Features Australia
Tin foil hats and the top end of town
You have to wonder what Paul Keating will be thinking as the invitations to attend Labor fundraisers and campaign events…
Letter from Russia
The Football World Cup was a winner for Russia; tourists like me flooded in (to cheer a reasonably performed Australian…
Anti-Abbott galahs just lying or incompetent?
Tony Abbott has the politicians, the commentariat and other elites very worried, and not just about energy.They know that what…
My civilisation is better than yours
Am I the only one who finds the Ramsay Western civilisation controversy unedifying? As I read the warring op-eds I…
Adjudication in advance
What is going on with the top judges in Britain? They sure seem hell bent on travelling as quickly as…
Did Granny jump, or was she pushed?
Dr Henry Marsh, British neurosurgeon, was displeased when the UK Parliament rejected euthanasia three years ago. The good doctor said,…
Cultural pronunciation
When I lived in Sweden, I would watch football with my Swedish mate Rob and struggle with some of the…
Renewables becalmed
As Australia’s electricity grids strain to cope with demand and government efforts to foist yet more renewable energy on them,…
Don’t call me Madam
‘Respect women’ shouts a giant hoarding sponsored by Victoria’s wastrel Labor government (the one that squandered $300 million on not…
Judge for yourself
An 82 year old American judge, Justice Anthony Kennedy, announces his retirement and the country is in uproar. It’s a…
Sounds from the silence
From Janpath Road in the centre of Delhi, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts appears almost deserted. I’m…
Letter from London
If the crescendo of cranes towering above development blocks represents a city’s prosperity, then Manila and London are prospering. Setting…
Writers are not moral guides
Like Dorothy Parker, I have a decent number of grey hairs from my dealings with the intelligentsia. I’ve had my…
CNN sucks, Trump triumphs
‘CNN sucks…CNN sucks,’ the capacity crowd of rank-and-file Americans in Minnesota’s giant Amsoil Arena chanted. This was their down-to-earth message…
Xena madness
For sheer grotesquerie, a recent push for the feminisation of the Australian Army would be hard to beat. Former General…
Heart of darkness
Sometimes African rulers get so corrupt that Western aid donors go on strike. Take what Trump would call the shit-hole…
Pride stripped bare
Every now and again the clouds part, a shaft of light breaks through and something up ahead is illuminated. In…
Trump towers
In his 1977 book The Age of Uncertainty, the American economist John Kenneth Galbraith depicted the great leaders of history…
Theatre of the absurd
The controversial University of Melbourne dance performance, Where We Stand, is an insight into the kind of divided society we…
Nobel laureates manqués
Calls for a Nobel Peace Prize for Donald Trump reminded me that if anyone should be a Nobel Laureate, it…
Closing down sale
When an historic Melbourne church went up in flames three years ago, the actress Rachel Griffiths, who’d made her First…
Not our ABC
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is a $1.04 billion piece of public policy and we treat it as exactly that: a…
Letter from Penge
Australia is now unwittingly linked even more closely with the dreary outer-London suburb of Penge. Not only was it the…
Planetary perspectives
Here I am, back in Ecuador. Ecuadorians boast that the 6,310-metre high Mt Chimaborazo volcano protrudes 2,073 metres higher into…
Australia, defenceless
The ability of our armed forces to defend the nation is being crippled, not through any fault of theirs, but…
