The shadow war on undersea cables
Undersea cables are like veins… People don’t pay them much mind until one gets nicked and there’s blood all over…
Does Victoria have the guts to go blue?
And so it is that another unpopular leader has lost the confidence of their party, was summarily rolled by a…
Taking out the trash
Thank god, that’s over! The risky (and some may argue, unnecessary) spectacle of Reform Leader Nigel Farage competing against a…
AI gives us 16 new viruses
‘For several years now, scientists have been able to synthesise viruses from scratch,’ stated an article in Wired. ‘These are typically…
From Woman, Life, Freedom to Javid Shah: how the streets answered
As 16 September approaches, the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in the custody of the Islamic regime occupying Iran, it…
Two plus two equals five
When recounting his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell admits, while being killed or maimed by bombs was…
The ABC radicalised my father
I grew up in the peaceful suburbs of Brisbane in a time before the 24-hour news cycle. Of a weekend…
Dismantling the syndicate
One Nation’s proposal to slash Australia’s federal tobacco excise by 75 per cent represents the first major political move to…
The case for a progressive conservative school rally
The student strike and protest of school children against One Nation and its Leader, Pauline Hanson, has been rightly condemned…
Forgiving those who sin against us
Labor politician Dave Kelly MP, Member for Bassendean, wishes for Western Australia’s Parliament to consider removing the daily recital of…
I was right from the very beginning
Today I received a gratifying message from my mother who lives in Brazil. The message, which refers to Brazilian journalists…
Superannuation at the centre of attention
Suddenly, superannuation has become a hot-button issue in Australia. Germany was the first modern state to introduce old-age pensions. That…
Reimaging the political spectrum
Imagine the following scenario: you are a conservative of some sort (church group or conservative political party) and you have…
The Census is no place for politics
Why am I not surprised the 2026 Census feels a bit … politicised? The last time a national census was…
Remembering the Bialystok Ghetto Revolt
On August 16, 1943, the Jews of the Bialystok Ghetto rose up against the Nazis. Eighty-three years later, we remember…
I have a dream
In the evocative words of Martin Luther King Jr., ‘I have a dream.’ It is a dream I have had…
The decent life
Somewhere in Australia is a party that is for the decent life, proudly lived, respected on its own terms, where…
Born alive means a patient deserving equal care
There are few subjects in Australian public life more polarising than abortion. When Llew O’Brien, Federal Member for Wide Bay,…
Iran’s quagmire, and why it is locked
Many see the current situation in the Iran war as merely a failure of clear strategy on the part of…
Labor’s distraction
Now, as the Albanese federal government and the Minns NSW government launch Australia’s largest gun buyback in decades, we are…
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…
Super spivs
Australia’s compulsory superannuation scheme, says Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg, is ‘a massive failure, probably the biggest failure of public policy…
Brown study
The Spectator Australia has just received a leak of the latest entry in the private diary of Anthony Albanese, Prime…
A royal commission for Victoria
One of the key differentiating points between outgoing Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, and newbie, Ben Carroll, was their preparedness to…
The great company tax trick
Every few months the same story does the rounds. Business groups circulate charts showing Australia’s 30-per-cent company tax rate near…
Missive from Monocultural land
As our brave and fearless editor has recently pointed out, the most monocultural parts of Australia are the institutions captured,…
Japan’s indebtedness threatens the world
In the sea off eastern Japan one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded erupted in March 2011 and created a…
Much is riding on 2028
Around Australia in places of influence Senator Pauline Hanson is depicted as a gaffe-prone, embarrassing, right-wing extremist and a danger…
Pauline – prime ministerial patriot
They say she’s a racist and that she’s not prime ministerial. In what the media admit are its ‘gotcha stakes’,…
Labor pains
Governments do not like to govern. Governing requires choices. Choices create losers and losers complain. It is much easier to…
The Art of the Impossible
It is a tragedy that Jason Arday cut short his life after a slew of his impossible claims were exposed.…
Albo’s boob job
It is hard to think of a less dignified individual for the critical role of representing Australian interests around the…
Can Ben, the Kmart kid, avert the crash?
Around the corner from where we live in suburban Melbourne, there is a sign that reads ‘Fault Identified’. It is…
Will the heatwaves make this year’s French wines better?
It has been a punishing summer in France. Heatwaves, drought and forest fires have driven away tourists and made life…
How will harsh sanctions on Iran play out?
If you control the world’s largest economy, as the US does, and if your enemy depends on exports to the West, as Iran…
The Premier League has lost its passion
The new Premier League season kicks off tonight, with champions Arsenal playing newly promoted Coventry City at the Emirates Stadium.…
Andy Burnham’s plan to end rough sleeping will fail
Andy Burnham has gone further than any of his predecessors have in years in attempting to address rough sleeping in…
Ghent university shouldn’t have suspended Nathan Cofnas
It is ironic that the ‘be kind’ brigade beating their breasts and wailing about the ‘lynching’ and ‘assassination’ of Jason…
Ministers have finally admitted the unsayable about illegal immigration
In the build-up to the 2024 Tory leadership election, Kemi Badenoch declared that ‘not all cultures are equal’. Her argument…
America won’t miss Harry and Meghan
The prospect of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle leaving the United States has been dangled by reports in the British…
Is Labour really considering a Rwanda-style scheme?
After two years in office, Labour may have begun to realise the Tories were right. One of Keir Starmer’s earliest…
The trouble with Cambridge’s education faculty goes all the way to the top
Professor Hilary Cremin, the head of Cambridge University’s education faculty, is best known as the woman who fawned over her…
The insanity of the Lindsay Clancy sympathizers
In 2023, Lindsay Clancy, a former labor-and-delivery nurse from Duxbury, Massachusetts, strangled her three children to death with exercise resistance…
Lucy Powell: There’s nothing wrong with migrant rape pamphlet
“What does this say about the people entering our country?” @NickFerrariLBC asks Education Secretary Lucy Powell why it’s necessary to…
The Victorian moralising of the Home Office’s migrant rape advice
The legacy of the Victorians is everywhere; we depend on them for our sewage disposal, our railway networks, much of…
Why you shouldn’t shrug at New Zealand’s greyhound racing ban
Greyhound racing ended in New Zealand on August 1. Those who neither own a greyhound nor care for the sport…
A New Zealand republic in Jacinda Ardern’s lifetime?
New Zealand’s former Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, believes the nation will become a republic within her lifetime. We have heard…
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’s in a kiss? A millennium of mixed messages
This devastating portrait of Americana
It’s more than 75 years since Lee J. Cobb opened in Elia Kazan’s production of Death of a Salesman and…
An aggravated splendour
Rod Liddle, who died on 2 August, was a journalist of genius and you could only feel a bit wonder-struck…
An exercise in murder
A friend said recently that the only two people he knew who had read Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers…
A gurgle of merriment
Chekhov is tricky. He’s not someone we think of as uproarious but the playwright himself used sometimes to complain that…
The enigma of Juba II, ‘the most fortunate captive ever taken’
What a fantastic subject this would be for a film. Born a prince of Numidia, in northern Africa, the hero…
From housemaid to monster: The Mare, by Angharad Hampshire, reviewed
In 1957, Russell Ryan, an American is holidaying alone in Austria. There he meets a young woman called Hermine Braunsteiner.…
How have we allowed star ratings to take over our lives?
Sometimes I like to imagine who I’d be without the internet. A better person, for sure. A person who has…
‘I always had a good life’: the boast of the 1970s’ most notorious terrorist
If you remember the 1970s you might also remember Carlos the Jackal, an international terrorist notorious for taking the Opec…
Always second but actually invincible: Agrippa, by Robert Harris, reviewed
Any readers of Robert Harris’s new novel who aren’t ancient historians might be surprised to discover what an important figure…
Shots in the dark: Fatal Love, by Louisa Treger, reviewed
Ruth Ellis was, as everyone knows, the last woman in Britain to be hanged – her case a catalyst for…
‘A wonderful, wacky woman’: a tribute to Betty Freedman
David Hockney painted ‘Beverly Hills Housewife’ between l966 and 1967, during an exceptionally happy period of his life. He was…
Finally – an authoritative, stimulating history of the modern Middle East
Around 350 pages into Simon Sebag Montefiore’s exhilarating and accomplished history of the modern Middle East, we reach the present…