Flat White

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

The greater good - or a grander evil?

9 February 2022 4:00 am

Every time I hear some middling news reporter parrot ‘for the greater good’ in reference to whatever the next absurd…

The Liberals are a lost cause

8 February 2022 2:00 pm

For some time, the Liberal Party has been walking a dangerous path, one lined with terrible policies and dodgy backroom…

Australia desperately needs a Criminal Cases Review Commission

8 February 2022 12:00 pm

Talk about missing the point… All those clamouring for a federal corruption commission to be an election issue have so…

Israel confounds the promise of vaccines as the way out of Covid

8 February 2022 9:00 am

Israel was meant to have been the showpiece of vaccination success in escaping from the threat of coronavirus. Instead, it…

Justin Langer thrown under the cricket bus

8 February 2022 4:00 am

Ian Chappell was a peerless captain and has provided cricket tragics – whether readers, viewers, or (now) listeners – with…

GoFundMe's spectacular 'woke' collapse

7 February 2022 2:32 pm

The CEO of GoFundMe, Tim Cadogan, set his Twitter account to ‘private’ after presiding over one of the biggest outrages…

Labor loves the ‘F’ word, but is too bashful to say it

7 February 2022 2:00 pm

Queensland loves a good rort, doesn’t it? Their integrity commissioner, Dr. Nikola Stepanov, resigned midway through her three-year term last week. Why?…

‘Conspiracy theorists’ – the new extremists

7 February 2022 12:00 pm

The rationale that dominates the minds of the mainstream, which for over two years has dictated the dominant discourse, seems…

The real hippies are with Joe Rogan

7 February 2022 9:00 am

I have been trying to avoid writing about Joe Rogan since everyone has a take on the old hippy rockers vs…

Will the Religious Discrimination Bill see the light of day?

7 February 2022 4:00 am

The 2022 Australian federal election must be held on or before May 21, 2022 to elect members of the 47th…

Australia is already a republic – leave it alone

6 February 2022 11:00 am

The great English philosopher, John Locke, wrote a revolutionary book called Two Treatises of Government. It was most surely revolutionary. First published…

Did Citipointe prove there's no 'freedom of religion'?

6 February 2022 7:00 am

This week, Citipointe Christian College was the centre of a mini publicity maelstrom. The Brisbane Christian school first released –…

When teachers become hate preachers

5 February 2022 10:58 am

This month marks 20 years since a grand jury indicted John Walker Lindh after his November 2001 capture in Afghanistan.…

How do we fix 'stupid'?

5 February 2022 8:00 am

It took centuries of history – wars fought, won, and lost – to bring together the world’s greatest philosophers and…

Can Big Tech remain as the arbiter of politics?

4 February 2022 2:00 pm

Increasingly, climate change is coming to dominate energy supply and indeed the whole economy. Modest changes to the climate are…

‘Whoopsi’ Goldberg’s learning curve

4 February 2022 12:00 pm

‘I stand corrected,’ said Whoopi Goldberg, the day after she was advised that the Holocaust was indeed a racist slaughter.…

Midwifery language dehumanising women

4 February 2022 8:57 am

A soon-to-be-released collaborative research paper led by a Sydney academic suggests that ‘de-sexing’ language around female reproduction could have ‘consequences…

$777.8 million wasted by NSW Health

4 February 2022 8:11 am

The people of New South Wales will remember when Health Minister Brad Hazzard floated the idea of making the unvaccinated…

Did Scott Morrison throw freedom of religion under the bus?

4 February 2022 4:00 am

A Christian school valiantly tries to uphold the Christian (and scientific) view of gender. It attempts to defend the Christian…

Australian Conservatism: comfortable, relaxed and in mortal danger

3 February 2022 2:00 pm

A quarter of a century ago, John Howard said he wanted Australians to be comfortable and relaxed about their history,…

I want my Australia back

3 February 2022 12:00 pm

Happy Australia Day! (Well, it was.) The day brought me mixed feelings of pride and shame, but not in the…

Hellish roasting for Citipointe College

3 February 2022 9:00 am

A Christian school catering for Christian families who value Christian education affirmed its commitment to Christianity this week, and all…

Newspeak and rewriting history

3 February 2022 4:00 am

As our captured two-party system embeds robotic politicians in the parliaments, their language is drying up and becoming highly formulaic.…

White dwarfs

2 February 2022 2:00 pm

‘White dwarfs’. These two words could get me cancelled. Maybe I should have written about panchromatic ex-Solar System height-challenged exhausted…

How do I vote for the ‘Barty Party’?

2 February 2022 12:00 pm

In the contrasts between Ash Barty and Nick Kyrgios we see a little of the divisions that rend modern Australian…