Meet 007’s most fearsome enemy: a politically correct lack of imagination
The meh news of the week: Since Daniel Craig announced he was standing down as James Bond, debate has raged…
A religious freedom commissioner: not just worse than doing nothing, but the wrong thing
Attorney-General Christian Porter intends to put the proposed religious discrimination bill to Parliament in the near future. Unveiling the government’s…
To save Western Civilisation, turn right
C S Lewis once observed that when you are going in the wrong direction, the thing to do is go…
How is it fair that unions pay no income tax?
The ACTU continually complain that business, including small business, don’t pay their fair share of income tax. The complaints often…
Forget when Belle Gibson will get jail. When will her victims get justice?
When the Belle Gibson trial hit the news again recently all I was able to do was ‘watch on’ as…
Have Their ABC declared Bob Brown an unperson for heresy against the great green goddess Gaia?
‘Unperson’. You know the word. George Orwell coined it for Nineteen Eighty-Four, as being someone erased from society, the past,…
An end to parliamentary rorts in one easy step
This week, Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon passionately defended the $46,000 electoral allowance which he, like other MPs, receives from taxpayers…
How will more pen-pushers help the Great Barrier Reef?
The idea that the Great Barrier Reef is in need of saving from catastrophe is popular, especially among academics and…
Is Boris wrong to claim Islam set the Muslim world back?
I do love the Guardian. As the years go by almost no publication continues to give me such constant amusement.…
The rise and fall of Beto O’Rourke
It wasn’t so long ago when Beto O’Rourke, the punk-rock band member and three-term congressman from West Texas, was the…
The only way to solve Labour’s anti-Semitism problem
‘The Labour Party welcomes everyone* irrespective of race, creed, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation. (except, it seems, Jews)’. So…
The white supremacy phantom
Well la-dee-dah. The House votes to condemn ‘President Trump for his “racist comments” about four Democratic congresswomen of color.’ First,…
Immigration and the demographic brioche
The Conversation is an online journal publishing commentary from Australian academics about current issues. It claims to present articles with…
An upside to invasion?
Nathan Moran, of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council in Sydney, kicked off Naidoc week by criticising the city’s publicly-funded…
Einstein, Marx and the scourge of suicide
Prime Minister Morrison’s commitment to addressing the escalating rate of suicide is commendable and much needed. Given 3,128 Australians committed…
Cancel culture
Everyone who hasn’t spent the last six months under a rock knows about Israel Folau and how he’s raised northwards…
Business/Robbery etc
It really is the greatest moral challenge of our time – and it’s not climate change. It is nationality versus…
Green notes
Renewables fail to pay their way The problem with continued calls for ‘sense’ in the Australian energy market including a…
Lies and the death of democracy
Words matter, concepts matter. Without a shared understanding of language we’d live in a world of chaos. Truth, in other…
Indigenous voice?
It’s Naidoc Week in Australia, and this year’s theme is: ‘Voice. Treaty. Truth. Let’s work together.’ As the locals are…
Paul Dyer conducting the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
Only a person who is more or less my age can have a direct recollection of the 1953 coronation of…
Shakespeare in Love
For centuries plays have been derived from novels, myths and legends but only recently have we become used to plays…
Margaret Olley Pomegranates in a basket 1967
It’s a barely forgivable cliche to call them ‘the odd couple’; but Margaret Olley (1923-2011) and Ben Quilty (b. 1973)…
Brett Whiteley (1939-1992) Self portrait in the studio 1976
Painters and opera go together. Connected by passion and big gestures, it is not surprising that composers are drawn to…
Words of war: interviews with the children who survived Hitler’s invasion of Russia
In 1990s Russia, war veterans were a bossy, even aggressive presence, upbraiding people in shops and pushing to the front…
Andreï Makine’s new novel is ‘masterful’
The Siberian-born novelist Andreï Makine has, as we say in the book world, a shedload of French literary bling. He’s…
How to train your husband
Around 25 years ago it became clear that there existed only two groups that could still be bullied by journalists…
It’s time we treated the moon with some respect
At the very back of the eye is a cluster of cells called ipRGCs. They are cells that don’t depend…
All of nature in a village in Norfolk
Walking home from work one day during the half-year I lived in London’s Maida Vale (almost three decades ago now),…
The problem of being, and writing
The venerable Oxford philologist Max Müller held that ‘mythology, which was the bane of the ancient world, is in truth…
The novel Silicon Valley’s tech moguls won’t be amused to read
Silicon Valley moguls might not find Zed a particularly amusing read. Joanna Kavenna’s latest mindbender features the CEO of a…
The tragic story of Witold Pilecki, whose reports from Auschwitz fell on deaf ears
On 14 October 1942, the 23 Swiss members of the International Committee of the Red Cross met in Geneva to…