In-depth analysis of the day’s news, plus stories and gossip from Australian politics.
Pauline Hanson: back, but for how long?
‘I’m back’, and with these two words, Pauline Hanson stated the bleeding obvious as she delivered her maiden speech in…
A conservative Bill for marriage equality
Edmund Burke seems to have gone out of fashion a bit, and as a man who still listens to Oasis…
The terrible truth about staffers
Poor Jack Walker, probably soon to be an ex-adviser to Christopher Pyne. Not only has he and his eight Sydney…
Milo Yiannopoulos and the @Nero fallacy
Milo Yiannopoulos, the social media agent provocateur banned from Twitter for mocking the star of the oh-so-PC, all-female Ghostbusters remake,…
What was that about swaggering sophomoric staffers?
Long hours, bad coffee, average hotels and Virgin Lounge popcorn instead of a home cooked meal. It ain’t glamorous. It…
Good luck manning the polling booths, Mr Baird
You all know the lines from Brecht: After the uprising of the 17th June The Secretary of the Writers Union…
Budgie smugglers and the rise of the staffer brat
Once again politics and budgie smugglers have divided a nation and provided days of rather unusual commentary. The familiarity is…
Who’s your nanny?
There once was a time when we, Australians and Americans, used to have a good laugh at the countries of…
John Howard: no villain, no racist but instead one of our best
John Howard, for the very reason that he was one of our best and longest serving prime ministers, remains the bête noire of…
Trolling with Clementine Ford
Fairfax columnist and ABC Drum presenter Julia Baird is drawn to forceful, opinionated public women. Baird is writing a biography of Queen Victoria, and in a column this week…
Calumnies from the clickbait farm
“This is what would happen if Australian halted immigration”, the introduction to ditzy Fairfax economics correspondent Jessica Irvine’s latest bleatings…
David Van Gend and the Rainbow Jihadists
Traditional marriage campaigner David Van Gend recently did that most rare of things – he defended the freedom of his…
The sickness at the soul of Generation Ink
The presence of body art is more prominent today than it has ever been before. What explains this new desire…
The campus left and definitions of morality
The University of Melbourne Student Union is an oh-so-democratic body that left-aligned student groups vie to control so they can…
John Howard upsets Sydney’s sandstone soviet
Sydney University staff already skip off to Syria to help Bashar al-Assad with his propaganda ploys and get involved in…
Time to talk frankly on immigration
Last week The Australian editorialised on Australia’s immigration policies, noting that the Prime Minister’s “reception this week at an invitation-only UN summit on…
Israel and the slippery slope of anti-Semitism
In a screening interview for a government job I was once asked about my religion. I said I was Jewish but not very religious;…
So, South Australia, how’s that move to renewables working out for you?
Oh. From the Adelaide Advertiser, this afternoon: The entire state has lost all power in the midst of today’s big…
First they came for the racists
Look at the comments on any article on Free Speech, in particular Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, and…
On the upside, Prime Minister…
Yesterday’s Newspoll wasn’t exactly the best of news for the Prime Minister, but it shouldn’t have come as any surprise.…
South African cricket: from racist to rainbow nation and back again
The obsession with race in South Africa has clearly not ended with the demise of National Party rule in 1994.…
New welfare model, old welfare results
Social Services Minister Christian Porter has announced that the government intends to introduce a New Zealand style approach to welfare.…
The trumpet blasts of the monstrous regiment
On the weekend I was on an ABC Radio National panel discussion about major topical events of the week. The return…
Marriage equality: the left wants Turnbull to be a dictator
The left-wing admiration for Malcolm Turnbull, with his PC-opinions and hip leather jacket during his wilderness years of 2010-2015, was…
And in further news from the inner-city…
Looking for a little culture this weekend? Here’s something: Hilariously though even this sort of stuff comes completes with a…
