Being Chauncey Chalmers
Ideology in council
I’m running for Mayor in the City of Sydney council elections because it’s quite clear we are living through a…
They are not ‘peace’ activists
Only the naïve, which seems to include a number of respected commentators, regard the mobs that gather to ‘protest’ against…
Violent peaceful protesters, and other hypocrisies
Australians have long watched overseas riots on the telly. ‘Those crazy foreigners, lucky it doesn’t happen here,’ we’d say. Well,…
Batteries not included
‘The illusory truth effect (also known as the illusion of truth effect, validity effect, truth effect, or the reiteration effect) is the tendency to believe false…
Israel is the coal miner’s canary
Miners often took a caged canary down into a coal mine. If it died, the miners knew they had to…
Maga versus Marxism?
Moderators made mincemeat of what will likely be Donald Trump’s only debate with Kamala Harris. ABC News hosts, David Muir…
A Harris Presidency: no cackling matter
President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation made a most curious comment about the forthcoming American election. He indicated that…
Trump’s faith advisor and emissary for freedom
Dr Ben Carson is stepping out of retirement and into a religious freedom advisory role for Donald Trump’s 2024 re-run.…
From Andrew Neil, Chairman of The Spectator
Below is Andrew Neil’s sad but superb letter of resignation from The Spectator. Andrew is a legend of the media…
Lacking moral clarity
A few prominent medical professionals latched on to an urgent call to action that was released by the organisation Physicians…
The conservative student who challenged university wokeness
What a journey my university experience has been… Never would I have thought that this is what university would look…
The RBA is doing its job, so don’t shoot the messenger
People love to hate the RBA at the moment. Along with unnecessarily high energy and grocery bills, mortgage repayments are…
Abrosexual, gender fluid or two spirit?
Once upon a time, I was a regular listener of local ABC radio. At this point, you might stop reading,…
Goldstopper versus the Man with the Golden Payslip
In a first for me, I am breaking some news from the world of entertainment. The daughter of Shirley Bassey…
Liberal interventions
The Liberal party in Australia is paying the price for two decades of factional infighting that has seen its membership…
Weak Treasurer Syndrome
Jim Chalmers is clearly struggling. He is presiding over an economy that is simultaneously over-heating, with underlying inflation stuck close…
Being Chauncey Chalmers
In 1984, Anthony Albanese graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Economics. In an ironic juxtaposition, this…
Yes, Hitler was the bad guy
If Sid Vicious and the other punks hadn’t been so incensed by all the peace, love and LSD, not to…
War, Peace & Horse Manure
Nothing better epitomises the Greens’ contribution to the national debate than protesters who support its causes hurling horse manure and…
Poisoning the well
I recently had an exchange of emails with a friend who lives on the Gold Coast. An expatriate Kiwi, he…
Policing minister’s purse stolen at conference about theft
Sir Keir’s Labour government may be determined to deprive daily life of all fun, but there’s still a little humour…
The NHS is not underfunded
John Bell, the former Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, was interviewed on today’s episode of the Today programme podcast.…
What has the SNP got against school blazers?
The much-maligned school blazer has come under attack once again, this time by Scottish government. In new guidance issued this morning, head…
Israel is turning its sights on Hezbollah
As its Gaza campaign cools, Israel’s attention is returning northwards. Approximately 60,000 Israelis from northern communities are still refugees. A…
How does New Zealand solve a problem like China?
New Zealand’s most important trading partner is also the nation’s biggest security headache, according to a new risk-assessment report produced…
Why are so many young people abandoning New Zealand?
Heading to the UK is a longstanding rite of cultural passage for many Kiwis. People like my youngest son, who…
Kiwi life
New Zealand in crisis Given the destruction the previous Labour government inflicted on this country, and the damage caused by…
New Zealand’s carbon sequestration problem
Ongoing concern about climate change has fuelled debate about the part carbon sequestration might play in reducing New Zealand’s net…
Xi speech warrior: Elon Musk’s love affair with China
Tragedy and lighter things
Noni Hazlehurst’s performance in Daniel Keene’s The Mother is a thing of wonder and terror, overwhelming in its power and…
Purring with cynical affection
It’s one of those weird paradoxes of history that we think of the Elizabethan era as the zenith of our…
Zany streak of British humour
The fact that Kip Williams is leaving the Sydney Theatre Company to stage The Picture of Dorian Gray with Sarah…
A man of incomparable beauty
It was sad to see that great French actor Alain Delon had died the other day. He was a man…
From ugly duckling into swan – the remarkable transformation of Pamela Digby
The tramp of lovers marching through our heroine’s bedroom in the first half of Sonia Purnell’s Kingmaker almost deafens the…
Undercover in the Dordogne: Creation Lake, by Rachel Kushner, reviewed
Creation Lake, by the American author Rachel Kushner, is a dazzling, genre-defying novel, satirical yet profound. In her 2018 novel…
The pitfalls of privilege and philanthropy: Entitlement, by Rumaan Alam, reviewed
Money can’t buy you love, the Beatles sang. But that doesn’t matter so much if you’re not interested in love,…
Man’s fraught relationship with nature extends back to prehistory
It is now almost a prerequisite of any dispute among environmentalists to recall a judgment offered by the literary critic…
From tragedy to mockery: Munichs, by David Peace, reviewed
If you have been to a football match in the past few years you will doubtless be familiar with what…
The mystique of Henry V remains as powerful as ever
A rare portrait of King Henry V of England painted in the early 16th century shows him in profile. This…
The tedium of covering ‘the greatest trial in history’
Three-and-a-half miles south-west of Nuremberg in the small town of Stein stands the Schloss Faber-Castell, a 19th-century neo-Renaissance castle built…
Observing nature observed: the art of Caspar David Friedrich
Imagine wandering through Germany. You might picture blustery Baltic seascapes, seen from island retreats such as Rügen. Or you might…