flat white

We can protect ourselves from sharks and still protect our seas

The Margaret River Pro — a surfing equivalent of the Australia Open — gets underway today in the magnificent waters…

2 May 2021

What Kevin Rudd gets wrong about church and state

Scott Morrison has been recently pilloried for outlining how his Christian faith positively influences his role as Australia’s Prime Minister.…

2 May 2021

Spectator Australia TV: Are we heading towards war with China?

A big show this week, featuring Senator James Paterson, John Ruddick, Professor Ian Plimer, the Institute of Public Affairs’ Bella…

Our Aussie contenders for the 2022 Oscars in full

It’s Academy Award time and the votes are in for best female black actor in a male Latino role.   Meanwhile…

30 Apr 2021

Vaccine passports create a two-tier society

Let us be blunt and upfront. The idea of implementing vaccine passports in Australia would surely be anathema to most Australians. A…

30 Apr 2021

What ever happened to good old fashioned innuendo?

Where did innuendo go?  That is the question that has been bugging me recently.  I listen to a lot of…

30 Apr 2021

If you want peace, prepare for war

This past weekend, Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton suggested that a conflict with China over Taiwan could not be discounted.  However,…

30 Apr 2021

China’s wolf warriors now sound like Q&A panellists – and that’s a real worry

China’s wolf warriors have spent the week snarling away at Australia, but one attack has really stood out. It came…

29 Apr 2021

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The strange truth about Japan’s climate change target

Japan has just raised its target for reducing carbon emissions from 26 percent to 46 percent (by 2030 from 2013…

1 May 2021

Zac Goldsmith, No. 10's rapid rebuttal service

It’s a tough gig defending this government. So tough in fact that the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson Allegra Stratton left…

1 May 2021

What Arlene Foster’s ousting means for Northern Ireland – and the Union

The brutal defenestration of Arlene Foster as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party could have severe implications for an already…

1 May 2021

How Tory MPs plan to clip Cummings' wings

On 26 May, Dominic Cummings will give evidence to MPs grouped on the health and science super committee, chaired by…

30 Apr 2021

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Inside the velvet glove

It was a strange spectacle, the recent televised presentation of Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne with Nanaia Mahuta, whose portfolios…

1 May 2021

Unpacking racism

Across the democratic world these days the ultimate weapon in silencing views you don’t like – a weapon far more…

1 May 2021

Is that a Cartier watch I hear ticking for Morrison?

The chief vice of capitalism, Churchill remarked, is the unequal sharing of blessings. To compensate, he added, socialism ensures an…

1 May 2021

Business/Robbery, etc.

Andrew Peacock copped a lot of flak in his 28 years in politics: ‘All feathers and no meat’, said the…

1 May 2021

Bad, bad business groups

Just how bad are the business groups that litter Australia’s corporate landscape? Think here the Business Council of Australia, the…

1 May 2021

Beyond the Yellow Brick Belt & Road

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews had nothing to say from his sick-bed when Prime Minister Morrison cancelled his Yellow Brick Belt…

1 May 2021

Roll over Beethoven, Bach and Mozart

No other occasion in Australia best exemplifies the hyper-politicisation of the arts than the annual Australia Council for the Arts…

1 May 2021

Lockdown lunacy

How long will Australians tolerate politicians abusing their powers, while under-performing in so many areas under their responsibility, such as…

1 May 2021

Killing Comrade Hampton

Fred Hampton, the young chairman of the Illinois Black Panthers, makes a brief appearance in The Trial of the Chicago…

1 May 2021

Kate Winslet

It’s been a strange week in the world of arts and entertainment as we slouched to the weirdest plague-governed Oscars…

1 May 2021

Science Gallery Melbourne

Sydney is still thrashing around with the historic Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, known as the Powerhouse Museum, while…

1 May 2021

Helen McCrory

At a time when people like Prince Philip looked as though they would live forever and the world was a…

24 Apr 2021

Aussie Life

I’ve travelled to Melbourne several times a year since I was a child and visited last month for the first…

1 May 2021

Aussie Language

The expression ‘culture cringe’ was coined in 1950 by literary critic A. A. Phillips to describe the cringing assumption that…

1 May 2021

Why all the outrage over the European Super League?

Anything been happening in football in the past couple of weeks? No? Moving on then… Hang about though. The doomed…

1 May 2021

The dirty truth about ‘sleaze’

‘Sleaze, sleaze, sleaze!’ exclaimed Sir Keir Starmer in Prime Minister’s Questions last week, hoping that a triple serving might stick.…

1 May 2021

Why should art have ever been considered a male preserve?

‘I’m a lady,’ insists the improbable damozel in David Walliams’s Little Britain sketch. I’m a lady, I kept thinking, reading…

1 May 2021

A meditation on everyday life: Early Morning Riser, by Katherine Heiny, reviewed

There were many moments in Early Morning Riser that made me laugh out loud in recognition. An episode where the…

1 May 2021

Stephen Hawking: the myth and the reality

I could never muster much enthusiasm for the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. His work, on the early universe and the…

1 May 2021

Stalin as puppet master: how Uncle Joe manipulated the West

Of the two dictators who began the second world war as allied partners in crime but ended it in combat…

1 May 2021

Not just a trolley dolly: the demanding life of an air hostess

Come Fly the World is not the book I thought I was getting. The slightly (surely deliberately) pulpy cover —…

1 May 2021

Ice and snow and sea and sky: Lean Fall Stand, by Jon McGregor, reviewed

Jon McGregor has an extraordinary ability to articulate the unspoken through ethereal prose that observes ordinary lives from above without…

1 May 2021

Sun, sex and acid: Thom Gunn in California

San Francisco is a fantastic place… it’s terribly sunny… I am having a splendid hedonistic time here… I find myself…

1 May 2021

Puzzle Pieces: Cowboy Graves, by Roberto Bolaño, reviewed

This might seem an odd confession, but the work of Roberto Bolaño gives me very good bad dreams. When I…

1 May 2021