Australia was never a nation of embarrassed millionaires
The conservatives are coming
There have been some seriously deranged things written about CPAC by left-wing publications. Conservative leaders spoke on stage in front…
AI is a psychopath
Did anyone else catch that fleeting headline in the Daily Mail, claiming: Chinese AI tool told researchers how to make biological weapons…
Wake up, Bowen. Nap time is over!
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen doesn’t seem to be enjoying is multi-million-dollar pre-COP soirée. Aside from criticism that…
Shoebridge’s obsession with turtle politics
You have to admire the commitment to delusion. Newly appointed Greens Leader, David Shoebridge, fronted the cameras and declared his…
Forget ‘killer robots’: the bigger AI threat is to the meaning of life
It’s finally happened. The Terminator is here. Well, sort of. Last month in San Francisco, a YouTuber stepped into a…
The only product the public had to prove unsafe
In every other corner of the law, the person who sells a product carries the burden of showing it is…
Australia was never a nation of embarrassed millionaires
One of the most famous things John Steinbeck never quite said is that socialism failed in America because the poor…
Can Australia reverse the policies hurtling us toward genteel poverty?
One Nation’s Leader in New South Wales, Mike Newman, has challenged Labor to reveal the full cost of its Net…
Introducing the new Queensland Premier … me!
In 1976 I had the growing desire to start my own company, to walk into a room where everyone paid…
Can Pauline Hanson save us from the United Nations?
The High Court’s ruling on a major coal mine expansion in NSW, on the basis of Scope 3 emissions, is…
When imitation becomes enough
What is beauty and what is objective truth? Modern society has neglected to ask this fundamental question, trading beauty and…
Is the Digital Duty of Care a censorship regime?
The Labor government has proposed a Digital Duty of Care, spruiking it as a way to keep children safe and…
Critical Theory in academia: neither critical nor theory
In the hallways of modern universities, certain ideas have achieved near-hegemonic status. Among them, Critical Theory stands as perhaps the…
It’s time to take the UK out of Aukus
Back in January, Spartacus argued that Australia should work with the US to drop the UK from Aukus and bring…
Angus Taylor: CPAC speech
As published on Liberal.org.au Good morning CPAC. It’s great to be with you. When the Liberal Party was last in…
Labor’s credit card surcharge fiasco hits mums and dads
The surcharge ban was sold as ‘money back every time you tap’. A month in, it has been reported that…
Britain cannot enforce half of Oslo
On September 8, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced an import ban on goods from Israeli communities beyond the 1967…
Fizzer in Fiji takes the wind out of Bowen’s turbines
Four years of promises, modelling, and National Press Club performances have run into higher electricity bills, angry people who live…
One day on the road to Moora
Have you read Xavier Herbert’s masterpiece, Poor Fellow my Country? You should, it’s about life in the Northern Territory between…
Every radical has an origin story
Tucker Carlson recently made the mistake of debating Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg on war and history. It didn’t go well. Rees-Mogg…
THE GREEN GROCERS OF THE APOCALYPSE – communism is back in fashion | S3 Ep 23
In this episode: The ‘Green’ Grocers of the apocalypse bringing communism via your weekly shop. Victoria collapsing underfoot – but…
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…
Third anniversary, October 7
The release of the Coalition’s immigration policy coincided with the third anniversary this week of the horrific 7 October massacre,…
Albo’s out of control spending
Almost fifty years ago, in his presidential debate with Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan said, ‘We don’t have inflation because the…
Cowardly corporate crony capitalists rule
Last week, I attended the annual conference of the H.R. Nicholls Society. The society is ‘dedicated to advocating for sensible…
Giggle v. Tickle v. Macbeth
Talking recently with an old acquaintance, now a barrister, I spoke of how disappointing it was that the High Court…
Go directly to jail!
Having addressed the position of the ever-shrivelling teals last week, I was well into drafting a piece turning to focus…
Business/Robbery, etc
There’s now a coal boom in Asia that the ideology-driven, anti-coal Albanese Labor government doesn’t want to know about –…
En garde! China and AI
Early in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Butch finds himself facing the intimidating Harvey Logan, who has decided that…
Painted clay
‘The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation: that away, men are but gilded loam or painted clay.’ That’s…
Hamas: Triumph of the intellectuals
On 7 October 2023, the world experienced in a real-time livestream what the absence of a secure Jewish state meant…
Australia on a road to ruin
Australians’ pessimism about the future of the country is now probably at its highest level. Polling suggests an extraordinary two…
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…
The IMF has faith in Britain. Should it?
Britain’s economy has come out near top of the class in the latest report from the International Monetary Fund. Overnight…
France’s schools protest has been hijacked
This is not going to be an easy week for the French police. More than 200,000 people are expected on…
The bravery of Joshua Wong
Joshua Wong, one of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy activists, turns 30 today. He should be in the prime of…
Should Britain have joined the Euro?
Critics of the Labour government looking for a stick to beat it with have hit on a novel line of…
Why museum exhibitions have become so expensive
Queuing for up to two hours to enjoy a fleeting encounter with the Bayeux Tapestry is not the only sign of history lovers’ dedication.…
Voters deserve better than Andy Burnham’s gimmicks
“It’s a long time since I’ve been asked for ID,” confessed Andy Burnham, holding a pint of Guinness and offering…
Burnham’s Brexit babblings have already backfired
It was back to the future in the House of Commons today. After their weeks of backslapping and self-delusion, MPs…
Civil servants threaten strike over demands to work less
Civil servants never cease to amaze with just how lazy and entitled they can be. Not content with switching on…
Does John Healey really have a £35 billion Budget black hole?
The headlines today say John Healey has a £35 billion hole in his Budget. The figure comes from the Institute…
Nigel Farage is shrewd to keep the focus on illegal migration
Reform today pledged the ‘biggest mass deportation programme’ in UK history, as Nigel Farage thrust the issue of illegal migration…
The Yorkshire Wildlife Park tiger doesn’t deserve to die
A man died on Saturday after entering the tiger enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park. Emergency services were called to the…
John Healey faces an impossible task at the coming Budget
Twelve billion pounds a month, £3 billion a week, or £420 million a day. If we divide the latest estimate…
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…
The anti-Semitic alliance between Restore and the Greens
That sinister sense of comic patter
Harold Pinter is one of the great dramatists of the last hundred years, perhaps the only one who can hold…
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 literary romp: Our Noble Selves, by Kate Atkinson, reviewed
It is hard to imagine a setting better suited to bureaucratic absurdity than the lead-up to the 1951 Festival of…
All the big hitters are here: scenes from the golden age of boxing
In 1891, in Thomas Edison’s makeshift film studio – a shack in West Orange, New Jersey – two men put…
Winning hearts and minds: propaganda of the Spanish Civil War
History, as the aphorism frequently attributed to Winston Churchill would have it, is written by the victors. This certainly holds…
A bullying monster: the infamous Roy Cohn, Donald Trump’s early mentor
For several decades, Roy Cohn (1927-86) was the man you needed to know if you wanted to get to know…
Famous for being famous – the scandalous life of the Countess of Castiglione
‘The whore of the Risorgimento’ or ‘the divine Countess’ – Virginia Oldoini Verasis di Castiglione was among the most extravagantly…
Adventures of the Time Traveler’s daughter: Life Out of Order, by Audrey Niffenegger, reviewed
There is only one problem with this beautiful, elegiac novel, a glorious hodgepodge mash-up of time travelling and apocalyptic eco-fiction:…
They don’t make men like Erroll Prior-Palmer any more
Erroll Prior-Palmer had one decision to make on D-Day. It wasn’t as momentous as Eisenhower’s to launch the invasion, having…
The mystery of Easter Island’s still undeciphered script
When British and Ottoman forces defeated the remnants of Napoleon’s army in Egypt, General Menou, the Frenchman in charge of…