The Dean Smith Five
Watching Liberal senator Dean Smith on the ABC’s Insiders on Sunday morning, I was impressed by the quiet and dignified…
Tax addict
At Australian Labor party conferences in New South Wales and Queensland last weekend, Bill Shorten proclaimed himself the Robin Hood…
Vaping, Big Public Health and the new McCarthyism
One of the more emotive arguments thrown up against e-cigarettes and vaping is that multinational tobacco companies, including Philip Morris…
Turnbull’s just Dizzy
Well, Malcolm Turnbull did it on Monday in London. He took Tony Abbott’s bait and weighed into the moderate v…
Is Turnbull planning a lightning strike against Abbott?
The Tony Abbott insurrection against the moderate overlords of the parliamentary Liberal party continues. ‘I am a member of the…
Abbott’s right about being more right
I wrote recently that the sensible centre in Australian politics is dead. Labor is off with the populist pixies and…
The curse of the Black Hand
How appropriate Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne was speaking to a Liberal left faction group called the Black Hand when…
Warsaw Diary
When one first lands in Warsaw, it’s easy to dismiss the prevailing Soviet realist architecture. The endless blocks of flats…
An attack on Andrew Bolt — and all believers in free speech
I know Andrew Bolt moderately. For a time I appeared on The Bolt Report. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting…
The health department head compounds his sins
Embattled Health Department head, Martin Bowles’s, Senate estimates performance last week is a gift that keeps on giving. As we…
The Health Department boss should pack his bags
If I was Health Department secretary, Martin Bowles, I’d be checking my superannuation paperwork is in order. Over three hours…
Where’s a drug test for hypocrisy when you need one?
I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning, and Twitter always is pungent with its bitter almond aroma. Today…
Budget 2017: politically clever, but…
I’ve been lamenting that for too long we’ve had no sensible centre in Australian politics, effectively ceding the political debate…
Time to scrap the rebates
Malcolm Turnbull almost lost an election because he had no health policy. Bill Shorten and Labor’s blatant, fabricated ‘Mediscare’, claiming…
Tony Nutt: Turnbull’s fall guy
On Wednesday, Liberal federal director Tony Nutt announced his resignation after a year and a half in the job. The…
Election notes
Malcolm, take note… As the dust settles on the Western Australian election result, and Labor’s Mark McGowan sweeping to office…
Thank you, Colin Barnett
As the dust settles on the Western Australian election result, let’s not forget that for 8 ½ years Colin Barnett…
Let’s have a day for middle-aged white men
So International Women’s Day (aka the ABC’s male presenters’ RDO) has come and gone. Feminists and social media mavens have…
Our pols can learn a thing or two from the Kiwi cousins
Today, Malcolm Turnbull visits New Zealand for his first leaders’ meeting with Kiwi Prime Minister Bill English. Trans-Tasman trade and whether there’s a future for the…
Women’s tennis is a joke
In the warm afterglow of the festival of tennis that was the Australian Open, and the glorious men’s final match…
Cory finally gets off the pot
So Cory Bernardi has finally done it. Today he leaves the Liberal party for his own vanity project, taking the six-year…
Don’t begrudge Gillard her gong
In her Australia Day column for the Herald-Sun, Rita Panahi decried the giving of Order of Australia honours to former…
Time to expose the public health boot boys and their media droogs
This week the public health Pooh-Bahs opened self-righteous fire on yet another front. A public health Pooh-Bah is a self-appointed…
Turnbull, turn to Key
Once upon a time, a multi-millionaire, former merchant banker Prime Minister, highly successful in business who came to politics later…
Sussan Ley: every cloud has a silver lining
Notwithstanding investigations under way into stood-aside Health minister Sussan Ley’s touching fondness for the Gold Coast, it now appears she…
