Apologies to journalists, but some of us are just clueless
Robot Waleed’s ‘moral burden’ as he dances in The Minefield
ABC Radio National’s The Minefield claims to ‘unpack‘ the moral and ethical issues of our time. Sadly the show fails to unpack…
The People’s Republic of Westralia: where nut jobs rule
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Curtin…
Apologies to journalists, but some of us are just clueless
Imprisoned Saudi writer Raif bin Muhammad Badawi was on my mind this week, as he often is when questions of free speech…
The Great Barrier Reef extortion racket
The Australian Institute of Marine Science has just revealed that Great Barrier Reef coral coverage has recovered to be as good as,…
Is the Kids Helpline helpful – or just a sign of our malaise?
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Curtin…
Bezos’s bell-end: a postscript
When he was back on the ground after his – ahem – epic space flight of all of ten minutes, Amazon founder Jeff…
Covidanity: Australia’s new state religion
A key to understanding our current predicament is the extent to which Covid has come to resemble a religion. Covidanity,…
It's not woke versus woke if lesbians want to exclude the transgendered
The street I grew up on was the border of a public housing estate. On my side of the street…
We need to act now to block Britain’s social credit system
I have to admit that I didn’t quite get it right when, 12 days ago, I wrote: ‘There is a…
China’s Belt and Road to Damascus
There is, it seems, no regime too odious to be a partner of China. Being repressive and corrupt have long…
Why we need bullfighting
Which US state will be first to legalize bullfighting? OK, I need to qualify the question. A few bloodless corridas were…
Will Dr Fauci ever take responsibility for COVID’s emergence?
Listening to the testy exchange between Sen. Rand Paul and St — er, Dr Anthony Fauci the other day, I couldn’t…
New Zealanders are revolting against Ardern
Thousands of tractors this recent week lined the streets of towns and cities throughout the country. In ‘The Howl of…
New Zealand's transgender debate is turning nasty
New Zealand was the first country in the world to give women the right to vote in parliamentary elections. But now,…
Will fairy dust power New Zealand?
Wishful thinking, allied to government incompetence and the ambition of our Prime Minister, is lining up trouble ahead. In one…
Kiwi Life
One of my goals over the coming months is to watch an entire rugby game for the first time in…
New Zealanders are revolting against Ardern
Thousands of tractors this recent week lined the streets of towns and cities throughout the country. In ‘The Howl of…
Flirting with the Marxists
I would vote for any party that promised either to privatise the ABC or to make it a subscription service,…
Business/Robbery, etc.
It’s a legal double-whammy, especially for the resources sector. ‘Perceived bias’ in the Australian judiciary on the one hand and,…
The moral scolds are now in charge
I am in charge of streaming in our household. Someone has to be. Let face it, there is a dizzying…
The Big Lie vs Stop the Steal
The soporific vision of genial old Joe, eating ice cream and mumbling through an autocued speech, belies what’s actually happening…
Ivermectin. It’s as Aussie as Vegemite
As more than five million Sydneysiders woke up to their fourth week under house arrest, they were greeted with the…
Why does the Pope dislike conservatives?
To pray for someone’s death is morally wrong, yet it will be difficult for many Roman Catholics to resist the…
Constitutional outrage
The Wuhan virus could never be sufficient reason to justify the evasion of much of the separation of powers and…
The Greeks
What a time of captivity, what a time of plague. The Disney musical Frozen, long delayed by the mammoth Melbourne…
Martin Clunes
Just as the lockdown imprisons the people of Sydney those in Canberra have had the chance to see that exhilaration…
Opera Australia’s production of Otello
Lockdown must be making me irritable; an article during the week really got me going. It concerns two forthcoming productions…
Ethos
A Sydney lockdown on the heels of Melbourne: what price entertainment? It seemed natural as ever to have recourse to…
The least familiar stretches of Nile prove the most interesting
It’s one of the most tantalising travel images in the world — a felucca floating along the Nile at sunset,…
Terence’s stamp: The Art of Living, by Stephen Bayley, reviewed
Rumours reach me that the libel report for Stephen Bayley’s forthcoming biography of Terence Conran was longer than the book…
Playing with fire — did QAnon start as a cynical game?
On Easter Monday 2018, Donald and Melania Trump stood on the balcony of the White House next to a giant…
As circus gets serious, is all the fun of the fair lost?
What’s so serious about a red nose? How should we analyse the ‘specific socio-historical relations’ and ‘aesthetic trends particular to…
Even psychiatrists don’t know how the drugs they prescribe work
What is it like to go mad? Not so much developing depression or having a panic attack — which is…
The great awakening: Henry Shukman becomes a child of the universe
For eight years I rented a small house in Oxford overlooking the canal. The landlord, a poet and novelist younger…
The man who made Manhattan: The Great Mistake, by Jonathan Lee, reviewed
What makes a city? The collective labour of millions packed into its history; the constant forgetting of incomers who arrive…
The young bride’s tale: China Room, by Sunjeev Sahota, reviewed
Sunjeev Sahota’s novels present an unvarnished image of British Asian lives. Ours Are the Streets chronicles a suicide bomber’s radicalisation,…
