Legacy shopping at the Dollar Store
Migration? That’s not Albanese’s problem
Mass migration is the most influential voting topic in Australia. This makes progressively-minded politicians uncomfortable, as it is a judgment…
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 Meloni-Trump saga is wild
Amidst the extremely serious geopolitics of Europe and the Middle East – where politicians are navigating active war fronts –…
The death taxes are dead
Family trusts and small businesses have been given a teensy reprieve from Labor’s so-called ‘tax reform’. Everyone is happy about…
Legacy shopping at the Dollar Store
Every government arrives in office convinced that history is waiting patiently for its grand performance. The Albanese government was no…
Consumer-first energy future?
Our three energy regulatory agencies and the Productivity Commission, the government’s independent economic adviser, have all issued reports and recommendations…
Yes, the Nationals can survive
Each party has major, consequential decisions to make in Australian politics these days. One of the more interesting is not…
Are we ‘Building a Better Future?’
Has the government actually met the promises it made with the Prime Minister’s speech opening the May 2025 election? Were…
The future is out of fashion
I recently watched a clip of Warren Buffett where he recalled a joke about the comedian W.C. Fields. After inheriting…
The correct Uniculturalism is superior to Multiculturalism
Etymonline (you guessed it, it’s a blend word combining etymology with online, a portmanteau) tells us that the blend word…
Gina’s space odyssey
At News Corp’s Bush Summit in Townsville this week, Australia’s richest woman proposed offering Elon Musk’s SpaceX sparsely populated Queensland…
Australia’s political grief
Australia’s establishment, whether it be politicians or journalists, calls the present insurgency a convulsion. It has the diagnosis backwards: the…
Beyond Multiculturalism
Senator Pauline Hanson recently argued at the National Press Club that while Australia is a multiracial country, it cannot and…
The Unfashionables
I was only 14 years old when Tony Abbott ran a 2013 federal election campaign largely centred on what was,…
Burning money in the name of ‘diversity’
Almost a quarter of a century ago, Microsoft launched the Xbox – a video game system that would eventually evolve…
Pauline Hanson came, saw, and conquered Canberra
The National Press Club this week attempted to show its liberal democratic credentials by giving the One Nation leader a…
Roll over Banjo, they’re culling your brumbies
I’m sure Banjo Paterson would be rolling in his grave if he learns that the beautiful wild brumbies that featured…
Stop the scare – save the science
The past two decades have seen an explosion in climate anxiety among children, defined as the chronic fear of environmental…
The X-Files of tax reform
I recently visited the website of the Federal Senate Standing Committees on Economics. If that doesn’t sound like the most…
Why One Nation is striking a deeper chord
One Nation’s critics have a lazy explanation for its rise. They say Pauline Hanson’s party is merely riding a Populist…
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…
Jim Chalmers is one of the most useless treasurers ever
Jim Chalmers will go down as one of the worst treasurers that Australia has ever had, up there with Jim…
Canberra’s obscene compassion machine
The alleged abduction and murder of five-year-old Kumanjayi Little Baby from an Alice Springs town camp should have shattered one…
The madness of Mabo
In the mining industry (and probably every other sector), Aboriginal heritage is no longer about the protection of Aboriginal heritage.…
Please explain, Pauline
One of the small pleasures of Australian politics over recent years has been Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain videos. Usually they…
Business/Robbery, etc
Deliberate, deceptive and disastrous. And although it is among the most damaging of all the appalling injuries the Albanese Labor…
Water versus massive waste
There’s one man in Australia who can say with overwhelming scientific authority that Donald Trump is right – the theory…
MAFS arms and legs race
I hadn’t planned to write about this, but life has a strange way of forcing your hand. After a particularly…
One Big Government Nation
In her address to the National Press Club this week, Senator Pauline Hanson took aim at the financial disaster that…
The last days of Starmer: A view from inside the No.10 bunker
It’s true that collapses come slowly and then fast. Ours started before we got into power with the belief that…
Streeting’s surrender is bad for Britain
Government bonds haven’t had a great few days, but there is one asset which has plummeted far quicker in value…
The very personal tragedy of Keir Starmer
Now that the end has come for Keir Starmer, history can get to work, analyzing and anatomizing his failures. The…
Wes Streeting: I’m backing Burnham
pic.twitter.com/ZVX6vS6Tl2 — Wes Streeting (@wesstreeting) June 22, 2026 Well, well, well. After weeks of insisting he ‘has the numbers’ and…
The truth about Keir Starmer’s legacy
It was when Keir Starmer claimed never to have had a dream that I knew we were dealing with potentially…
Why Japanese students aren’t woke
One of the joys of living in Japan is the lack of wokeness. It is not that it doesn’t exist – there is a…
Appointing Miliband as chancellor would be a mistake
There are plenty of solid arguments for Ed Miliband’s outriders to make about why he should be the chancellor when,…
Twelve graphs that expose Starmer’s dismal legacy
Keir Starmer has set out his timetable for leaving office less than two years after winning a landslide 174-seat majority.…
Sir Keir Starmer: I quit
BREAKING: Sir Keir Starmer has announced a timetable for his resignation as prime minister. Live updates: https://t.co/0NZcBgSmUq pic.twitter.com/awlsBDQYLK — Sky…
Starmer’s tears show why he failed as PM
Keir Starmer looked visibly emotional as he walked up to the lectern in Downing Street this morning. The Prime Minister…
Why Burnham’s casual dress sense is smart politics
It is time to talk about the real Andy Burnham and what he cares about most. In other words, let…
How a Trump-loving lawyer nicknamed ‘The Tiger’ became Colombia’s president
Abelardo de la Espriella was never going to be a typical Colombian presidential candidate. Nicknamed ‘The Tiger,’ the defence lawyer…
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 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…
Will the Iran deal destroy J.D. Vance?
Striped caps and striking shoes
June 11 saw the death of the Yorkshire-born English painter David Hockney who was arguably the most celebrated painter of…
A man of music
The other day saw the opening of the Peter Corrigan Collection at RMIT which comprises his personal collection of architectural…
Such stuff as dreams are made on
When Ken Branagh took the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford for the first time in thirty years…
Elegance and intrigue
Anyone who knows the Sixties can easily be reminded of the beauty and the authority of Sidney Poitier. The MTC…
The clear and present danger of exploring the Gulag
On 21 February 2022, 35-year-old Charlie Walker flew into Yakutsk in the Russian Far East, ready to ski hundreds of…
A trove of avian lore and history
I finished reading The Book of Birds by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, and leaned out of my attic window…
A grandmother’s twisted mind: The Passage of Roses, by Tie Ning, reviewed
At first glance, Tie Ning’s The Passage of Roses appears to be yet another Chinese novel set during the Cultural…
There will be blood – the vital work of field transfusion units
Most conventional second world war military histories focus on weapons, materiel and even the manpower needed for a decisive victory…
No fairytale: The Children, by Melissa Albert, reviewed
Who would be a child made famous by a book? A.A. Milne’s son, immortalised as the teddy-trailing Christopher Robin in…
Alien fever shows no signs of abating
These two books are about aliens – intelligent beings who may or may not have visited our planet. Jonathan Caplan…
Vigilante justice: Pure Men, by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, reviewed
Like the Booker, the Prix Goncourt’s laureates now tend to veer between diamonds and duds. One of the strongest recent…
French letters – Albert Camus’s great epistolary love affair
The extraordinary correspondence between Albert Camus and the love of his life Maria Casarès must rank among the most passionate…