Thinking … and other dangerous activities
Andrew Hastie: ‘Pauline Hanson’s problem is that she is MAGA first.’
Liberal Leader Angus Taylor barely has his toes in the sand and already there are articles pondering if he might…
The sacrifice of the lambs
The easiest and fastest way to fix a political screw-up is to replace the leader. New leader. New era. It…
Does the Liberal Party have a woman problem?
The Liberal Party has been mulling over its ‘woman’ problem. Disparity might be a better way to describe the situation. In…
Barnaby Joyce did the right thing
I watched Barnaby Joyce’s recent Sky News Australia interview with Andrew Bolt in dismay. Not because of its widely (dare we…
Thinking … and other dangerous activities
I’ve been thinking. Three words that have, throughout history, inspired hope, fear, or eye rolls when spoken. When I utter…
When did Albanese change his position?
‘We’ve changed our position’ is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s much ridiculed attempt to hide from accusations that he misled voters…
Ten reasons why the murder of Henry Novak was an example of Wokeness
One of the most heartbreaking videos I have ever seen was the speech made by Henry Novak’s father, Mark Novak,…
The real lesson of Socrates
More than 2,400 years after his death, Socrates remains one of the most misunderstood figures in history. Every few months,…
The Great Political Transition
Politics is undergoing a transition. In the recent Newspoll, ‘Almost 70 per cent of voters agreed that “the people who…
The truth is out there, Donald
With no clear end in view for the Iran War, critics are probably (partly) right in claiming US President Donald…
The logical fallacy of Artificial Intelligence
If you have been online in the last couple of years, you have probably been bombarded with advertisements, articles, over-enthusiastic…
God, King, and Country
God, King, and Country is an interesting concept. As a political scientist, my method tends to be what is known…
From settlers to bludgers
My forebears came to this wide brown land from Scotland and Ireland around 150 years ago. They were tillers of…
Is Musk’s SpaceX set to blow up on the launch pad?
The upcoming listing of Elon Musk’s SpaceX is shaping up as this year’s blockbuster event for financial markets. SpaceX plans…
Labor in a State
South Australia was the first place on Earth, ahead of New Zealand, to give women a complete political life –…
Is Aukus in disarray?
At the Shangri-La Dialogue last weekend, three defence ministers performed a quiet act of damage control and called it a…
Labor is budgeting more migration
One of my politics lecturers in university always said that budgets are useful because you can cut through all the…
What did I miss?
The bloke who sang leftie hits like US Forces, Harrisburg, and When the Generals Talk is set to go around…
Australia’s universities don’t have a funding problem
This week, both the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review have revealed that most Australian universities have dropped…
The beginning of the end – for Labor
This wasn’t just a Budget, it was electoral suicide. Anyone still cheering it on either hasn’t read the fine print…
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner loses again – A victory for free speech | Celine Baumgarten S3 Ep 18
Celine Baumgarten (Celine Against the Machine) has celebrated her SECOND victory against the eSafety Commissioner. This wasn’t only a personal…
Did Donald Trump conquer the world with witty insults? | Joel Gilbert S3 Ep 17
Did Donald Trump conquer the world with witty insults? I’m joined by Joel Gilbert to discuss the genius of humour…
Digital tyranny or ‘child safety’? 😵 & the bitcoin revolution | Efrat Fenigson S3 Ep 16
When Australia’s Under 16 social media ban started locking adult political writers out of #Substack – it was just the…
Teals should be terrified
I received a worried message from one of my oldest friends recently. She has a brother with a significant disability,…
A Beech of judicial etiquette
You’ve all seen the story by now. High Court judge Robert Beech-Jones decides to deliver a diatribe up in Townsville…
The Albo Manifesto
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels opened their 1848 manifesto with the claim that ‘the history of all hitherto existing society…
Menzies would not have built One Nation
One of the more dubious claims in Australian politics at present is that One Nation represents the future of Australian…
Disunited Kingdom
Would England be better off without Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? This may seem an extraordinary question but it is…
NZ’s latest party hates Israel
One of New Zealand’s proudest claims to fame, just behind the pavlova dessert and the All Blacks, is being the…
Justice miscarried
For more than five minutes of human history, society accepted biological reality as a simple fact. In primary schools everywhere,…
Put out more flags
And then there were two. With the swearing in of David Farley as the member for Farrer, One Nation has…
Watch: Hilary Benn’s Belfast evasion
Jim Allister: “What will be done to stop the importation of an alien culture that thinks it’s appropriate to try…
Reform demands answers on grooming gangs
The public is rightly focused on the violent attack that unfolded in Belfast on Monday. But today, Reform is keen…
Can China keep North Korea in check?
When Xi Jinping visited North Korea in June 2019 for his first state visit, he would not have expected nearly…
Kemi Badenoch’s equality reforms don’t go far enough
Ten years ago, I found myself accompanying the then Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign Office to the Locarno room…
Why the BBC won’t be presenting the World Cup from America
This year’s World Cup, already full of controversy, is being held across an unprecedented three countries: the United States, Mexico…
My annual pilgrimage along the route of the Berlin Wall
Each time I return to Berlin – that wonderful, awful city where I whiled away the best days of my…
The luvvies are out for Reform. Is anyone listening?
Brace yourself! Celebrities are on the march. As Keir Starmer’s premiership fades into irrelevance and Reform gears up to fight…
HelloFresh’s stomach-churning Pride ad
HelloFresh is a popular food-delivery service that has simplified home cooking with its pre-prepared ingredients. Yet this month, Pride Month,…
Westminster can’t escape blame for the Murrell scandal
Per Sir Humphrey Appleby: ‘A basic rule of government is never look into anything you don’t have to and never…
Kemi’s equality reform proposals are long overdue
Kemi Badenoch is right to argue that the Public Sector Equality Duty should go – and I say that as someone who…
The urgent case for fixing California’s broken elections
When late arriving ballots in the race for Los Angeles mayor turned dramatically against conservative Spencer Pratt last week, Donald…
Idris Elba is right about James Bond
When Daniel Craig was finishing his run as James Bond in 2021, Sir Keir Starmer was asked who was his…
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…
What they don’t tell you about Christmas in New Zealand
‘I still think New Zealand the most beautiful country I have ever seen,’ Agatha Christie marvelled in 1922. Evidently she’s…
What will Jacinda Ardern do next?
When I first met Jacinda Ardern in the early 2010s, the notion that the young MP with the toothy smile…
The de-Wokification of New Zealand’s education system
The conservative coalition government of New Zealand came to office promising to wind back an enormous, government-run system of ‘Woke’…
The Pope’s merciless war against the Old Rite
Such stuff as dreams are made on
When Ken Branagh took the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford for the first time in thirty years…
Elegance and intrigue
Anyone who knows the Sixties can easily be reminded of the beauty and the authority of Sidney Poitier. The MTC…
Sex symbol or respected actor?
You don’t have to be any specific age to thrill to the Opera Australia production of La Traviata. It is…
A masterpiece of economy
There’s something very odd about the fuss that’s been made about David Szalay who won the Booker a few months…
Jaded and adrift: I Want You to Be Happy, by Jem Calder, reviewed
Two people make an awkward stab at a relationship, even as both flounder under the realities of modern life. Yes,…
The world’s most beautiful man in a den of iniquity
A photograph from the late 1960s shows a lavishly underdressed Marianne Faithfull sandwiched between Alain Delon, the most beautiful man…
Mapping the Emerald Isle: Land, by Maggie O’Farrell, reviewed
Maggie O’Farrell’s two previous historical novels, Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait, made her a household name. Land marks a return…
Signs of impending doom: The Given World, by Melissa Harrison, reviewed
Melissa Harrison’s bestselling 2018 novel All Among the Barley, set in the early 1930s, was much concerned with the pace…
The importance of fairy tales in testing times
In the realm of magic and imagination, human nature can be better understood than in the world of our everyday…
The Panic of 1873 seems eerily familiar
On 18 September 1873, the leading American bank Jay Cooke & Co collapsed after a disastrous bet on the railroad…
Will robots simply bore us to extinction?
A few years ago, when ChatGPT and Claude were beginning to take off, some tech leaders seemed to develop a…
The humiliating truth about the way we think
Over the long span of human existence, different cultures have held varying notions as to how responsible we are for…