Hoax of an inquiry
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…
Can Victoria send Albo a melon-surrender bin?
While the fabric of Australia is tearing itself to bits, the national conversation remains preoccupied with the Prime Minister’s melon…
Do politicians have the right to block citizens on social media?
Politicians, or perhaps their shallow-minded media managers, have been going crazy with the ‘block’ button. If you call the Treasurer…
The ownership era: a disguised unwind
The Australian housing market overall peaked in March. By the time you read this, it will have been falling for…
Who owns Australia? Don’t ask. Nobody knows.
There is something magnificently Australian about owing a trillion dollars and not being entirely sure to whom. Other nations fret…
Classy, biased bigotry, brought to you by your ABC
It was no surprise to hear that Barnaby Joyce doesn’t give a toss what you think of him. That much…
The European Commission’s ‘lazy money’
Not infrequently, Australian politicians suggest that the considerable household deposits in savings accounts, estimated to be $19.21 trillion (mainly driven…
Canberra renamed to Buenos Aires
To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway, Australia asks Argentina: How did you go broke? Argentina replies to Australia: Gradually and then suddenly.…
No shame in the democracy game
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but Australian citizenship – the practice, not the now cheaply won legal status –…
Prayer, privilege, and power
There’s a move afoot in our Parliament that needs your attention. Several weeks ago, I was prompted to look at…
The Victorianisation of Australia
Australians’ living standards have gone backwards since the end of the pandemic in 2022. In a healthy economy, per capita…
The real secret of Secret Harbour
The real secret of Secret Harbour is that One Nation’s national vote may actually be much higher than we think…
Education departments have a plan for the bully. What about the victim?
A mother asked a fairly elementary question last week: When is enough finally enough? Her primary school-aged son, she says,…
The death of the heroic political backstory
In Blackadder the Third, Series 3, Episode 5, ‘Amy and Amiability’, Warren Clarke’s Josiah Hardwood cuts a formidable figure. The…
When did normal become ‘far-right’?
As an older member of Generation X, I was born only 25 years after the end of the second world…
Woodside drops $7 billion low-carbon investment target
In a sharp reversal of its former clean-energy commitments, energy giant Woodside has apparently dumped its $7 billion low-carbon investment…
One Nation is winning the battle for the somewheres
To help explain Pauline Hanson and One Nation’s rise, it is instructive to reference David Goodhart’s seminal work, The Road…
Open Letter to Dr Anna Cody
Dear Dr Cody, I am a retired Humanities and Social Sciences academic. I am well read in third wave feminist…
Woke hasn’t killed Australia’s adventurer spirit
I was brought up on Boy’s Own adventures. I remember pacing up and down with Sir Douglas Bader’s Reach for…
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…
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…
The Green Dream fades
Is anyone surprised that the invitation of president for negotiations Chris Bowen – B1 to Speccie readers – to his…
Licence to kill (businesses)
Listen to Australian politicians opine on business for five minutes and you will hear the expression ‘social licence’. All too…
Fagan’s shameful ruling
In a recent case before the Supreme Court of New South Wales, State of NSW v. Farhat, Justice Fagan had…
Trump won’t lose
With only two months until the American midterm elections in early November, it’s time for an update on the big…
Keating’s monster
Jim Chalmers says the next election will be a referendum on superannuation. Splendid. Let us have it. For thirty-four years…
One Nation’s House of Cards
There was something revealing about Pauline Hanson’s unveiling of Mike Newman as the candidate for Cessnock and One Nation’s new…
Ooshienomics
Communications Minister Anika Wells was ridiculed this week for using Ooshies to explain Jim Chalmers’ changes to negative gearing and…
Secret Harbour revolt
Not long ago, while I was waiting on a ferry moored at Circular Quay before an evening cruise across Sydney…
Dolly, Kylie & Albo
Just when you thought it was safe to view melons simply as grocery items, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese himself has,…
Brown study
In the last week, Melongate has proceeded along its sordid way. But it has now taken on a new significance.…
Polanski confirms run for Starmer’s seat
The Green party’s resident tit-whisperer, Zack Polanski – formerly Dave Paulden – looks set to take on Labour in the…
The day the Today programme lost the plot
I never wanted to be one of those grumpy ex-BBC types who write articles with headlines like ‘what has happened…
Marine Le Pen’s Muslim headscarf ban is popular, not populist
Marine Le Pen has promised to ban women wearing Muslim headscarves if she becomes president next year. The leader of…
‘Clean cocaine’ isn’t worth it
Cocaine has a tendency to get the press all aflutter. So it’s probably no surprise that the Daily Mail had a splash earlier this summer with…
When will Scottish nationalists come clean about devolution?
The Programme for Government – picture a dour, cheapo version of the King’s Speech – is an annual statement by…
Andy Burnham is about to face a hard lesson
There was a cautious cheer for Andy Burnham as he stood up for his first PMQs. MPs were perhaps cautious…
Burnham can’t blame Sunak for Britain’s bond woes
At Prime Minister’s questions today, Andy Burnham was pressed by Kemi Badenoch on the sharp rise in government borrowing costs…
Burnham can’t keep being a people pleaser
Andy Burnham had a reasonable first outing at Prime Minister’s Questions today. He didn’t flounder, but he didn’t make it…
No. 10 refuses to condemn Diane Abbott’s Nato conspiracy rant
The imminent threat from Russia is a NATO fiction to justify their complete capitulation to Trump’s demands for more military…
Burnham says yes, yes, yes to Labour’s Summer of Sex
One of the biggest criticisms levelled at Andy Burnham is that he simply cannot say no. Every campaign, every demand…
Fixing depressed kids is a near-impossible business
As a young Emergency Department doctor, I developed a spiel for the kids who came in with mental health problems.…
Sadiq Khan is the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice
Who – at least among those of a Conservative mind — didn’t feel a pang of pleasure at the news…
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 trouble with communism began with Plato
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…
An aggravated splendour
Rod Liddle, who died on 2 August, was a journalist of genius and you could only feel a bit wonder-struck…
Few writers have covered their tracks as successfully as Anita Brookner
Anita Brookner, at 80, knew that, were any biographer to delve too deeply into her private affairs, her literature would…
The horror that emerges from the columns of Domesday Book
The opening of the British Museum’s The Bayeux Tapestry exhibition is not far off now. In early July, a bright…
Why we should never be afraid to ask questions
Lani Watson’s wonderful book is a study of the nature of questions: different types of questioning, where questions come from,…
Language lessons: Taipei Story, by Rebecca Kuang, reviewed
Rebecca Kuang was quietly writing cult classics for years before she hit the best-seller lists with Babel, a Victorian fantasy…
The trouble with communism began with Plato
Immediately after the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed, during the brief ‘end of history’ period, there…
Surviving the Dresden firestorm: Slaughterhouse-Five revisited
I was in my teens and a bathtub when I first read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Published in 1969, the novel…
From ballrooms to billets – the fate of our country houses and their owners in wartime
Ever since Brideshead Revisited, both the book and two television series, there has been a fascination with what some of…
Sad girl story: Sophie, Standing There, by Meg Mason, reviewed
Sophie Pattison, 37, is not in a good place: heartbroken, childless, mid-divorce from ‘arsehole’ Paul, with her self-esteem and bank…