Lost in translation
Earlier this year, I was asked to speak at the Round Table Forum on ‘the hollowing out of democracy: managerial elites,…
Behold, Western Australia’s march toward a Chinese-style surveillance state
Is anyone else concerned about the direction our once laid-back, freedom-loving nation is headed? Thanks to serious errors in government…
The end is nigh
Communists are marching on Paris. Weekend after weekend. Traipsing the wreckage of civilisation with them. Smashing. Stealing. Revelling in the…
Lord of the sock puppets
Anthony Albanese has joined the Unplug24 campaign, announcing on X: The movement is in honour of Mac Holdsworth who, to…
The Right mistook a mood for a movement
The 2026 midterms were a referendum on Donald Trump. The verdict was not especially difficult to decipher. Two years earlier,…
Yes, we can protect forests and profit from them
With forests, as with water, fish and even farmland and minerals, Australian governments have become experts at preventing natural resources…
Homer’s revenge: Why AI could save the Arts Degree
There is something wonderfully iconic happening at Harvard University. Just as artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to make some university education…
Lest Labor forget this Remembrance Day
As I left for my truck run in Central NSW this morning, the Flanders poppies stood at attention along the…
Trials and tribulations of free speech in Australia
I am a long-time critic of our High Court’s adventurism and willingness to usurp the legitimate lawmaking power of the…
Haiti: the world’s reluctant laboratory
When the government of Nayib Bukele announced the deployment of more than 2,000 Salvadoran troops to Haiti, the official justification…
Australia’s bloated bureaucracy needs a slice of PIE
Australians love a pie. We eat them at the football, at service stations and, in moments of poor judgment, one-handed…
The saving of Victoria Barracks
The backdown by Prime Minister Albanese on the sale of Victoria Barracks in Sydney (and, I believe, two other heritage…
Britain needs a second amendment
The European continent, at least the Western part, lunges further into disarray every time you check the TV news. If…
Councillors are happy, shame about the ratepayers
Local government is the only institution where customers are unhappy, management is delighted, and the solution is to send a…
Albo is sleepwalking us into ‘Down and out in Paris and London’
In the late 1920s, George Orwell lived in poverty in Paris. His savings stolen, he worked as a dish pig…
The King’s umbrella
King Charles, who is also King of Australia, was drenched at Antigua’s independence celebrations on Sunday. He was seen throwing…
More than music
Some music entertains us. Some makes us think. And then there is music that reaches into our souls, awakens memories…
Victorian Labor – a ‘credibility-free’ zone
For good reason, Federal Labor MPs are keeping their distance from their toxic Victorian Labor counterparts as the November 28…
Donald Trump defied populism and the woke-right podcasters to do what was right
It has been amusing as well as entirely predictable to watch the Trump Derangement Syndrome crowing over the so-called Blue…
Australia’s most serious skills shortage
I’m generally sceptical when our leaders claim Australia needs to import more people because of skills shortages. But there is…
MIDTERM BLUE – NAMI CRASHES OVER DONALD TRUMP | Is this the end of the WEST as we know it? | S3 Ep 27
In this episode: Democrats rise as war in #Iran and mass migration turn the polls against #DonaldTrump #MAGA Republicans. #DavidJones…
OH NO, NOT BLUEY! – Labor has started a war against speech and satire | S3 Ep 26
In this episode: Is BLUEY ground zero for the war against satire? Victoria – the reddest state – is about…
TURN THE POLITICAL TEMPERATURE DOWN… WHO TURNED IT UP?! – Labor’s outrageous hypocrisy | S3 Ep 25
In this episode: Macron’s ‘soft touch’ on far-left riot agitators. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni vows swift justice against looters. Labor’s inter-generational…
Dismissal 2.0
We need a Second Dismissal, a Dismissal 2.0, if you prefer. The Albanese government is out of control. It is…
Brown study
One of the more enjoyable tasks that descended on me during my epoch-making time as a minister in the federal…
Maga is dead. Long live Maga
Trump’s Maga has suffered a spectacular rebuke. But the demand that gave it life – for a country that works…
Vive la France? Quelle France?
For nearly 250 years, France has experienced a succession of short-lived regimes: a directoire, a consulate, two empires, two monarchies,…
OK, I admit I got it wrong on the midterms
It is a bad, bad US midterm election result to lose over eight per cent of the party popular vote…
Back from the brink
For various reasons, I have spent virtually all this year in Melbourne. Being here month in, month out, really focuses…
Al Capone 2.0
In 1920s Chicago, gangsters bombed saloons that bought from the wrong supplier. In 2026 Melbourne they are doing it again.…
Business/Robbery, etc
In the fantasy world of the Albanese Labor government’s ‘renewable energy superpower’ dreams, yet another unachievable critical minerals policy change,…
Turkish delight
Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen demonstrated his formidable negotiating skills even before he landed at COP31 this…
Democrats must build consensus with Donald Trump
‘All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is…
Yobbos of the manosphere
Yet again, Australians have been made fools of by a supposedly independent commission that we never elected, that we pay…
Oink! Oink!
Picture the scene. Jack is having a can of Balter beer; Jill is having an Aperol spritz. They are sitting…
Britain’s GDP boost is a gift for Labour
The bogey is off. In recent years Britain’s economy has experienced an annoying trend: growth in the first half of…
Let Reform’s Joe Martin speak
Joe Martin is a member of the Welsh Parliament who finds himself in a pickle: he’s been banned from speaking…
Why do Western leaders pay so little attention to Christian persecution?
A Nigerian woman who watched Boko Haram militants kill her husband after he identified himself as a Christian will be…
Burnham should run a meat raffle, not a G7 economy
After a week off in the Caribbean, The Great Triviality was off his kilter in his initial remarks at PMQs.…
Should Labour apologise for courting Russell Brand?
Should Labour have courted Russell Brand more than a decade ago? And should the party apologise now that he has…
Andy Burnham had nothing to say at PMQs
Andy Burnham put in a poor performance at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions. He had a slightly plodding delivery, which didn’t…
Raheem Kassam takes the National Pulse international
Nigel Farage has often talked about spotting and exploiting gaps in the market. So it is no surprise that one…
The Republicans need Ron DeSantis – just not in 2028
Ron DeSantis is the Republican party’s great ‘what if…?’ If Donald Trump had opted not to run for a third…
Does Thomas Markle deserve the death penalty?
There are many crimes that Thomas Markle may or may not be guilty of, specifically involving the possession of child…
The dangerous identity politics of Cambridge’s Simon Woolley
There was once a New Yorker cartoon with a suit-wearing politician stuck on the wrong side of the Pearly Gates. ‘Wait, those…
Should there be an inquiry into anti-Semitism at the BBC?
Does there need to be an independent inquiry into anti-Semitism at the BBC? Last month, it was revealed that Lucie Kon – an…
Is Britain still safe for America’s armed forces?
The episode at RAF Fairford in September, when five men were arrested near the perimeter of the airbase, initially on…
New Zealand election musings
By the time you read this, the New Zealand election will be about a week away. Now I’d like to…
Why you shouldn’t shrug at New Zealand’s greyhound racing ban
Greyhound racing ended in New Zealand on August 1. Those who neither own a greyhound nor care for the sport…
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…
The prison early release scheme is already a disaster
A whisper so loud it is deafening
Next year’s Adelaide Festival is looming and it’s fascinating to see what Matthew Lutton has planned for us. Among the…
A patina of majesty
Patrick Stewart, the man who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and then went on to…
An urge to take over the play
It’s astonishing what awaits the culture vulture. A lot of people know the riches on offer when they see the…
The beauty of the ruthless truth
There are times when the screen, big or small, looks like a gift of the gods. In the last week…
Season of spice: a selection of cook books
The cover of the latest, much admired Vittles magazine displays a mocked-up tombstone bearing the inscription: ‘In affectionate remembrance of…
Testing times for cricket and the Raj
It’s 4 a.m. on 25 June 1932. The sun hasn’t risen and the Maharaja of Porbandar is standing in his…
An obscure 18th-century Bavarian continues to inspire the wildest conspiracy theories
The Illuminati – in case you didn’t know – were members of a Bavarian secret society that first convened in…
Sins of the mother: The Hill, by Harriet Clark, reviewed
For a novel rooted in reality, there is an eerily mythical feel to the first few pages of The Hill,…
Ghost stories by candlelight with M.R. James
At the start of his Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1905), M.R. James tells us that five of the stories…
Why Stephen Hawking will forever embody the triumph of mind over matter
Was Stephen Hawking a world-historical scientific genius? No. Was he nonetheless a scrupulous and collegiate collaborator with others? Also no.…
Children behaving badly – the wonderfully wicked world of Saki
‘Light literature’ has the potential to tell us more about the society that produced it than any number of more…
Saved by the Yanks
A startling new book thanks the United States for saving Australia from invasion in the second world war. Dr Tom…