Two little girls are dead
Tony Burke’s troubling interview on our migration future
Immigration Minister Tony Burke’s interview with Pawan Luthra on The Pawan Luthra Podcast has been doing the rounds on social media…
If Barnaby Joyce stays in the Lower House…
It was assumed Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce would take the lead position on the New South Wales Senate…
The Liberals win Nepean, but have they lost the civil war?
Those who follow mainstream media might agree the result in Nepean is a glowing endorsement of Liberal Leader Jess Wilson,…
How a sexy plane upset the left
Leftwing politics, globally, is full of sexy planes. If you want to see a parade of private jets, attend a…
Two little girls are dead
When the history of this miserable, lazy, reckless, and disgusting government is written, two names deserve to stand out in…
Stupid, really stupid – evidence is in
The mother of all unchallenged false premises, that fossil fuel emissions drive global warming, has delivered a bastard of policy…
The torch of jazz has been relit by its prodigies
Growing up in Toronto, I was fortunate to live in a city that loved jazz. I knew, even as a…
Toxic compassion: a warning from healthcare
Compassion is one of the most cherished virtues in medicine. It is the impulse that draws many of us into…
The firm hand of government could do with a smack
We seek to become a land of ordinary civil free speech, where people go about their business earning an income…
The return of the trades
The dignity of work has long been a tenet of the West, encapsulating the very quintessence of the human experience.…
What did I miss?
Ah, the lucky country… While we try to bring you the week in fast forward, Labor was hell-bent on putting…
The report that won’t name the problem
The interim report of the antisemitism Royal Commission, led by Virginia Bell and delivered to Governor-General Sam Mostyn, was always…
What is a woman? What is the NDIS…
If a group of leaders cannot define a man or a woman, how confident are we in their ability to…
Data centres are eating the economy
Recent earnings from some of the world’s largest tech companies reveal the eye-watering scale of their AI infrastructure spending. The…
Don’t miss the jazz renaissance happening all around you
Something miraculous is happening in jazz, and almost nobody seems aware of it. I came to jazz on my own.…
The path to change in Iran: pressure, patience, and the people
Sun Tzu, the Chinese strategist of the 6th Century BC, teaches that the highest form of victory is achieved without…
Anzac Day and the cost of silence
Anzac Day is observed every year on April 25 in Australia, a day that begins in silence and respect. It commemorates…
The men we have forgotten
Seven men a day. That is the quiet, unacceptable arithmetic of contemporary Australia. In 2024, the Australian Bureau of Statistics…
The country is fed up with the old political order
On Sunday during the Anzac weekend, Pauline Hanson spoke at a pro-Australia rally in Canberra and stated what many people…
The other bracket creeps
Everyone knows about income tax bracket creep. Wages drift up with inflation, taxpayers slide into higher brackets, and the Commonwealth…
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…
Encouraging assassinations
Well, the good news is that there is now an opening for a substitute teacher in Torrance, California. Cole Allen,…
Taylor tinkers with tough talk on immigration
In Angus Taylor’s recent keynote speech on immigration, he repeatedly cited the experience of the UK and Europe as an…
If it’s bad here, it’s worse in the mother country
Just as I was ready to move on from the creeping civilianisation of military justice, the news out of the…
World sags under record debt
Howard Marks, the co-founder of US-based Oaktree Capital Management, became a billionaire by investing in distressed debt. When giving talks,…
Zero debt
It was an event that was largely ignored by the mainstream media. On 21 April, it was the two-decade anniversary…
Australia is trying to drink its way to fiscal sobriety
Australia is in the longest run of falling per capita output since the Australian Bureau of Statistics began publishing the…
How feminism demoralises young women
In 1983, Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB agent and defector, delivered a chilling lecture on ideological subversion. Speaking at UCLA,…
Once a jolly jihadist
This week, we learned that the government has spent $318 million investigating war crimes allegedly committed by the approximately 230…
Potholes could pave the way to victory for Reform
When I was young and green and working as a gossip columnist, I learned much from the energy and enthusiasm…
Venezuela has become another American puppet state
Venezuela’s deposed president, Nicolás Maduro, never enjoyed the charisma or genuine popularity of his predecessor, ‘El Comandante’ Hugo Chávez. So…
AI is revolutionising mathematics
Last week, a 23-year-old amateur with no advanced mathematical training did something many mathematicians never manage in a lifetime: he solved…
Did European rule in Asia and Africa really make colonised people poorer?
Few questions in economic history generate more heat than the one that seems, on the surface, most straightforward: Did European…
MAHA must resist purity tests to survive
The Make America Healthy Again movement has already accomplished more in its first year than many reformers dared to hope.…
Sunday shows round-up: Labour minister attacks ‘disgusting’ Polanski
The Prime Minister has said he is considering a ban on some pro-Palestine marches, and wants ‘tougher action’ on certain…
The case that shows jihadism is for losers
If anyone needs proof that jihadism is for losers, they need only look at the case of Abdullah Albadri. He…
Is Reform brave enough to be a pro-family party?
Nigel Farage told Radio 4 this week that he had ‘made a mistake’ in trying to pursue pro-family policies, concluding…
Russia is running out of workers
Vladimir Putin likes good statistics. At a government meeting on 15 April, even as he acknowledged that growth was slowing,…
The Tories are on the verge of a surprise Westminster comeback
Four years ago, the unthinkable, for many Westminster residents, happened. Control of the council was won for the first time…
How to silence Scottish nationalists
It’s been the favourite gotcha question put forward by supporters of the SNP and the Scottish Greens at hustings events…
We are closer to AI extinction than we think
A spectre is hanging over humanity: the spectre of superintelligent AI. While governments busy themselves with the mundane work of…
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’…
My night under fire at the White House correspondents’ dinner
Skill of the characterisation
Yasmina Reza is one of the most dazzling playwrights alive because she creates sweepingly funny bits of theatre (masterfully translated…
Scrupulous fidelity
Isn’t it fascinating how much we adapt works of literature? 150 years ago someone would have had a fair chance…
Like him or loathe him
It’s cheering to hear very promising reports of Barrie Kosky’s production of Siegfried at Covent Garden suggesting that the Melbourne-born…
Cruelties of popular culture
Ethan Hawke is an extraordinary figure. He has made straightforward Hollywood classics like Training Day but he also comes out…
Were Britain’s postwar dons just having too much fun?
A history of academic life stands and falls by the number and quality of its anecdotes. On this count, Colin…
How Syria’s dream of freedom ended in further repression
Anand Gopal has form when it comes to war. In Afghanistan, distrustful of President Bush’s ‘good vs evil’ and ‘you’re…
The doyen of the France’s culinary scene is unmasked
For some reason it took nearly a decade for the news of a revolution in the restaurants of France to…
A foolproof way of predicting the future
A peek at the horoscope, puzzling the meaning of dreams, wearing lucky socks, having a method for choosing lottery numbers…
In praise of uncertainty over hollow conviction
When I met Brian Dillon in February 2023, he seemed to have a lot on his mind. We had arranged…
The land of missed opportunity: The Left and the Lucky, by Willy Vlautin, reviewed
Were arriving aliens to be introduced to the concept of the USA via the work of Willy Vlautin, they would…
The art of printmaking in all its glorious complexity
Do you know your aquatint from your drypoint? Your intaglio from your lithograph? The appearance of any one finished print…
A meditation on reality: Transcription, by Ben Lerner, reviewed
Near the beginning of Ben Lerner’s new novel the unnamed narrator recalls visiting an exhibition of botanical models made by…