Dire strait
Silence of the Lambie
Remember when Jacqui Lambie fantasised about throwing Elon Musk in jail? I had forgotten until Damian Coory pointed it out…
Kevin Rudd might be … right(?!)
Carrying on the great political tradition of ‘never buggering off’, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is back – sort of…
The Chalmers diet
Sydney’s working class look hungry. By that I mean, they are getting noticeably thinner. My advice to the political class…
Nepal and the scam of climate reparations
When the Earth shakes – climate reparations fall out. That may be the eventual lesson of the Nepal flood that…
Parents are leaving. The law still wants one kind of school
Parents are not waiting for a white paper. They are leaving. Queensland’s figures are plain. Registered home education rose from…
In defence of disagreement
Charlie Kirk was one of the internet’s most divisive figures. Like many, I disagree with much of what he said.…
The little red man and the unthinking generation
Every morning I walk through Brisbane’s red light district. Nowhere in Queensland is there such a proliferation of red lights…
The academic pursuit of error
I hear so many commentators repeat the mantra: ‘We should teach them how to think, not what to think!’ This…
The legal case for Reform UK
Whilst on holiday in Egypt, I visited the site of the Lighthouse in Alexandria, now a Citadel near a Casbah.…
Vale Gary ‘Angry’ Anderson
Two bands defined my youth – AC/DC and Rose Tattoo. This week we lost the lead singer of the latter.…
Armageddon and Artificial Intelligence
Just when some online worry-warts and so-called ‘climate experts’ are starting to ease a little on warnings that the end…
Alex Antic: reformer, victor, and future leader
Something extraordinary happened last week. South Australian Senator, Alex Antic, won the South Australian Liberal Party presidency. Not a moderate.…
Why the Lord’s Prayer still matters
I am proud to be reading into the Western Australian Parliament a petition initiated by Cáit Folan-Sfakianakis calling for the…
The ‘loose cannons’ of The Spectator Australia
During my latest annual pilgrimage to Europe, I met many ‘conservatives’ who professed to be sympathetic to the themes developed…
Two budgets away from fiscal responsibility
The Australian colonies did comparatively very well in economic development and prosperity. Surely we can repeat this, given that we…
Crisafulli and Check the Science
The most powerful Liberal/National politician in the country, Queensland Premier David Crisafulli, has made a sequence of decisions that indicate…
Macklemore wants to ‘free Palestine’. Which one?
American rapper, Macklemore, is the definition of a modern-day activist idiot. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but it’s true.…
Dead within a decade?
The latest round of AI doomsaying arrived with characteristic drama. Recent media coverage has relayed warnings that artificial super-intelligence might…
Backing away from Net Zero
At the Federal level, the Coalition’s once-blurred battle line on Net Zero is gradually crystallising. Although the ‘Modern Liberals’ have…
What the Coalition’s meeting with Reza Pahlavi means for Australia
On Thursday, September 17, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor, Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Ted O’Brien, and other senior members of the…
SILENCE OF THE ROYALS – Spencer’s memoir and the death of the last Royal carriage maker | S3 Ep 20
This week with Professor David Flint. Does the ghost of Princess Diana still pose a threat to King Charles’ legacy?…
PLEASE EXPLAIN! Why politicians are getting salty over satirical cartoons… | S3 Ep 19
This week… Jacqui Lambie’s rant over One Nation’s Andrew Hastie ‘traitor’ cartoon. Who dragged Albanese’s mother into the political conversation…
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…
Not OKKK
‘Is it heartening for you to see someone like anti-immigration Pauline doing well in Australia?’ asked the Channel Nine journalist.…
Bad laws outlive their victims
England once taxed daylight. It did so for 155 years. That is the number to keep in mind as we…
Time to abandon Snowy 2.0
All tunnels face geotechnical problems from unknown unknowns. In the Channel Tunnel, huge water pressure opened fractures; there were swelling…
Reporting on self-serving twaddle
In my line of work, I read a lot of self-serving twaddle. Arguably, most of what I read is self-serving…
Brown study
Any normal person would know that at my advanced age and imminent senility, the last thing I should be doing…
Taylor & Canavan must stop the preference leak to Labor
Because the enemy is from within, the next election is probably the most crucial in our nation’s history. If the…
Dire strait
After several months of watching his popularity plumb new depths, Prime Minister Albanese must have been looking forward to an…
Unite the right? In Australia we did that
Britain is again debating how to ‘unite the right’. In the Telegraph last week, Lord Frost – Boris Johnson’s former…
If I’m far right, so was JFK
Okay readers, give me two generalisations about the democratic world over the last fifty years. Well, first off, we can…
Germany’s political earthquake
We think we’ve heard it all before: a European election heralded as a great victory for the right against open…
Aussies teed off
When it comes to sinking the career of Anthony Albanese, the scandalous ‘Golfgate’ should be a hole-in-one for the opposition.…
A phalanx of unelected commissioners
I am often in the car around 5 p.m., having helped with the school/kinder pickup. It’s a great joy hanging…
What’s the point of Trump’s cringemaking fawning over Xi?
Moments before President Xi Jinping climbed down the steps of his aircraft to be greeted by Donald Trump, US marines…
It’s a miracle young people aren’t more unhappy
Since 2014, Oxford University Press has been tracking the Children’s Word of the Year, and the results reveal interesting truths…
Horses still have a role in the British army – for now
The Ministry of Defence is a frustrating organisation, secretive, slow to change, often hidebound by process. In one regard, however,…
The UN is no longer a forum for international peace
Should Russia’s aggressive war on Ukraine, with its accompanying litany of horrific human rights abuses, disqualify it from a seat…
Why are women giving up on the Labour Party?
A YouGov ‘mega poll’ out yesterday has been making headlines because it shows Reform UK pushed into third place, behind…
Watch: Polanski heckled at Jewish by-election hustings
Zack Polanski was heckled by furious residents of Holborn and St Pancras at a Jewish community hustings this evening. The…
Australia’s OpenAI hack is a wake-up call
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is someone who doesn’t appear on Donald Trump’s radar. Since Trump’s return to the US…
Was Putin planning to attack France, Italy and Spain?
Since CIA chief John Ratcliffe made an unannounced trip to Moscow in late August to meet with his Russian intelligence…
Does Britain have the worst air travel delays in Europe?
On Monday a ‘connectivity issue’ at the National Air Traffic Services (Nats) centre in Prestwick caused flight delays and more…
The problem with the Tories’ benefits crackdown plan
The Conservatives have had a change of fortune of late. With the latest YouGov polls suggesting that the Tories have…
Andy Burnham’s Ministry of Truth
Yesterday, in America, Andy Burnham announced a new policy which has already been met with concern within the US government.…
Andy Burnham is no statesman
‘Britain is back,’ Burnham declared in his big speech to the UN yesterday. We have been laid low by ten…
Why you shouldn’t shrug at New Zealand’s greyhound racing ban
Greyhound racing ended in New Zealand on August 1. Those who neither own a greyhound nor care for the sport…
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…
The autistocracy: the men on the spectrum who rule our world
An elegance that is hair-raising
Sometimes cultural news is just bad news. Everyone was delighted at the thought that Joanna Murray-Smith’s Switzerland was being turned…
A gorgeous evocation of the natural world
The world of artistic expression runs in a thousand ways. The Melbourne Symphony’s Spring Gala – paralleling the Opera’s Wagner…
A man of great suavity
They were both films that stay in the mind from a lifetime ago. Peter Pan is J.M. Barrie’s contribution to…
The sexiest kind of rock star
It’s strange and sad what the world throws at us. We are assailed by musicals – a production of Reg…
The myth of authentic English food
There were two butcher’s pork pies in my bag that also contained a copy of Lewis Bassett’s The Full English.…
An overpromised land: Farewell to Eden, by Sebastian Faulks, reviewed
Farewell to Eden, Sebastian Faulks’s 18th novel, is a timely masterpiece; a riveting story of war and lost love across…
The Cavalry in the Clouds: tales of the airborne Great War
The first aeroplane flight in Britain was made in 1909 by John Moore-Brabazon, holder of the first British pilot’s licence.…
Rain never stopped play – cricketing feats of Victorian Britain
Drawing on contemporary newspaper reports, this splendid book recreates cricket’s watershed year, 1864. At the time, Kit Harris explains, football…
Madness, mutiny and murder in the Canadian Arctic
The elegant, charismatic and narcissistic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson wasn’t the average adventurer that Alaska attracted in 1912. When he arrived…
A fatal mistake: Time Being, by Jude Cook, reviewed
Jude Cook’s intriguing third novel, Time Being, opens with a bang. A philosophy lecturer has been shot dead through the…
Around Britain with a theodolite: a celebration of the Ordnance Survey maps
It took six years, starting in the summer of 1784, for the Board of Ordnance to establish the baseline of…
The Great Uprising: Doom Painting, by A.K. Blakemore, reviewed
We can never know whether a historical novelist really gets it right, but there are clear missteps. One is ascribing…