Cultural cleansing
It’s only a small business
Covid is a mismanaged economic disaster that has done more damage to the financial, social, ethical, and legal structure of…
Nice try, China, but I’m proud you think I’m a scumbag
Lunar New Year is as good a time as any to commend your friends and threaten your enemies, all in…
Their ABC isn’t in bed with the left? Yeah, right
“Our ABC is independent”, they claim. “A national treasure”, “independent”, “unbiased”, “worth every cent”, on and on, blah blah, they…
Don’t let the law become a political weapon
The presumption of innocence is one of the bedrock principles of the Australian legal system. In fact, near-universal support for…
What’s woke this week?
The woke Stasi’s not–so–secret police have been out in force recently: a bit of psychological harassment here, a bit of agitprop there, virtue…
The ‘court of public opinion’ is nothing but mob rule
During Christian Porter’s press conference which turned into a blood sport yesterday, two journalists in particular insisted that the Attorney-General…
Malcolm and Kevin, the Tinfoil Twins
The more I look at Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd these days, the more I think that ancient Greeks were…
Sorry Christian, but it’s time to take one for the team
His name is now officially out. The Christian Porter allegation is, like other recent tales from Canberra, a very sad…
The EU's ugly vaccine nationalism
We have to rid the world of vaccine nationalism. No one is protected until we are all protected. And we…
Why we shouldn't worry about Covid super strains
Should we worry about new Covid variants? Much has been made in recent weeks about the potential for new Covid…
Meghan, Harry and the trouble with Oprah's 'truth'
Obviously, I can’t wait for the Meghan and Harry audience with Oprah Winfrey. Alas, it’s going to be broadcast at…
HR 1 is an existential threat to American democracy
On Wednesday night, Speaker Nancy Pelosi dragooned all but one Democrat into voting for her total rewrite of the nation’s…
Sex, lies and the spirit of Salem
The spirit of Salem has come to Australia’s federal parliament with a 21st century twist; woke witches subject their conservative…
Re-thinking Covid-19
On 13 November Kamran Abbasi, editor of the British Medical Journal, argued that the medical debate on Covid-19 and policies…
The Covid Macguffin
A shadowy cabal of billionaires engineer a fake pandemic in order to fool the world into adopting an experimental vaccine…
Reset, build back better, green new deal
Here’s a tip: whenever you read the terms ‘reset’, ‘build back better’ or ‘green new deal’, be afraid, very afraid. …
Turning conservatives into sub-humans
The clever British fantasy series Black Mirror features an episode where soldiers must eradicate dangerous humanoid mutants known as roaches.…
Business/Robbery, etc.
Now that grown-up pragmatists are running BHP and its previous version of Saint Greta Thunberg’s environmental disaster gospel has been…
Cultural cleansing
Those of us who would normally undertake a yearly pilgrimage to Europe for a much-needed injection of Old World culture,…
Collins class all over again
The real surprise for any observer of the $90 billion deal between Australia and the French shipbuilder Naval Group to…
Christopher Plummer
A few weeks ago that great Canadian actor Christopher Plummer died. Everyone knows him as Captain Von Trapp opposite Julie…
Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London
Saint Zenobius was a Florentine nobleman who was converted to Christianity and baptised as an adult, ultimately becoming the first…
Anne-Marie Duff
Melbourne was just stirring into public cultural life when the hotel quarantine mishap led to that last alarming lockdown that…
Australian Love Stories: Celebrating love in all its guises at the NPG
The National Portrait Gallery seems to be floundering. That may be unfair but the announcement of the next exhibition left…
Chips Channon’s diaries can read like a drunken round of Consequences
Most of the grander 20th-century diarists had a sniffy air about them, looking down their noses at everyone, particularly each…
Walls go up after the Berlin Wall comes down
In her 2017 travelogue Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, the writer and poet Kapka Kassabova meets Emel,…
The robot as carer: Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro, reviewed
The world of Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel — let’s call it Ishville — is instantly recognisable. Our narrator, Klara, is…
Why autocracy in Russia always fails in the end
Churchill was wrong: Russia is neither a riddle nor an enigma. Russians themselves concoct endless stories to glorify their country’s…
My father, the tyrant: Robert Edric describes a brutal upbringing
In a career stretching back to the mid-1980s, Robert Edric has so far managed a grand total of 28 novels,…
Ghosts in a landscape: farming life through the eyes of Thomas Hennell
Thomas Hennell is one of that generation of painters born in 1903 whose collective achievements are such an adornment of…
‘Britain’s Dreyfus Affair’: a very nasty village scandal
It has been described as Britain’s Dreyfus Affair — the wrongful imprisonment in 1903 of a half-Indian solicitor George Edalji…
Why the first self-help book is still worth reading: The Anatomy of Melancholy anatomised
Footling around on the internet recently, I stumbled on a clip of a young woman singing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ to…