C’mon, Dutt Dutt!
Matt Canavan: the perfect conservative
Listen… Senator Matt Canavan might not be as traditionally dishy as Alex Antic, but he made himself an incredibly attractive…
Ignore the polls, it’s not too late for Dutton
Everywhere you turn, the polls say that Peter Dutton is losing the election and public vote is slipping through his…
Jacinta Price nearly won the election
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price should be the Leader of the Opposition, if for no other reason than she rubs the media…
Ditching Albo for Plibersek won’t save Labor
‘Backstabbing’ is the leading cause of early demise amongst the Labor leadership. If Prime Minister Anthony Albanese finds himself feeling…
Apparently Peter Dutton is a Liberal
In an exclusive interview with The Australian newspaper, Peter Dutton has revealed that he is, apparently, a Liberal. By Liberal,…
Lefty misogyny bingo: tick a box every time you hear Peter Dutton
The claim that Peter Dutton’s election policies ‘offer nothing for women’ is absurd. Lower fuel costs aren’t sexist. First-home support…
Housing policy debate mismatched with Australian culture
From the National Press Club: Housing policy is very tricky to balance effectively. There is no set formula because times…
Reform, restore, recover
The main solution to our drop in living standards is to spend a lot more in government handouts. That is…
Long live Chris Bowen!
As you pop your eyeballs back in place, lift your jaw off the floor, and pour a stiff drink after…
Wondering about winter
As I bask in the warm Autumn sunshine under a deep blue sky in Adelaide, I wonder when one of…
Trump’s tariff pause and the game theory gamble
President Donald Trump’s recent decision to pause tariffs for 90 days on most US trading partners – while escalating them…
Forget a tariff-induced recession, Australians have been in recession for two years
The standard of living in Australia has been in sharp focus during this election campaign. Both major parties have been…
Tone-deaf Greens disco on Anzac Day
Australia is in a strange space where the traditions that enabled our high standard of living are being taken for…
Albo’s ‘Blight on the Hill’ is blinding the MSM
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says she wants to ‘make Australia great again’. The reaction? ‘They finally said the quiet bit out…
Labor’s green gamble
As Australia gears up for a federal election, few issues loom larger than energy policy. Prime Minister Albanese’s Labor government…
Starmer says Net Zero nanny state will fortify UK against Trump’s Tariffs
Trump’s tariffs are set to ‘make Britain work again’. These were the assertions of Net-Zero nanny state leader, Keir Starmer,…
Bowen sinks to new lows
You might think I’m obsessed with Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen – B1 to me and Speccie readers. …
Poilievre still in the game to win
Canada’s looming election will take place on Monday, 28 April, five days before Australia’s. It seems to me that a…
ABC of Aboriginal history
Recent evidence from Washington shows how profoundly President Trump’s domestic decisions can affect the rest of the world. Australia’s woke…
The Federal Reserve can’t rescue stocks
On Monday, 19 October 1987, the US share market dropped on opening by about 10 per cent, double the slump…
Meloni’s war on the red robes
My Spectator Australia colleagues Ramesh Thakur and James Allan have written in these pages about the perils of an unelected…
A referendum on Albo’s government
Australia’s ‘sliding doors’ federal election is really two polls: one playing out in the suburbs and regions, where the hip-pocket…
The art of the fail
President Donald Trump’s trade policies, launched under the slogan ‘Making America Great Again’ have instead sparked economic disruption, geopolitical instability,…
The man who bought the world
According to a superfluity of economic experts and no fewer foreign policy wonks, on 2 April Donald Trump became the…
Britain and France are too scared to tackle the migrant crisis
France has overtaken Germany as Europe’s top destination for asylum seekers. During the first quarter of 2025, France registered more…
What do Wes Streeting and Kemi Badenoch have in common?
Labour’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch have clashed on many things – from Chagos to…
Can Giorgia Meloni sweet-talk Trump on EU tariffs?
We are about to see how significant a politician Giorgia Meloni really is after she arrived in Washington yesterday evening…
How well are Wes Streeting’s health reforms going?
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has made a lot of promises about the NHS. Before he got into power, he talked…
307,000 Voices
Growing concerns at the impact of unregulated free speech around the world, and especially in the English-speaking West, are understandable.…
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…
Will Trump join the strongman club?
The way the imagination works
Easter was almost on us when the suggestion came. There was talk of a new Narnia film underway and of…
The zenith of art
Last week your columnist cut a paragraph stating that the original Melbourne Higgins in My Fair Lady, Robin Bailey, and…
Unsurpassable
It’s a weird connection but they say Donald Trump is devoted to his presidential predecessor Andrew Jackson who was popular…
What really scares people about Adolescence
Two books I read in my teens made me want to be a writer. One, Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, appeared when…
Is there ever a good time to discuss the care of the elderly?
Not far into The Life, Old Age, and Death of a Working-Class Woman, Didier Eribon quotes from this balladesque 1980…
Only Hitler could have brought the disparate Allies together
‘Allies,’ declared Stalin on 8 February 1945, the fifth day of the Yalta Conference, ‘should not deceive one another.’ In…
Dangerous games of cat and mouse: a choice of crime fiction
Psychosis and thriller writing are never friends. Even when told from the psychotic’s point of view, madness is always hard…
The boy who would be king: The Pretender, by Jo Harkin, reviewed
Cock’s bones! This is a most wonderly historical novel, the very reverse of a wind-egg. It tells the story of…
The mystical masterpiece from Stalag VIII-A
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer steeped in the solitude and ecstasy of Catholic mysticism: everything he wrote was dedicated…
Why we never tire of tales of pointless polar hardship
I’m not altogether a fan of what the writer Sara Wheeler has called the Big Willie school of expeditions. ‘To…
The making of Van Gogh as an artist came at a terrible cost
Six months before Vincent van Gogh’s death, the critic Albert Aurier, waxing poetical, wrote an article entitled Les Isolés on…
Christianity in England is dying – and our national identity with it
‘Christianity,’ writes Bijan Omrani in his opening sentence, ‘is dying in England.’ Does it matter? His next sentence makes it…