Labor is limiting access to retirees’ super pension funds
When someone retires after the age of 60, their superannuation savings become ‘unrestricted non-preserved’ and can be converted into pension phase, or…
The pop culture wars
Recently, a small miniature company in the UK, Games Workshop, announced a change to its longstanding lore. I won’t get…
Victorians will pay more and get less
In case we ever doubted it, this week’s budget made clear that months of Labor leaks on the state’s upcoming…
Eurovision: decadent and profane
A cursory watching of the Eurovision Song Contest has brought to light the fact that this contemporary ‘entertainment’ event, despite…
Warragamba Dam: the political yo-yo of failed water politics
Warragamba Dam is spilling again, but it didn’t have to be this way. There have been warnings for decades about…
Think of the kids: student-led learning finally dies
Most of us were lucky enough to make it through the education system largely unharmed. Today, parents are terrified that…
Victorian budget blues
The best thing that can be said about the 2024 Victorian Budget is that it’s not as bad as recent…
To stock the book or not?
A Sydney council is currently under fire for passing a motion to ban same-sex parenting books from the shelves of…
Campus sit-ins
Let’s be clear. Supporting free speech does not require you to allow people to trespass or to shut down public…
Victoria’s Budget reveals a state strangled by Labor
Forty years ago, John Cain’s Victorian government commenced an era of extravagant expenditure turbocharged by the Victorian Economic Development Corporation (a…
Home-schooling seeks to avoid the cluttered National Curriculum
The Queensland government has declared war on the ever-growing number of parents across the state who have decided to home-school…
Kill comedy, kill truth
French playwright Moliere once said, ‘The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.’ As the share of television…
Tory voters on strike
The Tories’ 2 May electoral disaster – the loss of almost 400 council seats, ten councils, the high-profile West Midlands…
Quantum delusions
Paul Benioff (1930-2022) was a US physicist who wrote a paper in 1980 that imagined the feats computing might achieve…
Return of the MFP
Does anyone remember the Multifunction Polis? It was doing the rounds in the late 1980s, sponsored by Labor industry minister,…
Oppression, dispossession and massacres
When Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan appeared at the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s ‘truth telling’ inquiry last week, she sought to perpetuate…
Save the planet
The Great Artesian Basin of Queensland, New South Wales, the Northern Territory and South Australia is the largest groundwater basin…
Fatties for a Free Palestine
Meet the Fatties for a Free Palestine, a project of Hannah Moushabeck who is, she writes, unapologetically fat and a…
Gay Rex
‘Moral values’ fell out of fashion long before what we now know as ‘woke’ became the controlling virus in the…
Asia’s new flashpoint
For the last few months, China’s People’s Liberation Army forces have harassed Taiwan, repeatedly breaching the country’s air zone and…
Why Israel is crucial to Eurovision
Eden Golan has qualified for the final of tonight’s Eurovision Song Contest and will represent Israel in the world’s most-watched…
The FTSE 100 hits a new high – but don’t celebrate yet
Another day, another all time high. As the week closed, the FTSE 100 index hit 8,433 — the highest level…
The bizarre sexual politics of the French
‘More sex please, we’re French,’ declared, in effect, France’s president Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, demanding that his compatriots counteract a…
Why is Russia’s economy booming despite sanctions?
Over two years on from the invasion of Ukraine, Russia is the most sanctioned nation in the world. And yet the country’s…
Why New Zealand is cracking down on immigration
The government of New Zealand this week tightened the country’s working visa rules in order to stem historically high numbers…
Why is New Zealand’s deputy PM rowing with Chumbawamba?
In their musical heyday, the English anarchist punk band Chumbawamba enjoyed a reputation for having an irreverent attitude towards those…
New Zealand’s imperial judiciary
If you cast your eyes across the Tasman right now, you can see the beginnings of an imperial judiciary, the…
Subversion within New Zealand
Recently querying why New Zealand governments make annual January pilgrimages to the Maori Pa at Ratana, to celebrate the birth…
The Xi files: how China spies
Dark and crooked byways
Isn’t it strange that the new television, the television of the streamers which has dominated our world since Covid, has…
The best and worst of the 2024 Met Gala
On Monday night, celebrities, designers and the highest edges of New York’s upper crust attended the biggest party of the…
Music as pasta
It’s sad to see that Sir Andrew Davis, the former head of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, has died. The man…
Is John Cleese right that the ‘literal minded’ have killed comedy?
John Cleese appeared in the West End this week. ‘I’ve got vertigo,’ he said as he walked on stage at…
Aussie life
As the terrible events in Bondi Junction last month reminded us, fortune doesn’t always favour the brave. Indeed, the courage…
Language
Speccie reader Terry writes to ask when and where did ‘non-binary’ come into the language – and who applied it…
How to solve ‘range anxiety’
In ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’, Sherlock Holmes mentions ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’. ‘But the…
Dear Mary: what should I do if a fellow passenger is reading porn?
Q. On a recent short-haul flight, I had the misfortune to be seated next to a much older man who…
The endless fascination of volcanoes
Volcanoes, volcanoes, volcanoes. You wait years for a good book or a film about volcanoes to come along and then…
Kindness backfires: Sufferance, by Charles Palliser, reviewed
Charles Palliser’s Sufferance tells us what happens to one family in an occupied country during wartime. What sets it apart…
The traditional British hedge is fast vanishing
Five years ago, a documentary about the Duchy of Cornwall featured the then Prince of Wales in tweeds and jaunty…
The perils of waiting on a Tudor queen
At 7 o’clock on a bleak February morning in 1542, King Henry VIII’s fifth wife Katherine Howard, so enfeebled by…
Exploring the glorious literary heritage of Bengal
The first time I went to India, nearly 30 years ago, I was sent as a young novelist by the…
What do we mean when we talk of ‘home’?
Given that I know the author, would I feel inhibited about reviewing her new book critically, I asked myself. But…
There’s much to be said for nostalgia
Michel Barnier, the chief negotiator for the EU Commission, called Brexit an expression of ‘hope for a return to a…
When the local wizard was the repository of all wisdom
What do you do when one of your possessions goes missing? Search behind the sofa cushions? Ask other members of…