Hastie & Pickering
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…
Why is Albanese so defensive about Bowen’s tropical talkfest?
The Prime Minister appeared distinctly agitated when answering questions about Bowen’s expensive and poorly attended paradise climate talkfest in Fiji.…
Is offshore wind a defence risk?
Here are two things worth considering… Firstly, green energy projects and state government agendas envision a version of Australia essentially…
The orange waters of Secret Harbour
‘There are no safe Labor seats in this state, or in this country any more…’ declared Luke Herdegen, the freshly…
Defend sacred ground
I am a co-convenor of the Defend Sacred Ground campaign, which I would like to frame in a wider context.…
Grievance: the insurgency with 50 years to run
Samuel Thawley’s essay in these pages this week did something Australian economic writing almost never does. It located the pain.…
Bicycle helmets and the bubble-wrapping of Australia
A couple of weekends ago, I was reminded of my recent trip to London by Bernard Salt’s article in The…
From Athens to Albo: free speech and history
In our late democratic culture, where rights come cheap and easy, one could be forgiven for thinking our freedoms work…
The wrong man answered
Andrew Tate’s apparent downfall has been satisfying to watch. It shouldn’t be reassuring. If Tate were the problem, his disappearance…
We must stand with the Jews
I write these words with pride in my family, sorrow at what is happening in our country and an urgent…
Digital duty of care
Every few years we get all worked up as a country, and Canberra gets itchy feet about how to slap…
Ben Roberts-Smith, Shah Wali Kot, honour, and the war Australians barely know
Aaron Patrick spoke at the Gallipoli Memorial Club’s inaugural Lone Pine Dinner. At the event, he signed copies of his…
Claude ate my homework
When I was at school, the closest thing we had to AI was Clippy, the little animated paperclip who would…
The Treasury has a vision. (There is medication for that.)
Helmut Schmidt, former Chancellor of West Germany once observed that people who have visions should go and see a doctor.…
Don’t raid WA’s GST – make WA Labor spend it properly
There is a simple way for Australians on the eastern seaboard to think about Western Australia’s GST deal. Forget, for…
Should I fear writing this article?
It sounds absurd that I should even ask. Yet the Albanese government’s latest move is so broad, so unnecessary and…
Strange ‘communists’ I have known
It is ‘more like romance than reality’ Dr William Bland enthusiastically told a banquet celebrating NSW self-government in 1856 (Sweetman).…
The position of the Shahbanu: beyond a royal title
Throughout Iranian history, the term Shahbanu has never been merely a ceremonial title. In the cultural understanding of Iranians, the…
Clayton’s Royal Commission
Aussies of a certain vintage will remember this classic ad from the 1980s, my favourite decade. Yes, following the success…
Repeal the red tape – switch on the future
Australia’s nuclear future is not blocked by physics, engineering, or economics. It is blocked by statute. A handful of deliberate…
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…
Hastie & Pickering
It’s fascinating to compare the current imbroglio between two potential political leaders: Warren Pickering, of whom nobody had ever heard…
If 9/11 happened today
Twenty-five years on, if the 9/11 terrorist attack by al-Qaeda happened today, the response in Australia and countries such as…
The Plibersek paradox
It’s surely impossible to imagine Tanya Plibersek – Plibbers to most of us – ever being the prime minister of…
Business/Robbery, etc
Good news? Or the harbinger of a China-led destruction of the world financial order? When Australian gold exports soared last…
How the party elected to tackle debt fuelled it instead
That the Australian economy is in a mess should not surprise. It should also not surprise that the Albanese government…
Save Nepal – ban continental drift
India started to pull away from Antarctica 132 million years ago and 112 million years ago India fully detached from…
Climate exposé ignored
Artificial intelligence has an unintended talent to entertain through its predictability. Challenge elite orthodoxy on global warming and AI will…
Legacy media don’t get it
There seems to be an almost obtuse wilful blindness amongst the preponderance of those in our traditional, established political parties…
Pauline’s paper premiers
After the summer Pauline Hanson returned from Britain with Nigel in her handbag, even though he declined to meet her.…
Labor’s secret alborithm
Secret Harbour was Labor’s not-so-secret nightmare: a seat it had held since 1989 fell in a landslide to One Nation,…
Hoax of an inquiry
It is now clear that the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, designed to investigate the horrific Bondi massacre,…
Australian notes
One of the unforeseen consequences of the war in Gaza has been a significant erosion of freedom of speech in…
We risk another 9/11 by ignoring Afghanistan
Twenty-five years after 9/11, and five years after the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, armed resistance against their rule…
Scottish schooling was once the envy of the world. Then the SNP came to power
Scottish politics has all the dynamism of day-old porridge. Nothing ever changes, except for the worse. The latest results from the…
The assisted dying vote is a test of Labour’s core values
Andy Burnham has pledged to “eradicate” internal division and restore Labour’s sense of “common purpose”. The first major test of the…
Britain already knows what’s wrong with maternity care
There are a lot of things we know about NHS maternity: that it’s in crisis, that there are a lot…
Oil at $100 a barrel is a disaster for Trump
When Donald Trump’s political obituary comes to be written, none of his colorful phrases over the years will seem quite…
Met launches criminal probe into Reform donations
Nigel Farage faces yet another headache after the Met confirmed today that it will launch a criminal investigation into allegations…
Andy Burnham resembled an extreme train enthusiast at PMQs
Today was Andy Burnham’s second Prime Minister’s Questions and also his last one for five weeks. The mini-recess for the…
How to fix Britain’s ‘sick note’ disease
Alan Milburn, Labour grandee and member of His Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, has said our country’s sick note system…
Why were women banned from the Eiffel Tower?
The French are accustomed to rancorous debates about the threat to women’s rights posed by religious orthodoxies – especially Islam,…
If hot tea kills me, it’ll be worth it
For Britons, there could scarcely be worse news. The national drink – tea – and its usurper, coffee, is killing…
Ryanair is right to fume about the chaos at Britain’s airports
In a crowded market, the National Air Traffic Control Service (Nats) still has a good claim to be our most…
At PMQs, Burnham is short of answers
Kemi Badenoch attacked Andy Burnham on defence spending again for the second Prime Minister’s Questions where the pair faced each…
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 plan is for the country to fall in love with Nigel again’: Richard Tice on what’s next for Reform
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…
This silly and drivelling piece of tosh
Every so often something comes along that is so bad it fills the soul with wonder and dismay. It seems…
This devastating portrait of Americana
It’s more than 75 years since Lee J. Cobb opened in Elia Kazan’s production of Death of a Salesman and…
Few writers have covered their tracks as successfully as Anita Brookner
Anita Brookner, at 80, knew that, were any biographer to delve too deeply into her private affairs, her literature would…
The horror that emerges from the columns of Domesday Book
The opening of the British Museum’s The Bayeux Tapestry exhibition is not far off now. In early July, a bright…
Why we should never be afraid to ask questions
Lani Watson’s wonderful book is a study of the nature of questions: different types of questioning, where questions come from,…
Language lessons: Taipei Story, by Rebecca Kuang, reviewed
Rebecca Kuang was quietly writing cult classics for years before she hit the best-seller lists with Babel, a Victorian fantasy…
The trouble with communism began with Plato
Immediately after the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed, during the brief ‘end of history’ period, there…
Surviving the Dresden firestorm: Slaughterhouse-Five revisited
I was in my teens and a bathtub when I first read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Published in 1969, the novel…
From ballrooms to billets – the fate of our country houses and their owners in wartime
Ever since Brideshead Revisited, both the book and two television series, there has been a fascination with what some of…
Sad girl story: Sophie, Standing There, by Meg Mason, reviewed
Sophie Pattison, 37, is not in a good place: heartbroken, childless, mid-divorce from ‘arsehole’ Paul, with her self-esteem and bank…