Chris Bowen doesn’t need a Khemlani, he’s got you and me
The price of coffee could lose Albo the election
The price of coffee is set to become an election-defining issue after the Prime Minister was ridiculed and community-noted across…
Defiling Asimov’s Laws
Laymen concerned by the encroachment of AI assume CEOs and world governments are designing the digital age loosely around the…
Silence of the Lambie
Remember when Jacqui Lambie fantasised about throwing Elon Musk in jail? I had forgotten until Damian Coory pointed it out…
Kevin Rudd might be … right(?!)
Carrying on the great political tradition of ‘never buggering off’, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is back – sort of…
Rumble in the shallows
Coogee has always known how to draw a crowd. On Anzac Day 1935, a tiger shark on display at the…
Louise Clegg is right about the Teals. Now, the hard part…
I should declare a bias. I have always been a little wary of Louise Clegg’s view of the world, partly…
Chris Bowen doesn’t need a Khemlani, he’s got you and me
Whitlam’s infamous Minister for Minerals and Energy, Rex Connor, set in motion the wheels that led to The Dismissal on…
Flight 1073 and what we can learn from modern-day Spartans
While we celebrate the heroism that saved many lives on board Flydubai flight 1073, we should take the opportunity to…
Multiculturalism and the great Australian levelling
With One Nation now polling at or above Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition a distant third, Australia appears to be…
Iran needs another Cyrus the Great
At a time when Iran’s name has once again become a focus of international attention, the recent remarks by Benjamin…
Bill 691 and the French crisis of trust
France is once again on the streets. Across the country, students are protesting over overcrowded classrooms and deteriorating educational conditions.…
Albo was the only person who thought coffee would get cheaper
In a classic case of not having a clue, Anthony Albanese has made himself out to be the goose we…
Never stop campaigning
Donald Trump is a perpetual campaigner, whether in or out of office. We only have to look to the recent…
Who should we blame for high inflation?
It would make my life easier if Australia’s inflation problem had a simple cause done by a single villain. Alas,…
Listen to the Alborithm
One of the defining features of our age is the tendency for ostensibly democratic governments to introduce legislation that curtails…
Can beleaguered Victoria rise from Labor’s ashes?
With the ‘attention-sapping’ AFL football season over, many critical questions are starting to weigh on the minds of Victorian voters.…
Pauline Hanson: The problem woman (for the left)
This week, David Shoebridge defeated Mehreen Faruqi and Sarah Hanson-Young to become the new leader of the radical Greens party.…
You are NOT watching Rowan Dean
Notification 1A: Digital Duty of Care and Net Zero Misinformation You’re not watching Rowan Dean on TV, on social media,…
AI’s show-me-the-money moment is approaching
For years, tech bros, politicians, and Wall Street have been spruiking artificial intelligence as the holy grail of productivity growth.…
Marx and Engels made a deal, Mephistopheles giggled
If Marx were rolled out of Highgate cemetery and landed in Marrickville today, the surprise wouldn’t be that he had…
ALBO, THE COFFEE WHISPERER – Labor might be the worst economic managers of all time | S3 Ep 22
In this episode… Albo’s ‘not-so-cheap’ coffee. ☕️ Is Jim Chalmers a good Treasurer? Is the 5% house deposit scheme causing…
GLOBALIST IN CHIEF – Albanese accepts his award & Trump cancels ‘Fake News’ Media | S3 Ep 21
This week… Javier Milei ‘rips the United Nations to shreds’. Albanese’s good little globalist award. Digital Duty of Censorship… I…
SILENCE OF THE ROYALS – Spencer’s memoir and the death of the last Royal carriage maker | S3 Ep 20
This week with Professor David Flint. Does the ghost of Princess Diana still pose a threat to King Charles’ legacy?…
Return of the King
King Coal is back! This week the New South Wales Independent Planning Commission gave permission for two coalminers in the…
Brown study
I don’t know if Anthony Albanese actually learned anything from his recent sojourn at the United Nations, but I doubt…
You will live in a dog box and be happy!
I think someone needs to tell the hapless Housing Minister, Clare O’Neil, that the government’s housing target of an additional…
Time to fix our universities
This week I’m going to really depress readers, and especially those over the age of about thirty-five. You see, when…
Teal deal is dead
Remember what the teals were going to do? In 2022, they were going to change Australian politics. The Morrison government…
Australia – the failing state
Australians are getting poorer, and they know it. Real wages are going backwards as prices outpace pay packets. Productivity, the…
Trump’s honest bribe
Donald Trump has written the finest political satire of the decade. He did it in one sentence in Dallas this…
Shaggy God story
Every seven years or so there is a breathtaking announcement by an American fundamentalist Protestant group claiming they have found…
Albo’s left hook
Larissa Waters’ sudden resignation prompted a closer look at the political menagerie otherwise known as the Greens as they went…
How the far left plans to take over AI
Where else would our far-left Prime Minister Anthony Albanese go, other than the United Nations, to sound the alarm and…
Not OKKK
‘Is it heartening for you to see someone like anti-immigration Pauline doing well in Australia?’ asked the Channel Nine journalist.…
Bad laws outlive their victims
England once taxed daylight. It did so for 155 years. That is the number to keep in mind as we…
The Tories are right: the Environment Agency must go
You can almost feel John Selwyn Gummer, Zac Goldsmith and the rest of the Conservatives’ green lobby quaking. Kemi Badenoch…
France’s school riots offer a bitter taste of what will happen if Le Pen wins
Few modern states are as conditioned by historical determinism as France. The dream, or nightmare, of revolution, riots or coup…
Colleges are making themselves obsolete
American higher education is in retreat. It’s shrinking. The for-sale signs have gone up. It’s time for “inventory reduction.” Forty-nine…
Kemi Badenoch’s ‘Victorian Values’ could be an election winner
‘All life is a struggle,’ wrote the Victorian ‘self-help’ philosopher Samuel Smiles. ‘Under competition, the lazy man is put under…
Exclusive: Tory MP met Reform treasurer at defection peak
The Conservative Party conference is well underway in Birmingham, with Kemi Badenoch making the first of two speeches to the…
Polanski’s Green party has been overtaken by radical activists
In a remarkable act of self-sabotage, Green party members have today passed a motion declaring that ‘Zionism is racism’ by…
Zack Polanski is repeating history
If you are a Jewish Green party member, even one who proclaims to be anti-Zionist but attends a Zionist synagogue…
Sunday shows round-up: Norris drops jury trial curbs from Courts Bill
Justice Secretary Alex Norris has said the government’s Courts Bill will return to parliament a week on Tuesday, without his…
Sanctioning the West Bank will hurt Palestinians
The passengers on an El Al flight from Tel Aviv last week to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport were quickly separated and…
Get ready to flee socialist America
Peter Thiel, as is his wont, caused a stir last week when he expressed doubts that a Republican could win…
The delights of not running a newspaper
Writing this diary and the amiable correspondence I have had recently with my old friend Mathias Döpfner as he assumes…
Ed Davey is living on borrowed time as Lib Dem leader
per leader donning a wetsuit and making his way through a bog, but a political mess that he does not…
Why you shouldn’t shrug at New Zealand’s greyhound racing ban
Greyhound racing ended in New Zealand on August 1. Those who neither own a greyhound nor care for the sport…
A New Zealand republic in Jacinda Ardern’s lifetime?
New Zealand’s former Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, believes the nation will become a republic within her lifetime. We have heard…
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…
Andy Burnham begins the long march left
From another world
It’s striking what we can experience if we look back at the images of the recent past, aided by YouTube.…
An elegance that is hair-raising
Sometimes cultural news is just bad news. Everyone was delighted at the thought that Joanna Murray-Smith’s Switzerland was being turned…
A gorgeous evocation of the natural world
The world of artistic expression runs in a thousand ways. The Melbourne Symphony’s Spring Gala – paralleling the Opera’s Wagner…
A man of great suavity
They were both films that stay in the mind from a lifetime ago. Peter Pan is J.M. Barrie’s contribution to…
Did the Bayeux Tapestry succeed as a tool of Norman propaganda?
It makes for a good pub quiz question: what has 632 people, 202 horses, 55 dogs, 41 ships and only…
A passion for music: Partita, by Barbara Kingsolver, reviewed
Barbara Kingsolver’s bestselling novels tackle political and social issues and win prizes, among them the Pulitzer and Women’s Prize for…
The triumph of virtue over fear and malice: The Bridge, by Colm Tóibín, reviewed
A small, beautiful book about betrayal, the cost of isolation and the persistence of human decency, Colm Tóibín’s The Bridge…
Abstract ideas made concrete
The Iron Curtain, or at least its most visible symbol, was not metal. Berlin’s Antifaschistischer Schutzwall (Anti-Fascist Protection Wall) was…
‘I shall always want to say thank you to this country’: the gratitude of a former kindertransport refugee
For all that it is an anachronism, the House of Lords contains some remarkable specimens, not least Alf Dubs. The…
Terrorism nearly always fails – so where does that leave the ‘freedom fighter’?
This book begins with rueful comments on the absence of philosophy from terrorism literature. The phenomenon is frequently analysed through…
Battling the elements – Claude Monet’s litany of anguish
For a painter we acknowledge as a master of atmospheric effects and ever-changing light, whose early work ‘Impression, Sunrise’ sparked…
Warnings, omens and the end of days: the surreal times of the Emperor Charlemagne
I don’t know if it is still the case, but there was a time in London when the ring of…