Why Trump stepped back from the brink
France takes its 129 tonnes of gold out of New York
France has sold its 129 tonnes of gold being held in the New York Federal Reserve and purchased an equivalent…
No fuel rationing for April, as Albanese heads to Singapore
There are species of sloth that move faster than the Prime Minister. This much is evident as we discover today…
Can the Liberals win back Victoria?
The Herald Sun posted a non-April Fools’ piece on April 1 suggesting that the findings of an investigation ‘could deliver a devastating…
Free online therapy from a headache-inducing government
There is something uniquely insane about the Labor Party spending the best part of 2025 demonising social media, the internet, and…
One Nation, the Liberal collapse, and Australia’s populist reckoning
When I wrote about One Nation’s rise earlier this year, the polling was startling. The question was whether it would…
Strike out academic nonsense
In the geological past, I sat on the engineering and earth science and major equipment committees of the Australian Research…
The Isfahan discrepancy
When an American F-15E Strike Eagle was brought down over Iran on April 3 by a shoulder-fired missile, the Pentagon…
The last serious man in Washington
John Bolton was born in the Year of the Rat. The Chinese, who have been thinking about human character rather…
In praise of Pauline
Full disclosure, I have been a huge Pauline Hanson fan for decades, and yes, even fuller disclosure, a Donald Trump…
Beg, vote, and pray
‘See that guy. If he runs, we run.’ These were the words of our driver the first time a Saudi…
Dob in a servo? How very un-Australian
The NSW Labor government has found a new way to distract us from its own failures. It is encouraging the…
Our youth are impressionable, but not stupid
Let’s be honest. Australia’s young people have been marinated in Woke ideology from the cradle to the doctorate. From childcare…
Australian decadence
Is Australia a ‘decadent’ society? The term ‘decadence’ implies promiscuity. But, as American writer Ross Douthat explains, it’s a term…
The US guaranteed its oil, why can’t Australia?
It is widely claimed, correctly in my opinion, that any government’s first responsibility is to secure the ongoing safety of…
Should the ABC be privatised? A modest valuation…
There is something exquisitely self-referential about the ABC reporting on its own strike. It is the media equivalent of a…
Liberals are fools to support social media censorship
As Everett Dirksen once memorably said, there is an evil party and a stupid party. Sometimes, both parties come together…
The West’s parasite politics
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. In geopolitics, the vice is uglier still: entire governments now bite the hand…
Artemis foul? The future of space has a distinct Musk about it
On Wednesday, NASA lit the fuse on its Artemis II rocket, and the world watched four astronauts begin the first…
Three minutes of absolutely nothing
In 1979, US President Jimmy Carter went on national television during an oil crisis and delivered a 32-minute address diagnosing…
What did I miss?
Despite his intense paranoia regarding ‘conspiracy theories’, Anthony Albanese chose April Fools’ Day to make a rare national address about…
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…
My fellow Libs, we need to pick a side
The Islamic terrorist attack at Bondi Beach brought us to a crossroad. The tearing apart of the national fabric has,…
Unstoppable wind and sun
The Albanese government thought it had scored a political win from the leaking of the Coalition’s talking points in the…
The land we forgot to remember
The Prime Minister recently characterised One Nation as ‘…some politicians, some of which have risen up recently in the polling,…
Blind Freddy goes fracking
We are now paying the price after decades of demonising fossil fuels. The mythical fraudulent human-induced climate change ideology and…
When the Law of War comes home to roost
Ben Roberts-Smith VC was arrested this week after a long-running investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan. He was not…
Ben Roberts-Smith and the confused battlefield
So Ben Roberts-Smith has been arrested, and his life will never be the same again. Over the next few years…
Labor is busy fuelling the fuel crisis
When a product becomes scarce, prices rise to ration demand. That is not a moral judgement. It is a mechanism,…
Labor’s fossil fools
It’s hard not to experience cognitive dissonance watching Labor’s hapless ministers respond to the global energy crisis. For five weeks,…
This ceasefire hasn’t ended the war
As Donald Trump’s 8 p.m. deadline crept closer by the minute, accompanied by increasingly furious posts from the president online,…
Why are our universities dumbing down?
It’s strange and ironic that higher education establishments in Britain, institutions which ostensibly exist to broaden minds and deepen thought,…
Why Trump stepped back from the brink
At 5 p.m. Washington time, speculation was rife that a deal between the United States and Iran was in the…
Is it any wonder people don’t send letters?
Was there some failure of communication, do you think, when the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky bought Royal Mail (with the…
What will the Iran ceasefire cost Trump?
Might Donald Trump travel to Tehran this spring to open an American embassy and declare that he’s fallen in love with the new…
Why Trump is tempting 25th Amendment talk
During his remarks in Budapest, Vice President J.D. Vance, who is trying prop up Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as he runs for reelection, appeared to think the unthinkable.…
Why Iran thinks it’s winning
President Trump has what he so dearly craves; the attention of the global media and the world hanging on his…
Trump has lost control of his war
US President Trump has what he so dearly craves – the attention of the global media and the world hanging…
Reform is right to put its foot down over reparations
Liberals don’t realise it yet, and perhaps they never will, but Reform has just done them a massive favour. Nigel…
Trump gets Chamberlain wrong
Like US wartime presidents before him, Donald Trump made a priority of, and has succeeded, in attaining air superiority over…
The dramatic downfall of an Australian war hero
Australia’s most decorated war hero, Ben Roberts-Smith VC, is a mountain of a man. But today, he has been cut down…
Rory Stewart isn’t taking Islam seriously
It’s not often noted that the taboo on discussing racial issues goes both ways. While critics of immigration must often…
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’…
Organised crime is targeting artisanal food
Cruelties of popular culture
Ethan Hawke is an extraordinary figure. He has made straightforward Hollywood classics like Training Day but he also comes out…
Deaths in the mind
It’s strange the way certain deaths stay in the mind perhaps because of the fascination and interconnection of the lives…
A daily beauty
It’s fascinating to see that Sharmill are presenting a new Othello from London’s Haymarket from 28 March with David Harewood…
A versatile and virtuouso figure
Well, the Oscars have come and gone and we tend only to remember the anomalies. Julie Andrews winning the Oscar…
Cold wars
The US military might be the most powerful in the world but it has fallen dangerously behind in one of…
Why the General Strike of 1926 could never succeed
Although it may be in bad taste to have a favourite story about the General Strike of May 1926, one…
Expect toddlers and parlour games at today’s dinner parties
When I was in my twenties and giving dinner parties every week, I came up with a couple of money-saving…
Who wants to bring back the Neanderthals?
In the not-too-distant future, if your T-shirt starts giving fashion advice or we’re all enslaved by a race of disease-resistant…
Tradecraft secrets: a choice of crime fiction
If it takes one to know one, this may explain why spy fiction is enjoying such a renaissance, since among…
The dilemmas and difficulties of artists through the ages
Walter Neurath, refugee from Nazism, public educator and the founder of Thames & Hudson, would have loved this book. In…
Looking back in anguish: Good Good Loving, by Yvvette Edwards, reviewed
Ellen is at the end of her life and is frankly waiting to die while her extended family surrounds her,…
With no coherent strategy, Britain seems perpetually adrift in the world
The British state seems perpetually befuddled. Every international crisis catches it in its sudden glare like so many headlights trained…