Alex Antic: reformer, victor, and future leader
Silence of the Lambie
Remember when Jacqui Lambie fantasised about throwing Elon Musk in jail? I had forgotten until Damian Coory pointed it out…
Kevin Rudd might be … right(?!)
Carrying on the great political tradition of ‘never buggering off’, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is back – sort of…
The Chalmers diet
Sydney’s working class look hungry. By that I mean, they are getting noticeably thinner. My advice to the political class…
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…
Vale Gary ‘Angry’ Anderson
Two bands defined my youth – AC/DC and Rose Tattoo. This week we lost the lead singer of the latter.…
Armageddon and Artificial Intelligence
Just when some online worry-warts and so-called ‘climate experts’ are starting to ease a little on warnings that the end…
Alex Antic: reformer, victor, and future leader
Something extraordinary happened last week. South Australian Senator, Alex Antic, won the South Australian Liberal Party presidency. Not a moderate.…
Why the Lord’s Prayer still matters
I am proud to be reading into the Western Australian Parliament a petition initiated by Cáit Folan-Sfakianakis calling for the…
The ‘loose cannons’ of The Spectator Australia
During my latest annual pilgrimage to Europe, I met many ‘conservatives’ who professed to be sympathetic to the themes developed…
Two budgets away from fiscal responsibility
The Australian colonies did comparatively very well in economic development and prosperity. Surely we can repeat this, given that we…
Crisafulli and Check the Science
The most powerful Liberal/National politician in the country, Queensland Premier David Crisafulli, has made a sequence of decisions that indicate…
Macklemore wants to ‘free Palestine’. Which one?
American rapper, Macklemore, is the definition of a modern-day activist idiot. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but it’s true.…
Dead within a decade?
The latest round of AI doomsaying arrived with characteristic drama. Recent media coverage has relayed warnings that artificial super-intelligence might…
Backing away from Net Zero
At the Federal level, the Coalition’s once-blurred battle line on Net Zero is gradually crystallising. Although the ‘Modern Liberals’ have…
What the Coalition’s meeting with Reza Pahlavi means for Australia
On Thursday, September 17, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor, Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Ted O’Brien, and other senior members of the…
The Liberals must bite the bullet on preferences
The Liberals will decide in the next six weeks where to send their preferences in Victoria. My model has evaluated…
Labor doesn’t give a toss about Australia
When Tony Burke suddenly cancelled his appearance at the National Press Club in August, it was pretty obvious he had…
In government and out of control
One of our leaders gathered the Best and the Brightest together in Parliament House for the Australia 2020 Summit where…
Reza Shah II and Australia’s shadow government
The online meeting between Reza Shah II and Australia’s shadow government can be viewed as part of the growing dialogue…
Fauda and the shadow of October 7
Israel’s TV show Fauda has not disappointed with its long-awaited fifth season. Building on its longstanding international following, Fauda’s viewership…
PLEASE EXPLAIN! Why politicians are getting salty over satirical cartoons… | S3 Ep 19
This week… Jacqui Lambie’s rant over One Nation’s Andrew Hastie ‘traitor’ cartoon. Who dragged Albanese’s mother into the political conversation…
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…
Not OKKK
‘Is it heartening for you to see someone like anti-immigration Pauline doing well in Australia?’ asked the Channel Nine journalist.…
Bad laws outlive their victims
England once taxed daylight. It did so for 155 years. That is the number to keep in mind as we…
Time to abandon Snowy 2.0
All tunnels face geotechnical problems from unknown unknowns. In the Channel Tunnel, huge water pressure opened fractures; there were swelling…
Reporting on self-serving twaddle
In my line of work, I read a lot of self-serving twaddle. Arguably, most of what I read is self-serving…
Brown study
Any normal person would know that at my advanced age and imminent senility, the last thing I should be doing…
Taylor & Canavan must stop the preference leak to Labor
Because the enemy is from within, the next election is probably the most crucial in our nation’s history. If the…
Dire strait
After several months of watching his popularity plumb new depths, Prime Minister Albanese must have been looking forward to an…
Unite the right? In Australia we did that
Britain is again debating how to ‘unite the right’. In the Telegraph last week, Lord Frost – Boris Johnson’s former…
If I’m far right, so was JFK
Okay readers, give me two generalisations about the democratic world over the last fifty years. Well, first off, we can…
Germany’s political earthquake
We think we’ve heard it all before: a European election heralded as a great victory for the right against open…
Aussies teed off
When it comes to sinking the career of Anthony Albanese, the scandalous ‘Golfgate’ should be a hole-in-one for the opposition.…
A phalanx of unelected commissioners
I am often in the car around 5 p.m., having helped with the school/kinder pickup. It’s a great joy hanging…
Did AI write the French book of the year?
Many decades ago (or so it seems, it was actually January 2023, but things move fast in AI-world) I wrote…
Burnham wins over Trump – but can it last?
Andy Burnham yesterday cleared his first major diplomatic hurdle as his meeting with Donald Trump in Manhattan passed without serious…
High energy prices are crippling Britain
He is a tax exile, he lives in Monaco, and, perhaps worst of all, he supported Brexit. As Sir Jim…
Trump’s UN speech was a blasé affair
Donald Trump remains on a renaming tear. During his Tuesday morning address to the United Nations, he declared that his administration will…
Xi has no interest in stabilising relations with Trump
When Xi Jinping arrives in Washington today for a much-anticipated summit with President Donald Trump, the Chinese leader will want…
Could there be a second Ceuta invasion?
Messages circulating in Morocco are calling for another mass crossing into Ceuta, Spain’s North African exclave, on Wednesday. Spain has…
The continuity idiocy of Labour’s foreign policy
There was for a time the vaguest sense that things had got better since Andy Burnham took charge. That the…
Ed Davey’s reheated speech won’t revive the Lib Dems’ fortunes
Sir Ed Davey today attempted to woo disillusioned One Nation Tories with a pledge to raise the higher-rate income tax…
Germany’s growing Nato influence should shame Britain
In defence and security, two adages form a powerful alliance: money talks, and you get what you pay for. These…
Sarah Mullally and the real problem with interfaith initiatives
The Archbishop of Canterbury has given the country a perfect lesson in interfaith engagement – in what it is, rather…
Police impartiality is under threat in Britain
Police chief constables are sleep-walking into one of the gravest threats to the impartiality of British policing we have ever…
Trump pulls the plug on mainstream TV
The unveiling of President Trump’s new helipad on the South Lawn of the White House yesterday was a curious affair.…
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 autistocracy: the men on the spectrum who rule our world
An elegance that is hair-raising
Sometimes cultural news is just bad news. Everyone was delighted at the thought that Joanna Murray-Smith’s Switzerland was being turned…
A gorgeous evocation of the natural world
The world of artistic expression runs in a thousand ways. The Melbourne Symphony’s Spring Gala – paralleling the Opera’s Wagner…
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…
Art conquers all: The Disappearers by Marlon James, reviewed
Gothic fiction is full of Jekylls and Hydes. For every castle, there is a dungeon; for every locked door, a…
Pain passed down: a portrait of Russia and the war that dare not speak its name
Long before Asne Seierstad arrived at the bookseller’s house in Kabul, she studied in Moscow. ‘I tried to be one…
Rebecca reimagined: The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain, reviewed
Mrs Danvers is one of those rare characters who has transcended her original setting to enter the wider culture. She…
Too much and much too long: The Rouse by China Miéville, reviewed
China Miéville’s new novel is 1,264 pages long. Following his breakthrough ‘New Weird’ masterpiece Perdido Street Station (2000), Miéville was…
Worried about masculinity: from turrets and gargoyles to the state of men
In 2023, the author Jon Ronson woke one Sunday in upstate New York, where he lives, to a string of…
Curiouser and curiouser: The Strangers by Naomi Alderman, reviewed
This aptly titled novel might be Naomi Alderman’s strangest book yet – a work of fiction about a writer called…
Mind the gaps: a far-from comprehensive life of Hannah Arendt
In 1975 – the year of her own death – Hannah Arendt published a heartfelt memorial essay about W.H. Auden…
In with the new: Julie Christie, Mary Quant, Up the Junction – the decade that changed Britain
This glorious historical monument slows, expands and luxuriously stretches to encompass one of the defining moments of change in our…