Not to blow our own horn, but the June issue of The Monthly is Australia’s best magazine at its best. With the dust settling on the 2025 federal election, we have a long-form essay on a different kind of national reckoning. Like a political contest, it’s one concerned with the relationship between a local community and what they represent in a wider arena; it’s one that is deeply concerned with questions of who we are, as individuals and collectively; it’s an exploration of the role of idealism and a search for perfection in an imperfect world. When Sarah Krasnostein visited the rehearsal rooms of Preston Band, in Melbourne’s inner-north, she expected a small story about a treasured community ritual. She wound up following them to the 2025 Australian National Band Championships, with a story that is moving, surprising and deeply joyous.
“Regardless of the material through which the breath blows, the clarion call is always petitionary. From celebration and commemoration to war and its oppo- sites, the sounding horn summons that which is capable of making us greater than our parts. Whether, and how, we answer that call is a different matter.”
Elsewhere in the issue, Sam Roggeveen turns his attention to Australia’s submarine policy – AUKUS and beyond – to ask what it tells us about our foreign policy in general, and our capacity (and inclination) to stand alone as Trump’s America becomes an ever-less-reliable ally. Don Watson surveys the wreckage of the Liberal Party in the wake of its electoral drubbing, curious about the platitudes around the need to rebuild and what the party wants to rebuild into. Kath Kenny checks in with Antarctic researchers on the state of the ice shelves on the landmass to our south. There’s a new poem by recent NSW Premiers’ Award winner Nam Le. Plus the classic mix of cultural coverage and review, political and social insights and more great writing.