White privilege as the face of modern Labor
Vaccine mandates and passports are simply a bad idea
Covid-19 vaccine mandates and passports are a bad idea. I don’t want to suggest that they are unconstitutional, or…
Daniel Andrews sets the police onto Melbournians – and Melbourne itself
At the moment Melbourne’s beating heart, the CBD and inner suburbs, are almost silent — other than the sound of…
Dan, why not get Our Mary on the phone?
We need to get Our Mary on the line. That’s Mary Donaldson from Tasmania, the future Queen consort of Denmark.…
Does AUKUS show there’s still life in the Morrison government?
Yesterday’s surprise announcement of AUKUS – the new Australia-United Kingdom-United States security partnership – is huge news. Not only is…
Covid: time for our leaders to remember freedom has never been free
Australia’s leaders should take note: sometimes, doing the hard thing is worth considering. The easy thing is to wield one’s…
How long can the CCP dominate China?
The Chinese Communist Party is at the peak of its power as it enters its second century. But how long can it…
Time to show us the light at the end of the tunnel, Dan
The Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews (aka Chairman Dan) after over a year and a half has finally offered to provide…
Finally, some sense on subs
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has long signalled he was open to ending a ban on nuclear power in Australia. He…
Aukus is a disaster for the EU
It is hard to overstate the importance of the so-called Aukus alliance between the US, the UK and Australia —…
Are children capable of making life-changing decisions?
Keira Bell is a name that will be remembered. Like Victoria Gillick before her, she argued in the High Court…
Australia and the new special relationship
The awkwardly-named AUKUS agreement reflects Washington’s escalating concern about China’s dominance in the Indo-Pacific. It signals London’s determination to be…
Sir Humphrey's spirit survives in Whitehall
Fear has been the watchword of Westminster this week, as nervy ministers check to see whether they have survived the cull.…
Does AUKUS show there’s still life in the Morrison government?
Yesterday’s surprise announcement of AUKUS – the new Australia-United Kingdom-United States security partnership – is huge news. Not only is…
Jacinda Ardern – an agenda-driven autocrat?
It’s hard to keep up with our adroit Prime Minister who apparently doesn’t like answering questions, such as the one about where does…
More than one way to ruin a country
The shock of the brutal religious fanaticism of the Taliban again abroad in Afghanistan, partly at least to the shame…
Kiwis want elimination, and nothing but elimination
Yesterday, the New Zealand Herald published the findings of an opinion poll it commissioned as a wave of the Delta…
Australia fails the character test
James Allan recently lamented, as well he might, the unwillingness of Australia’s media to ask our politicians difficult questions about…
White privilege as the face of modern Labor
The runner-up in this year’s US Open tennis women’s final was 19-year old Leylah Fernandez who was born in Montreal…
Voting 1 for ‘least-bad’
There’s a story about a former New York City mayor. I think it was Ed Koch. He was talking to…
Business/Robbery, etc.
The worldwide silicon chip crisis is a national security problem, not just a commercial inconvenience that has closed production lines…
Deaths are sad or tragic, but look at the numbers
One of the most bizarre aspects of the interminable daily Covid media conferences is the release of the number of…
Xi’s Great Leap Backwards
Xi’s Cultural Revolution is now well under way and beginning to echo Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966-76). There will, of course,…
Fleas thrive in the grey zone
The cheaper alternative to conventional conflict for opponents of the US (and Australia) is to engineer endless ‘wars of the…
Poison pill
‘Who guards the guardians?’ asked Juvenal in his sixth Satire, in the second century. He was referring to corruptible lechers…
Diane Lane
It was doubly sad the other night to see Virginia Gay deliver a speech from her Covid-cancelled Cyrano on the…
Thomas Mann
And so Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge is Melbourne’s musical-in- waiting. The show that can only go on when we’re 80…
Charlie Watts
The endless news is of shows locked down as every form of life is locked down in a nation struggling…
Nicole Kidman
And, as even Canberra locks down, so do all the shows. The Melbourne Theatre Company shuts down its production of…
The war that changed the world in the early seventh century
It was not a war to end all wars, writes James Howard-Johnston at the start of this illuminating and thought-provoking…
Only Iain Sinclair could glimpse Hackney in the wilds of Peru
It seemed like a preposterous proposition. For decades, Iain Sinclair has been an assiduous psychogeographer of London, an eldritch cartographer…
How China’s economic revolution created billionaires overnight
In the winter of 1992, the retired octogenarian Deng Xiaoping toured China’s southern coasts. From there he gave a spirited…
No Samuel Beckett play is set in stone
It must have been shortly after my first performance of Not I in London in 2005 when Matthew Evans, the…
The secret life of Thomas Mann: The Magician, by Colm Tóibín, reviewed
In a letter to Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden, who had married Thomas Mann’s daughter Erika sight unseen in order to…
Is there intelligent life on other planets?: Bewilderment, by Richard Powers, reviewed
We open with Theo, our narrator, and Robin, his son, looking at the night sky through a telescope. ‘Darkness this…
Try forest bathing – by day and night – to ward off depression
Ever since a consensus emerged that trees and, by extension, their ecosystems, were both vastly interesting and badly threatened, great…
Louis-Ferdinand Céline was lucky to escape retribution in 1945
They rather like bad boys, the French. Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) is one, in a tradition that stretches from François Villon…
