Joshua tree
Tough love: we are letting ourselves get really dumb.
So, the Has Been’s Club recently met. Burgers and beers at a pub renovated to look more like an upmarket…
Why does the Left keep making the same mistake?
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It’s a cliché and it’s misattributed…
No, the government can’t sprinkle sherbet on everything
I love the federal budget. And I’m unapologetic about it. But there is one part of budget week that annoys me…
Adam Bandt’s drink problem
Is this why is Adam Bandt in parliament? Because he failed as a sommelier? One might think so from his…
The Coalition has surrendered its key point of political differentiation - debt and deficit
There were a heap of euphoric headlines in response to the federal budget. And what’s not to like in a…
The World Health Organisation had one job…
A review of the initial response to the Wuhan virus by an independent panel, co-chaired by former New Zealand prime…
The age of entitlement is back
I want to share with you the two best pieces of analysis about the 2021-22 federal budget delivered last night…
How even Xi Jinping gets something this budget
In all the lists of budget winners and losers, one name has been missing: Xi Jinping. Yet China’s President for…
Can Labour survive the next election?
Keir Starmer is having a torrid time. Today brings another poll showing his personal approval rating falling. The Labour leader…
What's the problem, ladies and gentlemen?
Picture the scene. You’re on a train when the following message comes over the tannoy: ‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,…
The battle the Israeli Defense Force can't win
The hostilities between Israel and Gaza caught Netanyahu’s government by surprise. What started as a local demonstration by Palestinians against…
How are we enjoying the Biden presidency so far?
Well, that didn’t take long. Less than four months into the Biden-Harris deep-state maladministration and we have roaring inflation, the…
How to beat the drums of war
Are we at last getting real about China? Are we ceasing to pretend that China is potentially a normal nation…
Sic ’em, Triggs!
In Canada an old friend of mine, Bruce Pardy, wrote an opinion piece last week calling on conservatives to start…
Business/Robbery, etc.
It’s only one word – inserting ‘financial’ between ‘members’ and ‘best interests’ – that should kill off much of the…
The middle-class childhood mafia is fleecing us again
I have always been fascinated by the story of the kibbutz movement in Israel. From their beginnings in the early…
The next Vietnam
ScoMo might as well get on with building the quarantine stations in the desert. Once vaccination has solved our current…
Waiting it out behind the Covid Curtain
Behind the Covid Curtain, Australia’s state and federal leaders tremble. Premiers try not to panic about solitary cases and missing…
You’re gonna make us lonesome when you go
Come writers and critics who prophesy with your pen, Bob Dylan turns eighty on Monday 24 May, and the opportunity…
Xi’s man in the White House?
Men in the Mirror, Sky News Australia’s excellent documentary by Chris Kenny on the awful similarities between those two prime…
Ulysses
If you wanted a college at the University of Melbourne that had no hint of imitation Oxbridge you would turn…
The Truth About China by Bill Birtles
As news came through of China’s suspension of high-level trade dialogue with Australia, I read The Truth About China by…
Reese Witherspoon
There are moments when the very idea of live entertainment including its high cultural expression, thrills the soul. On 6…
Francesco Cavalli’s The Loves of Apollo & Dafne
Venice in the 17th century was the birthplace of opera. Its dominant and most successful exponent was Francesco Cavalli. Once…
The evolution of England — from ragbag kingdoms to a centralised state
The title of Marc Morris’s new history makes me want to get up and dance a little jig. The modern…
Why did Hitler’s imperial dreams take Stalin by surprise?
The most extraordinary thing, still, about Operation Barbarossa is the complete surprise the Wehrmacht achieved. In the early hours of…
Will’s world: Shakespeare as the man in the crowd
Shakespeare’s first biographer was the gossipy antiquarian John Aubrey, who famously described the playwright as ‘not a company keeper’. It…
The gender identity issue: Kathleen Stock puts her head above the parapet
‘Something is afoot,’ wrote the academic philosopher Kathleen Stock in 2018: Beyond the academy, there’s a huge and impassioned discussion…
Cairo in crisis: The Republic of False Truths, by Alaa Al Aswany, reviewed
Certain novels complicate the very notion of literary enjoyment. This, by the author of the international bestseller The Yacoubian Building,…
A funny time to be Irish: The Rules of Revelation, by Lisa McInerney, reviewed
Lisa McInerney likes the rule of three. Three novels set in Cork structured around sex, drugs and rock’n’roll and, within…
The first Cambridge spy: A Fine Madness, by Alan Judd, reviewed
For his 15th novel, the espionage writer Alan Judd turns his hand to the mystery of Christopher Marlowe’s death. The…
Hitting the buffers: The Passenger, by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, reviewed
‘They’ll slowly undress us first and then kill us, so our clothes won’t get bloody and our banknotes won’t get…
