Thirty per cent of Coalition voters question if ScoMo deserves another win
Ben Eltham vs Craig Kelly: it’s never ok to dox
Yesterday on Twitter, Guardian Australian Arts writer Ben Eltham, possibly bored from writing about culture in a country that doesn’t…
ANZUS, Afghanistan – and where’s Billy Hughes or John Monash when you need them?
The last Australians to stand up to bullying by the United States were World War I General John Monash and…
Brad Hazzard’s schoolmaster schtick is making lockdown more laborious
It makes perfect sense that the New South Wales Health Minister would describe unvaccinated people as “self-entitled and indulgent”. He…
Living in a left-wing psychodrama
I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we have managed to survive four years of…
Profiles in Courage: Malcolm Turnbull
From today’s lockdown emergency toilet paper source, The SMAge: Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says American-led wars in the Middle…
Thirty per cent of Coalition voters question if ScoMo deserves another win
The fortnightly Essential Poll is out today, eclipsed (as it all too often is) by the Monday Newspoll, despite showing…
How can anyone own the word ‘liberal’?
There is no word more mangled in the political lexicon than ‘liberal’. It’s the only word whose definition first requires…
Daniel Andrews, democracy is an essential service
The Commonwealth parliament is sitting this week. The Victorian parliament is supposed to be. Except it isn’t. On the advice…
Is troubled Trudeau the new Theresa May?
Oh dear. For years Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been at pains to prove his feminist credentials. Whether it’s correcting a…
On child vaccination, parents should have the choice
On Saturday, the Health Secretary made his most bullish comments on child vaccination so far. Writing in the Times, Sajid Javid argued that…
Was Hurricane Ida really caused by climate change?
It’s climate change, innit? No sooner had Hurricane Ida smashed into the coast of Louisiana with winds of around 150…
The Tunisian paradox
‘We swore to defend the constitution,’ shouted the deputy speaker of the Tunisian parliament, to which a young soldier retorted,…
UK-New Zealand trade deal likely within weeks
September is shaping up to be a big month for Liz Truss and the Department for International Trade. While the minister…
The All Blacks, the All Whites – and how the demand for racism far exceeds supply
The demand for racism far exceeds supply. How else to explain New Zealand Football’s sudden concern that the nickname of…
Why are we ruled by political party patsies – as well as unelected MPs?
Some time back I learned a valuable lesson. At one of our annual Summer Sounds Symposiums, bringing together individuals from…
New Zealand’s zero Covid strategy is becoming unsustainable
New Zealand has done remarkably well over the past 18 months at protecting its citizens from the worst of the…
Hey Joe, I warned you what would happen…!
Understandably there has been rather a lot of comment on the triumphant entry of the Taliban into Kabul. The shots…
Zombie in the White House
The fall of Kabul on 15 August conjures up grim memories of Saigon in April 1975. People plunging to their…
Educating Melitta
Of the many presentations which were delivered at the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE) conference held in…
Gladys turns out to be a bad joke
One of the pitfalls of being a regular columnist is that sometimes you speak too soon. OK, sometimes you get…
Are our journalists just lazy? Or dumb?
Recently I wrote a column on Flat White (Speccie online) about the dishonesty of the political class in this country.…
Saigon… Kabul… Taiwan?
Mark Twain reportedly said ‘God created war so Americans would learn geography’. Former defense secretary Robert Gates said Joe Biden…
Flattening Australia fair
Armed forces on the streets. Helicopters overhead. Sullen people unable to leave. Is it Saigon or Sydney? Kabul or Melbourne?…
Time to court-martial Joe Biden
In a world increasingly dominated by the Chinese communist-led Beijing-Moscow-Tehran Axis, it is timely to ask the political class, much…
Nicole Kidman
And, as even Canberra locks down, so do all the shows. The Melbourne Theatre Company shuts down its production of…
Ernest Hemingway
Entertainment in a public place shrivels as the lockdowns continue. The Australian Ballet has cancelled its Melbourne season, Anna Karenina…
Aden Young
No one has any guarantee of seeing Sigrid Thornton in Lifespan of a Fact with the Sydney Theatre Company now…
Rose Byrne
‘Unemployed at last!’ That wonderful bit of national self-mockery that opens the classic Australian novel Such is Life takes on…
Jesus & the journo
Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of the Australian newspaper, is best known for his shrewd analysis of our country and…
Was Josiah Wedgwood really a radical?
No wonder Josiah Wedgwood, the 18th-century master potter, was a darling of the Victorians. From W.E. Gladstone to Samuel Smiles…
Hubris, blunders and lies characterised the war in Afghanistan from the start
And so the reckoning begins. As frantic Afghans wrestle with the agonising, life-and-death choice between staying in Kabul and risking…
A narrow escape in Britain’s most treacherous mountain range
Twenty-five years ago, my cousin Jock, a Scottish priest, rang in shock. Two priest friends, David and Norman, had been…
Like burst balloons after a party: the last paintings of John Hoyland
When the internationally acclaimed abstract painter John Hoyland died in 2011 at the age of 76, a large chunk of…
A glimpse of lost London – before the yuppie invasion
In a 1923 book called Echo de Paris, the writer Laurence Houseman attempted to conjure up in a very slim,…
War between Heaven and Hell: The Absolute Book, by Elizabeth Knox, reviewed
Ursula Le Guin once described speculative fiction as ‘a great heavy sack of stuff, a carrier bag full of wimps…
First love: The Inseparables, by Simone de Beauvoir, reviewed
‘Newly discovered novel’ can be a discouraging phrase. Sure, some writers leave works of extraordinary calibre lurking among their effects…
