Costly Roots
Albanese’s Trojan Horse omnibus bill
The Prime Minister’s Combatting Antisemitism, Hate, and Extremism omnibus bill, which his government is expected to ram through into law next week…
Maduro’s capture exposed the weakness of China’s military technology
If Maduro were to pen an autobiography, surely it would be titled, F- Around and Find out Real F-ing Quick… He…
Banning X has nothing to do with safety
The UK Labour government appears to be more worried about X than the Pakistani Grooming Gangs which were aided and…
One Nation and the Coalition neck-and-neck
In the final weeks of Parliament, both Labor and the Coalition imagined they had One Nation by the balls with…
Losing the war on CO2
The Net Zero program is essentially a war on plant food. In case you are worried about warming and CO2…
Waiting for our next Menzies
Australia is not short of arguments – it is short of confidence. We remain a nation of builders – families,…
Ten reasons why the Islamic Republic of Iran will fall
What seemed unbelievable a few years ago has suddenly become a very real possibility at the start of 2026. Namely,…
Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and displacement of Kurds: world must hold Syria responsible
As the world focuses on Venezuela after the removal of President Nicolas Maduro, and the anti-government protests in Iran, the…
The Royal Commission’s social cohesion deception
There have been 140 Royal Commissions of Inquiry since Federation. Most of these Commissions, 79, were held prior to 1939.…
What does ‘Javid Shah’ truly mean?
All Iranians across the world stand shoulder to shoulder with the protesters inside the country and chant ‘Javid Shah’. The…
The commonwealth of abusive complaints
Every morning, the first thing our federal government ministers do is wake up worrying about ways they can repair our…
Australians more likely to be victims of violent crime than Americans
The US experienced a serious violent crime increase of 59 per cent during the Biden Administration. Despite that increase, Americans…
Betting on war: gaming for the apocalypse
George Orwell noted: ‘War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit…
Albanese’s dithering on terror
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s leadership has been exposed for what it truly is – all fluff and no substance. But…
From honour to dignity
In an age of friction – between cultures, institutions, and moral expectations – it is worth pausing to consider a…
Hepatitis B shift should open a much bigger conversation
For the first time in decades, a major health authority – ACIP in the United States – has signalled that…
Strange death of the Maga right
Alert readers will recall that I have previously described the US version of so-called National Conservatism – otherwise known as…
King Albo Canute
PM Anthony Albanese is no King Canute of Bondi Beach, valiantly holding back the tidal wave of demands for a…
Big Mal and economics
Last year, the 50th anniversary of the dismissal of the Whitlam government in November 1975 led to an avalanche of…
Maduro madness
As if right out of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, the capture of Venezuela’s Nicholas Maduro by the United…
Trump v. Congressional Republicans
T here is a battle across the Anglosphere on the right side of the political spectrum. We see it in…
Sun King and the Scrub
I have it on good authority that Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen privately refer to one another as the Sun…
Costly Roots
Recently, I wrote about the potential damage to our economy driven by a slavish devotion to the protection of Aboriginal…
Terror by numbers
It is only sixteen months since Australians discovered, by accident, that the Albanese government had granted visas to Gazans who…
Why are teachers so obsessed with the ‘far right’?
Much has been written in recent years, and even recent days, about the threat posed to the mental wellbeing of…
When will Iran finally be free?
An Iranian friend of mine once told me that ever since fleeing his homeland in the early days of Iran’s…
How far can bravado take the US?
Operation Absolute Resolve, Donald Trump’s rendition of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, was a brilliantly executed coup. The audacious raid did…
Inside the Democrats’ AI skepticism
Bernie Sanders has been rolling out political hot takes for more than half a century, and in recent years his…
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’…
Jacinda, Jacinta
I’m not a big fan of self-serving autobiographies, particularly of recently departed political leaders. I had briefly considered dipping into…
The end of the climate cult
Remembrance of things past
It’s easy to forget the artistic range of people who have died recently. Susie Figgis, in charge of casting the…
Rebels and Rivals
It’s funny how implicated we are in the places from which we take our bearings. Memories of the Lexington-Concord bridge,…
Iron Maiden at 50: how heavy metal became mainstream
The death of the Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne this July, and the huge reaction it provoked worldwide, represented something…
The full range of diversions
Who can say what a world of Christmases will unfold this year? Sir Keir Starmer was knighted for services to…
The spiritual yearnings of David Bowie
What did David Bowie mean by ‘No confessions/ No religion’ in his lyrics to ‘Modern Love’? Peter Ormerod proposes what…
The scandal of California’s stolen water
As the poem goes: Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink – which might well describe how residents of…
Coming of age in Melbourne: Landscape with Landscape, by Gerald Murnane, reviewed
Gerald Murnane’s Landscape with Landscape opens with a splendidly disgruntled preface. The book is a collection of six longish stories…
Odd man out: The Burning Origin, by Daniele Mencarelli, reviewed
This terse, unsparing novel can be summed up thus: after nearly a decade’s absence, the successful designer Gabriele Bilancini returns…
The many shades of Pink Floyd
The English rock band Pink Floyd was founded 60 years ago in Cambridge. Reading two new books about them, it…
After the party: One of Us, by Elizabeth Day, reviewed
This is the sixth novel and tenth book overall by the highly successful journalist and podcaster Elizabeth Day. She hit…
The glorious ventilation shafts hiding in plain sight
In the centre of London’s Paternoster Square there is a tall column on a heavy octagonal base that provides a…
The adventures of an improbable rock journalist
The filmmaker Cameron Crowe had the coolest childhood. Growing up in California, he started writing for Rolling Stone magazine at…