Fear porn panic
Closed borders are unconstitutional – no question
You can’t argue that there is still a national coronavirus emergency that provides an exemption to Section 92 of the…
Why the time has come for national security hospitals
Catastrophes are sadly a part of life. Many cannot be prevented, but can at least be better handled than is…
Eden Monaro: will coronavirus campaigning skew the result?
The 2007 federal election was held in the early days of social media. Many a time when John Howard visited…
Why not replace politicians with the ‘experts’?
Is it time to replace our elected politicians with non-elected experts? We have always voted representatives into public office. But…
Wolf Warriors or China’s whores?
The media has quickly adopted the romanticised term ‘wolf warriors’ for those who in reality should be termed China’s prostitutes.…
The most important issue of 2020: sexist kids water bottles
Coronavirus seems to reveal the best and worst of humanity. Most Australians have spent the last two months adjusting to…
No, Prime Minister. We don’t need to go back to the Accord
PM Scott Morrison echoed Menzies when he claimed the last Australian election for the “quiet Australians” – the C21 equivalent…
In the absence of overseas student cash cows…
In the absence of overseas student cash cows, the University of Tasmania is proud to offer you an entirely worthless…
Keir Starmer is an excellent Labour leader, which is why he'll never be PM
We’ve all been very impressed, haven’t we, by Sir Keir Starmer’s performances at Prime Minister’s Questions? His calm, precise and…
Three reasons why a coronavirus vaccine might not be possible
The world is being held hostage by an organism so small that even the most powerful microscope could miss it.…
Let’s blame China
This article is in The Spectator’s June 2020 US edition. Subscribe here to get yours. Is Cui Tiankai, the Chinese ambassador to…
Biden’s mental frailty makes him a Teflon candidate
President Trump gets away with a lot because much of the world thinks he’s a buffoon. Former vice president Joe…
Fear porn panic
I think there is enough evidence in now to conclude that we have just lived through the worst public policy…
Get the globalists out of our classrooms
As Australia’s Wu-flu infection rate goes down, Scott Morrison and Reserve Bank Governor Dr Phillip Lowe both say it’s time…
Public health and social control
Long before coronavirus, the public health sector had inklings towards authoritarianism justified by the so-called science, just not the widespread…
Worse than the disease
The shock of widespread poverty and double-digit unemployment from the Covid-19 pandemic are predicted to cause a tsunami of mental…
Snapping turtles
When Gareth Evans was Labor’s foreign minister and Li Peng was premier of China, second in rank only to General…
Comfort the comfortable, afflict the afflicted
The motto of Australia’s political class could well be the reverse of that old saying, ‘Comfort the afflicted and afflict…
The FBI’s tinpot sting operation
If you’ve been following the latest US revelations about General Mike Flynn, ones that had to be forced out of…
Dr Fauci’s diabolical deal
As Dr Tony Fauci — the top US official handling Covid-19 drugs — goes into quarantine, it’s interesting to speculate…
Cover of May issue of Apollo
We are all being digitised one way or another. Performing arts companies, not able to perform, are gamely putting themselves…
Dame Mary Gilmore working from home in 1952
She lived in a flat in Kings Cross, was a lifelong socialist, a regularly observant Presbyterian, a Dame of the…
Queens of print
The Spectator has been celebrating its 10,000th UK issue with justifiable pride; it is an astounding achievement. Australia has long…
Geraldine Brooks and Darleen Bungey
Major award-winning biographies of Arthur Boyd and John Olsen have preceded the third book by Darleen Bungey. It is less…
The shock of discovering your ancestors were slave traders
If I had a slave owner in my family background I’d probably keep quiet about it. Richard Atkinson, in his…
The best way to cope with rejection is to write about it
With more than a dozen acclaimed novels to her name, not to mention short stories, poetry, a memoir and a…
The Plantagenet we always forget
Watching Heston Blumenthal arrange the infernal horror that is a lamprey’s head on a plate is one thing; seeing an…
Where did birds first learn to sing?
The crisis inflicted by Covid-19 has been a source of anguish for everyone; yet we frequently hear how people are…
The sorrows of young Hillary: Rodham, by Curtis Sittenfeld, reviewed
Question: which American president and first lady would you care to imagine having intercourse? If that provokes a shudder, be…
Disrupting the world — from a small bedroom in Hounslow
On 6 May 2010 the eurozone crisis was tearing through the continent. Greece was bankrupt, and it looked as though…
France will always have a love-hate relationship with its heroes
The French have a love-hate relationship with heroes. For the great 19th-century historian Jules Michelet, the French Revolution was supposed…
The genuine polymath is still one in a million
We live at a time of universal polymathy. We don’t know everything, but there’s not much difficulty in being able…