The white man’s burden
Moira Deeming v John Pesutto
In Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice, Mary Bennet, Jane’s puritanical sister, is recorded as saying: ‘Loss of virtue in a…
Hate crime and gender lawfare
As if the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill tabled on September 12 isn’t draconian enough, another new federal bill has been…
A chilling move toward government overreach
In 2024, the Liberal Party, under the leadership of Scott Morrison, proposed the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation)…
The final nail in the Liberal broad church?
‘The father of the nation…’ That’s how former Deputy Prime Minster John Anderson described his former boss, John Howard, during…
Extinction lecture event
Adelaide University, one of the elite Group of Eight universities in Australia (and my alma mater in the 1970s pre-Woke…
100 dignitaries sign open letter condemning Brazil
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADL) have launched an open letter, condemning Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes’ attacks on X. More…
Rainbow Toolkit activism, let children be children
Most parents today send their children off to kindergarten and school with the expectation that as they progress from infancy…
Government spending needs reform before taxes
I would like a dollar for every time I’ve read how much the Australian economy needs tax reform. Sure, it…
A wider malaise in the culture of Defence
The news that campaign and gallantry medals will be stripped from a bevy of middle-ranking officers over allegations of war…
The Greens’ housing delusion
There is nothing better than living in your own home. Even with a mortgage, being able to be the king…
Is Thierry Breton’s resignation a win for Elon Musk?
Described as ‘France’s powerful European Commissioner’, the EU bureaucrat who lectured Elon Musk about online censorship has resigned suddenly. Thierry…
Bureaucratic hypocrisy on the International Day of Democracy
Yesterday was the International Day of Democracy. Perhaps conscious of democracy’s decline under their watch, all the usual suspects have…
This Bill is a disgrace
Look, I realise that this Albanese government is adopting policies that give every impression that it wants to destroy our…
Business/Robbery, etc
It was a turning point. And there are significant implications for next year’s federal election, especially in Western Australia. On…
Customer is always right?
Once upon a time, the notion that the customer is always right was a truism, needing no further explanation. Businesses…
The white man’s burden
Much of a recent New South Wales Public Service Commission post to staff dwells on a 2023 People Matter Employee…
Housing crash is now inevitable
By 1989, the average UK house price had surged to 6.2 times average earnings from about four times just before…
The boys from Brazil
The front line of the global attack on free speech these days is Brazil where Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de…
Trump’s questionable tactics
During the past year, if anyone has asked me about the US presidential election, I have replied that the biggest…
The woke manifesto
First, online platform Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov is arrested on his arrival in Paris. Next, Lula da Silva’s Supreme Court…
Why aren’t some released prisoners being tagged?
As hundreds of prisoners are released early on to the streets of Britain, it’s vital that the authorities keep track…
There’s nothing wrong with being a ‘junior’ doctor
‘The wise bustle and laugh as they walk, but fools bustle and are important,’ wrote F.L. Lucas a century ago.…
The trouble with Trafalgar Square’s transgender tribute
Seven hundred and twenty-six plaster face casts of transsexual, non-binary or gender non-conforming people were unveiled yesterday in London’s Trafalgar…
Diane Abbott doesn’t understand fascism
Diane Abbott believes that Giorgia Meloni is a ‘literal fascist’. That must come as a surprise to the 12.3 million…
How does New Zealand solve a problem like China?
New Zealand’s most important trading partner is also the nation’s biggest security headache, according to a new risk-assessment report produced…
Why are so many young people abandoning New Zealand?
Heading to the UK is a longstanding rite of cultural passage for many Kiwis. People like my youngest son, who…
Kiwi life
New Zealand in crisis Given the destruction the previous Labour government inflicted on this country, and the damage caused by…
New Zealand’s carbon sequestration problem
Ongoing concern about climate change has fuelled debate about the part carbon sequestration might play in reducing New Zealand’s net…
Xi speech warrior: Elon Musk’s love affair with China
And then there was the voice
It was at Cape Liptrap that the call came through. The setting was almost absurdly beautiful, the sea one way…
Tragedy and lighter things
Noni Hazlehurst’s performance in Daniel Keene’s The Mother is a thing of wonder and terror, overwhelming in its power and…
Purring with cynical affection
It’s one of those weird paradoxes of history that we think of the Elizabethan era as the zenith of our…
Zany streak of British humour
The fact that Kip Williams is leaving the Sydney Theatre Company to stage The Picture of Dorian Gray with Sarah…
Nothing was off-limits for ‘the usual gang of idiots’ at Mad
As many of us who grew up in America in the 1960s and 1970s learned, Mad magazine didn’t, as our…
The sad story of the short-lived Small Faces
One Sunday in October 1967, about 16 per cent of the British population settled down at 8.15 p.m. to watch…
Mysteries and misogyny: The Empusium, by Olga Tokarczuk, reviewed
Nothing is ever quite as it seems in the world of Olga Tokarczuk. Her latest novel starts with an epigraph…
The troublesome idealism of Simone Weil
The French philosopher Simone Weil, who died of self-starvation and tuberculosis in a Kent sanitorium in 1943 at the age…
Life among the world’s biggest risk-takers
The Italian actuary Bruno de Finetti, writing in 1931, was explicit: ‘Probability does not exist.’ Probability, it’s true, is simply…
Unrecorded lives: Tell Me Everything, by Elizabeth Strout, reviewed
There was a time when Elizabeth Strout’s fans had to wait a few years for the next book; but Tell…
Heartbreaking scenes: Annihilation, by Michel Houellebecq, reviewed
Michel Houellebecq’s ninth and longest novel, anéantir, was published in France at the beginning of January 2022 with an initial…
Bones, bridles and bits – but where’s the horse?
The German cultural scientist Ulrich Raulff has written that horses have as many meanings as bones. In the archaeologist William…