Rooted in failure
Dark humour: Labor brands itself the party of tax cuts
Can anyone think of a more efficient way to waste trees than printing copies of the Budget on the eve…
Ask Chris Bowen anything!
Every now and then I do a ‘welfare check’ on Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who fled X…
Billboard Chris ‘moved on’ by police in Brisbane
Billboard Chris, defender of children’s rights against trans activism, is in Australia this week to ‘do battle’ with Australia’s eSafety…
It was a mistake: Teal MP’s husband apologises for removing Liberal sign
The Federal Election hasn’t been called, but its annoying campaign antics have already begun. ‘Sign Wars’ are a common feature…
Impossible business growth underpins house of cards Budget
From Parliament House, Canberra: Last year Australia experienced record numbers of business failures. While the percentage of businesses was not…
Budget 2025: out of ideas and full of fiscal analgesics
Almost 39 years after Paul Keating said Australia was on the way to becoming a ‘Banana Republic’ this year’s Budget…
A society suffering from ‘Labelism’
Misogynist. Patriarchy. Cis-Gendered. Woke. Labels en masse. We are a society that has succumbed to the sectionality, ostracisation, and disintegration…
Be suspicious when you hear the words ‘no evidence’
In every organisation there is usually an Achilles’ Heel, some fact which if widely known or understood, can cause damage,either…
Working class men are leaving the workforce
The Australian newspaper (March 24, 2025) has started to discuss the issue of working-age people relying on welfare rather than…
Are we due another rate cut?
With the next rate call in sight, the RBA is probably unlikely to make another cut, in spite of the…
Regional Australians are the biggest budget losers
From the Canberra Press Gallery: Regional Australia is the engine room of private sector activity in Australia. With the Budget…
The Romanian electoral farce
In his address to the 61st Munich Security Conference, held on February 14, the American Vice President, JD Vance, criticised…
A new paradigm for Cancer treatment
In a recent Joe Rogan Experience interview, actor Mel Gibson shared the story of three of his friends diagnosed with…
Budget top priority should be income tax cuts
The Government didn’t plan to be giving today’s Budget, and the Opposition didn’t expect to have to give a Budget…
We can’t afford Albo’s phoney election campaign
From the National Press Club: Australia is in a phoney election campaign. We’re in that period where we know an…
The low-down on the legal profession
Sydney’s Macquarie Law School is attracting public criticism for compelling law students to include Acknowledgment of Country (a form of…
Varsity farces
I hadn’t been back to my alma mater for a little while, but a reunion lunch of my honours class…
Budget bonfire of green vanities
Jim Chalmers’ fourth budget – the one he didn’t want to deliver before this year’s election – presents a grim…
Now the Amazon cops it
Good news everybody. The 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as Cop30, will take place later this year.…
Judges to rule the world?
Rudderless and dispirited Democrats are waging lawfare to thwart Trump, often on the losing side on hot-button ‘80:20’ issues against…
Australia’s top judges
Eight hundred and five. Four hundred and twenty-two. The first of those is the number of footnotes. The second is…
Hey, True Blue…
There was a time when being a ‘True Blue Aussie’ did not rest on a legal construct. Primarily it meant…
Tucker Carlson’s Ukraine
Ukraine, according to many media sites, including the UK Telegraph, is a problem for conservatives because it’s divisive: ‘Trump flirts…
Judicial coup against Trump
With ‘lawfare’ more intense than ever before, the Trump administration is the subject of an organised and unprecedented political campaign,…
The promise Putin made to Russia – and broke
When Vladimir Putin launched his bid to be elected as Russia’s president in 2000, he had already been in the…
Is Reeves brave enough to give the economy the medicine it needs?
Rachel Reeves has wanted to downplay the significance of the Spring Statement this afternoon. But with every leaked proposal and…
Jim Callaghan’s greatest achievement was to be himself
The government’s recent, palpable turn to the right seems to be gaining pace. In the past few weeks, Keir Starmer…
Rachel Reeves’s Spring Statement looks like a missed opportunity
The Spring Statement was supposed to be a fiscal non-event, but instead, it is shaping up to be a mini-Budget.…
New Zealand’s cringeworthy new tourism slogan
‘Everyone must go!’ New Zealand’s new tourism declares, but so far almost everyone seems to be cringing. The prime minister…
The sacred sites fandango
The second-highest mountain in New Zealand has been granted ‘personhood’ by the NZ parliament because it is regarded as the…
Operation Resolution: cleaning up after HMNZS Manawanui
HMNZS Manawanui, formally a chirpy red and yellow MV Edda Fonn, sank on October 6 much to the shock of…
Why is this New Zealand airport clamping down on hugs?
‘Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world,’ Hugh Grant famously offered in the heartwarming opening scene of Love,…
The World Happiness Report is a sham
Intensely engaging
The Australian National Academy of Music gala performance on Friday 21 March was dazzling with guest conductor Asher Fisch leading…
Theatre vultures will kill
Having a sportswriter father is no excuse. The young man was tall, long fair-haired with a hat. ‘What do you…
Netflix’s Adolescence is far from perfect
According to one gushing review, Netflix’s Adolescence is the ‘most brilliant TV drama in years’. And that verdict is at…
Is ‘good enough’ all we want from TV?
For those people with a therapeutic bent of mind, the phrase ‘good enough’ has an almost magical power. It says:…
Fight or flight?: 33 Place Brugmann, by Alice Austen, reviewed
In May 1940, as the Nazis invade Belgium, the residents of a sedate apartment block in Place Brugmann, Brussels, wake…
Why are we routinely buying disgusting bread in Britain?
‘Bread is simple. Or is it?’ That is the question David Wright poses about a keystone food that spans the…
The danger of becoming a ‘professional survivor’
It was a relatively minor episode in a period marked by the killing of two African presidents, months of massacres…
The sickness at the heart of boxing
There is a lot of death in the latest, and potentially last, book on boxing by the South African journalist…
Who will care for the carers themselves?
When her brother Lionel was born in 1949, ‘the concept of neurodiversity didn’t exist’, writes Caroline Elton. The subtitle of…
The agony of making music at Auschwitz
Anita Lasker survived the Holocaust because, as a Berlin teenager, she had enjoyed her cello lessons. The Hungarian Lily Mathé’s…
A picture of jealous rivalry: Madame Matisse, by Sophie Haydock, reviewed
‘Your muse or your wife’ is quite the ultimatum to throw at an artist. But that was the choice Henri…
The importance of honouring the enemy war dead
There are several dozen graves from the second world war (and some from the first) in churchyards near my village…