Nation Review

Nation Review was an Australian Sunday newspaper, which ceased publication in 1981. It was launched in 1970 after independent publisher Gordon Barton bought out Tom Fitzgerald's Nation publication and merged it with his own Sunday Review journal. Nation Review featured contributors such as Michael Leunig, Bob Ellis, Germaine Greer, Phillip Adams, Richard Beckett aka Sam Orr, Mungo MacCallum, John Hindle, Francis James, Patrick Cook 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 and Tharunka, 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 Review's 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