Reclaiming the Port of Darwin must be on the national agenda
Booing, Welcome to Country, and the long activist game
Several things can be true at once. A majority of Australians, as suggested by the Voice to Parliament referendum, disagree…
Come on, Avi – hurry up and Free Palestine!
I used to work with Avi Yemini, the Australian Bureau Chief for Rebel News. He won’t mind me writing this (I…
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…
Let us forget Welcome to Country on Anzac Day
I had a great-uncle, the brother of my maternal grandfather, who died at Gallipoli. My father was in the RAAF…
The great gas give-away
It is a persistent and lazy myth that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is a party of protest without policy. For…
Reclaiming the Port of Darwin must be on the national agenda
Australia faces its most uncertain strategic environment since the end of the second world war. In such times, governments must…
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…
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…
Ex-mandarin eviscerates PM’s claims on Mandy appointment
Whooooo remembers Sir Philip Barton? The lifelong diplomat spent an inglorious four and a half years in charge of the…
We all know how Cole Tomas Allen was radicalized
This column is about the relation between rhetoric and reality, with special reference to political violence and security. Everyone reading…
This is no way to stop the scourge of shoplifting
The ‘tide may be turning’ on shoplifting according to our ever-hopeful Prime Minister – despite the fact shoplifting offences have…
Hereditaries gear up for last hurrah
So. Farewell then to the last hereditary peers. Today marks the last day in parliament for most of the small…
The insufferable saintliness of Labour MPs
It is a part of the human lot that we lug about feelings of doubt, regret and guilt. We carry…
London should ban the naked bike ride
If I walked over Westminster Bridge in my birthday suit, I would almost certainly be arrested. And yet, for some…
Lawfare poses a grave risk to Britain’s military
The United Kingdom’s armed forces have long made an indispensable contribution to the defense of the free world. They are…
Why is Rachel Reeves flirting with rent controls?
Rachel Reeves may have lost the plot. The Guardian reports that the Chancellor is considering a one-year rent freeze on private-sector flats…
What is the argument for keeping Keir Starmer?
For something that’s apparently only a ‘desperate political stunt’, Keir Starmer is taking the looming vote on whether to refer…
Is this what Lord Hermer really thinks about Britain?
Just when things couldn’t get much worse for Keir Starmer’s premiership, they have. Last week the Telegraph exposed Lord Hermer’s continued…
What Harry and Meghan don’t get about royal visits
King Charles III’s state visit to Washington this week is the monarchy executing its core diplomatic function with precision and…
Why America still longs for monarchy
Even when he’s not visiting the United States, King Charles III might occasionally daydream about what his reign would be…
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…