In-depth analysis of the day’s news, plus stories and gossip from Australian politics.
Daniel Andrews is breaking the boundaries
Victoria police arrested a pregnant mother in front of her little children in her Ballarat home. Zoe Buhler was arrested…
We need the courage to reopen
When confronted with the unknown, it’s human to feel afraid. Lockdowns and border closures may calm our fears, but they…
Tony Abbott: skills and experience still count for something – just
Wanted: Envoy to advise Government on trade and to promote opportunities for the United Kingdom in emerging markets post-Brexit. The…
What’s woke this week?
Wokus pocus! The social justice conjurers of critical race theory and inclusiveness were staging some impressive illusions last week. With a wave of their wands looting, rioting and setting…
Elon Musk, Neuralink and the existential risks of human enhancement
Elon Musk’s Neuralink update on 28 August will be remembered by most of the public for clickbait news headlines involving…
Are the ‘quiet Australians’ confused, fearful – or both?
On Monday, a Newspoll published in The Australian put the Coalition Government and the Labor tied on 50-50 support on a two-party…
The real threat to black lives isn’t white men in police uniforms
Recently media, activists and keyboard warriors have cherry-picked examples of controversial police activity to present coppers as enemies of the…
100 years on, it’s well past time to rethink the court case that remade federation
The goings-on of the nation’s highest court rarely attract significant mainstream public attention. Yet the power of seven largely unknown judges to…
V is for Venezuela – and Victoria, too
The example of a pregnant woman in her home in front of her young children being interrogated and arrested by police graphically illustrates how…
Why has only five per cent of the government’s small business support made it through?
Amid all of the public fanfare created by the billions of dollars in “free money” handed out by the Morrison…
Oh Dan, I have sinned against you…
ITEM: The Australian, September 3, 2020 The arrest of a pregnant anti-lockdown protester, which was live-streamed on social media, has…
ANU students want to ban Churchill – but with no traumatic debate, please
Australia’s preeminent university, Australian National University is the latest institution to take part in the importation of cancel culture, with…
Good leaders minimise fear and explain their responses to a crisis. We’ve seen the opposite
Framing the coronavirus response as freedom vs. tyranny is counterproductive, because the government has so successfully stoked fear in Australians.…
Governments have made this recession worse. They can’t now impede recovery
A 7 per cent fall in GDP during the June quarter is pretty much to have been expected. Led by spending falls…
Recession 2020: you ain’t seen nothin’ yet
It’s official. We’re in recession, after two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Matters couldn’t be clearer. As the official release…
Mad at the witches
All is not well in the dark world of Mad F***ing Witches. While they’re attempting to keep up appearances with…
The WHO has let the cat out of the bag: COVID-19 is now more about politics than public health
The World Health Organisation’s Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last Friday that “we will not – we cannot – go back…
The Bushfires Royal Commission: saving reputations, not lives and property
The Interim Observations of the Bushfires Royal Commission are extremely disturbing. Not because they reveal any frightening facts about climate…
Extra infrastructure spending won’t build a road out of the corona recession
Increased government spending on infrastructure has been proposed yet again to revive the economy from the government-imposed recession. The latest…
Daniel Andrews’ deplorables moment
The clock has struck thirteen in Victoria and no man, woman, or child is free. Writing this sentence, according to…
Superannuation reform requires more than putting lipstick on a pig
H.L. Mencken once wrote that “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong”. But when…
Great Barrier Reef platitudes: more dangerous than sharks
It has always been the case that the individual is expected to conform and that there is hierarchy within myths.…
What you didn’t hear at the Press Club last week
Last week Wang Xining, China’s Deputy Chief of Mission in Canberra, addressed the National Press Club, a speech widely reported…
Forget the Wuhan flu, the Chi Comm virus is a bigger threat to our way of life
Over the last six months, we have witnessed an unprecedented global outbreak of politicians and journalists declaring how much they…
Corona crisis-mongering is scaring our kids to death
Enough with playing politics with people’s lives and gambling with mental health. The majority of the country may well have…
Editor’s picks
Magazine
Making appointments, Coalition-style
A satirical look at the previous government’s conservative leanings
Four troubling features of the Higgins judgment
Everyone behaving badly, but only one is pronounced guilty in a social justice outcome
