Aussies teed off
The Chalmers diet
Sydney’s working class look hungry. By that I mean, they are getting noticeably thinner. My advice to the political class…
Nepal and the scam of climate reparations
When the Earth shakes – climate reparations fall out. That may be the eventual lesson of the Nepal flood that…
Why is Albanese so defensive about Bowen’s tropical talkfest?
The Prime Minister appeared distinctly agitated when answering questions about Bowen’s expensive and poorly attended paradise climate talkfest in Fiji.…
Is offshore wind a defence risk?
Here are two things worth considering… Firstly, green energy projects and state government agendas envision a version of Australia essentially…
Methinks they doth protest too much
With apologies to Shakespeare and Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, for the reference in the title, the recent ranting by both Labor…
Israel’s war in Gaza
Before any serious discussion of the war in Gaza can begin, one fundamental distinction must be made: civilian deaths, however…
Novak Djokovic and the night his body said ‘enough’
There are defeats in tennis that live in statistics, and then there are defeats that live in memory. Novak Djokovic’s…
The load-bearing wall: Vale Dr Dale
In residential construction, a load-bearing wall is the one nobody thinks about until it is gone. It carries the weight…
Memo to Liberal Party
Liberal leadership hopeful Andrew Hastie sent an email to supporters over the weekend, doubling-down in his unnecessary public spat with…
Remembering September 11: still reeling 25 years on
It’s 25 years since that fateful day when a whole new reality crashed in on our world and set civilisation…
Veterans deserve better
In the May Budget, the Labor government, through Veterans’ Affairs Minister Matt Keogh, announced a $5,000-a-year cap on veterans’ allied-health…
We have not forgotten
It is my view that the Liberal Party and News24 are making a serious mistake by persistently conflating the Ben…
Please never explain
You may have heard I’ve been working as a barista, driving a school bus, and driving a truck in regional…
AOC and the parasocial nature of politics
Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who often goes by AOC, recently took to the internet to share that she would be freezing…
Restoring choice for stay-at-home parents
There is little to no defence from those in the modern Liberal Party of Malcolm Fraser. Even rarer is any…
Vale Jim Frecklington – an Australian craftsman for the ages
Australia has lost one of its most extraordinary and most artistic craftsmen. Jim Frecklington, royal coachmaker, horseman, artist, and patriot,…
Another attempt at internet censorship
As we outlined earlier this year, recent years have seen a steady stream of government proposals to crack down on…
One Nation stands against extremism on both sides
Immigration is the question of our generation. How we, as legislators and citizens, answer it will determine what sort of…
One Nation is here to stay … but where do they fit?
The rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has been meteoric. With the collapse in the Coalition’s polling, its own documented…
Beggars beware! The government is here to ‘help’
The Victorian government is proposing to decriminalise begging as an offence, but is this benevolence or perhaps something else more…
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…
Aussies teed off
When it comes to sinking the career of Anthony Albanese, the scandalous ‘Golfgate’ should be a hole-in-one for the opposition.…
A phalanx of unelected commissioners
I am often in the car around 5 p.m., having helped with the school/kinder pickup. It’s a great joy hanging…
Barnaby’s bread and circuses
I am borderline innumerate. Angus enjoys reminding our children of this, perhaps because his own identity is so bound up…
Chairman Kim’s codswallop
Many, if not most, Australians would have been embarrassed, even angered, by the fatuous welcome to ‘Naarm’ provided to the…
View from the Chairman’s Lounge
Somewhere behind a door through which few Australians will ever pass, inside the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge, a member of parliament…
Whose super is it? Albo’s?
A recent cartoon in the Australian captures the confidence trick Labor politicians are playing on the workers they pretend to…
We’re still woke, folks
Firstly, let me remind readers we have some big elections looming in the Anglosphere. Everyone will know about the US…
The road to hell is paved with political intentions
Standing beside Georgia Tree, Labor’s candidate for the safe Labor seat of Secret Harbour recently, West Australian premier Roger Cook…
Whyalla wipeout
On Monday night, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen conceded that green hydrogen had proved slower and more expensive…
Hastie & Pickering
It’s fascinating to compare the current imbroglio between two potential political leaders: Warren Pickering, of whom nobody had ever heard…
If 9/11 happened today
Twenty-five years on, if the 9/11 terrorist attack by al-Qaeda happened today, the response in Australia and countries such as…
The Plibersek paradox
It’s surely impossible to imagine Tanya Plibersek – Plibbers to most of us – ever being the prime minister of…
The Houthis are complicating Trump’s already failing war
To lose one Middle East sea lane vital for the global economy may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose…
Is Charles Spencer right about King Charles?
As soon as news broke that copies of Charles Spencer’s memoir about the late Princess of Wales, Swan Song: Diana, My…
Who’s afraid of AI?
It’s not often that we get a ringside seat to the Birth of a Narrative. Usually, those overseeing the parturition…
Mehdi Hasan is losing the argument on hijabs in schools
When you title your book Win Every Argument, you create the very definition of a hostage to fortune. So it’s…
How to deal with a bore like Macklemore
Exciting news: free speech is high-status again. The decision by the organisers of Ed Sheeran’s US tour to drop anti-Israel…
Lucy Letby and the truth about NHS managers
Read the Thirlwall report on the neonatal deaths at the Countess of Chester Hospital, and two kinds of culpability emerge.…
Watch: Polanski butchers his French
Ooh là là, Zack Polanski is at it again. Two days after his Urdu campaign video landed with a thud,…
When will Labour ‘do their bit’ on illegal immigration?
Lisa Nandy’s media-round sounds like the sort of thing you might be signed up to if you failed to make…
Green party activists turn on ‘genocide denier’ Zack Polanski
Green party activists have moaned they are reluctant to campaign for Zack Polanski because he is not sufficiently anti-Zionist, The Spectator can…
Watch: Labour MP calls for war against Israel
Not content with spending his time campaigning for an airport in Pakistan, Labour’s Tahir Ali has now called for Britain…
The Thirlwall report makes for grim reading for Lucy Letby’s supporters
Lady Thirlwall prefaced the launch of her report yesterday with the same message that she launched her public inquiry with…
Why was the BBC so surprised to meet an AI doomer?
A somewhat bemusing interview took place between Victoria Derbyshire and Geoffrey Hinton last week on Newsnight. Hinton, an eminent computer…
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…
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…
‘The plan is for the country to fall in love with Nigel again’: Richard Tice on what’s next for Reform
A gorgeous evocation of the natural world
The world of artistic expression runs in a thousand ways. The Melbourne Symphony’s Spring Gala – paralleling the Opera’s Wagner…
A man of great suavity
They were both films that stay in the mind from a lifetime ago. Peter Pan is J.M. Barrie’s contribution to…
The sexiest kind of rock star
It’s strange and sad what the world throws at us. We are assailed by musicals – a production of Reg…
This silly and drivelling piece of tosh
Every so often something comes along that is so bad it fills the soul with wonder and dismay. It seems…
Art conquers all: The Disappearers by Marlon James, reviewed
Gothic fiction is full of Jekylls and Hydes. For every castle, there is a dungeon; for every locked door, a…
Pain passed down: a portrait of Russia and the war that dare not speak its name
Long before Asne Seierstad arrived at the bookseller’s house in Kabul, she studied in Moscow. ‘I tried to be one…
Rebecca reimagined: The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain, reviewed
Mrs Danvers is one of those rare characters who has transcended her original setting to enter the wider culture. She…
Too much and much too long: The Rouse by China Miéville, reviewed
China Miéville’s new novel is 1,264 pages long. Following his breakthrough ‘New Weird’ masterpiece Perdido Street Station (2000), Miéville was…
Worried about masculinity: from turrets and gargoyles to the state of men
In 2023, the author Jon Ronson woke one Sunday in upstate New York, where he lives, to a string of…
Curiouser and curiouser: The Strangers by Naomi Alderman, reviewed
This aptly titled novel might be Naomi Alderman’s strangest book yet – a work of fiction about a writer called…
Mind the gaps: a far-from comprehensive life of Hannah Arendt
In 1975 – the year of her own death – Hannah Arendt published a heartfelt memorial essay about W.H. Auden…
In with the new: Julie Christie, Mary Quant, Up the Junction – the decade that changed Britain
This glorious historical monument slows, expands and luxuriously stretches to encompass one of the defining moments of change in our…