Brown study
South Australia: a race to opposition
Peter Malinauskas and the Labor Party are going to win the South Australian election. This much is obvious. The reasons…
Labor refuses to rule out fuel rationing and won’t cut excise tax
‘Don’t panic!’ cries Chris Bowen, while Richard Marles coughs and stammers his way out of questions pertaining to future fuel…
Revenge of the preppers
During the era of Covid, sneering at panic buyers became a national sport for bored nanny state enthusiasts. The worst…
The Farrer crucible for conservative politics
The Farrer by-election is more interesting than we first thought. Triggered by the resignation of former Liberal Leader, Sussan Ley,…
Labor trapped young people
Labor’s ‘Big Australia’ mass migration project has created a catastrophic housing shortage. Everyone knows it. Even if the media and…
Why do the Greens support people who want them dead?
Like other leftist organisations, the Australian Greens have predictably opposed US-Israeli action against the Iranian Islamic dictatorship. Despite opposing Islamist…
What does Australia expect to gain by snubbing Trump?
The Strait of Hormuz is the artery carrying one-fifth of the world’s oil. President Trump’s call for allied warships to…
Preparing for the 2026 recession
The economic fallout from a long Iran war would be larger than most people yet realise. Fuel and fertiliser shortages…
One Nation’s ten-year crusade to secure Australia
As One Nation rises in the polls, the overwhelming criticism of some very worried politicians and a vast phalanx from…
Is Labor deliberately ruining us?
From Myeongdong, Seoul: Across the road from me is the original Bank of Korea building, the nation’s central bank. It…
Transitioning a principled politician to a Coalition frontbench team player
It is sometimes said that a principled politician can never become a team player because their principles, even if they…
The 30th anniversary of the first Howard government
Last Friday night I attended a remarkable event, the 30th anniversary of the very first election of the Howard government.…
Secession by Western Australia: time to cut the cord
Bulgaria isn’t known as a source of humour, but back in the days of the Eastern Bloc and the Iron…
A letter from a migrant about becoming an Australian
My parents brought me to Australia 70 years ago. I am writing this letter to myself – and anyone else…
The classroom and the conscience
On February 25, in a speech to the McKell Institute titled, Proudly Embracing Modern Australia, Assistant Minister for Citizenship and…
On the ancient, exhausting, male compulsion to watch the world burn
There is a phrase that has quietly colonised the male psyche, one that doubles as internet meme and genuine behavioural…
Where is the October 7 tribunal?
‘Truth is on the march, and nothing shall stop it.’ – Émile Zola In January 1898, Émile Zola published his…
Australians want politics out of sport
Australian rules football is like a religion in Victoria. The buzz that the city experiences in March when footy returns…
The great Australian lock-out
The current rental crisis is frequently dismissed as a simple failure of the construction industry to ‘build more’. It is…
Free speech. Use it or lose it.
A serious debate must be undertaken in Australia to amend our Constitution to include protection of free speech for all…
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…
B1 does it again
The ideal type of person to be energy minister is someone with a calm, practical nature. Able to understand detailed…
Rev up your chainsaws!
Matt Canavan deserves congratulations on becoming leader of the Nationals. Staunch, switched-on, savvy – everything David Littleproud struggled to be.…
Rumours of the Coalition’s resurrection
To quote the great songsmiths Lennon and McCartney, ‘I don’t want to spoil the party’, but the idea that Australia’s…
Hands up those who want to work in a sweat shop?
This month marked the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of Adam Smith writing what remains one of the most thorough demolitions of bad…
Can we mend the fractures in the right?
Last year I had a gentle crack at the newly fashionable ‘national conservative’ tendency on the Australian right, suggesting that…
Is Iran our Last Chance Saloon?
There’s a meme doing the rounds depicting British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer saying, ‘Many Muslim countries, like the UAE…
No Grace under fire
Grace Tame is not happy. The former Australian of the Year said her most recent speaking engagement was her last…
Not Britain’s finest hour
Did Argentina pick the wrong timing in trying to conquer the Falkland Islands? It would almost certainly have had more…
Britain’s borrowing splurge is not sustainable
After a record tax take and surplus in January, normal service has resumed. Britain experienced its second-largest February borrowing splurge…
Is the disagreement between Israel and the US over striking Iran’s gas fields real?
As the war approaches the end of its third week, US and Israeli strikes inside Iran continue to intensify and…
Israel can’t assassinate its way to victory over Iran
The killing of the Iranian senior security official Ali Larijani this week is the most significant ‘targeted assassination’ undertaken since…
Could Iranian drones bomb Britain?
One night in 1909, in Peterborough, a police constable named Kettle looked up and saw ‘a strange cigar-shaped craft passing over…
Labour cares more about itself than Britain
While many people have been dissecting the power struggles and growing fissures within the Labour party, it might instead be…
Why did the authorities turn a blind eye to the alleged rape of a Berlin schoolgirl?
A 16-year-old schoolgirl was allegedly raped in the garden of a state-funded youth centre in Berlin-Neukölln last November. It was…
Nick Timothy isn’t the bad guy in the row over mass Muslim prayer
Would you rather live in a society where a man is free to criticise religious practices or one where such…
Why America and France are always arguing
“Not perfect,” was Donald Trump’s reply when asked about Emmanuel Macron’s support for the Iran operation. “But it’s France, we…
The Democrats’ weakness on war powers
Given my longstanding disgust with America’s lawlessly interventionist and self-destructive foreign policy, I should be outraged by Donald Trump’s cavalier…
Will the Covid inquiry teach us anything?
The Covid inquiry has published the third of its ten (ten!) modules today, this time focused on how the healthcare…
Why Muslims should be allowed to pray in Trafalgar Square
I approve of the large Muslim prayer meeting held in Trafalgar Square on Monday. But I would not want such…
Why the Afghan-Pakistan war matters
More than a decade ago, during a tense visit to Islamabad as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton gave Pakistan’s leaders…
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’…
‘We’ll wake up on 8 May and realise that the Conservative party’s gone’: Inside Reform’s plan to devour the Tories
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…
Uncanny mutations
Isn’t it odd the way we can start watching a streamer in absolute disgusted disbelief only to discover that we’re…
That glimpse of grandeur
The death of Robert Duvall the other week was a reminder of how long ago some of our cultural landmarks…
A hoard of lost treasure
Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is the most celebrated of all Australian plays; and this story of the…
Will colonialism’s psychological legacy ever cease to be a source of pain?
Whenever the legacy of colonialism comes up for debate, a Monty Python sketch springs to mind. It’s the one from…
A sinister strangeness: City Like Water, by Dorothy Tse, reviewed
In Dorothy Tse’s City Like Water the location is never named. Anonymous, mutable, it slips from normal into nightmare, strangeness…
Is it better to be reasonable or rational?
You find yourself in the heat of an argument and your mulish interlocutor refuses to see the light. ‘Please,’ you…
The history of Moscow was one of extreme violence from the start
‘Moscow is hard to love,’ Simon Morrison writes at the beginning of this engaging book, ‘but I love it.’ He…
Thoughtful fantasy: Travel Light, by Naomi Mitchison, reviewed
Naomi Mitchison is now renowned for being the author of ‘lost classics’ – famous for being forgotten. She lived to…
W.H. Auden’s virtuosity masked careful craftsmanship
‘Begin with the name,’ begins Peter Ackroyd. ‘Wystan is singular and arresting. Auden himself… confessed that he would be furious…
A revival of Alan Bennett’s early work is long overdue
It is a curious literary form, the published diary. A surprising number of the classic diarists did write for eventual,…
Fractured loyalties: The Tribe, by Michael Arditti, reviewed
Michael Arditti’s impressive and immersive family saga begins in Salonica (now Thessaloniki) in 1911 and follows the fortunes of the…