of the activities of the Students' Representative Council...

 and Tharunka

Tharunka

Tharunka is a student newspaper published at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Established in 1953 at the then New South Wales University of Technology, Tharunka has been published in a variety of forms by various student organisations...

, from which publications many of its contributors and editors had indeed graduated.

Nation Review editorial policy was egalitarian and anti-Establishment. The paper was pro-Labor, or at least, pro political change, but after the Federal Labor victory of 1972, 'disillusionment set in' as its former editor Richard Walsh put it. To the 'Ferret', it seemed merely that another set of fallible and opportunistic politicians had taken charge of the country.

Nation Review survived several mergers and name-changes, only to expire because its readership's tastes had altered.

Much of Nation Reviews best art and writing has been collected and published elsewhere.

Details

• Richard Walsh (1993)Ferretabilia: Life and Times of Nation Review. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press. ISBN 0702224502

• Michael Leunig (1974)The Penguin Leunig. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin. ISBN 0140040196

• Sam Orr (Richard Beckett) (1980)Roll On, Brave New Bloody World. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. ISBN 0207140529
• Nation Review (Melbourne, Vic.)
• Publisher: Melbourne : Incorporated Newsagencies Co., 1972-1981.
• ISSN 0156-8221