WA lost a Liberal MP, and barely anyone noticed
Trainee MP David Farley makes a mistake and sits with the Green (whoops!) and all hell breaks loose. Headline after…
This is the end of the Teals
Hold on a moment… Conservatives are given plenty of stick for not being able to define what they stand for,…
No, One Nation isn’t giving land to Musk or Israel
In a podcast livestreamed this afternoon, Senator Malcolm Roberts clarified One Nation’s position in regard to Gina Rinehart’s comments about…
Nuclear will save us from renewables
It has been convenient for renewable energy enthusiasts to blame nuclear energy policy for Peter Dutton’s demise. Of course, this…
Allegiance, not diversity, defines a nation
Clare O’Neil recently saw fit to issue what some may call a ‘political loyalty test’ from the floor of Parliament,…
Labor’s social media ban fails again!
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But what happens if it is broken, and the fix is more political…
Productivity is prosperity
Productivity and prosperity – these are two concepts intimately linked and yet wrongly separated thanks to the over-taxing demands of…
The sophistication of denial
In recent weeks, One Nation briefly passed Labor in the published surveys and became, on paper, the country’s most popular…
Want to save Australia’s heritage? Attend this event!
Everyone’s talking about Australian culture. What is it? Where is it? And how do we know it when we see…
Culture? Race? Civilisation?
Senator Pauline Hanson’s historic National Press Club address was unpolished and direct, quickly becoming a defining moment in not only…
The Left’s cultural hegemony
Never did I expect to see the cultural consensus of our time enforced so completely until I watched even members…
Monocultural mythology
‘We cannot be a multicultural society. We are a multiracial society, but we must be monocultural. Australians must live under…
Modernising the Liberal Party is not a good idea
Given the dramatic slump in support and the rising popularity of One Nation, the Liberal Party federal Member of Parliament,…
Data centres: the panopticon of the 21st Century
In 1791, Jeremy Bentham described in his book Panopticon: The Inspection House how a panopticon could allow a single guard…
Grand Theft memory
Last week, gamers rejoiced as pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto 6, the most anticipated game of all time, officially opened.…
Is One Nation trolling the Coalition?
Pauline Hanson is often likened by her detractors to Donald Trump. Now, I don’t want to detract, but she’s no…
The coming crash of intellectuals
Every bubble looks like progress while it inflates. Many investors have been wondering whether there is an AI bubble or…
The Parliament in Crown: a constitutional thought experiment
Contemporary discussion of constitutional legitimacy tends to smuggle in the assumptions of one particular constitutional tradition and mistake them for…
One Nation supporters are the underdogs
None of them get it – not journalists, academics, big business, policymakers, or the major parties. One Nation supporters are…
Blair, Starmer, and the destruction of greatness
‘I met Murder on the way – he had a mask like Castlereagh.’ – Percy Bysshe Shelley With Keir Starmer…
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner loses again – A victory for free speech | Celine Baumgarten S3 Ep 18
Celine Baumgarten (Celine Against the Machine) has celebrated her SECOND victory against the eSafety Commissioner. This wasn’t only a personal…
Did Donald Trump conquer the world with witty insults? | Joel Gilbert S3 Ep 17
Did Donald Trump conquer the world with witty insults? I’m joined by Joel Gilbert to discuss the genius of humour…
Digital tyranny or ‘child safety’? 😵 & the bitcoin revolution | Efrat Fenigson S3 Ep 16
When Australia’s Under 16 social media ban started locking adult political writers out of #Substack – it was just the…
What’s in a name?
A fortnight ago, my wife and I were driving some 750 kilometres one day from the north-western tip of Newfoundland…
Hey, big spenders
I’m always up for a bit of an adventure. So, when I was in Melbourne recently, I thought I would…
Words that changed the world
Two hundred and fifty years ago today, on 4 July 1776, fifty-six men adopted the Declaration of Independence. It is…
Britain has a governess
For someone arriving in London for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference, the weather forecast looked positively Mediterranean. Early morning…
Australia’s kulaks face vicious campaign
The recent appearance by Labor’s right-wing eminence Don Farrell in the Weekend Australian was a master-class in political theatre. With…
Nowak sacrificed on the altar of DEI
I’d be lying if I claimed to dislike polemic, but I do try to avoid it. Yet in this moment,…
Erasing the portrait of a nation
National cultural institutions are entrusted with preserving a country’s historical memory. When they lose sight of that mission, the consequences…
We are many but we are one
The highly charged debate about multiculturalism, monoculturalism and Australian values is generating more heat than light because people are arguing…
Taylor Swift has the power to make marriage great again
Taylor Swift’s wedding – a multi-day extravaganza kicking off in earnest at New York’s Madison Square Garden arena later today –…
Riad Bouchaker’s stab attack was a crime against Ireland
When does a crime against the individual become an assault on an entire nation? This is the harrowing question at…
In praise of the American Loyalists
As the United States marks 250 years since the country’s unilateral declaration of independence, most of the 4 July celebrations…
TG Jones and WH Smith deserve to fail
‘Too big to go down’ is an old football maxim and a cautionary tale. It refers to the complacent attitude…
Burnham’s LBC interview told us nothing new
With less than three weeks to go until he enters No. 10, Andy Burnham has adopted a ‘Ming vase’ approach…
Will there be justice for Henry Nowak?
Britain’s Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) have announced they are investigating two officers who attended the scene of Henry…
Can the Kremlin afford to fix Russia’s oil crisis?
For a country that pumps roughly nine million barrels of oil a day – the third highest of any country…
The brutal excommunication of the Society of Saint Pius X
On Wednesday, the largest traditional Catholic order of priests in the world, the Society of Saint Pius X, consecrated four…
Will anything change after the Southport attack?
It should come as no surprise that ministers have accepted all the recommendations made in the first phase of the…
JK Rowling is a national treasure, so why don’t we treat her like one?
There’s one member of the royal family that most women of a certain age would truly like to hang out…
Berlin should preserve, not destroy, its Nazi bunkers
Berlin is currently convulsed by a culture war – and one all too familiar in a country and capital which,…
Burnham’s chancellor could decide his fate
War! What is it good for? A ding-dong political row. The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) continues to dominate Westminster, following its…
A New Zealand republic in Jacinda Ardern’s lifetime?
New Zealand’s former Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, believes the nation will become a republic within her lifetime. We have heard…
The row over English becoming an official language of New Zealand
Parliamentarians in New Zealand have been limbering up for an oddly unedifying debate over what ought to be the most…
What they don’t tell you about Christmas in New Zealand
‘I still think New Zealand the most beautiful country I have ever seen,’ Agatha Christie marvelled in 1922. Evidently she’s…
What will Jacinda Ardern do next?
When I first met Jacinda Ardern in the early 2010s, the notion that the young MP with the toothy smile…
Will the Iran deal destroy J.D. Vance?
Tip-Toeing in Manchester
The world knows that Andy Burnham, the ‘King from the North’, was a very successful mayor of Manchester. There have…
Beauty, blarney and banshees
It’s a bit odd in its way that a fair fraction of the more or less British theatre we watch…
Striped caps and striking shoes
June 11 saw the death of the Yorkshire-born English painter David Hockney who was arguably the most celebrated painter of…
A man of music
The other day saw the opening of the Peter Corrigan Collection at RMIT which comprises his personal collection of architectural…
A century of movie magic: how cinema has changed the way we think
The making of films is a process often on an industrial scale, and among the thousands of professionals contributing there…
The conspiracy of silence surrounding the Nord Stream bombings
Six months after undersea explosions ripped through three of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany I…
Our resentment of migrants is centuries old: the Little Englanders of the Tudor era
This Little World opens with a description of the riots of 1517, an explosion of pent-up hostility and resentment against…
Small, skewed pictures that cast a spell: the art of Mollie Douthit
In this clever, moving mosaic of a book, Sara Baume tells us she originally wanted to be an art critic…
Family Tyrant: The Anniversary, by Andrea Bajani, reviewed
Andrea Bajani’s short novel The Anniversary won Italy’s Premio Strega prize last year and has since become an international bestseller.…
Disability is becoming the new normal
Before I became confined to a wheelchair two years ago after an operation for a spinal abscess, I’d never read…
Persistent gossip about Brian Epstein’s death risks defining his life
We know the facts about Brian Epstein’s death. The Beatles’ manager died in bed at his Belgravia home on 27…
Do single women bother to cook for themselves?
‘Let us begin with cookbooks. Or, rather, with a rejection of them. I cannot look at mine. They remind me…