Brown study
Frankly, I have been shocked by the appalling revelations of sexual harassment that have come out in the last few…
Have a great Invasion Day
Like a national sports event, the annual Australia Day clash between patriotism and shame is upon us again. It’s a…
Australian diary
When I visited India as a tourist 47 years ago I was told that the population of Delhi was about…
Business/Robbery etc
It’s not President Trump’s corporate tax cuts, or even the retailer-busting arrival of Amazon to these shores that poses the…
Letter from Beijing
Political extravaganzas in China, like October’s 19th Communist Party Congress, aren’t policy turning points. They are theatre. Only one of…
Nightmares from the Nineties
The release of the Keating Cabinet papers was an opportunity for the Left to salivate over one of their politico-cultural…
In the dark
When I was very young (it must have been before I was sent to boarding school at the age of…
Keep on tweeting, Mr President
There are two ways to judge a president or a prime minister. That which is true is based on policy,…
Vox Clamantis
For many of us it probably qualifies as ‘a distant country of which we know little’. Estonia, after decades of…
Trial by #metoo media
The Golden Globe awards have come and gone, with Hollywood emblackening itself and making self-righteous declarations against sexual harassment and…
Big is not beautiful or why fat is a feminine issue
Not so long ago American feminist, Naomi Wolf, did an international lap of honour to celebrate 25 years since the…
Revenue and responsibility
The Queensland government submission to the Productivity Commission review of GST distribution suggests the Commonwealth government should share its income…
Puffed-up public health poohbahs pan our happy heroes
So the public health poohbahs are off and running in 2018. The prurient puritans, the humourless harridans, the admonishing androids…
John Gorton: a rugged Australian idealist
Following the death of Sir John Gorton on 19 May 2002, Christopher Zinn wrote in the Guardian that “Gorton left…
Goodbye boozy Tuesday?
If we had been asked to name the most cuckoo council in Australia in 2017, Melbourne would have stood a…
What’s to gain from an Australian republic?
On New Year’s Day, the Prime Minister was goaded into commenting on the prospect of opening up the debate on…
Manufacturing climate consensus
Just out, the first book to be published by the US-based Global Warming Foundation is by the Australian writer/researcher Bernie…
Stop this volunteering nonsense now II
Federal MP Tim Wilson has labelled this article by Catherine Walsh from Friday’s Sydney Morning Herald, “peak stupid” on Twitter. And…
Stop this volunteering nonsense now I
In last Friday’s Fairfax papers, Catherine Walsh called on Australians to “stop volunteering”. Why? She believes volunteering is a faux help, not resolving…
Ambitions closer to home?
There used to be rules about diplomatic postings, rules ancient, arcane and complicated. Fluency in the language of the host…
Golden Globes: black is the new black
The stars have all arrived at the red carpet for the 75th Golden Globe awards, most of them wearing black…
The fine art of political juxtaposition
We all have that friend who we hang out with because they make us look better than we actually are…
The day The Sydney Morning Herald turned into New Idea
This is it. The point of no return. There’s no going back. The once-mighty Sydney Morning Herald — and its…
There’s no participation trophy in real life
There has been a trend afoot for a number of years to give people participation awards, particularly to children in…
Where it’s silly season all year long
Boy. Boy oh boy oh boy. Sorry for being so gender specific, so emphatically binary — let alone using the…
