By contrast, Quadrant only prided itself on not needing to change with the times. In fact the basic cover design of its April 2011 issue used the same typeface, and was printed on similar paper stock (a type of newsprint), as that it used in the 1970s. Yet it has maintained widespread newsagent distribution in an effort to reach a non-coterie audience — ‘so it does make literature and literary discussion available to a casual, browsing public’ in contrast to the other magazines, according to Michael Wilding (‘Letter to the author’).

Quadrant had always prided itself on being Australia's only conservative literary magazine, so in a sense it has seen no reason to update itself, unlike Meanjin and Overland, on the so-called Left. Its raison d’être has been to resist trends and fashions. Largely, it has been a magazine of politics and opinion with relatively marginal adherence to original literary work, something which the Literature Board of the Australia Council had questioned in the past. To a lesser degree, the same could be said for Meanjin and Overland; even so, they have consistently dedicated a greater proportion of their pages to original creative writing. As discussed previously in Chapter Six, Quadrant has, on occasions, made political representations whenever it has felt that its interests have been under attack — confident, it seems, in the belief that it is on sure ground in an Australia that has largely resisted radical ideas, and ideas in general. But it must be said that the great majority of little magazines in this country are (and have not been) political in the strict sense. A rollcall, particularly of the 1970s, reveals a list of publications that were broadly libertarian, individualistic in the extreme, and concerned only in publishing new writers, irrespective of any ideological framing. A similar pattern of magazines largely eschewing overt political positions would develop during the 1980s, 1990s and into the new millennium.

Quadrant still describes itself as ‘Australia's leading journal of ideas, essays, literature, poetry, and political and historical debate’ (Quadrant Magazine n.p.). In 2011 it was published ten times a year, with double editions in January-February and July-August, so it has never been backward in coming forward, charting out a territory for itself that is adversarial and, in earlier times, anti-communist.