Trust the markets
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…
Jess Wilson seeks to protect war memorials and colonial statues
Jess Wilson and the Victorian Liberals had to do something to win back disaffected conservatives after their preselection disaster, and this is…
EU threatens Australia’s tea tree oil industry
Tea tree oil is a proud Australian export worth around $40 million per year to the essential oils and cosmetics…
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’,…
From the Sydney Opera House to Anzac Day: A pattern of impunity
A fortnight ago, Jewish communities across Australia and the world paused for Yom HaShoah, a solemn remembrance of the six…
From the coronation to a modern civilisation
Reza Shah is considered one of the most influential figures in modern Iranian history. In 1925, by establishing the Pahlavi…
Media God bothering
Donald Trump got the whole media God Bothering-thing started with his now deleted post of him dressed in white Jesus-robes…
This Anzac Day, I Remember John Elmhurst Price
There is a small newspaper clipping in my mother’s possession, fragile and yellowed with the passing of nearly a century.…
The Digger’s Code: Anzac Day and the Vernacular of Belonging
As we pause this Anzac Day to remember the fallen and their mates, spare a thought for our native language…
Could a former Prime Minister help reform the Liberal Party?
Factional wars and external pressure from the Teals and One Nation have created the perfect storm for Liberal Party reformers.…
Australia’s shameful silence on youth gender medicine
Another major peer-reviewed study on so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ has been published, and predictably, Australia’s political class has responded with the…
The wolf in inclusion’s clothing
As a former anglophile, I liked their earlier stuff better, and I often check in to see just how close…
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…
Oxford’s grand new building reveals the university’s misplaced priorities
The Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities in Oxford is well and truly open; there was an Open Day this weekend.…
The targeting of Trump tells its own tale
“I can’t imagine that there’s any profession that is more dangerous,” Donald Trump told reporters just hours after the shooting incident…
Britain has a Prime Minister problem
I wrote not all that long ago about this disconcerting situation we’re in where the only news story the Prime…
Net zero and the myth of German efficiency
Losing one energy source may be misfortune. Losing two is carelessness. And losing three is alarming if you’re the world’s…
Book publishers must fight back against AI
AI writing is God-awful. It appears intelligent at first glance, empty at second. It possesses the insufferable buoyancy of a…
Sunday shows round-up: shots fired at the White House correspondent’s dinner
Shots fired at White House correspondents’ dinner On Saturday night, shots were fired as an armed suspect charged security at…
The true cost of Chernobyl isn’t what you think
On the morning of the 28 April 1986, a worker at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden set off…
Why the ban on Palestine Action should be upheld
Next week, the Court of Appeal will hear Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s appeal against a High Court decision that the…
Immigration has turned the Netherlands into a tinderbox
To many Dutch voters, it came as no great surprise. This week, the Senate rejected a package of immigration laws…
London is becoming the home of climate litigation
The British high court is currently preparing to hear a case that will be conducted in accordance with Filipino law.…
What I heard inside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
The evening had started pleasantly enough. The most alarming thing about the party I was attending in the Hilton Hotel…
Shots fired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Donald and Melania Trump entered the hall at 8:16 to cheers and applause. “Hail to the Chief” was followed by…
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…