Canberra's cultural change and the Jenkins looking glass
Comparing Pearl Harbor and the Darwin Raids 80 years on
Pearl Harbor is often compared to the Darwin attack but the similarities are very few. Although both were ‘surprise’ initial…
Josh Frydenberg: the man who would be king
He’s the man who would be king, but Josh Frydenberg originally wanted to be a tennis pro rather than a…
'Not an organ donor anymore' trends after vaccine mandate
#NotAnOrganDonorAnymore has been trending on social media for the last few days after Australians began taking themselves off the organ…
The electric highway – a ‘fuelish’ policy
Scott Morrison has had another green brainwave – spend a zillion dollars to build Australia’s electric/hydrogen highway. Naturally, this ‘Fuelish…
Inside Canberra they’re riding the Greens Machine
It was Labor’s Shadow Defence Minister, Kimberley Kitching, who spilled the beans by forcefully declaring that Labor should not do…
Canberra's cultural change and the Jenkins looking glass
The 2021 federal parliamentary sitting year has been plagued and book-ended by allegations of poor behaviour. It started with Brittney…
Defending Australia from itself
World War I saw a significant tactical blunder by the Commonwealth countries in regards to Gallipoli where 480,000 allied forces…
Religious Discrimination Bill unleashes hell in the ABC
It’s only a matter of time before journalists at the ABC claim religious freedom is a threat to koalas. The…
No. 10 in crisis over leaked Christmas party video
Downing Street is in crisis mode this morning following the publication of a leaked video showing senior No. 10 staff…
What Functional America wants
The United States is still rich enough to meet higher-order needs and call them entitlements. The decades-long response to race,…
The hidden victims of the South African shutdown
I sit in a National Park in South Africa, looking at an empty restaurant in which a robust staff, hired…
Watch: No. 10 staff joking about Downing Street Christmas party
Downing Street have spent the week trying to play down reports of a secret No. 10 party last Christmas when the rest of…
Kiwi Life
A government in jackboots A recent headline echoes the current mood of this now fed-up country, with Sir Russell Coutts,…
He Puapua?
Now why on earth why would the New Zealand government, dominated by the far-left Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, produce a…
Kiwi notes
Our tired democracy teeters When is enough? When Aucklanders recently heard the seemingly interminable lockdown which the Prime Minister Jacinda…
Kiwi Life
Lorde vs Lana People who live in glass houses really shouldn’t get changed with the lights on. Doubly so, one…
Decline and fall of New Zealand
As some readers of this fine weekly will know, my family and I spent eleven wonderful years living and working…
The tide’s gone out
‘Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked’. It’s one of my favourite sayings from…
Business/Robbery, etc.
‘Chaos’, said the headlines. ‘Revolts on the left and the right’, along with ministerial and backbench departures, both voluntary and…
Are the kids OK?
On Sunday, Ben Madgen who plays football for Southeast Melbourne Phoenix tweeted that he ‘ended up in the emergency room…
Last rights
Fraud is an intrinsic and disgraceful part of the Australian electoral system. If our credit card or registered mail systems…
High courts and misdemeanours
The latest forensic disaster, in which one of Australia’s most respected forensic scientists, Kirsty Wright, laid out the serious errors…
Pork-barrelling: the real reason to be in politics
When it comes to parliamentary question time, I hold an equivocal position. On the one hand, I feel I should…
China’s behaviour demands a boycott of the Winter Olympics
First it was former prime minister, Paul Keating, telling us that Australia has no interest in defending the democratic freedoms…
Jane Campion
A new film by Jane Campion is always going to be a magnetsing prospect and the idea of it suddenly…
Nitram
Nitram is the Martin Bryant film which sent shivers down everyone’s spine at the mere prospect. Justin Kurzel’s film about…
As You Like It
As You Like It is middle Shakespeare, probably lateish 1590s. It’s not one of the earlier happy comedies like the…
Don’t forget the motor city
Detroit is the only American city where I always felt uneasy. Even the cops look at you as if you…
There is nothing cosy about Penelope Lively
At one time, Penelope Lively was routinely shortchanged by critics. Her protagonists are often middle-class professionals — historians, archeologists, scriptwriters…
Why I was labelled a bitch: Joan Collins remembers the old Hollywood days
Readers of this magazine will have enjoyed Joan Collins’s diaries, and her Past Imperfect was one of the funniest showbiz…
A celebration of natural wonders: the best of the year’s art books
If one of the purposes of art is to help us see the world around us, then Sebastião Salgado’s photographs…
A broken nation: Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, by Wole Soyinka, reviewed
One of the best episodes in Wole Soyinka’s third novel (his first since 1973) takes place not in Nigeria but…
In defence of capitalism – ‘the greatest engine of human progress ever invented’
For all its faults and foibles, its busts and bailouts, modern market capitalism demonstrates a remarkably bullish resilience. We don’t…
Is Christianity about to end in the place it began?
Janine di Giovanni’s book begins in a Paris apartment during the first lockdown. She’s at a friend’s home, which she…
Why the mid-1960s was the golden age of pop music
On a Monday evening in May 1966, Paul McCartney and John Lennon visited a nightclub called Dolly’s in Jermyn Street.…
A glimpse of the real Patricia Highsmith through her diaries and notebooks
There are three ways of knowing Patricia Highsmith. First, of course, she was the author of 22 novels and several…
