The Ben Roberts-Smith affair
Lord of the sock puppets
Anthony Albanese has joined the Unplug24 campaign, announcing on X: The movement is in honour of Mac Holdsworth who, to…
Penny Wong vs Ralph Babet
United Australia Party Senator Ralph Babet has a knack for getting under Labor’s skin and this week, he succeeded in…
The conservatives are coming
There have been some seriously deranged things written about CPAC by left-wing publications. Conservative leaders spoke on stage in front…
AI is a psychopath
Did anyone else catch that fleeting headline in the Daily Mail, claiming: Chinese AI tool told researchers how to make biological weapons…
What happened to the Australia my grandfather believed in?
My grandfather survived the Holocaust and came to Australia believing he had found something precious: a country where his children…
Bradman read the ball. Brabham read the road. Can Canberra read AI?
Australian Formula One legend, Sir Jack Brabham, once observed that ‘good drivers can drive anything and can adapt to anything…
The Ben Roberts-Smith affair
This week, because of his PR campaign, the interview on News24, and on 2GB, every pet-shop galah has had his…
Raging at the ‘dying’ of Wokeism
Labor’s Digital Duty of Care bill forms part of an ongoing tantrum put on – jointly – by the Uniparty…
Politicians have changed their tune on crime
On the corner of a main street in a Southern Tablelands city this afternoon, three elderly people stood waving Palestine…
The 5:48am plan to reinvent Australia
At 2:52am last Sunday, a former employee and friend sent me ‘just a salute’. My writing was very good, he…
Victoria’s ‘Labor experiment’ fails spectacularly
In just 30 or so days – voters in Victoria have a single task – dumping the most dodgy, ‘clapped…
Frankfurt says ‘non’
Either the bond markets riot or the people riot, as a CNBC headline put it this week, and France has…
We should be a nation of citizens, not residents
Recently, I participated in the Robert Menzies Institute’s 2026 Policy Dialogue in my dual capacity as its General Manager and…
Labor ignores the criminals and bans the tools
The alleged attack on Dr Helen Haines MP and the revelations of an alleged ‘dirt file’ on her held by…
Higher or lower migration: at what cost?
Young Australians are repeatedly told Australia needs high migration to help them pay for an ageing population in coming decades.…
Australia’s fair go was never exclusively libertarian
In 1907, Justice Henry Bourne Higgins was asked to decide what constituted a fair and reasonable wage for an Australian…
In defence of big words
In the course of my daily grind, I routinely review documents created by dozens of colleagues. Some are internal documents…
My quest to climb Ayers Rock
Growing up in Australia in the 1950s, I was inspired by the idea of climbing Ayers Rock, the largest sandstone…
Please explain the great Australian prolapse debate
There are moments in the life of a nation when a man must step forward and offer whatever expertise he…
Under socialism, tomorrow never comes
Change by stealth is an old socialist tactic, often accompanied by the promise that tomorrow will be better if people…
TURN THE POLITICAL TEMPERATURE DOWN… WHO TURNED IT UP?! – Labor’s outrageous hypocrisy | S3 Ep 25
In this episode: Macron’s ‘soft touch’ on far-left riot agitators. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni vows swift justice against looters. Labor’s inter-generational…
CHAMPAGNE SOCIALISM BURNS FRENCH CULTURE – and Australia’s descent into censorship | S3 Ep 24
In this episode: Far-left riots bring France to its knees while President Macron attends #CelineDion concert. Australia’s Royal Commission into…
THE GREEN GROCERS OF THE APOCALYPSE – communism is back in fashion | S3 Ep 23
In this episode: The ‘Green’ Grocers of the apocalypse bringing communism via your weekly shop. Victoria collapsing underfoot – but…
Left-wing violence
In a recent speech, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned about the deadly danger of left-wing activism, claiming that…
The left’s fraudulent language
Many years ago, I was on an appointments committee to select between two candidates for a lecturing position in the…
Voters should have the right to remain silent
A man picked up by police on suspicion of robbing a petrol station is entitled to say nothing. Not a…
Let the Brethren hand out
Australia is talking about religious freedom again. Allegra Spender wants to restrict the exemptions under which religious schools make decisions…
Praising and censuring
Let’s hand out some bouquets and brickbats this week. Start with the praise. Angus Taylor and the Libs have nailed…
One Nation must de-woke Victoria, because the Libs won’t
Labor in Victoria is rotten at two levels – economic and cultural. If the Liberal leader, Jess Wilson, and the…
Australian notes
I sometimes wonder if Greg Sheridan reads his own columns. In last Saturday’s Australian he has penned a jeremiad which…
The lost decade they made for us
Australia used to be good at getting richer. In the ten years to 2012, real national income per head grew…
Why is the Albanese government so vindictive?
Governments of the doctrinaire far left, such as the Albanese government, share certain defining instincts which are truly appalling. These…
Albanese fans the flames
Brendan Nugent describes himself on X as a ‘plant person’ who believes ‘The world should be run by dogs and…
Conservative leadership
Sorry, Josh, you had your go. And you blew it. Politics is both a brutal and an unforgiving game. As…
If socialists understood economics they wouldn’t be socialists
Nobel Prize-winning economist, Friederich Hayek, argued the price system and market competition are the only effective ways to organise a…
There’s no democracy like Israeli democracy
I landed in Israel as acres of commentary continued to declare its current election the most consequential ever. An emergency.…
Andy Burnham is a people-pleaser and that’s a problem
Prime Ministers in the modern era have invariably tried to prove that they are men of the people. It’s one…
Does Andy Burnham really want an ‘honest’ conversation on EU free movement?
When a politician says that they want to have an “honest conversation” or discussion, there’s two things to take note…
To Bibi or not to Bibi?
Israel Tel Aviv’s promenade on a Saturday night is heavenly. To one side, the Mediterranean glistens, dotted with boogie boards…
Angela Rayner: ‘We can’t rerun what happened in 2016’
The autumn Budget will be delivered on Wednesday, but speculation over its contents has been overshadowed by Andy Burnham saying…
Alastair Campbell would like your attention
Please, one last indulgence, implored Alastair Campbell. The previous two hours had been bad enough, sitting through Campbell being ‘interviewed’…
In praise of Master and Commander
Every year, around Trafalgar Day, I rewatch Peter Weir’s 2003 film Master and Commander. It seems obvious to say that…
Burghart: Veterans’ Bill risks Britain’s place in the world
In an office stuffed full of books, Alex Burghart sits back in his chair, sipping on a mug of tea.…
The myth of the Emerald Isle
I’ve just been to the west of Ireland, perhaps the greenest place I have ever seen, and one of the…
Remembering the Big Bang, forty years on
‘You need a better class of work, my boy.’ My GP father’s well-meaning but unhelpful reaction to my second redundancy,…
Pedestrianising Oxford Street will be good for business
‘Oxford Street ought to be the finest thoroughfare in the world.’ To try and live up to that potential, it’s…
Israel’s Arab voters could decide this election
As Israel prepares for its election on October 27, the most consequential in decades, I find myself missing my late…
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…
Revolting France: The riots are driving the country’s politics to its extremes
The beauty of the ruthless truth
There are times when the screen, big or small, looks like a gift of the gods. In the last week…
Conflicting colours and tones of tragedy
Any fan of Gerald Murnane would love to see him win the Nobel Prize for Literature. And if it’s never…
That sinister sense of comic patter
Harold Pinter is one of the great dramatists of the last hundred years, perhaps the only one who can hold…
From another world
It’s striking what we can experience if we look back at the images of the recent past, aided by YouTube.…
Instruments of war
Drum Major Henry Barnes Jackson was 40 years old, had served in the Great War in the British Army, and…
How Sweden has kept communism at bay
Stay-behind cells in the second world war and the Cold War are familiar to students of intelligence and military history.…
The end is nigh: Switzy, by Emma Cline, reviewed
Emma Cline’s first novel, The Girls (2016), sold more hardback copies than any other debut novel published in the UK…
Dark, dank and mysterious: the haunting strangeness of boglands
‘Bog’ is an unlovely word, and the expressions in the bog lexicon – ‘bogged down’, ‘bog standard’, ‘bog off’ –…
Alternative universes: Exit Party, by Emily St John Mandel, reviewed
The premise of this novel is weird and delightful. At a party in the year 2031, with the American civil…
‘There’s a 50-50 chance I’ll get bumped off’: an American scholar foresees his death
On a drizzly morning in January 1984, Malcolm Kerr, the president of the American University of Beirut (AUB), was walking…
The intellectual passions of J.R.R. Tolkien
It was December 1942 and J.R.R. Tolkien was having doubts about his new book, a sequel to The Hobbit published…
Homesick for Tennessee: The Newer World, by Sebastian Barry, reviewed
‘I am become a name,’ Alfred Tennyson has Ulysses declare in his 1833 poem, an epigraph that sets up Sebastian…