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…
Chris Minns declares he’s leaving … eventually
Aw… but everyone loves him? At least, that is what I am told by a nauseating procession of Labor and…
Albanese’s catastrophic ‘deplorables’ moment
It’s possible to pinpoint the exact moment Democrat hopeful Hillary Clinton lost her presidential campaign. No, it wasn’t a dodgy…
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…
Neither globalisation nor protectionism
When it comes to foreign policy, the debate can easily get simplified into a binary of ‘free trade v protectionism’…
Iran: When is war the lesser evil?
For forty-five years, the West has tried to weaken Iran’s regime without toppling it, and the people of Iran have…
Another ‘world first’ from the Allan government
The Victorian Labor government has continued with its ‘world first’ legislation with its recently announced work from home laws joining…
Will the West survive the Marxist-Islamist alliance?
‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ – Kautilya, in Arthashastra, a Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, 4th Century BC…
Who gives a toss about Kyle and Jackie O?
This week the news cycle has been dominated by the spectacular implosion of Australia’s highest-paid radio duo, Kyle Sandilands and…
Iranian warship sunk off Sri Lanka raises more questions than answers
The alleged sinking of an Iranian warship off the south Sri Lankan coast raises more questions than answers at present.…
This is not Winston Churchill
The bombing campaign is the least interesting part of this war. Missiles and satellite images dominate the news cycle, but…
When civilisations hesitate
‘Christianity was saved in Europe solely because the peoples of Europe fought.’ – President Theodore Roosevelt, Fear God and Take…
The case for American-Israeli intervention in Iran
Only a few days ago, on February 24, I argued that because of Iran’s: …egregious violations of basic human rights,…
Grief over Khamenei reveals a serious problem in Australia
I have always been very critical of Tony Abbott for his inability to recognise his enemies when they were standing…
Angus needs time, but conservatives want a revolution
The Liberal Party are searching for good news in the polls on the back of Angus Taylor taking over from…
We are in the final days of the liberal epoch
It is rare thing in the corporate wokeonomy that an important figure has the guts to speak out about important…
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…
The Iran war is showing no sign of slowing
Israeli and American military operations against Iranian targets intensified over Thursday, while Iran and its proxy militias across the region…
Trump’s war doesn’t mean the rebirth of neoconservatism
Win or lose, Donald Trump has begun the last war the United States is ever likely to fight in the…
The real reason Greens are gaining ground
It was only a matter of time before an ultra-progressive, hard-left party with a fondness for voguish identity politics, enthusiasm…
Emmanuel Macron is having a good war
It is not just Donald Trump who believes Keir Starmer has failed to channel Winston Churchill. Now Cyprus have given…
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,…