The Curley problem of cynical vote harvesting
Do politicians have the right to block citizens on social media?
Politicians, or perhaps their shallow-minded media managers, have been going crazy with the ‘block’ button. If you call the Treasurer…
I can’t believe they haven’t banned Community Notes
The fragile feelings and unconvincing campaign promises of politicians are under threat from … X’s Community Notes. We know because…
The Netflixification of the Royals
Royal Watchers will be aware of the unexpected news that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are evacuating California after a…
The shadow war on undersea cables
Undersea cables are like veins… People don’t pay them much mind until one gets nicked and there’s blood all over…
The Curley problem of cynical vote harvesting
Most of you will recognise the Curley Effect, even if you haven’t heard of it. James Curley, also known as…
Victorians have every right to be angry
Ben Carroll can abolish the 1 per cent transport levy, but he cannot abolish the questions surrounding how it came…
Immigration confusion
A clear majority of Australians want less immigration, but it’s not clear exactly what that means. In the lead-up to…
Shahriyaragan: The ancient Iranian tradition of ideal kingship
This essay concerns a desire that Iranians have preserved deep within their collective soul for centuries, a longing for the…
Stories from the edge of the world
Part 1 – The Refusal In the second war, an enemy raider lying in Port Davey hears the banshee blast…
Our universities are captured and don’t even know it!
The problem with Australian universities is not that they are ‘Woke’ in the typical sense. Politics is never that simple.…
If super is really our money, prove it
Australians are constantly told that superannuation is ‘their money’. They can choose a fund, switch providers, consolidate accounts, or run…
Data centre derangement syndrome
Data centres are more unpopular than potholes, and the industry seems unable to shift public perceptions with facts and figures.…
The trouble with Utopia … is us
The Left has been fighting human nature for more than 200 years. Human nature keeps winning. You would think by…
Two dead families’ worth of grief, and one theory
Two courtrooms, an ocean apart in relevance but identical in structure. In Massachusetts, Lindsay Clancy’s lawyers have rested their case,…
Before the shouting starts
Every sitting day in the Western Australian Legislative Council begins with the same small act. Before the debates, the interjections,…
Albanese thinks his government is anger-proof
There is something strange going on in Australian politics. Usually, the last thing a sitting government wants is an angry…
People and politics now polls apart
Everyone is trying to explain the polls. Pollsters have charts, commentators have theories, and party strategists have PowerPoint presentations, which…
The Lord’s Prayer is inclusive. Acknowledgement of Country is not…
If the Lord’s Prayer is removed from each day of Parliament, it doesn’t mean there is no prayer at the…
Angus Taylor: ‘The Labor government is f**kin’ sh*t…’
Am I the only one who thinks the optics of the Pollie Pedal event, despite being for a good cause,…
Prime Minister, why should data centres underwrite wind if it is so cheap?
Reading in The Australian Financial Review that data centres will have to get 40 per cent of their power from…
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…
Dolly, Kylie & Albo
Just when you thought it was safe to view melons simply as grocery items, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese himself has,…
Brown study
In the last week, Melongate has proceeded along its sordid way. But it has now taken on a new significance.…
One trillion and counting
Last week, the federal government’s debt dial clicked over one trillion dollars. It’s a figure we should have avoided. But…
The High Court’s Pauline problem
How exciting. Three weeks ago in these pages, I predicted that if Pauline Hanson sought special leave to appeal to…
The heretics strike back
Raising the profile of a not-for-profit organisation is no easy task. Add to that trying to bring in new members.…
Murdoch, the Australian and me
We all know the Australian, the national newspaper Rupert Murdoch created in 1964, as a publication that generally occupies the…
Britain’s feuding conservatives
Most Spectator Australia readers won’t have heard of Sir Simon Woolley, the Right Honourable the Lord Woolley of Woodford, a…
Safety catch
Antisemitism is an abomination, unacceptable in any civilised society. Yet, as we look at the current state of our streets…
TikToxic antisemitism
One of the most illuminating pieces of evidence given to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion came in…
The Productivity Commission has declared war on productivity
I served on the staff of Alf Rattigan’s Tariff Board, the Productivity Commission’s ancestor, in the years it began pulling…
Super spivs
Australia’s compulsory superannuation scheme, says Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg, is ‘a massive failure, probably the biggest failure of public policy…
Brown study
The Spectator Australia has just received a leak of the latest entry in the private diary of Anthony Albanese, Prime…
Ceuta’s migrant problem shows no signs of ending
Just under a month has passed since the sudden, mass arrival of approximately 80,000 mostly Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans in…
The fight for France’s future is underway
The fight for France is underway. The 2027 presidential campaign began last night as the leading candidates clashed in a…
Trump’s stalemate with Iran looks set to limp on
The standoff between Iran and the United States has currently reached stalemate. Iranian hopes to use control of the Strait of…
The Kremlin’s threats against Britain shouldn’t scare us
The latest statement from Maria Zakharova, the reliably acerbic spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, has generated considerable interest and…
Is AI really taking young people’s jobs?
We’ve had three announcements this week that paint a worrying picture for the job prospects of young people. First, the…
Why would Germany want to help fund Trident?
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. When the Cold War ended and the main rationale for enormous stockpiles of…
Don’t bet against Nvidia – yet
Last night revealed another set of outstanding results from Nvidia. Its quarterly revenues were up by 105 per cent year-on-year,…
Why ‘I’m backing Britain’ would never happen today
The economic storm clouds continue to gather over Britain. A reckoning of some sort is on its way, possibly a…
Carney’s defiance of Trump could destroy the Canadian economy
Canada and the US were once great friends, allies and trading partners. They had disagreements on various domestic and international…
Why the world loved Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton was all-American. Born into the dirt-poor Tennessee hills of the Great Smokey Mountains, her upbringing reflected the indigent…
Burnham’s council housing pledge falls short
We are starting to see a pattern in the announcements that Andy Burnham has made over his first few weeks…
Middle East Eye seems to get stupider and stupider
Breaking news: Jason Arday was telling the truth. That, at least, is the verdict of Middle East Eye, a generously funded…
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…
Jason Arday’s tragic death is no reason to silence the press
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…
This devastating portrait of Americana
It’s more than 75 years since Lee J. Cobb opened in Elia Kazan’s production of Death of a Salesman and…
An aggravated splendour
Rod Liddle, who died on 2 August, was a journalist of genius and you could only feel a bit wonder-struck…
An exercise in murder
A friend said recently that the only two people he knew who had read Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers…
An excellent spy: Cold Sunset, by William Boyd, reviewed
Gabriel Dax, the hero of William Boyd’s latest spy thriller, is one of literature’s reluctant spies: good, solitary men who…
We must stop treating soil like dirt
There is a delightful moment at the end of this book when Frank Ashwood is out looking for soil-dwelling invertebrates…
The wonder of ancient English parish churches
John Betjeman, the patron saint of the English parish church, invented the term ‘church-crawler’ in 1948. Rachel Morley acknowledges his…
A world full of artifice: Life of M, by Rachel Cusk, reviewed
The twin themes of Rachel Cusk’s latest novel are truth and fame. In fact it’s not quite accurate to call…
How black music changed the world
In the boiling August of 1919, a 27-piece African-American jazz outfit called the Southern Syncopated Orchestra was summoned to play…
Could we bring back the Great Auk?
In 2023, the State of Nature Report announced that Britain was one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries. This can…
Would Eve Babitz really have wanted her unsent letters published?
‘I regard Too L.A. as Eve’s second masterpiece – her first being, of course, Slow Days, Fast Company – and…
Why Mussolini still fascinates Italians
You do not have to travel far in Italy to encounter the remains of Mussolini’s dreams of architectural splendour. From…