A Statement of Public Interest should accompany all government bills. Here’s why
What must Daniel Andrews’ Department of Fairness make of Daniel Andrews’ Victoria?
The Victorian Department of Fairness must be tut-tutting like a metronome in overdrive. Its job is to work ‘hard to…
A Statement of Public Interest should accompany all government bills. Here’s why
Research by both right and left think tanks the Insitute of Public Affairs and Per Capita show that for all…
Pru Goward and the road to Wigan Pier
Has there ever been a more pathetic display of bile-reeking, attention-seeking, virtue-signalling conspicuous compassion from the woke and the wonderful…
Vaping: one policy the Kiwis have got right
The Asia Pacific region has been split in two as to how to best deal with vaping. No bigger is…
First lockdown, now segregation
As New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet leads the way out of lockdowns and restrictions in Australia, a job Scott…
No choice on net-zero? Really, Prime Minister?
Believing we always have a choice is key to living in a free, liberal, democratic society like Australia. That’s why…
The WHO fails again – on smoking
Whatever reputation for competence and honesty the World Health Organisation might once have had has been destroyed by its response…
Adam Bandt is being ignored so has had to say something stupid
While the Liberals are flirting with net zero, the Greens are demanding peak stupid and proving themselves to be even…
Don’t worry: colleges are still insufferably woke post-COVID
Given the recent spate of “fuck Joe Biden” chants at college football games, you’d be forgiven for thinking that a…
Progressive scare tactics won’t work on Joe Manchin over Build Back Better
Are progressives serious about winning over Joe Manchin? If so, they’ve got a funny way of showing it. The Democratic senator…
Is Virginia's Terry McAuliffe ‘losing it’?
Is Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe really “losing it”? Last week, McAuliffe snapped at a tracker who asked him…
America has few good options in Haiti
Haiti has never been known as a beacon of stability and tranquility. Most of its politicians are feckless, in league…
Vaping: one policy the Kiwis have got right
The Asia Pacific region has been split in two as to how to best deal with vaping. No bigger is…
Insufficient intent
To tell you the truth, I lost interest in Aussie rules football some time ago. My team is into a…
Kiwi Life
A crisis by design It is increasingly sad, so many New Zealanders saying they would leave – if they could…
Kiwi Language
A tech company claims that anti-vax and anti-lockdown rallies have been ‘astroturfed’. Which means? Well, ‘AstroTurf’ was the world’s first…
It’s net curtains
Net zero emissions is the public policy embodiment of corporate BS. Anyone who has worked for a large corporation has…
Campus lies, damned lies and statistics
This year sexual assault has been constantly in the news, part of an ongoing campaign targeting the Coalition government. Now…
Questioning Covid
In lighting the way out of the nightmare of serial lockdowns, new New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet has said…
Heard the one about the BCA economist…?
It’s an oldie but a goody: What’s the purpose of economic modelling? To make astrology look good. Of course, the…
Covid’s lepers
When Victorian Premier Dan Andrews promised this week to continue to punish the unvaccinated well into next year, the #IStandWithDan…
They Ridd us of that turbulent academic
Last week’s High Court decision in the Peter Ridd v. James Cook University case has already received plenty of attention.…
Aux bien pensants
‘The train has left the station’ wrote one journalist, echoing the mainstream media pack on net zero emissions. Forget that…
How to kill a country
Long ago, back in the distant Eighties, the wonderful, witty and luckily enduring cartoonist Mark Knight – yes, he of…
Bob Dylan
Only in Australia and perhaps only in Sydney, that cradle of the cons and the jailers, the Rum Corps and…
Maggie Smith
And so we look like being able to see live performance again in the two biggest cities in Australia: Sydney…
Clive Owen
A time of plague makes us brood on the culture we share in the absence of personal preference. One person…
Heath Ledger
It’s weird to hear news of artistic life in the midst of Covid. The Sydney Theatre Company has a new…
Bach’s Cello Suites represent a spiritual meditation — from the Nativity to the Resurrection
‘One player on four strings, with a bow.’ That’s what Bach’s six Cello Suites boil down to, says Steven Isserlis.…
Has George III been seriously maligned?
Every British historian has a story about the witlessness of Americans when it comes to our Georgian kings. The fate…
A master of spy fiction to the end — John Le Carré’s Silverview reviewed
Literary estates work to preserve a writer’s reputation — and sometimes milk it too. The appearance of this novel by…
The horror of tank warfare brought vividly to life
If Joseph Stalin was right about one thing it was his assertion that ‘the death of one man is a…
God is everywhere, sometimes in strange guises, in Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads
Twenty years ago The Corrections alerted a troubled world to the talents of Jonathan Franzen. Though cruel and funny and…
Stylish and useful: why the Anglepoise remains a design classic
The tide of survival bias has retreated and left the Anglepoise a design classic. Its contemporaries from the mid-1930s, a…
Another haphazard Booker shortlist lacks literary competence
The Booker used to be more enthusiastic about the historical novel than it now is. Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle (Doubleday,…
Folk music is still very much alive and kicking
As a writer who obsesses over the right title to grab a target audience, seeing a book subtitled ‘Song Collectors…
