Politics, transparency and Cash
Imagine you are driving a car and collide with a cyclist. The front windscreen is smashed and the cyclist left…
Doing business with China without retreating on national security
China is a one-party state led by Xi Jinping, whose powers look like growing to that of a modern Stalin,…
How the cult of the expert weakens democracy
A new survey from Pew Research Center, which asked 42,000 people in 38 nations about their attitudes towards democracy, has…
Very Lonely Planet’s guide to Canberra
The residents of Canberra have woken up this morning to a novel sensation: somebody out there actually likes their city.…
Time to unite the right
In the midst of an apparent identity crisis, the American Right are asking themselves, is ‘Classical Liberalism’ the same as…
Hanson and Bernardi face a looming Senate showdown
With speculation rampant that the Coalition will take Australians to an early federal election in September 2018 to avoid a…
“My gynaecologist found…”
Michelle Barrow is an American who studied at Yale in the same years as Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton. Barrow’s…
A free market strategy to solve societal problems
People seem to have lost faith in both the free market and in government. Capitalism and investing are now pejorative…
Mango, memes, millennials and the MSM
I had a ‘delightful discovery’ of my own last week. And that is, young people today (i.e. millennials) understand what’s…
As a UN Human Rights Council member we must not reward Palestinian terror
Now that Australia is to be a card-carrying member of the UN’s Human Rights Council from January 2018 (alongside such…
State-sanctioned suicide
James Merlino, Victoria’s Deputy Premier spectacularly crossed the floor last week to oppose his leader, Daniel Andrews, on the matter…
Our universities value identity politics over Western civilisation — and here’s the proof
The IPA’s report, The Rise of Identity Politics: An Audit of History Teaching at Australian Universities in 2017, written by…
Diary
New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Raleigh, Dallas… I’m on a book tour in Donald Trump’s USA, which feels much like the…
The Kurds are on their own
The routing of Isis in northern Iraq ought to be a time of international celebration, but as ever in the…
Letters
The great divider Sir: Niall Ferguson (‘Tech vs Trump’, 14 October) draws a parallel between the Reformation — powered by the…
Kiwi notes
Piggy’s prevaricating protégé Australians who like to poke fun at quaint, idiosyncratic New Zealand have, for once, got all the…
Dis-con notes
Toughen up, snowflakes Another parliamentary sitting week has passed, with nothing done to confront the fate that has been staring…
Just another hoax
Two out of three ain’t bad. Or so we are supposed to believe. So let’s start by accepting that the…
Brexit can strengthen the Union
There will be no chance of the United Kingdom making a success of Brexit if Scotland votes to break up…
Bridge
Bridge is a partnership game — but haven’t you sometimes wished you could file for a quick divorce mid-rubber? The…
no. 479
Black to play. This is from Sanal-Arnaudov, Antalya 2017. How did Black finish off the horribly exposed white king? Answers…
Cruise ship pianists
When Crystal Cruises invited me to join their flagship as the guest classical pianist for a springtime voyage around the…
It’s the thought that counts
During a panel discussion in 1949, Frank Lloyd Wright made an undiplomatic comment about Marcel Duchamp’s celebrated picture of 1912,…
St Vincent: Masseduction
Grade: A The old Tulsa sound was a rather agreeable low-key, shuffling, blues-inflected rockabilly — primarily J.J. Cale and Leon…
The Bilbao effect
Twenty years ago I wrote of the otherwise slaveringly praised Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao: I’m in a minority of, apparently,…
