Should the ABC be privatised? A modest valuation…
Free online therapy from a headache-inducing government
There is something uniquely insane about the Labor Party spending the best part of 2025 demonising social media, the internet, and…
Pauline Hanson: straight to number one
In news that will alarm Australia’s ‘dignified’ major parties, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has skipped straight over Labor to take…
Just, you know, check your tyre pressure
It’s challenging to take Chris Bowen seriously, even though he appears to have shed his ‘Climate Change’ portfolio handle while…
Net Zero nations trapped in mad race for oil
Two months ago, Western nations were polishing their climate agenda and promoting themselves as Net Zero superpowers. Now, they’re locked…
Australian decadence
Is Australia a ‘decadent’ society? The term ‘decadence’ implies promiscuity. But, as American writer Ross Douthat explains, it’s a term…
The US guaranteed its oil, why can’t Australia?
It is widely claimed, correctly in my opinion, that any government’s first responsibility is to secure the ongoing safety of…
Should the ABC be privatised? A modest valuation…
There is something exquisitely self-referential about the ABC reporting on its own strike. It is the media equivalent of a…
Liberals are fools to support social media censorship
As Everett Dirksen once memorably said, there is an evil party and a stupid party. Sometimes, both parties come together…
The West’s parasite politics
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. In geopolitics, the vice is uglier still: entire governments now bite the hand…
Artemis foul? The future of space has a distinct Musk about it
On Wednesday, NASA lit the fuse on its Artemis II rocket, and the world watched four astronauts begin the first…
Three minutes of absolutely nothing
In 1979, US President Jimmy Carter went on national television during an oil crisis and delivered a 32-minute address diagnosing…
What did I miss?
Despite his intense paranoia regarding ‘conspiracy theories’, Anthony Albanese chose April Fools’ Day to make a rare national address about…
The new rotten boroughs of accountability
Alexandra Marshall made a sharp observation this week, one that cuts to the quick of the modern democratic malaise. We…
The breach of trust fuelling One Nation
One Nation is now the most intriguing phenomenon in Australian politics. Thirty years after Pauline Hanson first entered federal Parliament,…
Why Canberra wasn’t told
The recent escalation in the Middle East has prompted a predictable chorus of dismay from Australia’s academic and journalistic establishment.…
From Atousa to Noor
In this article, I seek to trace a continuum between the distant past of my homeland, Iran, and its imagined…
Moira Deeming’s preselection chaos demands Liberal Party reform
Never, in all my 45 years of experience inside the Liberal Party, have I witnessed a disgraceful, public humiliation on…
How Australia can prosper in a lawless world
With Khamenei’s death, another war in the Middle East has begun. War, by its nature, is unpredictable, and there are…
Build-up to war
As the United States and Israel’s war with Iran continues to escalate with no clear end in sight, Australia’s politicians…
Policies for prosperity
Grantlee Kieza’s biography of Mary Reibey (1777-1855), the woman pictured on the $20 note, provides a splendid account of how…
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner loses again – A victory for free speech | Celine Baumgarten S3 Ep 18
Celine Baumgarten (Celine Against the Machine) has celebrated her SECOND victory against the eSafety Commissioner. This wasn’t only a personal…
Did Donald Trump conquer the world with witty insults? | Joel Gilbert S3 Ep 17
Did Donald Trump conquer the world with witty insults? I’m joined by Joel Gilbert to discuss the genius of humour…
Digital tyranny or ‘child safety’? 😵 & the bitcoin revolution | Efrat Fenigson S3 Ep 16
When Australia’s Under 16 social media ban started locking adult political writers out of #Substack – it was just the…
The popularity of populism
If you look around the Anglosphere and Western Europe you will notice that many of the long-established or legacy right-of-centre…
The Great Displ-AI-cement
Every technological revolution replaces the one before it. The loom replaced the spinning wheel. The excavator replaced the shovel. The…
Europe’s moral escape room
I’ve known a few Hungarians in my time. Immensely hospitable, deeply proud of their history and scientific achievements, resilient people…
Ursula arrives
Governments of all persuasions love a free trade agreement. They are something to announce. They are written on many pages.…
Labor’s dud Euro-deal
A mystery hovers over Labor’s free trade agreement with the EU. Why, in 2023, under pressure from our beef producers,…
Climate has always changed
Australia has entered a crisis due to a shortage of fossil fuels. Over 600 service stations have run out of…
Hastie by nature
Andrew Hastie can’t wait to lead the Liberal party, so this weekend he gave us a sneak preview. After spending…
Pauline’s contract with the people
With a federal election likely at any time up to 20 May 2028, Australians can either reclaim their destiny or…
The Tories should beware the fate of Lloyd George’s Liberals
Reform leader Nigel Farage likes to claim that his latest political vehicle is on course to replace the ‘old fuddy…
The Easter tradition of women taking men hostage
In a few communities in Victorian England, there was a custom of men tying women to chairs with ribbons on…
Scrapping jury trials will cost us all
For hundreds of years in Britain, juries have been the cornerstone of the justice system. The right to trial by…
Is Pete Hegseth waging a Christian Zionist war?
By pushing religion almost as much as US military might in his war briefings, Pete Hegseth has raised questions about…
Will Trump really obliterate Iran on Tuesday?
Was Donald Trump’s profane and threatening tweet, which included an F-bomb and an allusion to Iran’s leaders as “crazy bastards,”…
Even dirty Russian tricks might not save Viktor Orban
With a week to go until Hungary heads to the polls, Prime Minister Viktor Orban is fighting to save his…
Inside the fearless rescue of the second US airman
‘WE GOT HIM!’ Donald Trump’s announcement was immediate and emphatic. The operation was ‘one of the most daring Search and…
The surprising truth about AI and jobs
Lord Stockwood, the minister for investment, recently floated the idea of universal basic income to cushion AI-driven job losses. Last…
Iran has offered Trump an olive branch
There are few figures in Iranian politics as simultaneously familiar and enigmatic as Javad Zarif. To some in Washington he…
What David Attenborough gets wrong about cats
Here we go again. Last February I wrote about the latest wave of ‘catphobia’ – my new word, do use…
What we really know about the first Easter
A friend who spent much of his life as an archaeologist in Israel once told me that there were three…
Has Canada’s bilingualism gone too far?
Two young Canadian pilots were killed in a tragic accident on 22 March. What should have been an occasion for…
The row over English becoming an official language of New Zealand
Parliamentarians in New Zealand have been limbering up for an oddly unedifying debate over what ought to be the most…
What they don’t tell you about Christmas in New Zealand
‘I still think New Zealand the most beautiful country I have ever seen,’ Agatha Christie marvelled in 1922. Evidently she’s…
What will Jacinda Ardern do next?
When I first met Jacinda Ardern in the early 2010s, the notion that the young MP with the toothy smile…
The de-Wokification of New Zealand’s education system
The conservative coalition government of New Zealand came to office promising to wind back an enormous, government-run system of ‘Woke’…
Organised crime is targeting artisanal food
Deaths in the mind
It’s strange the way certain deaths stay in the mind perhaps because of the fascination and interconnection of the lives…
A daily beauty
It’s fascinating to see that Sharmill are presenting a new Othello from London’s Haymarket from 28 March with David Harewood…
A versatile and virtuouso figure
Well, the Oscars have come and gone and we tend only to remember the anomalies. Julie Andrews winning the Oscar…
Uncanny mutations
Isn’t it odd the way we can start watching a streamer in absolute disgusted disbelief only to discover that we’re…
Cold wars
The US military might be the most powerful in the world but it has fallen dangerously behind in one of…
Why the General Strike of 1926 could never succeed
Although it may be in bad taste to have a favourite story about the General Strike of May 1926, one…
Expect toddlers and parlour games at today’s dinner parties
When I was in my twenties and giving dinner parties every week, I came up with a couple of money-saving…
Who wants to bring back the Neanderthals?
In the not-too-distant future, if your T-shirt starts giving fashion advice or we’re all enslaved by a race of disease-resistant…
Tradecraft secrets: a choice of crime fiction
If it takes one to know one, this may explain why spy fiction is enjoying such a renaissance, since among…
The dilemmas and difficulties of artists through the ages
Walter Neurath, refugee from Nazism, public educator and the founder of Thames & Hudson, would have loved this book. In…
Looking back in anguish: Good Good Loving, by Yvvette Edwards, reviewed
Ellen is at the end of her life and is frankly waiting to die while her extended family surrounds her,…
With no coherent strategy, Britain seems perpetually adrift in the world
The British state seems perpetually befuddled. Every international crisis catches it in its sudden glare like so many headlights trained…