flat white

Closed borders are unconstitutional – no question

You can’t argue that there is still a national coronavirus emergency that provides an exemption to Section 92 of the…

23 May 2020

Why the time has come for national security hospitals

Catastrophes are sadly a part of life. Many cannot be prevented, but can at least be better handled than is…

22 May 2020

Eden Monaro: will coronavirus campaigning skew the result?

The 2007 federal election was held in the early days of social media. Many a time when John Howard visited…

22 May 2020

Why not replace politicians with the ‘experts’?

Is it time to replace our elected politicians with non-elected experts? We have always voted representatives into public office. But…

22 May 2020

Wolf Warriors or China’s whores?

The media has quickly adopted the romanticised term ‘wolf warriors’ for those who in reality should be termed China’s prostitutes.…

21 May 2020

The most important issue of 2020: sexist kids water bottles

Coronavirus seems to reveal the best and worst of humanity. Most Australians have spent the last two months adjusting to…

21 May 2020

No, Prime Minister. We don’t need to go back to the Accord

PM Scott Morrison echoed Menzies when he claimed the last Australian election for the “quiet Australians” – the C21 equivalent…

21 May 2020

In the absence of overseas student cash cows…

In the absence of overseas student cash cows, the University of Tasmania is proud to offer you an entirely worthless…

Keir Starmer is an excellent Labour leader, which is why he'll never be PM

We’ve all been very impressed, haven’t we, by Sir Keir Starmer’s performances at Prime Minister’s Questions? His calm, precise and…

23 May 2020

Three reasons why a coronavirus vaccine might not be possible

The world is being held hostage by an organism so small that even the most powerful microscope could miss it.…

23 May 2020

Let’s blame China

This article is in The Spectator’s June 2020 US edition. Subscribe here to get yours. Is Cui Tiankai, the Chinese ambassador to…

23 May 2020

Biden’s mental frailty makes him a Teflon candidate

President Trump gets away with a lot because much of the world thinks he’s a buffoon. Former vice president Joe…

23 May 2020

Fear porn panic

I think there is enough evidence in now to conclude that we have just lived through the worst public policy…

23 May 2020

Get the globalists out of our classrooms

As Australia’s Wu-flu infection rate goes down, Scott Morrison and Reserve Bank Governor Dr Phillip Lowe both say it’s time…

Public health and social control

Long before coronavirus, the public health sector had inklings towards authoritarianism justified by the so-called science, just not the widespread…

23 May 2020

Worse than the disease

The shock of widespread poverty and double-digit unemployment from the Covid-19 pandemic are predicted to cause a tsunami of mental…

23 May 2020

Snapping turtles

When Gareth Evans was Labor’s foreign minister and Li Peng was premier of China, second in rank only to General…

23 May 2020

Comfort the comfortable, afflict the afflicted

The motto of Australia’s political class could well be the reverse  of that old saying, ‘Comfort the afflicted and afflict…

23 May 2020

The FBI’s tinpot sting operation

If you’ve been following the latest US revelations about General Mike Flynn, ones that had to be forced out of…

16 May 2020

Dr Fauci’s diabolical deal

As Dr Tony Fauci — the top US official handling Covid-19 drugs — goes into quarantine, it’s interesting to speculate…

16 May 2020

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Cover of May issue of Apollo

We are all being digitised one way or another. Performing arts companies, not able to perform, are gamely putting themselves…

23 May 2020

Dame Mary Gilmore working from home in 1952

She lived in a flat in Kings Cross, was a lifelong socialist, a regularly observant Presbyterian, a Dame of the…

16 May 2020

Queens of print

The Spectator has been celebrating its 10,000th UK issue with justifiable pride; it is an astounding achievement. Australia has long…

8 May 2020

Geraldine Brooks and Darleen Bungey

Major award-winning biographies of Arthur Boyd and John Olsen have preceded the third book by Darleen Bungey. It is less…

2 May 2020

The link between spick and span, spanking and spoon

I Hoovered on Saturday (or vacuumed as they say in newspapers eager to avoid using a trademark) while my husband…

23 May 2020

Rules for a deconfinement dinner party

The most visible local landmark is a solitary two-headed Jurassic mountain called Le Bessillon, six miles long and 800 metres…

23 May 2020

Dear Mary: What Zoom background will impress my boss?

Q. My goddaughter was getting married in July but due to Covid-19 this has been postponed. I had already chosen…

23 May 2020

What no one tells you about owning a horse

When people ask me what I did during lockdown, I would like to give an inspiring answer, apart from growing…

23 May 2020

The shock of discovering your ancestors were slave traders

If I had a slave owner in my family background I’d probably keep quiet about it. Richard Atkinson, in his…

23 May 2020

The best way to cope with rejection is to write about it

With more than a dozen acclaimed novels to her name, not to mention short stories, poetry, a memoir and a…

23 May 2020

The Plantagenet we always forget

Watching Heston Blumenthal arrange the infernal horror that is a lamprey’s head on a plate is one thing; seeing an…

23 May 2020

Where did birds first learn to sing?

The crisis inflicted by Covid-19 has been a source of anguish for everyone; yet we frequently hear how people are…

23 May 2020

The sorrows of young Hillary: Rodham, by Curtis Sittenfeld, reviewed

Question: which American president and first lady would you care to imagine having intercourse? If that provokes a shudder, be…

23 May 2020

Disrupting the world — from a small bedroom in Hounslow

On 6 May 2010 the eurozone crisis was tearing through the continent. Greece was bankrupt, and it looked as though…

23 May 2020

France will always have a love-hate relationship with its heroes

The French have a love-hate relationship with heroes. For the great 19th-century historian Jules Michelet, the French Revolution was supposed…

23 May 2020

The genuine polymath is still one in a million

We live at a time of universal polymathy. We don’t know everything, but there’s not much difficulty in being able…

16 May 2020