The Farrer by-election was worse than we think
Taxpayers despair at forking out for ISIS brides
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor offered two numbers that represent taxpayer-funded support. Pensioners: $31,309 ISIS Brides: $46,889 Taylor presented these figures…
Angus Taylor: party of convenience, not conviction
The results of the Farrer byelection are going to be difficult to swallow for the Liberal faithful. Farrer, described as…
Is Labor allergic to fuel security?
Albanese has been on an extended begging tour of Asia, promising who-knows-what in exchange for the odd shipment of fuel.…
Nuclear energy and uranium mining for NSW?
A milestone was reached yesterday when a bill to repeal the 1986 prohibition on nuclear energy and uranium mining passed…
What David Pocock, and others, miss in the gas tax debate
There’s a reason the recent gas tax debate has cut through. Australians haven’t suddenly developed a deep interest in resource…
The Farrer by-election was worse than we think
The results from the May 9, 2026, Farrer by-election are in, and it is worse than you think. It appears…
The 1932 ghost
Chris Minns has plenty of reasons to feel secure right now. As a first-term Premier, he’s still ahead in the…
Noblesse Oblige died last night
Classical liberalism was not invented at the Albury Conference. It was inherited. Locke gave us the idea that government exists…
How counter-sovereignty is killing the West
Sovereignty, in classical terms, was the locus of final political authority within a bounded polity. Sovereignty for Hobbes must be…
War of the Worlds: Is the populist moment coming for Australia?
Watching the results for the Farrer by-election come in I was surprised at how high the final vote was for…
The Farrer earthquake
The political establishment is in a state of shock. When Sky News Australia took the unprecedented step of calling the…
The lottery of life
Being mother to five beautiful daughters feels like winning the lottery of life. Contrary to much of the public commentary…
The death of decarbonisation
Headlining the latest climate talkfest taking place this month, The Guardian gushed, ‘Historic breakthrough: Colombia climate talks end with hopes…
The real story of the UK Council Elections
In recent times, the story in British politics has been a sad tale not of voting for the party that…
Between hope and heartbreak
I am certain you have heard enough from the experts. Between the news cycles and the strategic analyses, there is…
The Left’s never-ending search for victims
Again and again, conservatives are caught off guard by another left-manufactured crisis, thinly disguised as a fight for social justice,…
Was the Biden Administration anti-Christian?
The US government recently released a report that alleges the previous Biden Administration may be guilty of religious discrimination in…
Our fossil-fuelled world
If there’s one message out of our current oil crisis, it is that we still live in a fossil-fuelled world.…
Big government plans to bailout big media
Old media is dying. One of the consequences of the internet revolution has been the emergence of citizen journalists and…
Experience matters
In May 1940, the Menzies government approached Essington Lewis, the CEO of BHP, to formally take up the role of…
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…
The blame game
There is an interesting debate taking place in Britain right now. On one side is Dan Hannan. Or if you…
Another budget lock-up
I don’t know how many budget lock-ups I have attended. I know the answer would be depressing, so I don’t…
Hold your horses!
Greetings from an increasingly chilly Narrandera – One Nation central in the heart of the Farrer electorate where One Nation…
Hating men
In 2018, feminist and professor of sociology Suzanna Danuta Walters asked, ‘Why Can’t We Hate Men?’ in a piece for…
Eurovision’s sadly accurate microcosm
The annual Eurovision Song Contest grants us all a wonderful blend of music of varying quality served with performances that…
Enid Blyted
From small beginnings, the elite have progressed to Covid lockdowns and net zero. Since the second world war, including my…
Grifters’ war on thrift
With the federal budget less than a week away, the Albanese government is shamelessly trashing the promises it made about…
The King of Australia (and Great Britain) wows the Americans
The Royal Visit to Washington, DC has been nothing short of a diplomatic triumph, with King Charles III and President…
Polanski exaggerates his CV (again)
While all eyes today rest squarely on Sir Keir Starmer and the will-he-won’t-he question of surviving a leadership coup, Mr…
Lewisham shows why Labour is doomed
One of the biggest shocks of the local elections was the result of the Lewisham mayoral race and council elections,…
Badenoch is the perfect Tory leader
Plenty of narratives can be pulled out of last Thursday’s elections. Labour’s shattered hold over its Northern and Welsh heartlands;…
Starmer’s big speech can’t save him now
Even those who dislike Keir Starmer might feel a smidgen of pity – on a human level – for his…
Why the question ‘Can women have a penis?’ really matters
What’s weirder: asking if a woman can have a penis or being so flummoxed by such a simple query that…
TV doesn’t ruin childhood, but phones might
When I was a nipper, a staple of children’s television was a show called Why Don’t You? The full title,…
Taking my cat on holiday is like a military campaign
The recent news that the EU was tightening up its rules on UK residents travelling with their animals is just…
Live: The Labour MPs calling for Sir Keir Starmer to go
A devastating set of local elections has left Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership on the brink. Calls for the prime minister…
China’s theft of American AI tech is becoming more brazen
Despite the hype surrounding China’s artificial intelligence capabilities, progress remains heavily dependent on theft and smuggling. The Chinese Communist party…
Sunday shows round-up: Phillipson says Catherine West is ‘completely wrong’
Bridget Phillipson: ‘She’s got this completely wrong’ Thursday’s local election results were dismal for the government, and have plunged Labour…
Did antisemitism cost the Greens at the local elections?
Did the Greens’ racist candidates cost them a majority in one of their top targets? The London borough of Lambeth…
Starmer is shedding support across Labour
By inclination, tradition and design, the Labour Party is much less prone to toppling leaders than their Conservative counterparts. There…
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
The performance of her career
It’s odd, isn’t it, the uncanny relationship between success and achievement. Just the other night the Melbourne Theatre Company had…
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…
Would W.G. Grace recognise the game of cricket today?
There’s a fascinating thought that the authors of Full Circle pursue for just a couple of pages, then leave hanging:…
Lean and mean: Mick Jagger was always a tightwad
This book got glowing reviews when it was published in the US a few months ago: ‘Irresistible’ (New York Times);…
Marvels of the masked ball: dressing up in Georgian London
In the satirical print ‘Remarkable Characters at Mrs Cornely’s Masquerade’ from February 1771, the Georgian craze for dressing up as…
Accelerating the ‘kill chain’ – a terrifying glimpse of future warfare
America possesses the most powerful military in history, but since 1945 it has not won a war against anyone other…
From pike-and-pitchfork brigade to crack militia: ‘Dad’s Army’ wasn’t so ludicrous after all
Ever since the BBC’s Dad’s Army (which ran from 1968 to 1977), it’s been hard to keep a straight face…
No one is ordinary: The Things We Never Say, by Elizabeth Strout, reviewed
It is both a comfort and a discomfort to yield to a new novel from Elizabeth Strout, who writes with…
Is coffee-drinking the new secular religion?
A lot of books, obviously depending on what mood you’re in and viewed from a certain angle, slantwise or squintlike,…
They shoot horses: Boyhood, by David Keenan, reviewed
David Keenan’s seventh novel is quite the ride, but its plot is not always easy to disentangle. The author has…