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Politicians need to ditch the faux celebrity act
There’s an old adage which says that politics is “show business for ugly people”; the idea being that if you’re not attractive…
Daniel Andrews and Victorian Labor: devious, dangerous and duplicitous
Victorian taxpayers are supposed to believe the Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, is pure as the driven snow. We are supposed…
ScoMo doesn’t need to go to Glasgow. I grew up there and can tell him all he needs to know
I grew up close to Glasgow on the River Clyde, and from our kitchen window you could predict the weather…
Covid, compassion, conscience and civil disagreement
Some would argue that thanks to ‘cancel culture’ and the curious notion that a differing view is synonymous with stupidity…
The Bureau of Statistics bells the cat on lockdown and jobs
Today’s unemployment figures give a picture-perfect snapshot of the impact of lockdown on jobs. The unemployment rate increased to 4.6%,…
News Corp has its woke and eats it?
Is the Harvey Norman, sorry, News Corp papers’ sudden greenwashing an attempt to generate advertising revenue? One reader thinks so.…
Who exactly runs the ABC nowadays?
The combative, pugnacious Gaven Morris is quitting his taxpayer-funded job as national news chief at the ABC. The questions as…
The imperative of a complete ban on Hamas
On October 1, the head of ASIO, Mike Burgess, expressed support for banning Hamas in its entirety. When questioned during…
British oddsmakers: Trump favorite to win in 2024
They say betting markets are more reliable indicators of election outcomes than the pundits and even the polls. But the…
Pete Buttigieg’s high class problems
It’s time for Pete Buttigieg to truck off down the road from the Department of Transportation — if, that is,…
Feminism has failed us
I’ve lost count of how many seminars I’ve had to sit through on Diversity & Inclusion, how many times I’ve…
Why Covid means the big state is back
History suggests that when the state expands in a crisis, it doesn’t go back to its pre-crisis level once the…
Insufficient intent
To tell you the truth, I lost interest in Aussie rules football some time ago. My team is into a…
Kiwi Life
A crisis by design It is increasingly sad, so many New Zealanders saying they would leave – if they could…
Kiwi Language
A tech company claims that anti-vax and anti-lockdown rallies have been ‘astroturfed’. Which means? Well, ‘AstroTurf’ was the world’s first…
No, New Zealand is not Aotearoa
“Create your own pepeha to celebrate te wiki o te reo movement.” Given that estimates range between about 4% and…
Covid ‘science’, lockdowns and flat-earthers
As we hurtle towards medical app-artheid with ethically challenged vaccine passports following anti-science lockdowns, answer me this: have you ever…
Insufficient intent
To tell you the truth, I lost interest in Aussie rules football some time ago. My team is into a…
Business/Robbery, etc.
There are far better ways to spend $50 billion if you really want to ‘save the planet’ than splurging it…
Once were revolutionaries
For all its flaws, Twitter occasionally delivers gems of information that would otherwise pass one by. Thus the news that…
The Covid hunt
Freedom Day for the Double Vaccinated in Sydney was cold and wet, matching the mood of many. It is not…
A different Afghanistan
As the world salutes the 20th anniversary of the start of the Afghanistan War, and ponders the chaos and bloodshed…
Xi’s battle for absolute control
Following the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration about Hong Kong, an increasing number of residents of the island moved to Australia,…
Aux bien pensants
Net zero only the beginning ‘Net zero emissions’ are only the beginning. A similar sleight of hand is occurring with…
Maggie Smith
And so we look like being able to see live performance again in the two biggest cities in Australia: Sydney…
Clive Owen
A time of plague makes us brood on the culture we share in the absence of personal preference. One person…
Heath Ledger
It’s weird to hear news of artistic life in the midst of Covid. The Sydney Theatre Company has a new…
Nic Denton and Frances O’Connor
As the northern hemisphere, that ambiguous spectral homeland we’re conscious of, starts to open up, it’s easy to be envious…
Another haphazard Booker shortlist lacks literary competence
The Booker used to be more enthusiastic about the historical novel than it now is. Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle (Doubleday,…
Folk music is still very much alive and kicking
As a writer who obsesses over the right title to grab a target audience, seeing a book subtitled ‘Song Collectors…
Any beggar woman was a potential scapegoat during the European witch craze
In the three centuries between 1450 and 1750 in Europe it is estimated that up to 100,000 women were burned,…
Don’t ask a historian what history is
E.H. Carr’s 1961 book What is History? has cast a long shadow over the discipline. I recall being assigned to…
Under deep suspicion in Beirut, Kim Philby still carried on regardless
The story of the Cambridge spies has been served up so often that it has become stale — too detailed,…
Reassess every relationship you’ve ever had before it’s too late
‘Reading is a celebration of the mystery of ourselves,’ according to Elizabeth Strout, who writes to help readers understand themselves…
Colson Whitehead celebrates old Harlem in a hardboiled thriller that’s also a morality tale
For modern America, Harlem is a once maligned, now much vaunted literary totem, which continues to occupy a gargantuan place…
From ‘little Cockney’ to playing Queen Mary: the remarkable career of Eileen Atkins
Eileen Atkins belongs to a singular generation of British actresses, among them Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Sian Phillips and Vanessa…
