Features Australia
Letter to Greta
Dear Greta, You should feel very proud of yourself. Your crusade against Climate Warming has taken you into the homes…
Off with his head!
The President of the United States is a sort of elected monarch, which is why the office itself is imbued…
All the dumb things
‘Gee our schools are good!’ a friend once said. ‘By the time our kids are 12, they know everything!’ No…
Recognising China (for what it is)
Scott Morrison’s recent speech to the Lowy Institute was the most important prime ministerial foreign policy announcement in some years.…
Coyote and Road Runner
The biggest news story for years has been a real-life depiction of those classic cartoons, Coyote and Road Runner. In…
Turmoil in the Anglosphere
Well, there’s certainly a fair bit of action coming out of Canada, Britain and the US these days. In my…
Our Manchurian candidate
‘Power grows out of the barrel of a gun,’ said Mao Zedong and there were plenty in evidence in Tiananmen…
Labor’s forgotten voters
At the May federal election, Labor’s primary vote in the lower house was just 33.3 per cent – its worst…
Profits not passé
CEOs have wealth that far exceeds that of the average shareholder in their company, which they have every right to…
Portrait of an artist as ghost
There are difficult decisions to be made when writing the posthumous biography of a close friend who was as famous…
Revenge of the Remoaners
If the UK Supreme Court’s decision on the prorogation or ending of the current session of Parliament were handed in…
Persian palimpsest
It was 1966. We were two young Australians, fresh out of Melbourne University. We decided to drive from India to…
Fabulous and forgotten
Frederick Kelly was a celebrated Australian sportsman who won the Diamond Challenge Sculls at the Henley Regatta three times and…
The story of Mrs O
Of the 27 original candidates who entered the race for Democratic Party nomination for the 2020 US presidential election, only…
Academies or madrassas
Whether our universities have ever lived up to their lofty ideals is difficult to say. What is clear is that…
Revolt of the elites
It was a big week for the noisy Australians. Some 300,000 downed pens and nobly put aside the tedium of…
Doomed revolutions
Some revolutions such as the American War of Independence, succeed and result in the birth of great nations. Some, such…
Hit and run journalism
Having failed to reverse the 2016 election through impeachment or declaration of mental impairment, the American mainstream media are determined…
Deserter dads
Nearly everyone in New Zealand has been made to feel they could play a part in the forthcoming Royal Commission…
Worse than 18C
The federal government’s draft religious discrimination bill highlights – no doubt unconsciously – some of the limitations on freedom of…
Iran’s hostage chess
The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad,’ wrote Mark…
Campus of dunces
Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987) showed higher education failing democracy and impoverishing students. Forty years later,…
Our unique opportunity
Australia, more than any other, is a child of the two great English-speaking nations. They have for two centuries successively…
Deal or no deal
No longer can Brexit be considered inevitable: British democracy is on life support, and there are many who want to…
Business/Robbery etc
‘It was just a good title for a book’, Graham Richardson protested last week, after a federal Labor front-bencher blamed…
