Australia’s doctors need their Kory moment
AI gives us 16 new viruses
‘For several years now, scientists have been able to synthesise viruses from scratch,’ stated an article in Wired. ‘These are typically…
Pauline Hanson vs anti-capitalist students
There has been nation-wide scorn and fits of eye-rolling over a planned student ‘protest’ against Pauline Hanson. To quote our…
Victoria’s emergency reset
I’m not Daniel Andrews. I’m not Jacinta Allan. It’s surprising these declarations weren’t followed up with, I’m not Labor! For…
Has One Nation forced Tony Burke to get serious about migration?
One Nation is driving the conversation about mass migration. Now, they appear to have forced Labor’s hand. Okay, nudged their…
The de-Christianisation of the nation
In Australia, people are confronted by the rapid, almost irreversible, de-Christianisation of their country. The National Church Life Survey estimates…
Should Australia care where migrants spend their money?
Australian immigration is a story as old as time. It’s as sure as sunshine in Queensland, dirt in the desert,…
Identity politics is the root cause of Albo’s success
A cartoon that appeared in The Industrial Worker in 1911 outlined the Pyramid of the Capitalist System. The pyramid consists…
Australia’s doctors need their Kory moment
On August 5, a United States federal court did something no Australian court has ever done for a medical practitioner:…
Why did it take the ABC 25 days to say ‘sorry’ for torture fantasy?
Imagine a major television network airing a segment in which a contestant fantasises, in graphic detail, about sexually torturing a…
Before we say Amen to change
There is an old saying that tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. It is…
How times have changed for uranium exporters
The Whitlam government established the Fox Inquiry in 1975. Two reports were released in the following year. One recommended that…
A resurrection in bad faith
Alexandra Marshall is right to blink. ‘From oblivion to resurrection – wait, what?!’ is about the only honest response to…
If you think AI is a fait accompli…
There is a fashionable certainty in some circles that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will simply arrive, transform the economy, create untold…
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…
Has Holocaust memory lost its moral compass?
There are places where history should impose a particular seriousness upon us. Mauthausen is one of them. A concentration camp…
Labor is not building anything. They are tearing society apart…
Human society is different from other animal societies because of humanity’s most important idea: legitimate government. Before the beginnings of…
The word-bankers
Media followers learned that Scotland Yard had spent four months investigating a journalist. His offence was, it appears, emailing questions…
They knew. They published it. They mandated anyway…
On July 29, Anthony Fauci sat before a US Senate committee and refused to answer. Senator Rand Paul had released…
The A-Bombs were necessary, and the most merciful option
As the anniversary of the atomic bomb attacks in 1945 arrives, many commentators will argue they should never have been…
Where did the resourceful Aussie spirit go?
At our family house, inner-city Perth, in the old garage – it has a smell you would know. Cut timber.…
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…
Premier Pete from central casting
Come on girls and boys, admit it – he’s a good looker. Tall, athletic, softly spoken; I’m talking about the…
My prediction? 18C will bite the dust
After more than thirty years of argument about the merits and validity of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act,…
In Canberra, consent not required
Among the most powerful ideas in the history of politics is that governments derive their powers from the consent of…
Is there a field the Libs didn’t abandon?
I attended a really excellent talk last week on the virtues of Western culture. In the audience there were a…
ICAC – an unnecessary disaster
To err is human, but to persist in error – actively undermining the constitutional order – is the hallmark of…
Luck of the Irish
I don’t know about you, but every time I look at my phone there’s another story about ‘passport power’. Usually…
How to succeed as a Covid expert
On 29 July, Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment one hundred and eleven times in three hours before a Senate…
Nobody paid for this article
How can Australians trust the energy debate when the government is helping to pay the journalists reporting on its own…
The prisons crisis needs bold solutions like the El Salvador plan
Two days is a very long time in British politics. On Saturday it was being reported that Andy Burnham might…
Miatta Fahnbulleh and the society of socialist hypocrisy
‘The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons,’ was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s immortal line to…
The Colombia earthquake is a big test for its new president
When Abelardo de la Espriella was sworn in as Colombia’s president on August 7, he had a long list of…
Greta and Kneecap are a match made in heaven
Is there anything sadder than a Kneecap fan? Privileged kids in tricolour balaclavas leaping around like demented wombats. Bourgeois radicals…
Meet Farah Ahmed, Jason Arday’s colleague
After the Jason Arday disaster, here is new evidence that things have gone deeply wrong at Cambridge University. We can…
Jason Arday and the terrible truth about students
When I was a young punk, my favourite badge (we loved badges!) was a big white one which a reader…
What has happened to Ricky Gervais?
A defiant Ricky Gervais has insisted that he’s ‘never been so happy’ after his Netflix series, Alley Cats, reached the number…
The man who hunted the Kinahans
Last night, an Irish government jet landed just outside Dublin. On board was Daniel Kinahan, alleged leader of one of…
Nigel Farage: Restore must kick out its racists
Nigel Farage today doubled down on his pledge not to strike a deal with Restore unless Rupert Lowe rids his…
Why can’t Britain deport all our foreign prisoners?
The great civic crisis of our times is state capacity. When policies favoured by voters are repeatedly met with a…
The genius of Jason Arday
Halfway through watching the hit Netflix series The Tinder Swindler, I realised I was cheering on the swindler Simon Leviev, who…
A Burnham wealth tax looks inevitable
In the run-up to his elevation to prime minister, it would be safe to say that Andy Burnham did not…
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…
Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is a triumph
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…
A gurgle of merriment
Chekhov is tricky. He’s not someone we think of as uproarious but the playwright himself used sometimes to complain that…
High Antipodean
The death of that fabled cricketer Sir Garfield Sobers – one of the greatest all-rounders who ever lived – is…
A Treasury on YouTube
It’s strange how much we take for granted the world we inherit, which is available to us on YouTube for…
Forty years on, the furore over Paul Simon’s Graceland seems almost quaint
‘The story of Graceland’s origins,’ writes Ashley Kahn in his deep dive into Paul Simon’s multi-million-selling album, ‘is the story…
Finding happiness in simple tactile pleasures
When I confess that this is the first self-help book I’ve read, I’m also confessing to a minor but pointed…
A house of secrets: Where Are the Kings, by Donal Ryan, reviewed
A typical adolescent, Jack Fristensky is consumed by uncertainty about who he is, his place in the world and, of…
Why we must forgive Immanuel Kant his misogyny and racism
If the only story you’ve heard about Immanuel Kant’s life is that it was so regular that the citizens of…
An exhilarating chase: The Runner, by Scarlett Thomas, reviewed
Billed as a literary thriller from one of the masters of the genre, Scarlett Thomas’s The Runner is a far…
What will the successful cities of the future look like?
Can architecture solve urban crises? Or should architects and planners concentrate on mitigating the consequences of wider events (climate change,…
The monumental failure that was Henry VIII
There can be virtually no aspect of Henry VIII’s life and reign, as Steven Veerapen puts it, that has not…
Looking for Katrin: Rory MacLean goes in search of his dead wife
One September, Rory MacLean’s wife, Katrin, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Seven months later she was dead. The couple had…