Is Australia’s Defence Policy also decided on the steps of the Lakemba Mosque?
Custodians of patriotism: One Nation earned this
One Nation has pitched itself as the party of patriotism. The weight of this cannot be understated. The electoral landscape…
Alex Antic: Will he, or won’t he?
Even before the Liberal Party found itself in an existential crisis, whispers were circling South Australian Senator Alex Antic and…
Dear Liberals, middle ground ‘niceness’ doesn’t win elections
Labor was declared the winner of the South Australian state election before the first vote was cast. Victory was confirmed…
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…
The victory of the Iranian nation in Nowruz 2585
Nowruz marks the beginning of the solar year and the first day of the first month of the Persian calendar,…
Bowen bends on sulphur, not on nuclear
Last week the Australian government made an abrupt policy reversal. Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who championed Australia’s ultra-low sulphur petrol…
Coalition of three?
My friend Ian Plimer, in a recent TV interview, made the bold suggestion of creating the Coalition of Three. While…
Is Australia’s Defence Policy also decided on the steps of the Lakemba Mosque?
In 2012, during a heated Labor caucus meeting, then-Foreign Minister Bob Carr reportedly issued a challenge to his colleagues that…
Why we should send a frigate to the Gulf
We should send a frigate to the Gulf. The government’s advice that it hasn’t been asked to send ships to…
Iran: dreaming of revolution
Iran is at the crossroads once again. While bombastic left-wing activists and journalists are strangely quiet about Iranians fighting a…
What did I miss?
The most important issue this week was Labor’s desperate ‘don’t panic!’ messaging. Government officials claimed the problem was not a…
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…
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…
The truth about Robert Mueller
In the pantheon of Trump adversaries, Robert Mueller may rank at the very top. Everything about Mueller – his rectitude, his…
Saturday Night Live is a major breakthrough in British TV
The news that a British version of Saturday Night Live was in the offing raised an enormous gestalt groan throughout…
A migration U-turn would bury the Labour party
Immigration has come back to bite the government big time. Shabana Mahmood’s sage campaign to set up Labour as the…
Britain is experiencing a pilgrimage revival
When Sarah Mullally started her pilgrimage this week, travelling from London to Canterbury, she wasn’t just embracing a tradition in…
Trinidad is sick of Britain’s lax asylum system
As political speeches go, it struck familiar themes. An island nation was being overrun by dangerous criminals, taking advantage of…
The Hundred still has a problem with Pakistani cricketers
Throwing open the Hundred to foreign investment was intended to attract more elite players, boost attendances and position it as…
Iran tries to attack the Chagos islands
Shortly after midnight, Iran launched two long-range missiles towards the US base at Diego Garcia, the joint US-UK military base…
Reeves should tax expats to fund Britain’s defence spending
Open the first page of any British passport and you will be met by a request on behalf of the…
The bittersweet death of Lycra
There are a lot of things that Ozempic & Co. have killed business for. Weight Watchers. Diets from cabbage soup…
What Louis Theroux misses about the Manosphere
Louis Theroux, the Lib Dem Alan Whicker, has now had his turn at the manosphere. His new Netflix film Inside…
How AI is reshaping the Iran war
The magnitude and speed of the US and Israeli airstrikes eliminating Iranian regime officials can be explained in part by…
Asia is paying a very heavy price for the Iran war
This week, Sri Lankans took Wednesday off. They’ll be doing the same next week – and for as long as…
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…