An Open Letter to the Honourable Barnaby Joyce, MP
Alex Antic doesn’t like Paris either
Calling the Paris Agreement ‘just a piece of paper’ is a mistake that will haunt the Coalition, possibly all the…
Angus Taylor did the right thing defending Jacinta Price
Why is the media having a fit over Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s podcast interview? I don’t know about you, but…
Bitcoin will be the death of Chalmers
By framing the Budget around intergenerational fairness, or whatever weak excuse the Treasurer gave for raiding private equity, it seems…
Pure, bloody-minded politics
One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson slammed the Albanese government on X this afternoon over a long-running dispute about staff cuts.…
Turnbull’s endorsement should worry the Teals
The Teals should be afraid. Very afraid. Not of One Nation’s growing popularity, nor the swing toward economic conservatism in…
More than meets the grid
Artificial intelligence has commanded global attention in recent years, with trillions flowing into a new, turbocharged digital era. Tech giants…
An Open Letter to the Honourable Barnaby Joyce, MP
Dear Barnaby, The proposed budget changes have caused a great deal of anxiety amongst small business owners and your more…
Where is the empathy for victims of socialism and communism?
April 30 marked 51 years since the end of the Vietnam War. In Australia, on this anniversary, a group of…
Is Aboriginal child safety being compromised for cultural reasons?
It’s been more than a month since the apparent murder of a five-year-old Aboriginal girl in the Northern Territory and…
Recognition of Palestine risks undermining the legal order Australia claims to defend
On September 21, 2025, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated a recognition of a Palestinian state, presented as an act…
The death of legacy media, political incompetence, and rise of minor parties
Talk of the Teals forming their own party and running more candidates in the next election complicates the make-up of…
Sophistries from the Liar in the Lodge
Imagine this. Before getting married, a groom promises to be faithful to his would-be bride. He promises it unequivocally. Still,…
The Iranian tradition of kingship and its legacy in the world
The deep civilisation of Iran was built on ethical traditions and the ancient concept of kingship. It was never limited…
Our big, bureaucratic government holds us back from prosperity
Australia will be strenuously challenged and tested in coming decades thanks to flagging economic performance and new geopolitical threats. No…
Policy corner – voluntary tax, honours, land transfers
I am tired of hearing from the wealth boulevardiers that Australia’s taxes should be increased and that wealthy people should…
The children under fire who rarely enter the record
On April 24, 2026, 11-year-old Nesya Karadi of Bnei Brak died from wounds sustained in an Iranian cluster-munition attack three…
Reviving Revive
At the end of the week submissions for Australia’s next National Cultural Policy will close. It is two years until…
The Israel obsession is distracting Australia
Australia’s political left appears so consumed by Israel that one could be forgiven for thinking there are no other issues…
America’s vehicle kill-switch mandate threatens privacy
Have you ever heard of a kill-switch? Unless you are a devotee of American legislative developments relating to motor vehicles,…
Australia needs a CGT rule for the start-up age
Labor’s capital gains tax debate has revived an old question: How should Australia tax asset gains without punishing investment, work…
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…
Retreat from net zero
He wouldn’t admit it, but Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen – affectionately referred to as B1 by Speccie…
How Tickle v. Giggle happened
Recently my sister attended a meeting in Goulburn for women hoping to establish a women’s only space, possibly like a…
Too many devil-worshippers in the Liberals’ broad church
It is said, naivety in grown-ups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity. The…
Business/Robbery, etc
There is a lot more depending on the necessity for newly minted opposition leader Angus Taylor’s restoration of traditional Liberal…
The return of Jew-hatred
There was a time when I could watch films and documentaries and read books and first-hand accounts of what happened…
A Human Terrain assessment of the Islamist safe haven of Victoria
Before entering a village in Afghanistan or any other uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment I have worked in across Africa,…
Snouts in the trusts
When Animal Farm was published in 1945, George Orwell had a particular grievance in mind. He had watched, over a…
Bolt from the blue
‘Two former Liberal party heavyweights defect to One Nation,’ read the Sky News Australia headline on Sunday evening as ominously…
Japan isn’t as safe as you think
I was robbed in Tokyo recently, an experience as unexpected as it was distressing. Despite long years in London, plus decades of…
Donald Trump has a plan
To the untrained eye, ceasefires in the Middle East can look a bit like war at a lower intensity. US…
Nicola Sturgeon still has questions to answer
When SNP supporters who’d donated to a fund for a second independence referendum campaign began asking questions about where all…
Q Manivannan is perfect for the modern Green party
A whole raft of new terminology has emerged since the Great Awokening ten years ago. Much of it suggests that…
Why Greta is so angry about Swedish immigration
Greta Thunberg is 23 years old. Six years have passed since her emotional address to the UN Climate Action Summit…
The problem with Andy Burnham’s ‘passion’
It’s striking how very swiftly we’ve accepted an event so mightily strange as the Makerfield by-election. After a couple of…
Reform’s overtime policy is comically bad
Labour’s increase to employer National Insurance as part of the 2024 Budget may well have been the worst tax rise…
Peter Murrell pleads guilty to embezzling £400,000 from the SNP
It appears in politics, as in life, there’s no such thing as a free campervan. Today, Peter Murrell – the former…
Why is Andy Burnham asking Sue Gray for advice?
As Andy Burnham, who is still mayor of Greater Manchester in his spare time, campaigns to win the Makerfield by-election…
The Andrew investigation is looking increasingly desperate
‘Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime’ is the can-do attitude attributed to Stalin’s chief of the…
My pet transport hell
In the weeks since I relocated from London to Melbourne, I suspect my reputation among those who know me underwent…
A painful pension crunch is coming for Generation X
Pensions are boring. I say this from a position of some knowledge. I spend quite a lot of my working…
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’…
Things can always get worse
Sex symbol or respected actor?
You don’t have to be any specific age to thrill to the Opera Australia production of La Traviata. It is…
A masterpiece of economy
There’s something very odd about the fuss that’s been made about David Szalay who won the Booker a few months…
The performance of her career
It’s odd, isn’t it, the uncanny relationship between success and achievement. Just the other night the Melbourne Theatre Company had…
Skill of the characterisation
Yasmina Reza is one of the most dazzling playwrights alive because she creates sweepingly funny bits of theatre (masterfully translated…
Another heroic freethinker is wiped from Russian history
It sometimes seems that those people chosen to be subjects for biographies are drawn from a strictly limited cast. Every…
Macbeth in Swahili? There might even be improvements
Let’s start with some low-hanging fruit. When, in Henry V, the king inspires his army before Agincourt, the Danish translator…
The punishing gluttony of Georgian high living
Georgian dining, if you were wealthy, was an incredible experience. Everything, from the location to the furniture, was carefully planned…
Highland noir: The Grey Coast; The Serpent; Blood Hunt, by Neil M. Gunn, reviewed
Before he died in 1973 at the age of 81, Neil Gunn was arguably Scotland’s greatest living novelist, a leading…
A weary trek in the steps of Garibaldi and his Redshirts
By the time he died in 1882 at the age of 74, Giuseppe Garibaldi had freed the Italian peninsula from…
It’s grim up north: Malc’s Boy, by Shaun Wilson, reviewed
Shaun Wilson’s latest novel gets going with a childhood recalled like James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young…
What does it say about Britain that the Palace of Westminster is crumbling?
Many political scientists are oddly uninterested in politics. Their fascination is at a level of theory; but the means through…
How Rupert Murdoch destroyed the innocent enjoyment of watching sport
In July 2000, Rupert Murdoch’s Sky acquired an obscure online gambling brand called Surrey Sports. It was little remarked upon…