Hubris is here
Angus Taylor did the right thing defending Jacinta Price
Why is the media having a fit over Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s podcast interview? I don’t know about you, but…
Bitcoin will be the death of Chalmers
By framing the Budget around intergenerational fairness, or whatever weak excuse the Treasurer gave for raiding private equity, it seems…
Pure, bloody-minded politics
One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson slammed the Albanese government on X this afternoon over a long-running dispute about staff cuts.…
We need to talk about Stafford
On the surface, the Queensland by-election of Stafford may seem unremarkable. A Labor safe seat was held by Labor after…
The children under fire who rarely enter the record
On April 24, 2026, 11-year-old Nesya Karadi of Bnei Brak died from wounds sustained in an Iranian cluster-munition attack three…
Reviving Revive
At the end of the week submissions for Australia’s next National Cultural Policy will close. It is two years until…
The Israel obsession is distracting Australia
Australia’s political left appears so consumed by Israel that one could be forgiven for thinking there are no other issues…
America’s vehicle kill-switch mandate threatens privacy
Have you ever heard of a kill-switch? Unless you are a devotee of American legislative developments relating to motor vehicles,…
Australia needs a CGT rule for the start-up age
Labor’s capital gains tax debate has revived an old question: How should Australia tax asset gains without punishing investment, work…
I just changed my position, Your Honour
While Labor’s Federal Budget has copped a lot of flak from investors and potential property buyers – including the young…
The monstrous reach of the Paris Agreement
We’ve heard it before. A cataclysmic policy or international agreement disguised as performative, symbolic, or ‘a piece of paper’. Anthony…
Why more than 18,000 Australians want Labor gone
Anthony Albanese and Labor are rapidly burning through the one thing every government desperately needs to survive: public trust. And…
Catastrophic bias: if it bleeds, it leads
Sometimes it takes a while for rigorous data-based statistical research to catch up to what anyone with eyes to see…
The ABC and SBS have a problem
The reluctance of Australia’s public broadcasters to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism should not surprise…
Albo’s big, fat pork pie
The Prime Minister of Australia seems to be consistently unable to tell the truth about future policy, especially when it’s…
Standing on the shoulders of leftists
Do you remember the election debate between Morrison and Albanese? Morrison effectively said that Labor had introduced great ideas but…
Of trust and trusts
Our existing political elites fundamentally broke trust over the Covid debacle. They panicked, threw the manual out the window, and…
The aspiration deficit
Deception works best when it appeals to the victim’s deepest anxieties. The Trojan Horse promised divine protection to a profoundly…
What did I miss?
Small businesses copped Labor’s socialist king-hit. These days they’re called a ‘coward punch’ which is fitting, because what the Treasurer…
No wonder men are opting out
The warning signs have been there for decades. Back in 1983, American author Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a powerful book –…
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…
Retreat from net zero
He wouldn’t admit it, but Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen – affectionately referred to as B1 by Speccie…
How Tickle v. Giggle happened
Recently my sister attended a meeting in Goulburn for women hoping to establish a women’s only space, possibly like a…
Too many devil-worshippers in the Liberals’ broad church
It is said, naivety in grown-ups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity. The…
Business/Robbery, etc
There is a lot more depending on the necessity for newly minted opposition leader Angus Taylor’s restoration of traditional Liberal…
The return of Jew-hatred
There was a time when I could watch films and documentaries and read books and first-hand accounts of what happened…
A Human Terrain assessment of the Islamist safe haven of Victoria
Before entering a village in Afghanistan or any other uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment I have worked in across Africa,…
Snouts in the trusts
When Animal Farm was published in 1945, George Orwell had a particular grievance in mind. He had watched, over a…
Bolt from the blue
‘Two former Liberal party heavyweights defect to One Nation,’ read the Sky News Australia headline on Sunday evening as ominously…
Green Party’s former Makerfield candidate shared antisemitic conspiracies
Yesterday, the Green Party announced that its candidate for the Makerfield by-election was quitting the race less than ten hours…
Burnham’s buses show why he will probably fail as prime minister
It’s one of those political facts that everyone parrots without really knowing whether it’s true: Andy Burnham has, in his…
Why the Pentagon has Nigeria in its sights
For the Pentagon, Nigeria is firmly on the list of countries where terror has run amok. In 2025 and again…
Labour’s day of trans reckoning arrives
More than a year after the Supreme Court ruled that a woman is defined by biological sex, Labour has finally…
Why did the Queen push for Andrew to become a trade envoy?
The Andrew formerly known as “Prince” was always supposedly his mother’s favorite child. He had a degree of indulgence paid…
Putin’s nuclear escalation is a sign of desperation
As Vladimir Putin senses the momentum of the war shifting in Ukraine’s favour, he has redoubled his attempts to coerce…
The bleak truth about falling net migration
The government has been in a celebratory mood since the release of the latest immigration figures. The Home Secretary tweeted…
Streeting has abandoned the NHS like everyone else
As well as making noises about wealth taxes that sound suspiciously similar to the kind of thing Andy Burnham would…
The planning catastrophe that stops homes being built in London
The Aylesham Centre is a rundown half-empty shopping centre built in the 1980s. It is a short walk from Peckham…
Net emigration isn’t soaring
This morning the government was able to celebrate some sorely needed good news. Long-term net migration has fallen sharply to…
Starmer’s Russia oil U-turn sends a clear message to Ukraine
The government did two things at once on Tuesday evening. It legislated, for the first time in binding form, the…
Labour MPs are in no mood to celebrate falling migration
Net migration has hit its lowest level since the pandemic – but you won’t catch swathes of Labour MPs celebrating…
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’…
Things can always get worse
Sex symbol or respected actor?
You don’t have to be any specific age to thrill to the Opera Australia production of La Traviata. It is…
A masterpiece of economy
There’s something very odd about the fuss that’s been made about David Szalay who won the Booker a few months…
The performance of her career
It’s odd, isn’t it, the uncanny relationship between success and achievement. Just the other night the Melbourne Theatre Company had…
Skill of the characterisation
Yasmina Reza is one of the most dazzling playwrights alive because she creates sweepingly funny bits of theatre (masterfully translated…
Another heroic freethinker is wiped from Russian history
It sometimes seems that those people chosen to be subjects for biographies are drawn from a strictly limited cast. Every…
Macbeth in Swahili? There might even be improvements
Let’s start with some low-hanging fruit. When, in Henry V, the king inspires his army before Agincourt, the Danish translator…
The punishing gluttony of Georgian high living
Georgian dining, if you were wealthy, was an incredible experience. Everything, from the location to the furniture, was carefully planned…
Highland noir: The Grey Coast; The Serpent; Blood Hunt, by Neil M. Gunn, reviewed
Before he died in 1973 at the age of 81, Neil Gunn was arguably Scotland’s greatest living novelist, a leading…
A weary trek in the steps of Garibaldi and his Redshirts
By the time he died in 1882 at the age of 74, Giuseppe Garibaldi had freed the Italian peninsula from…
It’s grim up north: Malc’s Boy, by Shaun Wilson, reviewed
Shaun Wilson’s latest novel gets going with a childhood recalled like James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young…
What does it say about Britain that the Palace of Westminster is crumbling?
Many political scientists are oddly uninterested in politics. Their fascination is at a level of theory; but the means through…
How Rupert Murdoch destroyed the innocent enjoyment of watching sport
In July 2000, Rupert Murdoch’s Sky acquired an obscure online gambling brand called Surrey Sports. It was little remarked upon…