This anti-Semitic bomb plot was a hoax all along
You can thank our politicians for Trump’s tariffs
It’s all fun and games until Trump pulls the tariff card. Remember that while having a chuckle at the President’s…
Trudeau: farewell, au revoir
Put your Castro jokes away, Justin Trudeau’s reign as Governor Prime Minister of Canada has come to an end. His…
What did the WA Liberals do wrong?
‘Is this the result I hoped for? Of course not. Is this what we have been working for? Absolutely not.…
The chapter closes on Gene Hackman
The final days of Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, have slowly come into focus. Arakawa (65) is believed…
Simon says Teals keen for costly minority government
From the National Press Club: The disdain for conservatives was palpable in Simon Holmes à Court’s address at the National…
Exam group-think
It’s obvious cultural-Left activists are indoctrinating students across the nation’s classrooms. Examples include teaching radical gender ideology, climate alarmism, a…
The political hysteria behind ‘Hate Speech Laws’
Australia’s newest authoritarian approach to controlling its political climate has been manufactured through the enactment of Federal and State hate…
Trump’s tariffs are accelerating our economic restructuring
Donald Trump’s tariffs are not just a policy decision; they are an accelerant. They are pushing forward an economic restructuring…
Victoria’s anti-free speech agenda shelved – for now
Those who value freedom of speech will be relieved that the Victorian government’s attempt to pass its anti-vilification legislation has…
Albanese’s tariff spin
Anthony Albanese has a knack for political sleight of hand. His latest trick? Framing his government’s failure to secure an…
Is the US steel tariff ‘entirely’ unjustified?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese characterised the US steel tariff to be imposed on Australia as ‘entirely unjustified’. That might be…
Trumpet of Patriots announces a Liberal election platform
From the National Press Club: Clive Palmer’s address on March 13 delivered the first tranche of the Trumpet of Patriot’s…
Scorched Earth disease control
Way back in 1858 Nongqawuse, a prophetess of the Xhosa tribe in South Africa had a vision telling her that…
Iconoclastic without scepticism
We here at The Spectator Australia are an iconoclastic bunch. Give us a lively, interesting argument and our brave, sainted…
Gender pay gap drama sparked by newly released WGEA figures
The grievance industry has sprung into action with the release of the latest gender pay gap figures by the Workplace…
Wind energy: the worst peacetime policy blunder?
Wind droughts would have been the most important discovery in the 20th Century but the discovery came too late to…
Kean channels Jimbo
The fact is that it’s not easy being green just now. Physics, engineering and economics in combination have a nasty…
It’s time
Australia once had cheap reliable electricity, generated mainly from coal. Not now. Electricity generated from Victorian brown coal was some…
The recession we deny
Peter Jay (1937-2024), a UK economist, broadcaster and ambassador to the US between 1977 and 1979, was ‘in the room’…
Mandates matter
I’ve asked this question before and I’ll ask it again. Why do right-of-centre politicians want to go into politics? If…
End the foreign aid scam
I have long favoured the complete elimination of the foreign aid industry but failed to make much headway in persuading…
Fewer bureaucrats, more fighters
Australians are frequently reminded that we are facing ‘the most complex and challenging strategic environment since the second world war’.…
Dutton get your gun
‘Call it what it was, PM: a menacing attempt to increase anxiety in the Australian population,’ read the headline of…
Trump may yet prove Ukraine’s peacemaker
To anyone who’s been a diplomat, the choreography of Donald Trump’s White House meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky was bizarre.…
This anti-Semitic bomb plot was a hoax all along
In late January, Australians were convulsed out of their summer holiday torpor by what appeared to be an elaborate anti-Semitic…
The economy is shrinking. Rachel Reeves must act
The economy shrank by 0.1 per cent in January according to figures just published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The…
The problem with putting US nukes in Poland
Nukes are becoming a big issue for Poland. One way or another, both the Polish president and prime minister want…
Why couldn’t this elite school cope with my talk on anti-Semitism?
Perhaps it is a rite of passage these days for a journalist to be cancelled. But I never expected that…
New Zealand’s cringeworthy new tourism slogan
‘Everyone must go!’ New Zealand’s new tourism declares, but so far almost everyone seems to be cringing. The prime minister…
The sacred sites fandango
The second-highest mountain in New Zealand has been granted ‘personhood’ by the NZ parliament because it is regarded as the…
Operation Resolution: cleaning up after HMNZS Manawanui
HMNZS Manawanui, formally a chirpy red and yellow MV Edda Fonn, sank on October 6 much to the shock of…
Why is this New Zealand airport clamping down on hugs?
‘Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world,’ Hugh Grant famously offered in the heartwarming opening scene of Love,…
Survival of the cruellest in 16th-century Constantinople
Never mind the cracks
If you wanted confirmation that the world can change dramatically you need only remember the Berlin Wall coming down in…
Devotion and betrayals
There is a Roman saying, ‘What the barbarians started the Barberinis completed’ with reference to one of the great dynastic…
No Other Land isn’t what it seems
The Oscars, an institution that claims to celebrate artistic excellence, this week played a leading role in a sophisticated and…
Netflix’s ‘With Love, Meghan’ is surreally dull
My experience of Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex and Muchness of Montecito, has I imagine been quite a common one.…
The adventures of the indomitable Dorothy Mills
When Dorothy Mills disappeared to Haiti to research a travel book, the British press led with the headline: EARL’S DAUGHTER…
The vagaries of laboratory experiments
One usually likes to think that scientists know what they’re doing. Here’s something that might shake your confidence. In bio-medical…
The unfairytale life of two European princesses
This hefty book is more about context – the turbulent years of mid-19th-century Europe – than it is about its…
The soldier poet: Viva Byron!, by Hugh Thomson, reviewed
In 1821, while Byron and Shelley briefly shared what they high-mindedly called an ‘artist’s colony’ in Pisa, along with Mary…
The mystery of the missing man: Green Ink, by Stephen May, reviewed
Stephen May used to write contemporary novels about men who ‘live outside big cities, lack self-confidence and rarely feature in…
The comfort of curling up with a violent thriller
Tsundokists of the world, unite! You have a new champion in Lucy Mangan, whose follow up to her entrancing memoir…
Survival of the cruellest in 16th-century Constantinople
The 16th-century Ottoman ruler Sultan Suleyman liked to impose himself on foreign monarchs from the start, always beginning official letters…
The world’s most exotic languages are vanishing in a puff of smoke
It is one of academia’s horrible ironies that linguistics, the subject devoted to human communication, has managed to communicate nothing…