Columnists Australia

Simon Collins

4 May 2019 9:00 am

A wealthy, white, male, middle-aged American Christian takes his wife on holiday to Australia. Hiking through the Tasmanian wilderness one…

Australian notes

4 May 2019 9:00 am

Labor’s water hypocrisy  What water scandal? ‘I acted on the recommendations of my department which had conducted an independent, competitive…

Brown Study

27 April 2019 9:00 am

Our serried ranks of interstate and overseas readers may not be aware that in the last two weeks Melbourne has…

Australian Notes

27 April 2019 9:00 am

Golden transparency of surrogacy secrecy? How many times have you met a person and wondered if they could talk under…

Brown study

20 April 2019 9:00 am

The federal parliament used to be a place of vigorous but respectful debate. Not now. I was reflecting on this…

Simon Collins

20 April 2019 9:00 am

When Christopher Hitchens decided to qualify the title of his 2007 magnum opus God is not Great with the caption…

Brown study

13 April 2019 9:00 am

There is something symbiotic about the fact that the federal Budget has been dropped on us just when the final…

Brown study

6 April 2019 9:00 am

What do the ABC and the New Zealand terrorist horror have in common? Apart, I mean, from the fact that…

Simon Collins

6 April 2019 9:00 am

There are two kinds of political figure who cannot be effectively satirised. One is the kind of leader who makes…

Running on empty

30 March 2019 9:00 am

If anything happened to disrupt our imports of oil and fuel, such as a blockade of shipping through the South…

Simon Collins

23 March 2019 9:00 am

In the early 1980s I went out briefly with the daughter of a Thatcher cabinet minister, and spent several evenings…

Australian notes

16 March 2019 9:00 am

On academic freedom The dismissal of Tim Anderson from his academic post at the University of Sydney has triggered a…

Brown study

9 March 2019 9:00 am

A few weeks ago we drew attention to some significant reforms to the electoral law in the Democratic Republic of…

Simon Collins

9 March 2019 9:00 am

If there is anything which can be relied upon to bring a nation together better than the achievements of its…

Brown study

2 March 2019 9:00 am

The appointment of Ita Buttrose as the new Chair of the ABC is another step back from making it truly…

Australian notes

2 March 2019 9:00 am

Let’s emulate Jordan Jordan Peterson’s much-hyped performance on Q&A was a model of reasonable discussion. As long as the ABC…

Simon Collins

23 February 2019 9:00 am

Queensland may have thrown in the towel in its wars with the cane toad, the rabbit and the crown-of-thorns starfish,…

Brown study

16 February 2019 9:00 am

The iconic Australian company, Bradbury’s Chocolates, has just concluded its search for the sensible centre. But the dismal results obtained…

Brown study

9 February 2019 9:00 am

The Spectator Australia Electoral Reform Unit, working in secrecy behind its heavily fortified premises at Belconnen in the ACT, has…

Simon Collins

9 February 2019 9:00 am

Two weeks ago on this page I complained about how rarely mainstream Australian media uses the word ‘masculinity’ without the…

Brown study

2 February 2019 9:00 am

The absurd contribution by Thomas Vargas, the head of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Indonesia, to the refugee issue…

Australian notes

2 February 2019 9:00 am

For me, at least, this year’s Australia Day was preceded somewhat significantly two days earlier by a vast four page…

Simon Collins

26 January 2019 9:00 am

Underpinning Orwell’s most chilling dystopian vision was the belief that controlling what people say is half way to controlling what…

Brown study

26 January 2019 9:00 am

This column has now embarked on a series of articles to prepare you for the coming election season. Our policy…

Brown study

19 January 2019 9:00 am

As this is an election year, I would like to bring you up-to-date on the ground-breaking research that the Spectator…