Time to stash cash under the bed?
‘I wonder how many of you have savings locked away in the banking system where you think it’s safe? Well,…
Taxpayers despair at forking out for ISIS brides
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor offered two numbers that represent taxpayer-funded support. Pensioners: $31,309 ISIS Brides: $46,889 Taylor presented these figures…
Angus Taylor: party of convenience, not conviction
The results of the Farrer byelection are going to be difficult to swallow for the Liberal faithful. Farrer, described as…
Is Labor allergic to fuel security?
Albanese has been on an extended begging tour of Asia, promising who-knows-what in exchange for the odd shipment of fuel.…
Australia’s prosperity problem is bigger than the budget
The federal budget was presented as a story of discipline and restraint. Australians heard the usual arguments. Surplus versus deficit.…
Anger is never without an object
The way the mainstream media talks about populism and the manifest anger of voters is deeply frustrating. Anger is an…
If Elon Musk were in an Australian classroom, he’d be on the NDIS
With 16 per cent of all Australian boys aged five to seven now on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, our…
In this budget, it was our veterans who paid
Tuesday’s Federal Budget did something quietly disgraceful. It cut the funding of Invictus Australia, the charity that has helped more…
Making a difference – a million migrants at a time
Is it a naive analytical blind spot that prompts the following: ‘[Angus] Taylor’s remarks were a distraction from a more…
Are death duties next?
The May 2026 Budget has confirmed what many suspected: Labor’s election promises are merely temporary placeholders for a more predatory…
A student perspective on the ‘lost boys’ in higher education
Recently, I came across a post from The Australian on X with the headline: Lost boys need a leg-up as…
How is this budget fair to young Australians?
The biggest problem with the government’s negative gearing changes is not simply the policy itself. It is who still gets…
Australians are paying for broken promises and election lies
Now Labor wants Australians to believe the budget problems are suddenly the fault of instability in the Middle East and…
Budget 2026 losers and biggest losers
The Treasurer’s opening statement in the budget overview places the blame for our current economic woes on the war in…
Rubio is coming…
Who will be the next President of the United States? Donald Trump will, alas – and I mean alas –…
Sex matters, but where are the men?
The gender debate in Australia has long been driven by women. It’s women who’ve had their community sports made unsafe…
I am done with the debate. I want outcomes…
The Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion formally opened last week. Over recent days, I’ve sat watching the lived…
Recession, this way comes
Australia is heading for a recession. Policymakers may not want to admit it yet, but the warning signs are flashing…
What did I miss?
Probably the main thing you missed this week was that Nasa released actual footage of UFOs under President Trump’s orders.…
What David Pocock, and others, miss in the gas tax debate
There’s a reason the recent gas tax debate has cut through. Australians haven’t suddenly developed a deep interest in resource…
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…
Brown study
It is with a tone of despair, but some optimism, that I have been cogitating on the result of the…
Bungling bureaucrats
Two senior executives in the financial services industry are invited by the Treasury to provide some confidential technical advice on…
Thirty years boiling the frog
Simon Benson wrote in the Australian this week that the Liberal party’s collapse in Farrer had been ‘rapid and spectacular’.…
Enlightenment is not a dirty word
Australia stands at a critical inflection point, with a defining choice to be made. The liberal order is under assault.…
Nigel and Pauline
Well, it wasn’t a great week for the public broadcasters in Britain and here in Australia. I’m talking about the…
Treasurer, you’re no Keating
Other than Malcolm Turnbull, no retired Australian politician has devoted quite so much energy to the high art of the…
The coming Farage revolution
Has there ever been such a case of political buyer’s remorse? At Britain’s last general election less than two years…
His word is his junk bond
‘My word is my bond,’ said a freshly minted Prime Minister Albanese in July 2022. After this week’s budget, his…
The voters of Makerfield should give Burnham the boot
The good people of Makerfield have the potential to do the funniest thing. It is in their gift to unleash…
Streeting’s NHS record is nothing to boast about
“Leaders take responsibility,” Wes Streeting wrote, in what has already been called his Wesignation letter. The charge against Keir Starmer…
Trump needs a deal, but Xi needs it more
Although the substance of the Donald Trump-Xi Jinping talks are about tariffs, trade, supply issues (rare earth metals etc), fentanyl,…
Wes Streeting would be a disastrous PM – but not for the reason you think
The joke doing the rounds over the past couple of days has been that the choice of Sir Keir Starmer’s…
Prince Harry’s fears for our ‘divided country’ are hard to swallow
Prince Harry has called for Britain to stand against both anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim hate. In an essay for the New…
What Streeting won’t tell us about his record as Health Secretary
Wes Streeting’s resignation letter began with a paragraph praising his own record in managing the NHS. He said: “The results…
The Burnham Gambit: Makerfield or Breakerfield?
Josh Simons, the MP for Makerfield, has decided to stand aside and resign his seat so that Andy Burnham can…
Is Sebastian Gorka brave enough to face Tucker Carlson?
Strange things are happening with Dr. Sebastian Gorka. In a clip that circulated widely yesterday, the deputy assistant to the…
Watch: Michael Gove informs Cabinet of Burnham manoeuvres
WATCH: Michael Gove informs Steve Reed at The Spectator’s Levelling Up vs Pride In Place event that Andy Burnham has…
Nigel Farage’s big Brexit gift
As Labour MPs carry on tearing bits out of each other, the story of Nigel Farage’s £5 million gift from…
Wes Streeting finally resigns
After days of deliberation, Wes Streeting has finally quit Keir Starmer’s government. At the stroke of 1 p.m., the Ilford…
Why I had to resign
Wes Streeting has, finally, resigned as Health Secretary. Below is the full text of his resignation letter to Keir Starmer:…
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…
The de-Wokification of New Zealand’s education system
The conservative coalition government of New Zealand came to office promising to wind back an enormous, government-run system of ‘Woke’…
My night under fire at the White House correspondents’ dinner
A masterpiece of economy
There’s something very odd about the fuss that’s been made about David Szalay who won the Booker a few months…
The performance of her career
It’s odd, isn’t it, the uncanny relationship between success and achievement. Just the other night the Melbourne Theatre Company had…
Skill of the characterisation
Yasmina Reza is one of the most dazzling playwrights alive because she creates sweepingly funny bits of theatre (masterfully translated…
Scrupulous fidelity
Isn’t it fascinating how much we adapt works of literature? 150 years ago someone would have had a fair chance…
The tragedy of Sir Walter Ralegh’s impossible quest
I remember little of my two years at boarding school, where I arrived aged eight, apart from the cloaks. Red,…
Love and loneliness in the Outer Hebrides: John of John, by Douglas Stuart, reviewed
For his third novel, Douglas Stuart moves north from the Glasgow tenements of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo to the…
Were the lies we told to combat communism so shameful?
This, we might imagine, is the Age of the Fake. AI videos; TikTok fascists; the Joycean mind-fragments of a US…
Mourning becomes Siri Hustvedt
At 6.58 p.m. on 30 April 2024, Siri Hustvedt’s husband of 43 years, the novelist Paul Auster, died of cancer…
The movie brats who changed popular cinema
For some people it’s Star Wars; for others it’s Jaws or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. For me not…
Paw prints through the ages: a stunning visual history of man’s best friend
Inspiring, educational, moving, sometimes distressing, this is a riveting visual history of man’s best friend. Thomas Laqueur, from a German…
The good old bad old days: Prestige Drama, by Seamas O’Reilly, reviewed
Set in present-day Derry, Seamas O’Reilly’s Prestige Drama centres on the filming of a television series set in the 1980s.…
Does a propensity for crime depend on one’s DNA?
This book begins strangely. Kathryn Paige Harden and her man Travis go off into the Texas desert to take some…