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The August issue of The Monthly is here, with multiple questions occupying its writers around the function and disfunction of our major institutions. Judith Brett, one of the country’s most astute observers of politics and Australian public life, delivers a cover story that unpacks the whole sordid PwC affair, and what it tells us about the outsourcing of government, of responsibility and of character. There’s also a major essay from Claire Connelly about what we need next from the Reserve Bank of Australia, and how reducing its level of influence in economic policy may be a damaging miscalculation.

Elsewhere in the magazine: Jennifer Miller, the mother of robodebt victim Rhys Cauzzo, reflects on the outcomes of the royal commission and the desire for justice; Melissa Lucashenko asks how Australians who have been raised culturally white might reasonably integrate the discovery of Aboriginal ancestry into their identity; Don Watson puzzles over the AUKUS price tag; Kate Grenville shares some advice from her mother; and much more besides.