New world order: can Britain, America and Australia contain China?
Why is Victoria heading down a dead end street with prostitution law reform?
New South Wales model of decriminalisation and deregulation of prostitution has failed to protect workers in the sex industry while empowering…
Keating, Turnbull and Rudd: the new Three Stooges
Three questions in today’s quiz: Who couldn’t care less about party or national loyalties once the prime ministerial pension kicks…
We salute the Trotskyite press (sorta)
First The Age called the Melbourne protests correctly. Now, even the Trotskyites have made points worth noting. Red Flag, their…
Australia’s vaccine mandates: a violation of international law?
The Covid-19 Directions adopted by Australia’s governments have the effect of violating the rule of law when they excessively interfere…
Now it’s the great vape conspiracy
The ongoing conflation of vaping and tobacco industry e-cigarettes is an intentional misdirection and a dangerous one. The strongest observation…
Why is Victoria Police fighting media freedom?
Whatever your views on the Melbourne protests, here’s something you should be concerned about: the attack on media freedom –and transparency…
Limiting access for the unvaxed to public places will likely breach the Disability Discrimination Act
Your correspondent is a retired lawyer who these days prefers gardening to litigating. Spring in the Victorian High Country is…
Unis still stinging students while claiming Covid-poverty
In the era of Covid-19, change is everywhere. I have spent the past 18 months adapting to the Covid-19 university experience.…
Harry and Meghan, maskless in Manhattan
Aspiring hermits Prince Harry and Meghan Markle retreated to the notably reclusive borough of Manhattan today to visit the One…
Could the squeeze on living standards bring down Boris?
There is about to be a two-phase onslaught on the living standards of those on low-to-middling incomes. On 1 October…
Why the world is in for a dangerous decade
The Australia/UK/US (Aukus) deal for Australia to acquire nuclear submarines is the clearest demonstration yet of the UK’s tilt to…
Is Russia ready for life after Putin?
When Russians headed to the polls last week, the Duma election results were never in doubt: Putin’s United Russiaparty won…
Does AUKUS show there’s still life in the Morrison government?
Yesterday’s surprise announcement of AUKUS – the new Australia-United Kingdom-United States security partnership – is huge news. Not only is…
Jacinda Ardern – an agenda-driven autocrat?
It’s hard to keep up with our adroit Prime Minister who apparently doesn’t like answering questions, such as the one about where does…
More than one way to ruin a country
The shock of the brutal religious fanaticism of the Taliban again abroad in Afghanistan, partly at least to the shame…
Kiwis want elimination, and nothing but elimination
Yesterday, the New Zealand Herald published the findings of an opinion poll it commissioned as a wave of the Delta…
Premier Dan-Xi crushes dissent
Victoria’s truculent Premier Dan Andrews – who ought to change his name to Dan-Xi Andrews in homage to his role…
This headline is ‘hateful’ to Victorians
It’s not hard to see why Michael O’Brien’s leadership of the Liberal party in Victoria had become so tenuous before…
Voldermectin
On 10 September, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) banned GPs from prescribing ivermectin for preventing or treating Covid-19, citing ‘a…
Our classy new subs
The good news from the government’s defence announcement in mid-September is that the absurd $90 billion deal between Australia and…
Thanks for nothing, Mathias
It is estimated that Australian taxpayers chipped in at least a million bucks to support the bid of former Liberal…
Labor falls off its horse
‘The man-baby Nazis who attacked the construction union’s HQ deserve to the have the book thrown at them,’ tweeted once…
‘Strong Female Lead’ is weak on the truth
You’re taking the journalistic mickey when the image you use to promote a show you’ve listed in the ‘factual’ program…
A harbinger for AUKUS
Was keeping Christopher Pyne in Parliament and Malcolm Turnbull in The Lodge really worth spending billions on a fleet of…
Nic Denton and Frances O’Connor
As the northern hemisphere, that ambiguous spectral homeland we’re conscious of, starts to open up, it’s easy to be envious…
Diane Lane
It was doubly sad the other night to see Virginia Gay deliver a speech from her Covid-cancelled Cyrano on the…
Thomas Mann
And so Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge is Melbourne’s musical-in- waiting. The show that can only go on when we’re 80…
Charlie Watts
The endless news is of shows locked down as every form of life is locked down in a nation struggling…
A 21st-century Holden Caulfield: The Book of Form and Emptiness, by Ruth Ozecki, reviewed
The world Ruth Ozeki creates in The Book of Form & Emptiness resembles one of the snow globes that pop…
The coal mining conundrum: why did the NUM fight so hard for its members’ right to suffer underground?
Anyone with a grasp of the history of Britain knows that its once considerable power, and much of its still…
Flight into danger: Freight Dogs, by Giles Foden, reviewed
Flying has always attracted chancers and characters to Africa. Wilbur Smith’s father so loved aviation he named his son to…
China and the WHO are given an easy ride in the Covid blame game
Are you ready to relive 2020? That’s what Adam Tooze is offering as he tells the story of Covid-19 through…
The first patrons of Modernism deserve much sympathy and respect
If Modernism is a jungle, how do you navigate a path through its thickets? Some explorers — Peter Gay and…
From salivating dogs to mass indoctrination: Pavlov’s sinister legacy
When two post-Soviet supermodels committed suicide in the noughties, both throwing themselves off high buildings in New York and Kiev,…
T.S. Eliot’s preoccupations in wartime Britain
In her essay ‘A House of One’s Own’, about Vanessa Bell, Janet Malcolm says memorably that Bloomsbury is a fiction,…
Thoroughly modern Marie: Matrix, by Lauren Groff, reviewed
It is 1158. A 17-year-old girl, born of both rape and royal blood, is cast out of the French court…
