Whitewashing fundamentalist Islam?
Booing, Welcome to Country, and the long activist game
Several things can be true at once. A majority of Australians, as suggested by the Voice to Parliament referendum, disagree…
Come on, Avi – hurry up and Free Palestine!
I used to work with Avi Yemini, the Australian Bureau Chief for Rebel News. He won’t mind me writing this (I…
President Trump addresses shooting at White House Correspondents’ Dinner
‘That was … very unexpected,’ said President Trump, addressing the press after the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.…
Gina Rinehart’s act of kindness toward veterans
Broke Labor, the delusional Greens, and their cultivated maze of semi-socialist converts have been beating their ‘eat the rich’ drum…
The high (moral) crimes of left-wing ideology
It is easy to forget that what we think of as ‘constitutional democracy’ covers fewer than half of the world’s…
Whitewashing fundamentalist Islam?
Given Iran is a despotic Islamic theocracy dedicated to destroying Israel and perpetrating a Jihad against the West, and given…
How welcoming are the Welcomes?
The discourse around Anzac Day this year was dominated by the reaction to ‘Welcome to Country’ ceremonies. These ceremonies now…
The battle for Farrer … and conservatism
While I am a Queensland Senator, the political battle taking place in Farrer is fascinating. Usually, a by-election triggered by…
The other strait we should be worrying about
The world is fixated on the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. It should be watching the waters off Taiwan,…
Let us forget Welcome to Country on Anzac Day
I had a great-uncle, the brother of my maternal grandfather, who died at Gallipoli. My father was in the RAAF…
The great gas give-away
It is a persistent and lazy myth that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is a party of protest without policy. For…
Reclaiming the Port of Darwin must be on the national agenda
Australia faces its most uncertain strategic environment since the end of the second world war. In such times, governments must…
Gina Rinehart: Lest We Forget
The following is a transcript from Gina Rinehart’s Anzac Day Sunset Tribute at the Sydney Opera House. Today, we especially…
Trust the markets
There is a seductive new idea doing the rounds on the political right. And like most seductive ideas, it should…
A continent-sized nation, living in a corner of itself
Australia is one of the largest countries on earth, yet most of its population and economic activity are concentrated in…
Perpetual indignation is not a Constitutional principle
Many harsh things have been said about our beautiful country. Yet the Australian Parliament now also wants to ‘…foster informed,…
We are sleeping through history
All Speccie readers know there is a particular kind of intellectual courage that costs nothing. It loves prudence, develops complexity…
A reflection on my father
He was the man with the most even temperament that I have ever known. Knowing my father as a person…
Do land claims present a risk to North American society?
Canada is taking risks with its sovereignty on the West Coast, and the rest of North America should be paying…
God’s money and fool’s gold
What if you prayed relentlessly – ‘God, please design the perfect money for us humans on Earth…’ The ‘perfect money’,…
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…
The wrong clubs
After nearly three decades practising as a garden-variety civil lawyer, steering well clear of international law and anything to do…
Business/Robbery, etc
It’s energy, stupid. And that means all forms – oil, gas, coal, nuclear and the broad range of renewables. Energy…
Angus takes a stand
The fact that Tony Burke, Paul Keating and Andrew Leigh felt the need to formally respond to the recent speech…
Hungary’s messy new direction
The many who don’t follow news from Hungary closely must have thought the landslide defeat of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán…
Command and control Australia
Author Donald Horne explained how Australia was ‘the Lucky Country’ since it became successful despite the fact it was run…
Living with a lie
At this year’s World Economic Forum, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned about ‘a rupture in the world order, the…
Decapitating Poppies
In the lead-up to Anzac Day, the Australian National University has released an interesting poll. The headline finding is that…
Body of evidence
As Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping walked to a platform to review a Beijing military parade last September, their words…
The end is nigh for Opec
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) choosing to quit the Opec oil cartel after nearly 60 years of membership is, to…
Why are women so anti-nuclear?
When I was a teenager, I became mildly obsessed with The Darwin Awards. The Darwin Awards, in their own words,…
Is ChatGPT losing its shine?
Sam Altman has always been a charmer. At school he revelled in the art of persuasion, joining a school debate…
Was King Charles’s Congress speech a success?
President Trump lavished praise upon King Charles from the Oval Office at the outset of his four-day state visit to…
The Scottish independence lie
For the last 20 years, Scotland has been labouring under a lie. A lie that is so offensive that seemingly…
The US is back in charge of the oil industry
The United States is getting sucked into a conflict in the Middle East, central banks are desperately trying to keep…
The Mamdani idea of the British crown
Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York has faced what others might consider awkward moments in office, as when two Islamists, inspired by ISIS, tried to…
The King’s speech: disagreement should not become divorce
The King’s address to Congress was a rare and authoritative statement of national and international interest, delivered from a position…
Starmer’s long goodbye
The slow political death of Sir Keir Starmer continued again today. Westminster must increasingly resemble a torture chamber for the…
British Ambassador torpedoes King’s state visit
Oh dear. Just when you thought a British ambassador to the US couldn’t possibly cause any more grief for Sir…
Watch: Morgan McSweeney’s mea culpa
It’s a blockbuster day in parliament today. To kick things off, we had Philip Barton up pleading ignorance; to close…
Why the Greens have a problem with alcohol
I think the best and most succinct description of the Green party was Tim Stanley’s ‘Stalin with a nose ring’.…
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 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’…
Organised crime is targeting artisanal food
Scrupulous fidelity
Isn’t it fascinating how much we adapt works of literature? 150 years ago someone would have had a fair chance…
Like him or loathe him
It’s cheering to hear very promising reports of Barrie Kosky’s production of Siegfried at Covent Garden suggesting that the Melbourne-born…
Cruelties of popular culture
Ethan Hawke is an extraordinary figure. He has made straightforward Hollywood classics like Training Day but he also comes out…
Deaths in the mind
It’s strange the way certain deaths stay in the mind perhaps because of the fascination and interconnection of the lives…
Haunting images: The Shadow of the Object, by Chloe Aridjis, reviewed
What marks out Chloe Aridjis as a novelist is her ability to create atmospheres and ambiences. These often have hints…
A portrait of the fin de siècle in all its morbid decadence
Everyone I have met who has read Belchamber, Howard Sturgis’s novel of 1904, would endorse Edith Wharton’s judgment that this…
The potentially catastrophic consequences of reading Kafka
Rainer Maria Rilke’s claim that fame is the ‘sum of all misunderstandings’ is certainly true of Franz Kafka, whose life,…
The nightmare of filming A Hard Day’s Night
It would be easy to dismiss A Hard Day’s Night, the Beatles film made in 1964, as a throwaway period…
Why it’s permissible to betray family secrets
Blake Morrison is the quintessential man of letters. More exactly, he’s a man of genres – poet, novelist, playwright, essayist,…
Alone on a vast fjord, surrounded by whales, beneath the midnight sun
As an angler in pursuit of fish across some 45 countries, I have travelled in a variety of precarious watercraft,…
Antony Gormley’s lonely figures transfer to paper
If there’s any consolation to be had in the prospect of AI filling the world with humanoids, it will be…
Farewell to the Calloways: See You on the Other Side, by Jay McInerney, reviewed
Many of Jay McInerney’s characters had their glory days in the 1980s and 1990s of his vivid early novels, with…