Fire up your writing engine – and win five grand
Theme: ‘…or forever hold your peace’. It is with great delight that we announce the sixth annual Spectator Australia Thawley…
2018 Thawley Essay Prize winners
It is with great delight that we announce the winner and the runner-up of the 2018 Spectator Australia Thawley Essay…
Rowan Dean: I predicted all along that Morrison would win
The Coalition has been returned to government. Bill Shorten lost the “unlosable” election and Scott Morrison won – funnily enough,…
The Lion, the Witch & the Closet
With impeccable timing, increasingly-eccentric Defence Minister Christopher Pyne this week leapt out of some bizarre theological closet to declare that…
Fire up your writing engine – and win five grand
Due to popular demand, the deadline has been extended to 5 January 2019
The Spectator Anglo-Australia Forum
The Aussie sun shone down over a glistening Sydney harbour only metres from where the First Fleet landed back in…
A fight for the heart and soul of the Liberal Party
Choosing between Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison as to whom should lead the Liberal party is the most significant decision…
2017 Thawley Essay Prize winners
It is with great delight that we announce the winner and the runner-up of the 2017 Spectator Austraia Thawley Essay…
#TrumpsAussieMates
Appearing on Lateline the other night as the only Trump supporter the ABC producers could find willing to predict a…
Is Kevin putting his book together? Some clairvoyance from the editor
You can always tell when someone has finally had enough of their job and is desperate to get the hell…
Discover your inner writer – and win five grand
Calling all entries for The 2016 Thawley Prize
Turnbull – all for nothing by Richard Ferguson
Imagine you’re Malcolm Turnbull for a second (you might need to see a psychiatrist after the exercise). You have destroyed…
Former Australian PM John Howard backs Brexit
Speaking at a private Liberal Party fundraiser in Sydney on Wednesday night, Australia’s second longest serving Prime Minister, John Howard,…
Shorten comes clean
Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten has revealed police have cleared him of an allegation that dates back nearly 61 weeks.…
Sicilian Diary
Most of my dealings with the mafia — to the best of my knowledge — have been pleasant ones. Visiting…
How Kevin Rudd nearly destroyed Labor
Phew! That’s a relief. Labor’s long-awaited review into why it was soundly trounced in 2013 by the hated, reviled, moronic,…
Dinner party anti-Semitism
‘I hate f-—ing Jews!’ screeched one dinner guest, his face contorted in rage only millimetres in front of mine. It…
Europe needs a Tony Abbott
In the frenzied aftermath of his infamous 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, Conservative MP Enoch Powell was asked by an…
A PR guide to selling a budget
‘One: tell them what you’re going to tell them; two: tell them; three: tell them what you just told them.’…
An extravagant entitlement
‘When we lie to ourselves and believe it, truth vanishes and we’re at the negation of the negation,’ wrote Robert…
Climate change, the movie
With the release last week of the exciting third instalment of the mighty IPCC trilogy ‘Assessment Report 5’, it’s clear…
Diary
I’ve recently rediscovered the lost, forbidden pleasure of the smoko. My earliest memories of enjoying a smoko were back at…
Under the house with Hergé
‘Ten thousand thundering typhoons!’ I curse loudly as my head crashes into a concrete beam in the darkness. I’m deep…
Black armband
Adam Goodes does not deserve to be Australian of the Year. The appointment was questionable in the first place, but…
Satirising anti-Semitism
The scene: a redneck bar in Tuscon, Arizona. Sacha Baron Cohen, under the pseudonym of ‘Arote and his Cowboy Astana…