The ‘Lest’ slogan
EU threatens Australia’s tea tree oil industry
Tea tree oil is a proud Australian export worth around $40 million per year to the essential oils and cosmetics…
Who needs the Department of Climate Change anyway?
One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce sent the collective Left into fits of hysteria by repeating Senator Hanson’s desire to make the…
Has protesting gone too far?
If you walk through the city today, you’ll come across four or five dedicated anti-fossil fuel protesters. They are frequent…
Part of Victoria’s petrol production up in flames
The Iran war made it obvious Australia has not completed any serious war-gaming on fuel shortages. Theoretical papers, maybe. A…
Why the Middle East cannot be understood – or repaired – through corrupted language
I. When Words Fail, Policy Follows Clear words produce clear thoughts. Clear thoughts produce coherent policy. When language decays, so…
Is the rule of law still fit for purpose?
The rule of law is one of the foundational pillars of liberal democracy. At its core, it rests on the…
Angus Taylor’s immigration policy
Designing an immigration policy in Australia in 2026 is undoubtedly a politically hazardous task. Huge numbers of immigrants have been…
The review settles the review
A little over a year ago, Creative Australia announced Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s representative at the 2026 Venice Biennale. Six…
I hope Farrer pick One Nation candidate David Farley
Since the South Australian state election last month, myself and the other six new One Nation Parliamentarians have been busy…
Multiculturalism and the language of ‘values’
The return of multiculturalism as a live political question in Australia has been swift – and faintly familiar. The Coalition’s…
The keys to the kingdom
Australia has been here before. Time and again, the country has stumbled upon extraordinary good fortune – gold in the…
Australia’s energy problem isn’t resources – it’s strategy
Australia is one of the most energy-rich countries in the world, yet remains exposed in the very systems those resources…
The bonfire of the ideals
Henry Parkes, the Father of Federation, was converted to free trade by Richard Cobden, the apostle of free trade and…
Before the celebration, the cost
In 1963, the Knesset made a decision that, at first glance, feels almost counter-intuitive. Why would a nation choose to…
Negotiation, delay, and strategic reality
There is a recurring instinct in Western policymaking to believe that with enough persistence, enough goodwill, and enough diplomatic effort,…
Energy crisis demonstrates the benefits of war
Many governments are suddenly realising that economies do not operate on sunbeams and zephyrs. This is less so for the…
You can trust One Nation to keep their word on migration
The Liberal Party could not be more rattled by the rise of One Nation and the speech by Angus Taylor…
Glory and shame, two noble myths corrode
There is a temptation in Australia to treat the Ben Roberts-Smith affair as though it were, at heart, a simple…
ABC’s war on those who fight wars
There is a particular kind of arrogance that only flourishes at a safe distance from danger, and the arrest of…
Before the Dawn Service, there was this
The staged arrest of Ben Roberts-Smith, just weeks before Anzac Day, is not just bad optics. It is a signal…
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…
The wrong clubs
After nearly three decades practising as a garden-variety civil lawyer, steering well clear of international law and anything to do…
Business/Robbery, etc
It’s energy, stupid. And that means all forms – oil, gas, coal, nuclear and the broad range of renewables. Energy…
Angus takes a stand
The fact that Tony Burke, Paul Keating and Andrew Leigh felt the need to formally respond to the recent speech…
Hungary’s messy new direction
The many who don’t follow news from Hungary closely must have thought the landslide defeat of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán…
Command and control Australia
Author Donald Horne explained how Australia was ‘the Lucky Country’ since it became successful despite the fact it was run…
Living with a lie
At this year’s World Economic Forum, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned about ‘a rupture in the world order, the…
Decapitating Poppies
In the lead-up to Anzac Day, the Australian National University has released an interesting poll. The headline finding is that…
Body of evidence
As Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping walked to a platform to review a Beijing military parade last September, their words…
How West Ham turned on Karren Brady
Baroness Karren Brady has finally stepped down as vice-chair of West Ham United and the fans are delighted. Never mind…
The Iran war hits inflation
The Iran war is being felt in Britain’s economy. Figures just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show…
Keir Starmer has been brutally exposed
There has been quite enough talk of process. In the past few days, we have heard more about vetting forms,…
What do the Greens have against Haifa?
Haifa, a mountainous Israeli city on the coast of the Mediterranean, is a place that makes you believe in coexistence.…
Gen Z’s faith in democracy is fraying
The basic idea that the next generation will have it better than previous ones is a founding belief for most…
Why Iran doesn’t want peace
Perhaps we should be used to be this by now. Yet again, there have been a flurry of promises to…
Congress needs an ethics overhaul: Anna Paulina Luna
Washington’s problems are not hidden. Many of them simply go unaddressed. On Capitol Hill, “open secrets” persist because Congress has…
The Iran war is giving Xi the upper hand with Trump
China’s largest trade show is now under way in the southern city of Guangzhou. The Canton Fair is a colossal…
Is Russia’s economy really on its last legs?
The head of Swedish military intelligence has dropped what he clearly regards as a bombshell. Thomas Nilsson told the Financial Times this…
Why Trump hasn’t stuck the knife into Starmer
As public messages of support go, it scored pretty low on the conviction-o-meter. “Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United…
War bonds won’t fix Britain’s creaking defence
The Chancellor Rachel Reeves is reported to be considering proposals to issue war bonds to fund a splurge in defence…
It’s little surprise that an Israeli soldier was caught desecrating a crucifix
There’s something apposite, I suppose, about the desecration of a crucifix. In this case, it was an Israeli soldier in…
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’…
Organised crime is targeting artisanal food
Scrupulous fidelity
Isn’t it fascinating how much we adapt works of literature? 150 years ago someone would have had a fair chance…
Like him or loathe him
It’s cheering to hear very promising reports of Barrie Kosky’s production of Siegfried at Covent Garden suggesting that the Melbourne-born…
Cruelties of popular culture
Ethan Hawke is an extraordinary figure. He has made straightforward Hollywood classics like Training Day but he also comes out…
Deaths in the mind
It’s strange the way certain deaths stay in the mind perhaps because of the fascination and interconnection of the lives…
Why one of Renoir’s most celebrated paintings languished unloved
Shimmering off the cover of The Renoir Girls are sisters Alice (aged four) and Elisabeth Cahen d’Anvers (six), portrayed in…
Unravelling the infinite mysteries of physics
Can artificial intelligence become godlike? Can such technology unravel the world’s great mysteries? Can everything, from love and intuition to…
Derided as ‘feminists’: the unsung witnesses of the Nuremberg trials
There are several things wrong with James Vanderbilt’s new film Nuremberg, least of all, some might say, the fact that…
A dying fall: The Last Movement, by Robert Seethaler, reviewed
Robert Seethaler is known for celebrating the unsung: commonplace characters – peasants, labourers or shop assistants – who draw us…
The typo that spelled death in the Soviet Union
‘As anyone who has gleefully spotted a typo in a prestigious publication, felt a flicker of schadenfreude at a pompous…
‘A lost generation’: My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein, by Deborah Levy, reviewed
In a 2013 interview, Deborah Levy said: ‘Modernism is the soft typewriter of the womb that made me.’ But what…
The cormorant – symbol of gluttony and the Devil
Greed, death, hate and clouds of destruction – this is the cormorant season all right. I was hungry to read…
A deadly imitation game: the fate of the British teenager who posed as a Russian oligarch’s son
This story is little more than a brutal anecdote, which Patrick Radden Keefe has chosen to tell at excessive length.…