Cousin, cousine
Visa warfare, a tool for censorship?
Are visas being used as weapons in the culture wars? Granting or denying a visa tarnishes the reputation of political…
Labor backs away from the scary green monster
The LNP’s decision to preference Labor over the Greens seems to have manoeuvred them out of power. ‘If Labor and…
Crisafulli will be the next Queensland premier
‘Tonight, Queenslanders voted for change. Tonight, Queenslanders voted for David Crisafulli!’ Or so went the new Premier’s intro and standing…
Trojan horses aplenty at CHOGM
The King is at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) foolishly preaching Climate Change and tip-toeing around the incredibly…
The Great Global Greening Hoax: why we should fear a flourishing planet
In today’s world, where common sense has packed its bags and gone bush, we’re faced with a new, dire threat…
Ten highlights from the Trump-Rogan interview
There can be little doubt that we are living in an age of disruption. One of the most compelling examples…
Debate is hate: Brazil’s tricky relationship with X
Justice Alexandre De Moraes announced the reversal of Brazil’s X ban earlier this month. In a decision published online, De…
Deaths of despair can be avoided
I have in front of me the final report of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. I am…
Painted into the climate change corner
While Anthony Albanese welcomed the King, warming to climate action the other day in Samoa, I was enjoying a BBQ…
Labor’s green gang is killing it
Much is being said about the Greens’ ‘failure’ in the Queensland election. At the time of writing, the Greens have…
Dissecting the socialist mind
When discussing the Queensland election with an acquaintance, I lambasted the transgressions of the Miles Labor government which has since…
Is India BRIC(K)ed-in?
Despite joining the Quad alliance in 2022, (Australia, Japan, India, and the US), India continues to tread a difficult, non-aligned…
Astonishing cost, miserable return
The Australian Energy Market Operator’s head, Daniel Westerman, attracted the media’s attention by refusing, under Parliamentary scrutiny, to guarantee that…
The dawn of a post-national Australia
The globalisation of our economy is a 20th Century phenomenon that has attracted much commentary in the past, yet it…
A wonky prime minister and straw man treasurer
We don’t have a Willy Wonka and a Candy Man. We have a wonky Prime Minister and a straw man…
To defend the Crown is to defend Australia’s honour
The happy festivities that took place during King Charles III’s tour were a celebration of Australia, as it was intended.…
Mac attack
Well, by the time you pick up this week’s Speccie there will be little more than a week until the…
Having your thunder stolen
‘My yoke’ has a particular meaning in our family. When someone repeats a story that someone has already recounted, we…
Voice anniversary & the battle of the sexes
Australia and the Western world have entered a new era of victimhood and separatism. Men and women have never had…
A bad idea, executed badly
There has been no shortage of navel-gazing in the year since the Voice referendum failed. Voice advocates have repeatedly blamed…
Australia’s export vandalism
In 2023, a coal mine was blocked for the first time under federal environmental law. Clive Palmer’s Central Queensland Coal…
Lidia the landlady demands the rent
‘You are not my king…You are a genocidalist,’ screamed Senator Lidia Thorpe at King Charles III on Monday. Annabel Crabb,…
Pygmies of the West
Few things are more evident on the first anniversary of the 7 October massacre of hundreds of young Jewish people…
We are all Israelis now
As conflicts unfold across the Middle East, two narratives about Israel dominate. On the one hand, there are accusations of…
I fear for Georgia’s future
Following this weekend’s fraughtly awaited election ‘results’ in Georgia – as important for the country’s direction as any since the…
Regime change in Iran is a bad idea
In 2012, as the Islamic Republic showed signs of buckling under the weight of US and EU sanctions, Senator John…
Keir Starmer, Karl Marx and the cant of ‘working people’
Labour has promised that, come what may, they will not be increasing taxes on ‘working people’. Well, jolly good. Those…
The long roots of Iran’s hatred for the Jewish state
As the dust settles on the latest confrontation between Israel and Iran in the Middle East, the nature of the…
Why is this New Zealand airport clamping down on hugs?
‘Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world,’ Hugh Grant famously offered in the heartwarming opening scene of Love,…
How New Zealand managed to sink a tenth of its naval fleet
New Zealand just lost one tenth of its naval defence fleet. The HMNZS Manawanui – the jewel in the nation’s small military…
How does New Zealand solve a problem like China?
New Zealand’s most important trading partner is also the nation’s biggest security headache, according to a new risk-assessment report produced…
Why are so many young people abandoning New Zealand?
Heading to the UK is a longstanding rite of cultural passage for many Kiwis. People like my youngest son, who…
The OnlyFans model, the milkshake and me
What Fight Club got right
There are three great makers of popular man-art working in Hollywood today – Michael Mann, Christopher Nolan and David Fincher…
Such wild and tumultuous art
Jonathan Mills’ opera Eucalyptus based on the superbly designed novel by Murray Bail has left audiences dazzled and rushing to…
Paddington shouldn’t have been given a passport
Paddington has an official passport. The makers of the new Paddington film Paddington in Peru revealed this in passing to the Radio Times today.…
A level of grandeur
You can hardly complain about the state of classical music in this country at the moment. The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra…
Conspiracy theories are as old as witch hunts
To millions of people across America, Hillary Clinton sits atop a global network of satanic child-traffickers and is battling an…
From street urchin to superstar: the unlikely career of Al Pacino
Ellen Barkin, Al Pacino’s lover-cum-prime- suspect in his comeback movie Sea of Love (1989), once dismissed the artifice of the…
An otherworldly London: The Great When, by Alan Moore, reviewed
Is occult knowledge even possible in the age of the internet? If a recondite author obsessed you back in the…
Doctor in trouble: Time of the Child, by Niall Williams, reviewed
In the early 1960s, glimmers of change start to appear in the Irish ‘backwater’ parish of Faha. A smuggled copy…
Why must medieval mysticism be treated as a malady?
Medieval women – they were ‘just like us’. Except that they weren’t. Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife is the first popular…
The enduring mystery of Goethe’s Faust
A.N. Wilson has never been afraid of big subjects. His previous books have tackled the Victorians, Charles Dickens, Dante, Jesus…
The stark, frugal world of Piet Mondrian
In September 1940 the Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian arrived in New York, a refugee from war and the London…
‘I had once been a cat’ – the feline fantasies of Caleb Carr
One of my favourite cartoons is of the owl and the pussycat going to sea in their pea-green boat. The…