Emmo calls out Twitter, lynch mob madness explodes
Craig Emerson is a former federal Labor minister and parliamentarian who represented the Queensland seat of Rankin from 1998 to…
Two years on from “marriage equality”, basic freedoms are under threat
As the nation today marks the second anniversary of the vote to redefine marriage, we remain in the grip of…
Ok, millennial?
The young and the hopeless: A new survey consisting of 2,000 millennials (ages 22-38) has revealed some troubling statistics regarding…
What’s woke this week?
The world has ridden a tsunami of woke this past week. It came crashing in from all corners of the…
Wheeling in the circus
The inaugural Broadside festival of feminist ideas — yes, that festival behind that episode of Q&A — ran last weekend…
Transgender adventure in Dan Andrewstan? Careful, you just might find it
“Transgender people should be given hormonal treatment and sex-reassignment surgery on demand without a diagnosis or assessment by a psychiatrist,…
SBS and the case of the missing bushfire story
Yesterday I tweeted a quote from an SBS News article from 2013 which featured top bushfire researcher David Packham calling…
Why school exams matter
Undoubtedly, the Higher School Certificate is hard. But final exams are not intended to be easy — to be some…
The chances of a Tory majority have increased this week
Four weeks from now, voters will be heading to their polling station, and the result of this election remains unpredictable.…
Most Americans know how Trump’s impeachment circus will end
The first public hearing into President Donald Trump’s impeachment began with a bang. And it proceeded throughout the afternoon into…
The Democrats’ bad start to the impeachment hearings
The first day of public impeachment hearings was good for Republicans and mediocre, at best, for Democrats. That’s far short…
Resistance reality TV has jumped the shark
Comey. Cohen. Strzok. Page. Blasey Ford. Kavanaugh. Mueller. Taylor and Kent. Are you fed up yet? It sometimes feels as…
Rampant antisemitism
Australia was recently shaken to learn of the horrifying news of two blatantly antisemitic incidents within Melbourne’s public schools. One…
Dutton’s dinner diary
I want to speak as a proud member of the Abbott cabinet, but I also want to speak as a…
Allan, James Allan
I have to confess that I’m a little bit insulted that no one in the totally impartial and apolitical Commonwealth…
Fran’s feminist fascists
‘I thought there would be a range of views on this in the panel,’ said wannabe full-time Q&A host Fran…
The carbon dioxide trap
Many people who discuss climate change believe that if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise so does the Earth’s temperature. This…
Labor’s lamentable loss
The question Labor grandees Craig Emerson and Jay Weatherill should have asked in their review of the ALP’s loss in…
Lefties’ shaggy dog story
At this distance, it’s hard to credit the derangement of the US leftist media over Donald Trump. The president had…
Since records began
If we are being asked to shut down our coal export industry and the 48 coal turbines that supply 75…
Caroline O’Connor is the Spider Woman
They wrote musicals based on the most unlikely material but John Kander and Fred Ebb enjoyed ultimate success with Cabaret…
Jacqueline Dark, Taryb Fiebig and Helen Sherman
Vivaldi is having further boosts to his popularity with the Brandenburg Orchestra delivering cracking performances of his Four Seasons in…
John Singer Sargent’s Madame X
Baron François Gérard would be astonished that his vast 1825 painting of The Coronation of Charles X is the inspiration…
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Andrew Tink
A serious bout of ill-health forced him to abandon a successful career in politics but, in the intervening 10 years,…
Books of the year – part two
Richard Ingrams A book that gave me great enjoyment (for all the wrong reasons) was Harvest Bells: New and Uncollected…
Yalta was a carve-up — and the Poles are understandably still bitter about it
‘The strong do what they can. The weak suffer what they must.’ Thucydides’ principle expresses an uncomfortable truth. The eight-day…
Eleanor of Aquitaine is still as elusive as quicksilver
Eleanor of Aquitaine is the most famous woman of the Middle Ages: queen of France and England, crusader, mother of…
Ben Lerner’s much hyped latest novel reads like an audit of contemporary grievances
Things keep recurring in the novels of Ben Lerner — snatches of conversation, lines of poetry, Lerner himself. But in…
Children’s questions about death are consistently good fun
What strikes me most about the Christmas gift-book industry — for industry it surely is, as I can confirm, having…
Friends forever: the inside story of the American sitcom classic
Here is a test to tell you whether you will like this book or not: when I write ‘So, no…
Tips for Christmas tipples
It’s telling that perhaps the best wine book of last year, Amber Revolution by Simon Woolf, was self-published, though you’d…
Less radical, less rich: Elizabeth Strout’s Olive, Again is a disappointment
Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer-prize winning Olive Kitteridge (2008) is the novel I recommend to friends who don’t read much. Talk about…