Iran’s Supreme Leader is just as bloodthirsty as his father
China and Russia have their sights set on Antarctica’s oil reserves
On the weekend, I tweeted that Antarctica would become the next frontier of geopolitical conflict as oil shortages in the…
Insatiable greed: Labor to charge for Twelve Apostles
‘It’s only fair that visitors to the region pay a small fee to visit this world-class destination so that we…
How to avoid world war three
Politicians used to be generals because politics was created as an extension of war. In the decades of peace, we…
Houthi pirates are Iran’s canaries: Will they drop off their perch?
The Houthi pirates have gone awfully quiet. For years, they have been holding the Red Sea shipping industry to ransom…
The Canzuk-Aukus convergence: two alliances hiding in plain sight
When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stood before both Houses of the Australian Parliament last week and declared that middle…
Chalmers has never met a tax he didn’t like
Jim Chalmers’ proposed new CGT regime, and mooted changes to negative gearing, would amount to a tax on renters, retirees,…
A preventable Armageddon?
Many have been foreshadowing a war involving the United States, Israel, and Iran, for quite some time, but now that…
Ukraine is wearing Russia down
Here in Ukraine, there is the sense that the grinding war imposed by Russia has reached a turning point, and…
The legless green energy transition
Think of wind, solar, and batteries as the three legs of a stool supporting the Net Zero transition program. The…
‘Yes’ to ISIS brides, ‘no’ to the Iranian women’s football team…
If only the Iranian women’s football team were ISIS brides, our government would have pulled out all stops to help…
Regulated to death
A country that has spent a quarter of a century methodically building the world’s most sophisticated machine for preventing wealth…
Reasons for hope in Iran’s future
In the context of US-Israeli attacks that have decapitated the Iranian leadership, prophets of doom are already predicting an Iranian…
The excellent Australian Constitution
How do you describe the Constitution of one of the most successful Western liberal democracies in history? We can be…
The Persian vacuum
As the smoke clears over the decimated bunkers of Semnan and the industrial ruins of Isfahan, a chilling silence has…
‘Nothing maxxing’
Part of my job involves spending a few hours per week doomscrolling TikTok. It’s a cheat way to keep up…
Saving Moira Deeming
Victorian Upper House member Moira Deeming is one of the most loved and respected conservatives anywhere in the country –…
Running on empty
Despite decades of warnings, Australia has been exposed to an incredibly dangerous situation. We have 30-ish days of fuel security,…
What did I miss?
The week began with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese surprising everyone, not least of all the Labor Party, by officially supporting…
Has every galah in every pet shop become an expert in international law?
To paraphrase Paul Keating, I guarantee that if you walk into any pet shop in the West or indeed the…
Substantially uncertain about being certainly substantial
Australia’s Treasurer, a man with a PhD in political science and the communicative precision of a fortune cookie, stepped to…
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…
Albanese discovers reality
On the last day of February, Anthony Albanese discovered that reality still exists. His statement supporting Operation Epic Fury –…
Unions lose the plot
Jonathan Rivett, a columnist with the Age, recently provided an answer to the question of why so few Australians join…
Australia’s most dangerous word
Ronald Reagan once joked that the nine most dangerous words in the English language were, ‘I’m from the government and…
Why the right keeps shooting itself in the foot on free speech
Freedom of speech is back on the conservative agenda. At the Aspire conference in Sydney last week, sustaining our freedoms…
Sympathy for the Devil
The death of Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, was confirmed on 1 March, provoking joyous celebrations in Iran…
Australia – the pretending nation
In the final years of the Soviet Union, a strange psychological phenomenon took root. The state’s economy was disintegrating, its…
Clerical error
Australia has long thrived within the protective orbit of two of history’s most benign empires: first the British, and then,…
Europe reverses on EVs
The European Union, like the United Nations, can often seem an unstoppable force of wokery, including on climate issues. Yet…
Australia finally did right by Iran’s brave footballers
In 1989, as tanks rolled into central Beijing to crush the pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen Square, Australia’s then prime minister,…
This ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ definition is truly sinister
The government’s new official definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ is 144 words long. But in a sign that even ministers now…
Trump threatens ‘death, fire and fury’ for Iran
Situation report The war with Iran shows little sign of slowing. Even as Donald Trump said on Monday that the…
Has Iran’s drone threat peaked?
In response to the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, Tehran has unleashed more than 1,500 drones on countries across…
Putin is enjoying the Iran war
After Iran unleashed a torrent of missiles against its neighbours – including those with whom it had enjoyed friendly relations…
Can you ‘identify’ as English?
There is not one drop of English blood in my body. I know this because, like many others, I succumbed…
El Mencho is dead. What’s next for Mexico?
For as long as there has been a Mexico, there have been cartels. Geography is not always destiny, but in…
I spent 25 years fighting neocons. Then Trump became one
Like everyone, I’m glued to the news coming out of Iran. I’m experiencing some depression, as one might, upon realizing…
The Green party is barking mad
The enormous fun of Crufts has reminded us that Britain is a nation of dog lovers. Or maybe we’re kidding…
Iran has wrecked Reeves’s cost-of-living promises
Just as Britain’s economy looked to be ‘turning a corner’, it may be about to slam into a wall. The…
Merz is feeling the pressure of Germany’s state elections
Amid growing uncertainty caused by the US-Israel offensive against Iran and surging gas prices, Germany had its first major election…
Does Ed Davey even know what the Iran war is about?
In the years when the Greens cared more about hedgehogs than Hamas, those opposed to military action made the Lib…
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’…
The inconvenient truth about polar bears
That glimpse of grandeur
The death of Robert Duvall the other week was a reminder of how long ago some of our cultural landmarks…
A hoard of lost treasure
Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is the most celebrated of all Australian plays; and this story of the…
Strange and familiar
One of the excitements of seeing Ngaire Dawn Fair in the full trilogy of The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll…
Dark and stormy
The opening gala of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra this year with the renowned pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet seems in every way congruent…
The curse of gold for the Asante nation
As a metal, gold never corrodes. As a possession, the reverse is too often true. It has the power to…
The glory and tragedy of Trafalgar
The historian of naval warfare is to be envied by his land counterpart. The Duke of Wellington wrote to a…
The sorrows of the young Melvyn Bragg
The leaves had yet to fall as Melvyn Bragg left his native Cumbria and arrived in Oxford by train in…
Seeing the trees for the wood
You’re up an oak tree somewhere between Ashtead and Epsom in Surrey. Wet lichens glow as you hunt for a…
How Ulysses horrified the stuffed shirts of New York’s literary establishment
The word ‘obscene’, according to the dictionary, refers to anything ‘offensively or grossly indecent, lewd’. By the standards of the…
Ghastly middle-class materialism: The Quantity Theory of Morality, by Will Self, reviewed
In ‘Ward 9’, the central story of Will Self’s lauded debut collection, The Quantity Theory of Insanity (1991), it is…
A nasty little tale about a marriage: Look What You Made Me Do, by John Lanchester, reviewed
Adultery and betrayal have always been richly rewarding subjects in fiction, as John Lanchester’s Look What You Made Me Do…
‘Evil visited that day and we don’t know why’ – Dunblane 30 years on
Shortly after 9.30 a.m. on 13 March 1996, a man walked into the gymnasium at Dunblane Primary School, near Stirling,…