How is this budget fair to young Australians?
Taxpayers despair at forking out for ISIS brides
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor offered two numbers that represent taxpayer-funded support. Pensioners: $31,309 ISIS Brides: $46,889 Taylor presented these figures…
Angus Taylor: party of convenience, not conviction
The results of the Farrer byelection are going to be difficult to swallow for the Liberal faithful. Farrer, described as…
Is Labor allergic to fuel security?
Albanese has been on an extended begging tour of Asia, promising who-knows-what in exchange for the odd shipment of fuel.…
Nuclear energy and uranium mining for NSW?
A milestone was reached yesterday when a bill to repeal the 1986 prohibition on nuclear energy and uranium mining passed…
Are death duties next?
The May 2026 Budget has confirmed what many suspected: Labor’s election promises are merely temporary placeholders for a more predatory…
A student perspective on the ‘lost boys’ in higher education
Recently, I came across a post from The Australian on X with the headline: Lost boys need a leg-up as…
How is this budget fair to young Australians?
The biggest problem with the government’s negative gearing changes is not simply the policy itself. It is who still gets…
Australians are paying for broken promises and election lies
Now Labor wants Australians to believe the budget problems are suddenly the fault of instability in the Middle East and…
Budget 2026 losers and biggest losers
The Treasurer’s opening statement in the budget overview places the blame for our current economic woes on the war in…
Rubio is coming…
Who will be the next President of the United States? Donald Trump will, alas – and I mean alas –…
Sex matters, but where are the men?
The gender debate in Australia has long been driven by women. It’s women who’ve had their community sports made unsafe…
I am done with the debate. I want outcomes…
The Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion formally opened last week. Over recent days, I’ve sat watching the lived…
Recession, this way comes
Australia is heading for a recession. Policymakers may not want to admit it yet, but the warning signs are flashing…
What did I miss?
Probably the main thing you missed this week was that Nasa released actual footage of UFOs under President Trump’s orders.…
What David Pocock, and others, miss in the gas tax debate
There’s a reason the recent gas tax debate has cut through. Australians haven’t suddenly developed a deep interest in resource…
The Farrer by-election was worse than we think
The results from the May 9, 2026, Farrer by-election are in, and it is worse than you think. It appears…
The 1932 ghost
Chris Minns has plenty of reasons to feel secure right now. As a first-term Premier, he’s still ahead in the…
Noblesse Oblige died last night
Classical liberalism was not invented at the Albury Conference. It was inherited. Locke gave us the idea that government exists…
How counter-sovereignty is killing the West
Sovereignty, in classical terms, was the locus of final political authority within a bounded polity. Sovereignty for Hobbes must be…
War of the Worlds: Is the populist moment coming for Australia?
Watching the results for the Farrer by-election come in I was surprised at how high the final vote was for…
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 blame game
There is an interesting debate taking place in Britain right now. On one side is Dan Hannan. Or if you…
Another budget lock-up
I don’t know how many budget lock-ups I have attended. I know the answer would be depressing, so I don’t…
Hold your horses!
Greetings from an increasingly chilly Narrandera – One Nation central in the heart of the Farrer electorate where One Nation…
Hating men
In 2018, feminist and professor of sociology Suzanna Danuta Walters asked, ‘Why Can’t We Hate Men?’ in a piece for…
Eurovision’s sadly accurate microcosm
The annual Eurovision Song Contest grants us all a wonderful blend of music of varying quality served with performances that…
Enid Blyted
From small beginnings, the elite have progressed to Covid lockdowns and net zero. Since the second world war, including my…
Grifters’ war on thrift
With the federal budget less than a week away, the Albanese government is shamelessly trashing the promises it made about…
The King of Australia (and Great Britain) wows the Americans
The Royal Visit to Washington, DC has been nothing short of a diplomatic triumph, with King Charles III and President…
Food shortages don’t worry the Falklands
Rumour had it that the Falkland Islands were running out of food. There was panic, it was said, and people…
You’ll miss Keir Starmer when he’s gone
You will miss Sir Keir Starmer when he has gone. I hear you say that you will do no such…
The London school where pupils are fighting back against striking teachers
Moan all you like about Gen Z, but some of today’s youngsters put adults to shame. Take the pupils at…
Keir Starmer has one card left to play
As calls for Sir Keir Starmer’s head grow ever louder among Labour MPs, the British Prime Minister is digging his…
Trump is in the mood to do a deal with China
As President Trump travels to China today, his original plans for the visit have been upended. He wanted to arrive as…
America’s Trump card in China
The Trump administration has released a list of CEOs who will be accompanying the president to his meeting in China…
Starmer should stay
Sir Keir Starmer remains dug in as Prime Minister, having told the cabinet: ‘Bring it on if you think you’re…
Zack Polanski’s council tax blunder shows he isn’t fit to lead the Greens
What a lucky fellow Zack Polanski is, in that his little council tax issue has come to light on the…
Jess Phillips’s resignation will be particularly painful for Starmer
All three of the resignation letters from ministers who have quit government in the past couple of hours will be…
Keir Starmer is done
This morning’s cabinet meeting was one for the ages. At 9.30 a.m., British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was greeted by…
Louise Haigh’s economic plan would hasten Britain’s decline
The government is on the brink of collapse, ministers are openly fighting for the succession, and the bond vigilantes are…
Keir Starmer’s ‘chaos’ hypocrisy
It’s fair to say the reset speech didn’t quite do the trick. As the number of Labour MPs calling on…
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’…
My night under fire at the White House correspondents’ dinner
The performance of her career
It’s odd, isn’t it, the uncanny relationship between success and achievement. Just the other night the Melbourne Theatre Company had…
Skill of the characterisation
Yasmina Reza is one of the most dazzling playwrights alive because she creates sweepingly funny bits of theatre (masterfully translated…
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…
Would W.G. Grace recognise the game of cricket today?
There’s a fascinating thought that the authors of Full Circle pursue for just a couple of pages, then leave hanging:…
Lean and mean: Mick Jagger was always a tightwad
This book got glowing reviews when it was published in the US a few months ago: ‘Irresistible’ (New York Times);…
Marvels of the masked ball: dressing up in Georgian London
In the satirical print ‘Remarkable Characters at Mrs Cornely’s Masquerade’ from February 1771, the Georgian craze for dressing up as…
Accelerating the ‘kill chain’ – a terrifying glimpse of future warfare
America possesses the most powerful military in history, but since 1945 it has not won a war against anyone other…
From pike-and-pitchfork brigade to crack militia: ‘Dad’s Army’ wasn’t so ludicrous after all
Ever since the BBC’s Dad’s Army (which ran from 1968 to 1977), it’s been hard to keep a straight face…
No one is ordinary: The Things We Never Say, by Elizabeth Strout, reviewed
It is both a comfort and a discomfort to yield to a new novel from Elizabeth Strout, who writes with…
Is coffee-drinking the new secular religion?
A lot of books, obviously depending on what mood you’re in and viewed from a certain angle, slantwise or squintlike,…
They shoot horses: Boyhood, by David Keenan, reviewed
David Keenan’s seventh novel is quite the ride, but its plot is not always easy to disentangle. The author has…