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What must Daniel Andrews’ Department of Fairness make of Daniel Andrews’ Victoria?

The Victorian Department of Fairness must be tut-tutting like a metronome in overdrive.  Its job is to work ‘hard to…

21 Oct 2021

A Statement of Public Interest should accompany all government bills. Here’s why

Research by both right and left think tanks the Insitute of Public Affairs and Per Capita show that for all…

21 Oct 2021

Pru Goward and the road to Wigan Pier

Has there ever been a more pathetic display of bile-reeking, attention-seeking, virtue-signalling conspicuous compassion from the woke and the wonderful…

21 Oct 2021

Vaping: one policy the Kiwis have got right

The Asia Pacific region has been split in two as to how to best deal with vaping. No bigger is…

21 Oct 2021

First lockdown, now segregation

As New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet leads the way out of lockdowns and restrictions in Australia, a job Scott…

21 Oct 2021

No choice on net-zero? Really, Prime Minister?

Believing we always have a choice is key to living in a free, liberal, democratic society like Australia. That’s why…

20 Oct 2021

The WHO fails again – on smoking

Whatever reputation for competence and honesty the World Health Organisation might once have had has been destroyed by its response…

20 Oct 2021

Adam Bandt is being ignored so has had to say something stupid

While the Liberals are flirting with net zero, the Greens are demanding peak stupid and proving themselves to be even…

20 Oct 2021

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Don’t worry: colleges are still insufferably woke post-COVID

Given the recent spate of “fuck Joe Biden” chants at college football games, you’d be forgiven for thinking that a…

21 Oct 2021

Progressive scare tactics won’t work on Joe Manchin over Build Back Better

Are progressives serious about winning over Joe Manchin? If so, they’ve got a funny way of showing it. The Democratic senator…

21 Oct 2021

Is Virginia's Terry McAuliffe ‘losing it’?

Is Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe really “losing it”? Last week, McAuliffe snapped at a tracker who asked him…

21 Oct 2021

America has few good options in Haiti

Haiti has never been known as a beacon of stability and tranquility. Most of its politicians are feckless, in league…

21 Oct 2021

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Vaping: one policy the Kiwis have got right

The Asia Pacific region has been split in two as to how to best deal with vaping. No bigger is…

21 Oct 2021

Insufficient intent

To tell you the truth, I lost interest in Aussie rules football some time ago.  My team is into a…

16 Oct 2021

Kiwi Life

A crisis by design It is increasingly sad, so many New Zealanders saying they would leave – if they could…

2 Oct 2021

Kiwi Language

A tech company claims that anti-vax and anti-lockdown rallies have been ‘astroturfed’. Which means? Well, ‘AstroTurf’ was the world’s first…

2 Oct 2021

It’s net curtains

Net zero emissions is the public policy embodiment of corporate BS. Anyone who has worked for a large corporation has…

23 Oct 2021

Campus lies, damned lies and statistics

This year sexual assault has been constantly in the news, part of an ongoing campaign targeting the Coalition government. Now…

23 Oct 2021

Questioning Covid

In lighting the way out of the nightmare of serial lockdowns, new New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet has said…

23 Oct 2021

Heard the one about the BCA economist…?

It’s an oldie but a goody: What’s the purpose of economic modelling? To make astrology look good. Of course, the…

23 Oct 2021

Covid’s lepers

When Victorian Premier Dan Andrews promised this week to continue to punish the unvaccinated well into next year, the #IStandWithDan…

23 Oct 2021

They Ridd us of that turbulent academic

Last week’s High Court decision in the Peter Ridd v. James Cook University case has already received plenty of attention.…

23 Oct 2021

Aux bien pensants

‘The train has left the station’ wrote one journalist, echoing the mainstream media pack on net zero emissions. Forget that…

23 Oct 2021

How to kill a country

Long ago, back in the distant Eighties, the wonderful, witty and luckily enduring cartoonist Mark Knight – yes, he of…

23 Oct 2021

Bob Dylan

Only in Australia and perhaps only in Sydney, that cradle of the cons and the jailers, the Rum Corps and…

23 Oct 2021

Maggie Smith

And so we look like being able to see live performance again in the two biggest cities in Australia: Sydney…

16 Oct 2021

Clive Owen

A time of plague makes us brood on the culture we share in the absence of personal preference. One person…

9 Oct 2021

Heath Ledger

It’s weird to hear news of artistic life in the midst of Covid. The Sydney Theatre Company has a new…

2 Oct 2021

Aussie Life

Go on, admit it; just when you thought it was safe to go back to the pub, or the office,…

23 Oct 2021

Aussie Language

Andrew Bolt, among others, has been scrupulous in drawing our attention to what he calls ‘race baiting’. For example, Greens…

23 Oct 2021

The poor are too busy trying to make a living to be angry about the global rich-poor divide

New York   ‘The City of London is hiding the world’s stolen money’, screams a Bagel Times headline, as bogus…

23 Oct 2021

If a bloke can wear stockings and suspenders in a stable yard why can’t I?

We had gone to visit a friend at a stable yard on a country estate on a crisp autumn Sunday.…

23 Oct 2021

Bach’s Cello Suites represent a spiritual meditation — from the Nativity to the Resurrection

‘One player on four strings, with a bow.’ That’s what Bach’s six Cello Suites boil down to, says Steven Isserlis.…

23 Oct 2021

Has George III been seriously maligned?

Every British historian has a story about the witlessness of Americans when it comes to our Georgian kings. The fate…

23 Oct 2021

A master of spy fiction to the end — John Le Carré’s Silverview reviewed

Literary estates work to preserve a writer’s reputation — and sometimes milk it too. The appearance of this novel by…

23 Oct 2021

The horror of tank warfare brought vividly to life

If Joseph Stalin was right about one thing it was his assertion that ‘the death of one man is a…

23 Oct 2021

God is everywhere, sometimes in strange guises, in Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads

Twenty years ago The Corrections alerted a troubled world to the talents of Jonathan Franzen. Though cruel and funny and…

23 Oct 2021

Stylish and useful: why the Anglepoise remains a design classic

The tide of survival bias has retreated and left the Anglepoise a design classic. Its contemporaries from the mid-1930s, a…

23 Oct 2021

Another haphazard Booker shortlist lacks literary competence

The Booker used to be more enthusiastic about the historical novel than it now is. Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle (Doubleday,…

16 Oct 2021

Folk music is still very much alive and kicking

As a writer who obsesses over the right title to grab a target audience, seeing a book subtitled ‘Song Collectors…

16 Oct 2021