Terry Barnes

An attack on Andrew Bolt — and all believers in free speech

8 June 2017 4:24 pm

I know Andrew Bolt moderately.  For a time I appeared on The Bolt Report.  I’ve had the pleasure of meeting…

The health department head compounds his sins

4 June 2017 5:12 pm

Embattled Health Department head, Martin Bowles’s, Senate estimates performance last week is a gift that keeps on giving. As we…

The Health Department boss should pack his bags

30 May 2017 4:25 pm

If I was Health Department secretary, Martin Bowles, I’d be checking my superannuation paperwork is in order. Over three hours…

Where’s a drug test for hypocrisy when you need one?

16 May 2017 5:00 pm

I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning, and Twitter always is pungent with its bitter almond aroma. Today…

Budget 2017: politically clever, but…

10 May 2017 7:38 am

I’ve been lamenting that for too long we’ve had no sensible centre in Australian politics, effectively ceding the political debate…

Time to scrap the rebates

6 May 2017 9:00 am

Malcolm Turnbull almost lost an election because he had no health policy. Bill Shorten and Labor’s blatant, fabricated ‘Mediscare’, claiming…

Tony Nutt: Turnbull’s fall guy

6 April 2017 9:26 am

On Wednesday, Liberal federal director Tony Nutt announced his resignation after a year and a half in the job. The…

Election notes

18 March 2017 9:00 am

Malcolm, take note… As the dust settles on the Western Australian election result, and Labor’s Mark McGowan sweeping to office…

Thank you, Colin Barnett

12 March 2017 12:27 pm

As the dust settles on the Western Australian election result, let’s not forget that for 8 ½ years Colin Barnett…

Let’s have a day for middle-aged white men

8 March 2017 6:17 pm

So International Women’s Day (aka the ABC’s male presenters’ RDO) has come and gone.  Feminists and social media mavens have…

Our pols can learn a thing or two from the Kiwi cousins

17 February 2017 10:00 am

Today, Malcolm Turnbull visits New Zealand for his first leaders’ meeting with Kiwi Prime Minister Bill English. Trans-Tasman trade and whether there’s a future for the…

Women’s tennis is a joke

11 February 2017 9:00 am

In the warm afterglow of the festival of tennis that was the Australian Open, and the glorious men’s final match…

Cory finally gets off the pot

7 February 2017 11:21 am

So Cory Bernardi has finally done it.  Today he leaves the Liberal party for his own vanity project, taking the six-year…

Don’t begrudge Gillard her gong

26 January 2017 2:20 pm

In her Australia Day column for the Herald-Sun, Rita Panahi decried the giving of Order of Australia honours to former…

Time to expose the public health boot boys and their media droogs

25 January 2017 7:18 am

This week the public health Pooh-Bahs opened self-righteous fire on yet another front. A public health Pooh-Bah is a self-appointed…

Turnbull, turn to Key

14 January 2017 9:00 am

Once upon a time, a multi-millionaire, former merchant banker Prime Minister, highly successful in business who came to politics later…

Sussan Ley: every cloud has a silver lining

11 January 2017 11:01 am

Notwithstanding investigations under way into stood-aside Health minister Sussan Ley’s touching fondness for the Gold Coast, it now appears she…

Bernardi must s— or get off the pot

22 December 2016 10:46 am

Last weekend I encountered Cory Bernardi at the Bolt Report Christmas party.  He’s a nice bloke: affable, serious, patriotic: a…

John Key’s class act

6 December 2016 7:10 am

There’s a photo taken in South Africa after Nelson Mandela’s funeral.  Three Anglosphere PMs, Tony Abbott, Canada’s Stephen Harper and…

Labor must share blame for GP co-payment fallout

28 November 2016 10:43 am

Last Friday, Fairfax ran a report by Latika Bourke on my talk to the Centre for Independent Studies, as the so-called…

We need a Strictly political Balls-up

21 November 2016 7:43 am

In the UK, what gets people talking passionately isn’t Brexit. It’s not Trump. It’s not even the May government’s looming Autumn Statement mini-budget…

We already have our Trump

11 November 2016 7:11 am

I enjoyed the sainted editor, Rowan Dean’s, rollicking Flat White account of his Trump, Trump, Trumpety-Trump election count party. Any…

Oh, those wide-eyed Buzzfeed kidz

4 November 2016 3:02 pm

It must be a quiet news day.  Buzzfeed’s Mark di Stefano posted a reheated story this morning, casting a close…

Abbott needs better advice, Turnbull needs to bury his pride

2 November 2016 7:31 am

Yes, it is true that the buck stops with him, and that he is responsible for his decisions and actions,…

Time to start looking beyond Abbott

28 October 2016 7:15 am

Whoever said or emailed what to whom, David Leyonhjelm’s Adler shotgun blasted through Coalition ranks last week.  What this week’s…