Who owns Australia’s children – parents or the government?
Enough with the political correctness
People are intrinsically good and want to please each other. We may have our quirks and foibles, but to be…
Australian jobs held hostage by the 'Vaccine Wars'
Of all the insanity of the last two years, I think one of the worst issues I have observed is…
Bread and games everybody, bread and games!
Australia is set to achieve 180 per cent vaccination now that the evil Novak Djokovic is out of the way.…
Who owns Australia’s children – parents or the government?
There used to be a fundamental difference between the world’s socialist states and western democracies. Under a socialist system, children…
Forget peak Omicron, it’s peak accountability that Andrews fears most
While medical experts debate the timing of peak Omicron, the non-Labor side of politics hopes a different type of ‘peak’…
Did Australia buy tanks to protect Taiwan?
Australia splashed out $3.5 billion on 120 specially re-enforced US military tanks and armoured vehicles, causing prominent political reporters to…
Australia stubbornly refuses to become a republic – with good reason
Back in high school days, a group of fellow students at a model United Nations conference rankled the organisers by…
The strange emergence of the anti-vaxxer bogeyman
To Sir (!) Tony Blair, they are selfish idiots. To Bob Carr, they are simpletons. To the Archbishop of Canterbury…
Are sex offenders exploiting trans-rights policies behind bars?
A few years ago, there was some controversy about the facts relating to people in prison who identify as transgender,…
Boris Johnson vs the red wall MPs
Is anger dying down among Conservative MPs over ‘partygate’? That was the suggestion overnight. But in the House of Commons today…
Will Jeremy Hunt be the next prime minister?
Since he was defeated by Boris Johnson in the 2019 Conservative leadership contest, Jeremy Hunt has had a quieter life…
The Met Office’s bizarre forecasts
Now that the government has stuck its neck out and frozen the BBC licence fee, will its next target be…
Dear New Zealand, it’s time to end Covid discrimination
Dear New Zealand, It’s a shame that we as a country have decided to follow a policy of discrimination. Supporting…
Heading towards dystopia – what happened to New Zealand?
In the clash between authoritarianism and democracy, we know what is winning hands down. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, far-left on…
Let’s not copy New Zealand’s mistake with ciggies
New Zealand this week banned smoking for the next generation. Those under 14 will never be allowed to legally smoke…
New Zealand embraces gender ghosts as the national religion
From where I sit from across the ditch it appears ‘the land of the long white cloud’ is encased in…
Jeremy Irons in House of Gucci
Any attempt to fictionalise the Gucci story runs into the same difficulties as Ridley Scott’s handsome and absorbing film, House…
West Side Story
How strange to revisit the Nova in Lygon Street, Carlton, where a lifetime of films have been experienced, after an…
The Cardinal’s books
There are a thousand overtly artistic things to talk about at this summer moment including the new Sidney Nolan exhibition…
Sigrid Thornton
It was the thought of Stephen Sondheim’s death that made us watch Imelda Staunton in Gypsy. It’s the second musical…
Communists down under
When I was a fifteen-year-old student at Melbourne High School, I tried to join the Communist Party of Australia. One…
Celebrating Konstantin Paustovsky — hailed as ‘the Russian Proust’
When is a life worth telling? The Soviet writer Konstantin Paustovsky’s six-volume autobiography The Story of a Life combines high…
The novels that became instant classics
In the world of books, a modern classic is an altogether more slippery thing than a classic: it must walk…
A topsy-turvy world: Peaces, by Helen Oyeyemi, reviewed
At a village train station in deepest Kent two men and their pet mongoose are setting off on their honeymoon.…
Should we blame our ancestors for slavery when we’re equally culpable?
The premise of White Debt is that the author’s ancestors ran a business selling a product grown by slaves. Therefore…
Emperor for three years: the doomed reign of Maximilian I of Mexico
On 8 April 1864 an Austrian archduke with a penchant for daydreaming agreed to be emperor of Mexico. As Edward…
A cursed place: Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan, reviewed
Claire Keegan’s tiny, cataclysmic novel takes us into the heart of small-town Ireland a few decades ago, creating a world…
When did postmodernism begin?
There’s a scene in Martin Amis’s 1990s revenge comedy The Information in which a book reviewer, who’s crushed by his…
