Three reasons Labor will lose the 2026 Victorian election
D**k measuring contest
There are some political commentators who believe Chris Bowen is the natural successor to Anthony Albanese. I know … but the…
The price of coffee is more than Bowen imagines…
There was something nauseating about listening to former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull lean into the camera and sing the…
Lost in translation
Earlier this year, I was asked to speak at the Round Table Forum on ‘the hollowing out of democracy: managerial elites,…
Behold, Western Australia’s march toward a Chinese-style surveillance state
Is anyone else concerned about the direction our once laid-back, freedom-loving nation is headed? Thanks to serious errors in government…
Three reasons Labor will lose the 2026 Victorian election
The votes in the Victorian election have not yet been cast and it’s wise to be cautious predicting outcomes in…
On any Sunday (under Grand Theft Albo)
There is now a T-shirt that reads Grand Theft Albo – a play on a popular video game title. I believe…
Change or go extinct
During February this year, Angus Taylor gave his first press conference as the new Liberal leader, presenting a stark warning…
She rolled up her sleeve. The system rolled down the shutters…
Sarah is not her real name, but every other detail of her story is true. She was an emergency nurse…
A failure to deliver, not a rejection of the right
There is no running from it: the results for Republicans in the 2026 midterms were bad. Really bad. Democrats will…
Silence on coal, hubris at Cop31
Anthony Albanese strutted out onto the Cop31 stage to crow about climate change. Cop31 is a place where the alpha…
The Right mistook a mood for a movement
The 2026 midterms were a referendum on Donald Trump. The verdict was not especially difficult to decipher. Two years earlier,…
Yes, we can protect forests and profit from them
With forests, as with water, fish and even farmland and minerals, Australian governments have become experts at preventing natural resources…
Homer’s revenge: Why AI could save the Arts Degree
There is something wonderfully iconic happening at Harvard University. Just as artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to make some university education…
Lest Labor forget this Remembrance Day
As I left for my truck run in Central NSW this morning, the Flanders poppies stood at attention along the…
Trials and tribulations of free speech in Australia
I am a long-time critic of our High Court’s adventurism and willingness to usurp the legitimate lawmaking power of the…
Haiti: the world’s reluctant laboratory
When the government of Nayib Bukele announced the deployment of more than 2,000 Salvadoran troops to Haiti, the official justification…
Australia’s bloated bureaucracy needs a slice of PIE
Australians love a pie. We eat them at the football, at service stations and, in moments of poor judgment, one-handed…
The saving of Victoria Barracks
The backdown by Prime Minister Albanese on the sale of Victoria Barracks in Sydney (and, I believe, two other heritage…
Britain needs a second amendment
The European continent, at least the Western part, lunges further into disarray every time you check the TV news. If…
Councillors are happy, shame about the ratepayers
Local government is the only institution where customers are unhappy, management is delighted, and the solution is to send a…
ALBO & BOWEN’S COP-OUT | Meanwhile, Sandpapergate is back to haunt Australian cricket fans | S3 Ep 28
In this episode: Worse than #MelongGate – Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen embarrass the nation with their childish antics at…
MIDTERM BLUE – NAMI CRASHES OVER DONALD TRUMP | Is this the end of the WEST as we know it? | S3 Ep 27
In this episode: Democrats rise as war in #Iran and mass migration turn the polls against #DonaldTrump #MAGA Republicans. #DavidJones…
OH NO, NOT BLUEY! – Labor has started a war against speech and satire | S3 Ep 26
In this episode: Is BLUEY ground zero for the war against satire? Victoria – the reddest state – is about…
Dismissal 2.0
We need a Second Dismissal, a Dismissal 2.0, if you prefer. The Albanese government is out of control. It is…
Brown study
One of the more enjoyable tasks that descended on me during my epoch-making time as a minister in the federal…
Maga is dead. Long live Maga
Trump’s Maga has suffered a spectacular rebuke. But the demand that gave it life – for a country that works…
Vive la France? Quelle France?
For nearly 250 years, France has experienced a succession of short-lived regimes: a directoire, a consulate, two empires, two monarchies,…
OK, I admit I got it wrong on the midterms
It is a bad, bad US midterm election result to lose over eight per cent of the party popular vote…
Back from the brink
For various reasons, I have spent virtually all this year in Melbourne. Being here month in, month out, really focuses…
Al Capone 2.0
In 1920s Chicago, gangsters bombed saloons that bought from the wrong supplier. In 2026 Melbourne they are doing it again.…
Business/Robbery, etc
In the fantasy world of the Albanese Labor government’s ‘renewable energy superpower’ dreams, yet another unachievable critical minerals policy change,…
Turkish delight
Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen demonstrated his formidable negotiating skills even before he landed at COP31 this…
Democrats must build consensus with Donald Trump
‘All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is…
Yobbos of the manosphere
Yet again, Australians have been made fools of by a supposedly independent commission that we never elected, that we pay…
Oink! Oink!
Picture the scene. Jack is having a can of Balter beer; Jill is having an Aperol spritz. They are sitting…
The tragedy of Piddington
Seventy-seven years on from Passport to Pimlico, life appears to be imitating art in a corner of rural Oxfordshire. The…
How many more scandals can the BBC take?
With Russell Brand’s conviction for rape and sexual assault, and the allegations swirling around David Walliams, there has been another…
Who owns Charles de Gaulle?
More than a half century after his death, Charles de Gaulle is making a surprising comeback. Last Saturday, the ambitious…
The Ukraine war is one of history’s great turning points
When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Russia’s president launched what was supposed to be a textbook twentieth-century invasion. Military commentators believed…
We are heading towards a gender blasphemy law
In 1596, Luis de Carvajal the Younger was burned at the stake at an auto da fé in Mexico City…
Danny Boyle is playing fast and loose with the truth
Unusually for an autocrat, Rupert Murdoch suffers from sackers’ regret. A year after he fired Sir Larry Lamb from the Sun,…
Has Trump run out of road?
All reasonable people agree that this year’s midterms mark an epochal shift for America. The problem is, ‘all reasonable people’…
Three cheers for Rishi Sunak
Since we are a nation burdened by an ever-growing number of ex-Prime Ministers, it is appropriate to praise them when…
The secretive workings of the Bank for International Settlements
The tower of Basel loomed over Centralbahn platz like a rocket about to launch into space. It was December 1996…
The NHS breastfeeding obsession is putting babies at risk
Tens of thousands of babies are being readmitted to hospital a few days after birth, every year, suffering from dehydration…
The plan to ruin Westminster’s Smith Square
Perhaps the nicest part of SW1, especially at night, is Smith Square and the Georgian and neo-Georgian streets around it.…
Bring on the next Brexit battle
It’s understandable that we unrepentant Brexiteers should be annoyed with Andy Burnham for creeping around whispering sweet nothings to the…
New Zealand election musings
By the time you read this, the New Zealand election will be about a week away. Now I’d like to…
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…
Terror at the gates: the dangers of Shabana Mahmood’s new asylum scheme
A whisper so loud it is deafening
Next year’s Adelaide Festival is looming and it’s fascinating to see what Matthew Lutton has planned for us. Among the…
A patina of majesty
Patrick Stewart, the man who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and then went on to…
An urge to take over the play
It’s astonishing what awaits the culture vulture. A lot of people know the riches on offer when they see the…
The beauty of the ruthless truth
There are times when the screen, big or small, looks like a gift of the gods. In the last week…
Season of spice: a selection of cook books
The cover of the latest, much admired Vittles magazine displays a mocked-up tombstone bearing the inscription: ‘In affectionate remembrance of…
Testing times for cricket and the Raj
It’s 4 a.m. on 25 June 1932. The sun hasn’t risen and the Maharaja of Porbandar is standing in his…
An obscure 18th-century Bavarian continues to inspire the wildest conspiracy theories
The Illuminati – in case you didn’t know – were members of a Bavarian secret society that first convened in…
Sins of the mother: The Hill, by Harriet Clark, reviewed
For a novel rooted in reality, there is an eerily mythical feel to the first few pages of The Hill,…
Ghost stories by candlelight with M.R. James
At the start of his Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1905), M.R. James tells us that five of the stories…
Why Stephen Hawking will forever embody the triumph of mind over matter
Was Stephen Hawking a world-historical scientific genius? No. Was he nonetheless a scrupulous and collegiate collaborator with others? Also no.…
Children behaving badly – the wonderfully wicked world of Saki
‘Light literature’ has the potential to tell us more about the society that produced it than any number of more…
Saved by the Yanks
A startling new book thanks the United States for saving Australia from invasion in the second world war. Dr Tom…