If the premiers are keeping us safe from the virus, who is keeping us safe from the premiers?
Fire! Fire! Fire!
The Spectator Australia’s Twitter account was suspended for 12 hours last night for the terrible sin of ‘violating community standards’. This…
Mark McGowan may have repented – but has reminded us of the threat to religious freedom in Australia
Yesterday, the Western Australian government backed down from its decision to cancel a booking made by Australian Christian Lobby to run…
The Member for Union Super?
The Labor member for Whitlam in New South Wales, Stephen Jones is morphing into the chief lobbyist for the super…
If the premiers are keeping us safe from the virus, who is keeping us safe from the premiers?
As if we needed more evidence that state premiers have become a law unto themselves, Daniel Andrews provided it today…
‘Feminists’ fighting the Liberal Party are making women collateral damage
How we frame political conversations is incredibly important, particularly when we are discussing a deeply personal topic like sexual harassment.…
What’s there to celebrate about Twitter’s fifteenth birthday?
Fifteen years ago, on July 15 2006 , Jack Dorsey launched Twitter. On that inaugural day, then 224 tweets were…
Meet the Covid billionaires
While the peasantry lick their wounds and shake the dwindling remnants of childhood piggy banks, there are plenty within the Covid…
Question everything
On learning about the extension to Sydney’s lockdown until the end of July, my mind broiled with one big question:…
Has Boris got cold feet over ‘freedom day’?
A very strange ‘freedom day’ greets us on Monday. Legally, almost all restrictions will be lifted. But practically, ministers are…
Afghanistan: give peace a chance
The American war in Afghanistan is over. In the predawn hours of July 2, US troops slunk away from Bagram…
The rule of law is breaking down in the EU
There are 27 member states in the EU. Two have now declared they are not bound by EU law. Based…
A salt and sugar tax doesn’t make much sense
What is the point of the National Food Strategy? When Henry Dimbleby was hired as Britain’s ‘food tsar’ several years…
New Zealand's transgender debate is turning nasty
New Zealand was the first country in the world to give women the right to vote in parliamentary elections. But now,…
Will fairy dust power New Zealand?
Wishful thinking, allied to government incompetence and the ambition of our Prime Minister, is lining up trouble ahead. In one…
Kiwi Life
One of my goals over the coming months is to watch an entire rugby game for the first time in…
New Zealand’s worrying battle over transgender rights
Last year, the equalities minister Liz Truss set aside laws which would have allowed people to self-identity as the legal…
Wink wink, nudge nudge!
The Australian, to its credit, has obtained reams of (heavily redacted) evidence under Freedom of Information that the government of…
The new religion of diversity
Readers of this fine publication have no doubt, on occasion, wondered from where this new, woke religion called ‘diversity’ emerged.…
The force is strong in the CCP
Like a Jedi mind trick, deception involves subverting an opponent with misleading information and intentions that conform with their expectations.…
The rise and rise of the Australian elites
I had the fascinating experience of having the author of The Lucky Country lecture me back in 1974. It was…
On the woke/green path to oblivion
When I was still a school girl, I started to read the Economist. My geography teacher had a commerce degree…
Farewell to Parkes’ vision splendid
Ten years ago, Western Australian Mines Minister Norman Moore proposed that the state secede and rely on China for its…
Hunt goes off script with ivermectin
‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety)…
Aux bien pensants
NSW under dictatorship As the dictatorship was intensified over New South Wales, the provisions of new decrees were announced as…
Martin Clunes
Just as the lockdown imprisons the people of Sydney those in Canberra have had the chance to see that exhilaration…
Opera Australia’s production of Otello
Lockdown must be making me irritable; an article during the week really got me going. It concerns two forthcoming productions…
Ethos
A Sydney lockdown on the heels of Melbourne: what price entertainment? It seemed natural as ever to have recourse to…
Jaime Martín
They’re changing guard at our two major orchestras; the Melbourne Symphony and the Sydney Symphony. A couple of months ago…
The life cycle of the limpet teaches universal truths
Adam Nicolson is one of our finest writers of non-fiction. He has range — from place and history to literature…
Germany’s post-war recovery was no economic miracle
Lord Macaulay wrote that ‘during the century and a half which followed the Conquest there is, to speak strictly, no…
The power of the translator to break nations
No one ever raised a statue to a translator, disgruntled adepts of that art sometimes complain. I beg to differ,…
She didn’t go quietly: Caroline Norton’s campaign for married women’s rights
When Caroline Sheridan married George Chapple Norton in 1827 she ceased to exist. According to the legal status quo, as…
The man at the heart of punk: the late Pete Shelley recalls his Buzzcocks years
Manchester, in the words of the artist Linder Sterling, is a ‘tiny little world’. Nearly three million people live in…
A matter of life or death: Should We Stay or Shall We Go, by Lionel Shriver, reviewed
Leave or remain? That’s the question hanging like a cartoon sledgehammer over Lionel Shriver’s 17th novel. Although she makes merry…
The US tech companies behind China’s mass surveillance
In January, the United States declared that China’s brutal treatment of the Uighur people in Xinjiang amounted to genocide. ‘I…
Richard Dawkins delights in his own invective
The late Derek Ratcliffe, arguably Britain’s greatest naturalist since Charles Darwin, once explained how he cultivated a technique for finding…
