Flat White

In-depth analysis of the day’s news, plus stories and gossip from Australian politics.

Rugby Australia needs to chill out

22 July 2022 7:00 am

Rugby Australia has threatened to ban a football fan for yelling abuse at England coach Eddie Jones on Sunday night.…

Politicians are not evolving as fast as Covid

21 July 2022 1:00 pm

It has been more than two years since China unleashed Covid onto the world, and with no end in sight,…

Knock-knock: offensive by nature

21 July 2022 10:00 am

Recently, someone told me a knock-knock joke, and I deemed it offensive and insensitive. The subject matter was itself not…

Djokovic and the US Open: let him play

21 July 2022 7:00 am

Novak Djokovic has won Wimbledon, the second major tennis tournament this year to be plagued by self-inflicted wounds following the…

Jeremy Clarkson torments Twitter by enjoying summer

21 July 2022 6:00 am

I was up at a scary hour this morning when I stumbled across Jeremy Clarkson braising a few thousand Twitter…

Has Australia become an elective dictatorship?

21 July 2022 4:00 am

The responses of the Australian government to the Covid pandemic had an overwhelming impact on the enjoyment of our basic…

Russia didn't get the memo about pronouns

20 July 2022 12:00 pm

Russian officials are openly mocking America’s embrace of transgenderism – taunting America to ‘keep going’. The ridicule came after a…

Australia’s renewable energy superpower fantasy

20 July 2022 11:00 am

One of Prime Minister Albanese’s favourite three-word slogans is ‘renewable energy superpower’. It comes from Ross Garnaut’s 2019 policy propaganda…

The world’s slowest apocalypse

20 July 2022 10:00 am

If you believe the hype, this is the most dangerous time in history to be a human. There’s an apocalypse…

Biden: Divider-in-Chief

20 July 2022 8:00 am

One of the media’s beloved titles for President Donald Trump was ‘Divider-in-Chief’. Well-deserved at times, the moniker was even used…

Australia’s Catholic Church: politics, paganism, and pandering

20 July 2022 4:00 am

The Catholic Church is one of the oldest institutions in the world, and it has long held to the values…

Australia in race to host COP 29 in 2024

19 July 2022 12:11 pm

It’s the prize no sane country wants to win, but Labor – egged on by the Pacific Islands – is…

What do we really know about the IPCC?

19 July 2022 10:00 am

Having concluded the latest Climate Change talk-fest – the United Nations COP26 in 2021 in Glasgow – the confected outburst…

Victorian Liberals: left of Labor?

19 July 2022 7:00 am

Since when does a centre-right political party win office by proposing policies even further to the left than its centre-left…

Speaking on Cancel Culture at Friedman

19 July 2022 4:00 am

Last weekend, Sydney played host to the Friedman conference where politicians, centre-right activists, and writers – including many Speccie contributors –…

Hollywoke hypocrites: Chinese & Muslim critics of Disney’s ‘Lightyear’ told their beliefs are ‘backward’

18 July 2022 12:00 pm

Socio-political critics of Pixar’s progressive flop, Lightyear have been mocked as 14 countries banned the ‘kids animated film’ for its…

China rising: do we need a Defence Levy?

18 July 2022 10:00 am

[ This is part 3 of a series. Read part 1 and part 2 ] The truth lurking under the political spin is that…

Gender quotas bite Labor hard

18 July 2022 9:00 am

It is going to be extremely difficult to write this while maintaining an air of sympathy – so bear with…

Climate Change, the art of sophistry

18 July 2022 7:00 am

Sophistry is the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving. Climate alarmists who know the…

The Queen is Australia's Head of State - don't deny it

18 July 2022 4:00 am

History tells us that new wars are lost because generals re-fight the last one. The looming battle to keep Australia’s…

Labor to 'rescue' ISIS brides?

17 July 2022 6:45 pm

If it wasn’t bad enough watching Foreign Minister Penny Wong hand $1 million to the Taliban in aid, it now appears that…

Of age and stage: over 50s excluded from workforce

17 July 2022 7:00 am

I find it ironic that everyone wants to live a long life but nobody wants to get old. Even fewer…

Sydney: third-worst place for making friends

17 July 2022 6:00 am

There is an odd condition known as Prosopagnosia – a cognitive disorder where the ability to recognise familiar faces is…

Albo learns nothing from European crisis – doubles down on renewables

16 July 2022 4:11 pm

Europe (and parts of Asia) are in the middle of an energy, food, social, and economic crisis exacerbated by ‘green’…

Dutch tolerance vs. the Great Reset

16 July 2022 11:00 am

The Dutch are a tolerant people, and they have a long-standing reputation for that. I lived in the Netherlands for…