flat white

Home ownership or super: the true retirement wealth issue

Another review of the retirement income system has come — and it seems, gone — without clearly having achieved its…

15 Dec 2020

If the Morrison government cares about jobs, it can’t cave to union scaremongering

The naked cynicism of the union movement has been laid bare in its attack on the Morrison government’s very modest…

15 Dec 2020

So now we can’t even talk transgender issues?

Question: How many trans activists does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: The same number that it takes to…

15 Dec 2020

Joe Biden: gone in 60 weeks?

Joe Biden is not meant to govern. If he manages, and whatever he manages, that’s all well and good, and…

15 Dec 2020

How a conservative Supreme Court nobly upheld conservatism

It appears the United States Supreme Court has snuffed out Donald Trump’s last chance to save his Presidency. This is…

14 Dec 2020

Who is compulsory super benefitting: ordinary Australians or the top end of town?

Mainstream Australians are being failed by the political class as the gap between two Australias continues to widen. This failure is…

14 Dec 2020

You too can wallow in Waleed’s wisdom, thanks to their ABC

Waleed and Scott are two of ABC radio’s intellectuals.  Doubtless, they’d correct me to say they are ‘the’ two intellectuals at…

14 Dec 2020

How Australia failed the Covid-19 test

As the wintery Northern Hemisphere suffers through a surge in coronavirus cases, Australians feel the relief of low numbers and…

14 Dec 2020

Closing time at the Barr

William P. Barr is out. Joe Biden is in. And Donald Trump has a few more weeks left to bemoan…

15 Dec 2020

Trump was right about the vaccine release

Donald Trump said during the second and final presidential debate on October 22 that he was optimistic a vaccine would…

15 Dec 2020

Should we worry about the new variant of Covid-19?

Should we worry about the emergence of a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19? News of the…

15 Dec 2020

Emmanuel Macron’s great Brexit gamble

There is an intriguing pattern in our relationship with European integration. A Frenchman vetoed our attempt to join. A Frenchman…

15 Dec 2020

Fighting back with conservative appointments

Why is it that left-wing political parties are so good at ruthlessly appointing like-minded fellow travellers to all the key…

12 Dec 2020

It’s not over

From the moment he and Melania glided down the golden escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidature, the denizens…

12 Dec 2020

Putting the ‘Panic!’ into pandemic

Remember the brilliant Clive Dunn as Lance-Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army? His default response to a crisis was to shout…

12 Dec 2020

The end of the affair

China’s wolf warrior diplomats keep warning us to ‘reflect on our deeds’ or learn how it feels to ‘walk into…

12 Dec 2020

Business/Robbery etc.

Wolfensohn’s success was Australia-based The glowing world-wide obituaries detailing the remarkable achievements of expatriate Australian James D. Wolfensohn who died…

12 Dec 2020

Smashing an old China plate

With China’s ministers refusing to take the calls of their Australian counterparts, bilateral relations have been outsourced to the Global…

12 Dec 2020

They are spitting in our face

Why are we so surprised and outraged by the recent behaviour of the Chinese government? A nation which can machine-gun…

5 Dec 2020

Playing politics with mental health

As a psychiatrist working in the public sector, I was depressed to see that the Productivity Commission’s Inquiry Report into…

5 Dec 2020

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Ned Kelly

All the young millennials I know were raging in Melbourne the other Saturday night and so were some of their…

12 Dec 2020

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Time to look to the future; performing arts companies are encouraging us to do so through their subscription seasons now…

12 Dec 2020

Gary Garrels

Let me take you down the strange rabbit hole of contemporary art museum culture. The senior curator of painting and…

5 Dec 2020

Richard Tognetti

There’s no doubt about the Australian Chamber Orchestra; full of confidence it is sailing into 2021 with its most ambitious…

5 Dec 2020

Aussie Life / Language

Simon Collins Contrary to popular belief, the largest and deadliest constrictors do not kill with speed and ferocity. Rather, having…

Racing books to get you through lockdown

Who owns Altior? I ask because of the brouhaha over Nicky Henderson’s late withdrawal of his stable star, winner of…

12 Dec 2020

Will video-calling kill bureaucracy?

Having grown up in a family business, my earliest exposure to corporate life was often baffling. I remember the first…

12 Dec 2020

Dear Mary: Should I give my postman a Christmas present?

Q. I am extremely fond of an artist friend, despite the fact that I have never liked her work or…

12 Dec 2020

Office boy

For most of us, going to work means going to an office, to sit at a desk and perform bureaucratic…

12 Dec 2020

The brutality of the Gulag was totally dehumanising

‘It was a gray mass of people in rags, lying motionless with bloodless, pale faces, cropped hair, with a shifty,…

12 Dec 2020

Unpleasant smells can actually enhance pleasure

Harold McGee’s Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells is an ambitious and enormous work. Indeed it’s so…

12 Dec 2020

Joseph Ratzinger’s coat of many colours

A common but flawed assumption about Joseph Ratzinger is that he is simply an ardent conservative. That’s the figure we…

12 Dec 2020

James Kelman’s ‘Memoirs’ are a misnomer

James Kelman doubtless remains best known for his 1994 Booker prize win for How Late It Was, How Late and…

12 Dec 2020

The serious business of graphic novels

One of the running jokes about ‘serious’ graphic novels is that so many seem to consist, one way and another,…

12 Dec 2020

Transport to Australia was the saving of Carmen Callil’s family

If 2020 has given us something to talk about other than Covid, it’s been history — and, more precisely, to…

12 Dec 2020

War was never Sir Edward Grey’s métier

This meaty but easily digested biography pivots around the events either side of that fateful evening of 4 August 1914…

12 Dec 2020