Nepal and the scam of climate reparations
When the Earth shakes – climate reparations fall out. That may be the eventual lesson of the Nepal flood that…
Why is Albanese so defensive about Bowen’s tropical talkfest?
The Prime Minister appeared distinctly agitated when answering questions about Bowen’s expensive and poorly attended paradise climate talkfest in Fiji.…
Is offshore wind a defence risk?
Here are two things worth considering… Firstly, green energy projects and state government agendas envision a version of Australia essentially…
The orange waters of Secret Harbour
‘There are no safe Labor seats in this state, or in this country any more…’ declared Luke Herdegen, the freshly…
Superannuation needs a new public debate
Fundamentally, superannuation is in place to ensure today’s income earners finance their own retirement. Around the world, old-age pensions, provided…
Has the curriculum been feminised?
The leader of the National Party, Matt Canavan, argues one of the reasons boys are attracted to toxic material on…
The cheque from Berlin
Germany wants to help pay for Britain’s nuclear weapons. Pause on that for a moment. The country that the non-proliferation…
A digital duty of care: taking failure to its illogical conclusion?
The Albanese Labor government has announced that a digital duty of care will be imposed on social media companies to…
Defend sacred ground
I am a co-convenor of the Defend Sacred Ground campaign, which I would like to frame in a wider context.…
Grievance: the insurgency with 50 years to run
Samuel Thawley’s essay in these pages this week did something Australian economic writing almost never does. It located the pain.…
Bicycle helmets and the bubble-wrapping of Australia
A couple of weekends ago, I was reminded of my recent trip to London by Bernard Salt’s article in The…
From Athens to Albo: free speech and history
In our late democratic culture, where rights come cheap and easy, one could be forgiven for thinking our freedoms work…
The wrong man answered
Andrew Tate’s apparent downfall has been satisfying to watch. It shouldn’t be reassuring. If Tate were the problem, his disappearance…
We must stand with the Jews
I write these words with pride in my family, sorrow at what is happening in our country and an urgent…
Digital duty of care
Every few years we get all worked up as a country, and Canberra gets itchy feet about how to slap…
Ben Roberts-Smith, Shah Wali Kot, honour, and the war Australians barely know
Aaron Patrick spoke at the Gallipoli Memorial Club’s inaugural Lone Pine Dinner. At the event, he signed copies of his…
Claude ate my homework
When I was at school, the closest thing we had to AI was Clippy, the little animated paperclip who would…
The Treasury has a vision. (There is medication for that.)
Helmut Schmidt, former Chancellor of West Germany once observed that people who have visions should go and see a doctor.…
Don’t raid WA’s GST – make WA Labor spend it properly
There is a simple way for Australians on the eastern seaboard to think about Western Australia’s GST deal. Forget, for…
Should I fear writing this article?
It sounds absurd that I should even ask. Yet the Albanese government’s latest move is so broad, so unnecessary and…
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…
Hastie & Pickering
It’s fascinating to compare the current imbroglio between two potential political leaders: Warren Pickering, of whom nobody had ever heard…
If 9/11 happened today
Twenty-five years on, if the 9/11 terrorist attack by al-Qaeda happened today, the response in Australia and countries such as…
The Plibersek paradox
It’s surely impossible to imagine Tanya Plibersek – Plibbers to most of us – ever being the prime minister of…
Business/Robbery, etc
Good news? Or the harbinger of a China-led destruction of the world financial order? When Australian gold exports soared last…
How the party elected to tackle debt fuelled it instead
That the Australian economy is in a mess should not surprise. It should also not surprise that the Albanese government…
Save Nepal – ban continental drift
India started to pull away from Antarctica 132 million years ago and 112 million years ago India fully detached from…
Climate exposé ignored
Artificial intelligence has an unintended talent to entertain through its predictability. Challenge elite orthodoxy on global warming and AI will…
Legacy media don’t get it
There seems to be an almost obtuse wilful blindness amongst the preponderance of those in our traditional, established political parties…
Pauline’s paper premiers
After the summer Pauline Hanson returned from Britain with Nigel in her handbag, even though he declined to meet her.…
Labor’s secret alborithm
Secret Harbour was Labor’s not-so-secret nightmare: a seat it had held since 1989 fell in a landslide to One Nation,…
Hoax of an inquiry
It is now clear that the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, designed to investigate the horrific Bondi massacre,…
Australian notes
One of the unforeseen consequences of the war in Gaza has been a significant erosion of freedom of speech in…
Britain is growing. Will Healey mess it up?
There are lots of reasons to seriously worry about the economy at the moment. The price of oil is surging,…
Disabled people will suffer if assisted dying becomes law
On 11 September, MPs will decide whether to proceed with the latest Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, sponsored…
‘A failure of imagination’ did not cause 9/11
On a balmy autumnal evening in October 2001, a secret task force assembled by the CIA and the Pentagon met…
Andy Burnham has given a gift to the SNP
Ever since the Supreme Court ruled in November 2022 that the Scottish Parliament could not hold a unilateral referendum on…
If Burnham won’t make cuts, the IMF will do it for him
Even the weather has been playing along with the bizarre 1976 tribute act in which we seem to be trapped.…
Exposed: The Cambridge University PR attacking Jason Arday’s black critics
A man called Lester Holloway has written a savage attack on black reporters who covered the Jason Arday scandal, saying they “have…
Don’t believe everything that AI companies say
Two big stories are driving interest in artificial intelligence this week. The first is the resignation of Jacob Coxon, a…
Labour’s woman problem is never-ending
Imagine you are a mother who has worked hard, played by the rules and saved every penny. You finally fulfil…
The desperation of the ‘Trump Dividend’
‘People don’t need no jobs,’ said Mike Judge’s marvellous comic creation, President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. ‘I’m gonna…
Can we just stop AI?
On Tuesday, a 27-year-old British researcher called Jacob Coxon walked out of Anthropic, the San Francisco lab that has made…
My friend Charlie – and the line between good and evil
A year ago, on the afternoon of September 10, 2025, I was 20 feet away when my friend Charlie Kirk…
The Online Safety Act is wrecking the internet
When Nadine Dorries first introduced the Online Safety Act (OSA) in 2021, she said it would be ‘watertight’. Now, she…
Why you shouldn’t shrug at New Zealand’s greyhound racing ban
Greyhound racing ended in New Zealand on August 1. Those who neither own a greyhound nor care for the sport…
A New Zealand republic in Jacinda Ardern’s lifetime?
New Zealand’s former Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, believes the nation will become a republic within her lifetime. We have heard…
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…
‘The plan is for the country to fall in love with Nigel again’: Richard Tice on what’s next for Reform
A man of great suavity
They were both films that stay in the mind from a lifetime ago. Peter Pan is J.M. Barrie’s contribution to…
The sexiest kind of rock star
It’s strange and sad what the world throws at us. We are assailed by musicals – a production of Reg…
This silly and drivelling piece of tosh
Every so often something comes along that is so bad it fills the soul with wonder and dismay. It seems…
This devastating portrait of Americana
It’s more than 75 years since Lee J. Cobb opened in Elia Kazan’s production of Death of a Salesman and…
A life lived to the hilt: Clare Consuelo Sheridan
Tall, blonde, beautiful, ruthless, brave and amoral to her fingertips (many of this biography’s paragraphs end with ‘The two became…
For better, for worse: Death Do Us by Ruthy Mason reviewed
Bea should be elated: her sweet and loyal boyfriend Jake has just proposed, with the family ring, over dinner. Instead,…
Stop moaning and do something: the active vs the passive voice
The Jamaican-American poet and essayist Claudia Rankine won a slew of prizes for her book Citizen (2014). Her blend of…
Pongs of praise: the history and importance of smell for our antisceptic age
For smell historians and experts, of whom there are gratifyingly more than you’d think, a standard assumption to be skewered…
First among equals: what makes a great leader and does it matter?
Almost two decades ago, Jared Diamond cemented his international reputation with Guns, Germs and Steel, which argued that geography and…
A succession of selves: How Do People Stay the Same by Mark Bowles reviewed
Readers of Mark Bowles’s All My Precious Madness (2024) will find much that is familiar in How Do People Stay…
Double jeopardy: the story of history’s most audacious KGB defector
Two spies meet in a white-tiled bathroom in Tehran. One large chap is perched on a creaking laundry basket, while…
She lived frantically ever after: the jaw-dropping life of Barbara Cartland
Matthew Sweet’s jaw-dropping life of Barbara Cartland opens with the grande dame reclining on her chaise longue in the library…