In-depth analysis of the day’s news, plus stories and gossip from Australian politics.
How can anyone own the word ‘liberal’?
There is no word more mangled in the political lexicon than ‘liberal’. It’s the only word whose definition first requires…
Daniel Andrews, democracy is an essential service
The Commonwealth parliament is sitting this week. The Victorian parliament is supposed to be. Except it isn’t. On the advice…
Australia: addicted to fear
Australians are the canaries laying at the bottom of the birdcage with all their little green and gold feathers gathering…
ABC frontliners drowning in their own sycophancy
Just how stupid do ABC marketers and presenters believe their audience actually is? On the evidence, the answer is very.…
‘We can no longer tolerate what ails us, nor its remedy’
Earlier in my career, in a very different world, I lived in China. It was possible, then, to stand on…
The PM and the Coalition’s polling paradox
Today’s Newspoll is ugly for the Coalition, throwing their primary vote and two-party preferred deficit back into late Malcolm Turnbull…
Why does Annastacia Palaszczuk think National Cabinet’s roadmap to reopening doesn’t apply to her?
Queenslanders are now far too familiar with the snap lockdowns and border restrictions used by the state government to manage…
Can we get our money back on ADF chief Angus Campbell?
In signals intelligence the term “look through” describes the tactic of penetrating deliberate noise and interference to reveal the real…
Have WorkSafe Victoria breached their statutory obligations over the hotel quarantine disaster?
It’s been eight weeks since the Victorian WorkSafe Authority failed to send to the Director of Public Prosecutions its investigation…
The political extremism of the left: a sacred cow
Everyone that wants to combat dogma and extremism should support heretics, no matter what sacred cows they slay. The fact…
Why I write or Hemingway’s chicken suit
Flat White lore is rich with stories of those who didn’t quite make it and those who did make it but we really wish hadn’t, and those who may make…
SpecOz TV – featuring Laurence Fox
This month’s edition of Spectator Australia TV is out now. Gideon Rozner rocks and is joined this month by a…
What’s woke this week?
Traditional circuses are out of favour in Wokeworld where three rings are clearly not enough for their intersectionality bazaar. It’s…
If it’s up to the health experts, Covid restrictions will never end
If it’s up to our health experts – doctors, scientists and researchers, administrators and bureaucrats – we will never return…
Cowardly Lions: Labor lets through the Coalition’s shameful electoral laws
Today, Labor waved the Coalition’s cowardly electoral laws described in these pages 11 days ago designed to strangle smaller parties…
The All Blacks, the All Whites – and how the demand for racism far exceeds supply
The demand for racism far exceeds supply. How else to explain New Zealand Football’s sudden concern that the nickname of…
New polling shows Australians won’t accept lockdowns once we hit jab targets
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is finally taking a stand against premiers wanting to keep wielding the lockdown weapon against Covid-19…
Police speak out on Covid regs: ‘The directions we are ordered to comply with are highly politicised’
Two weeks ago the Western Australian Police Commissioner, Chris Dawson, issued an edict. As of Monday, 9 August, any officer…
Why are we ruled by political party patsies – as well as unelected MPs?
Some time back I learned a valuable lesson. At one of our annual Summer Sounds Symposiums, bringing together individuals from…
Continuous disclosure obligations: now with less activist tail wagging the corporate dog
It was 2012 and I found myself walking into the High Court in Canberra: shiny red soles on my stilettos,…
A lockdown opponent’s wish: may I be courageous like Soviet dissidents I knew
At 58, I have for the first time become a dissident. I am in active opposition to Covid-19 related policies…
Australia, we’ve got you cowered
If you didn’t already think so, the news that police have received thousands of calls from Aussies dobbing in other…
ScoMo’s said ‘no’ – but this is why we need a ‘Freedom Day’
The great semanticist and one-time Republican senator from California, Samuel I. Hayakawa once remarked that language is thought in action.…
Just what is the Reserve Bank up to?
The conduct of monetary and fiscal policy since the pandemic began has no parallel in Australia’s economic history, certainly not compared to what happened during the more severe Spanish Flu a century ago. Back then in the…
Governments, get real. Eliminating Covid from the community with fines is fantasy
The unacceptable violence at Melbourne’s ‘freedom’ rally, the quieter Sydney and Adelaide rallies and the New South Wales/Queensland border ‘invasion’…
Editor’s picks
Magazine
