The Peter Ridd case: am I missing something?
Yesterday’s piece by Graham Young on the Peter Ridd High Court case got me thinking. Not about Young’s thesis that…
Do we have a constitutional right to free speech?
“Freedom of speech may not be protected by Australia’s constitution, high court judge says,” screamed a recent headline in The…
Find the CO2
Man-made carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is responsible for catastrophic climate change, according to climate alarmists. We must stop…
They don’t have safe spaces in North Korea
If you still have a copy of the important 1976 volume by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A Warning to the West, it will be worth…
Don’t moralise about sex work
There are a lot of myths surrounding prostitution. Chief among them is the claim that sex workers are virtual slaves,…
What do the ABC and the Chinese Communist Party have in common?
With all the attention being paid to the Chinese Communist Party’s birthday, we thought it only fair that our beloved…
The Peter Ridd case is too important to be left to the courts
A lot rides on the case of Ridd v JCU, which was heard last Wednesday, June 23, 2021, in the High…
The woke patriarchy
The hyperbole of progressive feminism has provided a lot of fodder for conservative commentators. Just the mention of the “patriarchy”…
Why the Chinese Communist Party fears its bloody history
This week, the Chinese Communist Party celebrated its hundredth anniversary with a powerful statement of self-confidence. What began as an…
Macron steps up his war on identity politics
The lifestyle magazine Elle is best known for its beauty tips, fashion recommendations and recipe ideas but the latest issue in France contains…
What Merkel's visit means for Brexit Britain
Angela Merkel visited the UK yesterday for the last time as German chancellor – the 22nd visit she has paid in…
Is it fair to compare inner-city crime to the Global South?
Just before 11 p.m. on Tuesday June 1, 18-year-old Kennedy Hobbs of Jackson, Mississippi stopped at a gas station off…
Kiwi saboteur?
For New Zealand’s Prime Minster to be talking such nonsense – in fact, such a complete untruth as ‘bold action…
Laurel Hubbard is just a symptom of new chilling attacks on free speech in New Zealand
Individuals seem born with a basic sense of fair play, and perceiving hard-working, well-deserving or brave individuals treated unjustly inevitably rankles. So condemnation of the New Zealand Olympic…
Maorification of smiling zombies
In his best-selling 1976 book The Passionless People, the late author and journalist Gordon McLauchlan characterised his fellow New Zealanders…
Miss New Zealand
Male-born Laurel Hubbard’s admission to the women’s Olympic weightlifting competition as a representative of New Zealand is, of course, absurd. …
Infrastructure: the new motherhood?
There’s a section of the Bruce Highway that we drive along fairly frequently. It’s been a construction site and unmitigated…
How high, Helmsman Xi?
WA Premier McGowan demands the PM show ‘a bit of tact and a bit of savvy’ in his dealings with…
‘We are the government and we are here to help’
On 11 June, I got the most patronising, individual choice-shaming and self-congratulatory letter to over-70s from the PM, Health Minister…
Does Matt Kean dream of electric Jeeps?
One of the more persistent fantasies of global warming activists is that electric cars will become the dominant means of…
Kiwi saboteur?
For New Zealand’s Prime Minster to be talking such nonsense – in fact, such a complete untruth as ‘bold action…
Covid scariants and the Delta blues
Funny man Mel Brooks coined the greatest horror movie tagline of all time —‘Be afraid. Be very afraid’, which is…
Rule by fear across the nation
Every day on which the Marxist-manufactured Wuhan virus is allowed to dominate our life, the closer we lurch towards dictatorship,…
Business/Robbery, etc.
Thanks, Premier Xi. Had it not been for your bellicose behaviour, including your economic bullying of Australia, as evidenced by…
Singing Shakespeare
Britain is certainly revving up when it comes to culture. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s defiance about social distancing for his new…
The Dictionary of Lost Words
These days I don’t read many novels although occasionally I have to read one for my book group. Recently our…
Anya Taylor Joy stars in the new Mad Max
It’s funny to reflect how the performing arts, theatre in particular, are a lot stronger when they have a literary…
Spring Waters
Recent decades have seen the opening or upgrading of numerous performing arts centres throughout regional Australia enabling the development of…
Australian art in the Roaring Twenties
The only criticism that can be levelled at For the Fallen by Paul Paffen is that it lacks the hard…
Not so dryasdust: how 18th-century antiquarians proved the first ‘modern’ historians
Antiquaries have had a bad press. If mentioned at all today, they are often derided as reclusive pedants poring over…
Leni Riefenstahl is missing: The Dictator’s Muse, by Nigel Farndale, reviewed
Leni Riefenstahl was a film-maker of genius whose name is everlastingly associated with her film about the German chancellor, Triumph…
A lesson in understanding serial killers and child molesters
True crime is having a moment: every day there’s a new documentary, book, podcast, or blockbuster film announced, detailing the…
Return to LA Confidential: Widespread Panic, by James Ellroy, reviewed
Even by James Ellroy’s standards, the narrator of his latest novel is not a man much given to the quiet…
The strangest landscapes are close to home
This pleasant volume, the author announces in the introduction, is ‘not a nature book, or even a travel book, so…
Sweet and sour: Barcelona Dreaming, by Rupert Thomson, reviewed
I’ve never been to Barcelona, but Rupert Thomson makes it feel like an old friend. The hot, airless nights and…
We’ve embraced William Blake without having any idea of what he was on about
Whose were those feet in ancient time that walked upon England’s mountains green? That William Blake assumed his readers were…
