A Roman emperor’s Triumph: Australia 2025
Australia in 2025 is a temporary one-party state, and not yet a Roman emperor’s triumph with gold, elephants, flute girls,…
The Alice in Wonderland productivity roundtable
It is a humbling experience to be a leader in a democracy. It requires the recent Coalition concession that they…
Chalmers’ river of gold runs dry
Free stuff from the government is not free
Is Australia derivative?
Donald Horne complained in 1964 that we were ‘derivative’ with ‘second rate’ leaders. The coming of British liberties in 1788…
Two remarkable Australian victories
The Coalition, led by Sussan Ley, is renewing itself under a new vision of small government and lower taxes, family,…
The smoking ruins of Mordor
As we stand amidst the black, smoking ruins of the 2025 election, there are two or three small green shoots.…
A nation of delayed common sense
We are a nation of delayed common sense. We often take too long to get there. Both sides of politics…
Reform, restore, recover
Election handouts just won’t cut it
Who has the courage to fix workplace law?
Will politics defeat sensible labour policy, just as it has with taxation, our disgraceful duplicative mining approvals procedures, and our…
Is labour market reform possible, or dead?
There is a glaring lack of enthusiasm for labour market reform coming into the federal election. Yet some maintain that…
Rage against the zeitgeist
The climate of thinking, the Zeitgeist, can seriously limit a country. The story of Australian democracy began in the 1850s,…
Australia has to change the way its Budget is spent
We need to rediscover a real productivity agenda in our budgets. In the past, Australia built a vastly successful nation,…
Fixing our civics education crisis
Young people know too little about how our democracy works, and we fail to teach democracy to immigrants. According to…
The Great Australian Empire of Nothing, according to some
As Dennis the peasant tells John Cleese, the King: ‘Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system…
Will Australia learn from the Doge Revolution?
During the 1990s, I claimed that the then federal ALP government was introducing a ‘US-style culture of litigation’. Then Attorney-General…
Our disordered world
Australians are a vastly successful people, but what will our children inherit from us? There are a lot of things…
Trump’s Australian revolution
The new US President, Donald J. Trump, has begun his term with a bang not a whimper, issuing a record…
Australia’s success, girt by sea and golden sands
Is the story of Australia a horn of plenty or a cornucopia which we systematically fail to celebrate each year…
Australians built a nation – has anyone noticed?
The 19th Century Prince of Sicily said in the wonderful novel The Leopard, ‘If we want things to stay as they…
How Australia began democracy
Nothing bad happened before Australian colonisation in 1788, or good after it. Apart from a modern first-world economy and democracy,…
