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A harsh lesson for our university chiefs

Education Minister Alan Tudge gave a speech at the annual Universities Australia conference yesterday. Here is how the AFR education editor described what…

4 Jun 2021

Another cock up from their ABC

If a story would not stand up in court, it should not be published.   It certainly should not be published…

4 Jun 2021

‘Crackpot’ lab leak theory suddenly ‘feasible’

What a difference a year makes. Sir Richard Dearlove, the MI6 chief (‘C’) from 1999 to 2004, was first interviewed on the UK’s excellent Planet Normal podcast almost exactly a year ago. His…

4 Jun 2021

Being in opposition is awesome (really)

If you ever catch a cuppa with an Australian federal or state politician who is out of government and in…

4 Jun 2021

What are the odds of a politician saying something sensible about sharks?

For the first time in five years, an Australian politician has acknowledged a bleeding obvious fact about the way we…

3 Jun 2021

‘Sweaty men have touched that ball’: South Australia’s special corona craziness

Every cloud has a silver lining, and corona craziness is providing a unique insight into how the nawabs of nannying,…

Sesame creep

Just because it’s Gay Pride Month—yep, there’s so many varieties on the LBTIQ+ spectrum they couldn’t just have one day—in…

3 Jun 2021

Their ABC fails the objectivity test on Aboriginal history

According to its Code of Practice, the ABC “has a statutory duty to ensure that the gathering and presentation of…

3 Jun 2021

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Joe Biden’s day off

Joe Biden may be the leader of the free world, but that hasn’t stopped him from taking retirement. The President…

4 Jun 2021

Hong Kong’s Tiananmen Square vigil will be different this year

Every year since the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, Hong Kongers have gathered in their thousands…

4 Jun 2021

Boris clamps down on foreign travel over Covid variant fears

Those hoping for a holiday abroad this summer were dealt a blow this afternoon with the announcement of the government’s…

4 Jun 2021

What does the future hold for Donald Trump?

Don’t call it a comeback! Whether it’s by popular acclamation or by a coup, as former national security adviser Michael…

4 Jun 2021

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Time for the lying to stop

On 5 March 2019, New Zealand’s Labour Coalition, presided over by the now highly controversial Jacinda Ardern, set up a…

5 Jun 2021

Scott Morrison must remind Jacinda Ardern who her real friends are

If, to borrow Paul Keating’s description, Australia is the arse end of the world, New Zealand is the arse end…

31 May 2021

Once were a democracy

There is no doubt  New Zealand’s democracy is now under aggressive attack by the small minority of those of part-Maori…

26 May 2021

The fight for New Zealand is now underway

In spite of government opposition, a radical report proposing destroying  New Zealand’s democracy, unintelligibly called He Puapua (let’s not give…

22 May 2021

Butler to Bowen – plus ça change

It’s a testament to the power of Labor’s factions that Mark Butler was able to remain spokesman for environment/climate change/energy…

5 Jun 2021

Vaccine gamble in the lottery of life

People take pharmaceutical shots and pills that promise better health and wellbeing, despite the risk of rare but catastrophic side-effects,…

Is Australia racist? Not so fast

I’ve had a soft spot for Australia since going to boarding school in India run by Australasian Jesuits. The camaraderie…

5 Jun 2021

The A-Z of Palestinian oppression

Are you confused about Israel? Rest assured, you are not alone, so I have compiled this glossary to guide you…

5 Jun 2021

Time for the lying to stop

On 5 March 2019, New Zealand’s Labour Coalition, presided over by the now highly controversial Jacinda Ardern, set up a…

5 Jun 2021

Leftists repent over lab leak farce

In May 2020, the ABC’s Media Watch host Paul Barry dedicated two programs to attacking the Australian’s Sharri Markson (then…

5 Jun 2021

Trump was right (again)

Until recently the sanity of anyone suggesting that the Wuhan virus could have come from a laboratory was put in…

5 Jun 2021

The Rorting Twenties

We are now in the rorting Twenties. Wealth is being concentrated among a few global billionaire elites and large companies…

29 May 2021

Chekhov

The trouble with the performing arts in Melbourne is that you blink and they’re gone. The other week we were…

5 Jun 2021

European Masterpieces from The MMA, New York at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art

This is a very active period for the visual arts. The Archibald Prize finalists have been announced, Vivid is returning,…

5 Jun 2021

Macbeth

It’s an extraordinary thing that a director of Bruce Beresford’s reputation should be directing for Melbourne Opera until you remember…

29 May 2021

Brett Whiteley : Drawing is Everything (31 July – 31 Oct)

Demonstrating excellent timing, the Bendigo Art Gallery has announced a major exhibition Brett Whiteley : Drawing is Everything (31 July…

29 May 2021

Aussie Life

The cold snap enveloping much of NSW at time of writing won’t help regional communities battling the mouse plague, such…

5 Jun 2021

Aussie Language

A campaign is needed against the word ‘partner’—so I have started one. It was launched on Peta Credlin’s program on…

5 Jun 2021

Taking charge: it’s time to buy an electric car

As a wise colleague once said: ‘Yesterday is a great time to buy a computer, because you have already enjoyed…

5 Jun 2021

Dear Mary: How do we tell our friend that her hairstyle doesn’t suit her?

Q. At a lunch party, I was getting on so well with someone I had not met before. She knew…

5 Jun 2021

The road to firebombing Tokyo was paved with good intentions

In the 1930s, a group of American airmen had a dream. Air power, they believed, would do away with the…

5 Jun 2021

It’s time the British faced some uncomfortable truths, says Matthew d’Ancona

As Britain starts its long Covid recovery, are deeper problems lurking beneath the surface? Matthew d’Ancona certainly thinks so, and…

5 Jun 2021

Orcadian cadences: celebrating the reclusive poet George Mackay Brown

Few journalists can have conducted such a dismal interview as mine with George Mackay Brown in the summer of 1992.…

5 Jun 2021

A mighty contest from trivial things — the quarrel between Alexander Pope and Edmund Curll

Rapid technological advance, a dark underworld of uncensored publishing, a threatened rupture with Scotland, even fears of a new outbreak…

5 Jun 2021

It takes a trained ear fully to appreciate Indian music

At George Harrison’s 1971 concert for Bangladesh, awkwardly, the audience applauded after Ravi Shankar and his musicians had paused to…

5 Jun 2021

The defiance of the ‘ghetto girls’ who resisted the Nazis

‘Jewish Resistance in Poland: Women Trample Nazi Soldiers,’ ran a New York headline in late 1942. That autumn, the Nazi…

5 Jun 2021

A Danubian Narnia: Nostalgia, by Mircea Cartarescu, reviewed

Mircea Cartarescu likens his native Romania to a Latin American country stranded in eastern Europe. Certainly, his writing delivers not…

5 Jun 2021

And then there were five: The High House, by Jessie Greengrass, reviewed

In 2009 Margaret Atwood published The Year of the Flood, set in the aftermath of a waterless flood, a flu-like…

5 Jun 2021