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The May edition of The Monthly is here, and it brings with it groundbreaking essays from two of Australia’s most respected writers, illuminating the dark corners of environmental and energy politics that have plagued industry and poisoned public discourse.

Richard Flanagan traces more than a decade of disgraceful tactics and lies employed by the Tasmanian salmon industry, despite clear evidence and advice that warned against its expansion: how companies gamed the regulatory system and twisted the truth in the eyes of the public, resulting in “duped Australians paying for an extinction at the checkout”. Flanagan’s essay is a sickening indictment on the Tasmanian salmon industry and its co-conspirators, which will have people rethinking putting salmon on their plate.

Leading investigative journalist Marian Wilkinson reveals the backstory of Peter Dutton’s radical new nuclear energy policy, driven by a two-year campaign run by conservative charity figures including one of the country’s biggest fossil fuel lobbyists. The policy, due to be released next month, is a dramatic break from any energy policy in Australia’s history. It proposes creating new nuclear power zones across the country powered by small modular reactors that, so far, have never been successfully employed for civilian use.

Elsewhere in the magazine, Isabelle Reinecke on Labor’s hypocrisy over NDAs and FOl laws, and Lucia Osborne-Crowley on human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson. Also, Bruce Pascoe’s letter to Gillian Mears, Bruce Beresford on Jan Senbergs, plus Ashley Hay, Carrie Tiffany, Sarah Krasnostein, Chunky Move at Rising festival, James Bradley’s Deep Water, Nam Le’s poetry collection, and much more.