flat white

A tale of two rallies: freedom vs teachers

I’m not a person who has ever attended rallies or protests. Over the years, the most interest I could muster…

10 Dec 2021

Will the US welcome a new president in 2022?

Over a year ago, I wrote that no Democrat voted ‘for Biden’ – they voted ‘for anyone but Trump’. Only…

10 Dec 2021

Major parties 2: Democracy 0

The Liberal Party has won a ruling from the Australian Electoral Commission to force the increasingly popular minor party, the…

10 Dec 2021

What about faith? A Christmas letter to the Prime Minister

It is encouraging to hear that our Prime Minister has resolved to protect the expression of honestly held religious beliefs…

9 Dec 2021

Comparing Pearl Harbor and the Darwin Raids 80 years on

Pearl Harbor is often compared to the Darwin attack but the similarities are very few. Although both were ‘surprise’ initial…

9 Dec 2021

Josh Frydenberg: the man who would be king

He’s the man who would be king, but Josh Frydenberg originally wanted to be a tennis pro rather than a…

9 Dec 2021

'Not an organ donor anymore' trends after vaccine mandate

#NotAnOrganDonorAnymore has been trending on social media for the last few days after Australians began taking themselves off the organ…

8 Dec 2021

The electric highway – a ‘fuelish’ policy

Scott Morrison has had another green brainwave – spend a zillion dollars to build Australia’s electric/hydrogen highway. Naturally, this ‘Fuelish…

8 Dec 2021

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The three problems facing Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson may be celebrating the birth of a baby daughter but that doesn’t mean the pressure on him is…

10 Dec 2021

Jussie Smollett and the rise of American hate hoaxing

So Jussie Smollett, the world’s most notorious hate hoaxer, has at last been found guilty of lying to the police. …

10 Dec 2021

China is right to laugh at the west

Signs of the enervating weakness of the west’s governing elites aren’t that hard to find but the case of the…

10 Dec 2021

The rise of the second-string left

If a recent Scientific American opinion piece purporting to explain how growing opposition to critical race theory damages public education…

10 Dec 2021

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Decline and fall of New Zealand

As some readers of this fine weekly will know, my family and I spent eleven wonderful years living and working…

11 Dec 2021

Saint Jacinda's war on fags

It is a curious irony that the West’s leading progressive icon is probably the most authoritarian leader in the free world…

10 Dec 2021

Kiwi Life

A government in jackboots A recent headline echoes the current mood of this now fed-up country, with Sir Russell Coutts,…

13 Nov 2021

He Puapua?

Now why on earth why would the New Zealand government, dominated by the far-left Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, produce a…

9 Nov 2021

Decline and fall of New Zealand

As some readers of this fine weekly will know, my family and I spent eleven wonderful years living and working…

11 Dec 2021

The tide’s gone out

‘Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked’. It’s one of my favourite sayings from…

11 Dec 2021

Business/Robbery, etc.

‘Chaos’, said the headlines. ‘Revolts on the left and the right’, along with ministerial and backbench departures, both voluntary and…

11 Dec 2021

Are the kids OK?

On Sunday, Ben Madgen who plays football for Southeast Melbourne Phoenix tweeted that he ‘ended up in the emergency room…

11 Dec 2021

Last rights

Fraud is an intrinsic and disgraceful part of the Australian electoral system. If our credit card or registered mail systems…

11 Dec 2021

High courts and misdemeanours

The latest forensic disaster, in which one of Australia’s most respected forensic scientists, Kirsty Wright, laid out the serious errors…

11 Dec 2021

Pork-barrelling: the real reason to be in politics

When it comes to parliamentary question time, I hold an equivocal position. On the one hand, I feel I should…

4 Dec 2021

China’s behaviour demands a boycott of the Winter Olympics

First it was former prime minister, Paul Keating, telling us that Australia has no interest in defending the democratic freedoms…

4 Dec 2021

Jane Campion

A new film by Jane Campion is always going to be a magnetsing prospect and the idea of it suddenly…

11 Dec 2021

Nitram

Nitram is the Martin Bryant film which sent shivers down everyone’s spine at the mere prospect. Justin Kurzel’s film about…

4 Dec 2021

As You Like It

As You Like It is middle Shakespeare, probably lateish 1590s. It’s not one of the earlier happy comedies like the…

27 Nov 2021

Don’t forget the motor city

Detroit is the only American city where I always felt uneasy. Even the cops look at you as if you…

20 Nov 2021

Aussie Life

The slur issued by Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe in the Chamber last week towards Hollie Hughes reaffirmed one thing, that…

11 Dec 2021

Aussie Language

Nick Cater has coined what I think is a brilliant new expression the ‘laptop class’. This is his vivid and…

11 Dec 2021

A hidden side of the Somme

Noticing via this Low Life column that I had trench fever, the Western Front Association treated me to a year’s…

11 Dec 2021

The culture of the weighing room needs to move with the times

In the first such case for 20 years, former rider Freddy Tylicki, paralysed and wheelchair-bound since his mount Nellie Dean…

11 Dec 2021

Children’s books for all ages: the best of 2021

She’s done it again: J.K. Rowling has written a captivating children’s book. The Christmas Pig(Little Brown, £20) is about a…

11 Dec 2021

A book trade romp: Sour Grapes, by Dan Rhodes, reviewed

Dan Rhodes’s career might be regarded as an object lesson in How Not to Get Ahead in Publishing. Our man…

11 Dec 2021

Has nostalgia become the Greeks’ national disease?

Imagine a new take on the Greek myth of Pygmalion. A love-shy artist makes a woman out of marble who…

11 Dec 2021

The 17th-century Huron chief Kondiaronk can still teach us valuable lessons

Ten years ago, David Graeber was a leading figure of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He and his fellow protesters…

11 Dec 2021

Lost in the fog: The Fell, by Sarah Moss, reviewed

Novelists are leery about letting the buzzwords of recent history into their books. The immediate past threatens to upstage the…

11 Dec 2021

Richard Needham takes a businesslike attitude to the Troubles

This memoir from Sir Richard Needham, 6th Earl of Kilmorey, businessman and former Northern Ireland minister, has a frank opening:…

11 Dec 2021

Father Christmas battles through the Blitz

When the shrill air raid sirens blared their familiar warning cries over the city at 6.01 p.m. on 29 December…

11 Dec 2021

Culture clash: Things We Don’t Tell the People We Love, by Huma Qureshi, reviewed

Apart from what the title tells us, these stories are about a fundamental difference in cultures. Huma Qureshi writes like…

11 Dec 2021