How our governments – and governance – could be improved by term limits
Welcome to the Age of the Goldfish
I hope you all have a good memory, because you are going to need it. Modern political events are being…
This is the politics the left made – based on threats of power, not peaceful persuasion
I guess like me you’ve been more than a little shocked at the Republican “insurrection” in the United States. But…
The two left wings
May I recommend the brilliant writing and analysis of Kevin Williamson in the National Review? He recently authored this nugget titled Joe…
No penises in the pool? Puh-lease!
For almost one hundred years, Sydney women have been able to bathe at Coogee’s ladies-only pool, free from the prying…
Coronavirus: we’ve barely scratched the surface of the economic contagion
Normally, I strut into a New Year full of motivation, inspiration and sass. Much like an underfed clothes horse down…
Today’s cold-blooded political animals are solar-powered
Now that it’s high summer, you might see a lizard, sunning itself on a rock. Lizards don’t just get their energy…
Now the Nats are choosing cute 'n' cuddly with koalas over facts
New South Wales Deputy Premier John Barilaro has ‘kissed and made up’ with Environment Minister Matt ‘Green’ Kean after taking time…
How our governments – and governance – could be improved by term limits
After a contentious two-year term capped off by a tumultuous 2020, January 3 marked the beginning of the 117th Congress…
Donald Trump is impeached again – now what?
Today Donald Trump became the first president in United States history to be impeached twice. He was first impeached in…
Donald Trump and the limits of free speech
Is Donald Trump’s expulsion from Twitter an attack on free speech? A great many Republicans are saying so. You certainly…
@jack is the giant
Where is Jack? You know, Jack-the-Giant-Killer? The little fellow who caught the giant Cormaran in a deadfall and dispatched him…
America’s Yeltsin moment
The end of the Cold War was as great a shock to US politics as it was to the Soviet Union’s. The…
Arbitrarily detained in Danandrewstan
All Australian passports bear the words, ‘The Governor-General, being the representative in Australia of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second,…
The fine art of hating
‘It’s a thin line between love and hate’ the Pretenders sang in 1983, but it’s one that legislators are eager…
Twittering on the brink
‘When acclaimed author David Sedaris wrote that choosing between Democrats and Republicans in presidential elections is like selecting an airline…
CCP’s persecution of the Uyghurs
Does the international community have a collective conscience? Could it act effectively if presented with evidence of massive human rights…
Pearls of wisdom
Our language is like a pearl inside a shell. The shell is like the people that carry the language. If…
Pandemic paradoxes
I t is tragic fact that there is not a single, identifiable free speech partisan in Team Morrison’s Cabinet. In…
Violent Delights
‘A riot is the language of the unheard,’ said Martin Luther King in an entirely different context. Purloined by the…
Remainers hoist with their own petards
And so, this is Brexit. And what has Boris done? Project Fear over. Regained sovereignty just begun. Let’s hope it’s…
Bridgerton
Who would have thought that Netflix would score so sumptuously with a Regency soap that flaunts colourblind casting like a…
Banks cover design by Hazel Lam, Harper Collins Design Studio
One of the most eligible bachelors in England, he was strong, handsome, well-educated, adventurous and a fabulously rich young man.…
New year pleasures
There are things to bring us pleasure in this new year. The opera has opened The Merry Widow (until 16…
Orson Welles
It seems on the face of it the oddest proposition on earth. David Fincher, the famous Hollywood director of Fight…
Xi’s Big Red Book
As well as micromanaging the lives of 1.4 billion Chinese, Xi Jinping is becoming a prolific author. His latest book,…
Speaking Our Language
The Australian language is one of the few bonds that still binds together the Australian nation. And, heaven knows, we…
The criminal code of Rotwelsch deciphered
When Martin Puchner was a child, tramps would turn up at his family home in Nuremberg to be fed by…
The aesthetic prejudice towards white classical statues
In the 1930s curators at the British Museum, under orders from Lord Duveen, a generous donor, scoured and hacked at…
The life and loves of Mary Wollstonecraft
What did Mary Wollstonecraft like and love? This is the question Sylvana Tomaselli, a lecturer at Cambridge University, asks herself…
Paint in the bloodstream: The Death of Francis Bacon, by Max Porter, reviewed
Francis Bacon once told the art critic Richard Cork: ‘I certainly hope I’ll go on till I drop dead.’ Max…
Latin America in crisis again
It wasn’t so long ago that British readers, on hearing about the incompetence and corruption of Latin America’s political leaders,…
The roots of humanity remain obscure
To comprehend ourselves and the future of humankind we have to understand where we came from. Unlike the approximately 350,000…