Flat White

In-depth analysis of the day’s news, plus stories and gossip from Australian politics.

The real threat to black lives isn’t white men in police uniforms

4 September 2020 5:00 am

Recently media, activists and keyboard warriors have cherry-picked examples of controversial police activity to present coppers as enemies of the…

100 years on, it’s well past time to rethink the court case that remade federation

3 September 2020 7:41 pm

The goings-on of the nation’s highest court rarely attract significant mainstream public attention. Yet the power of seven largely unknown judges to…

V is for Venezuela – and Victoria, too

3 September 2020 5:34 pm

The example of a pregnant woman in her home in front of her young children being interrogated and arrested by police graphically illustrates how…

Why has only five per cent of the government’s small business support made it through?

3 September 2020 3:00 pm

Amid all of the public fanfare created by the billions of dollars in “free money” handed out by the Morrison…

Oh Dan, I have sinned against you…

3 September 2020 11:01 am

ITEM: The Australian, September 3, 2020 The arrest of a pregnant anti-lockdown protester, which was live-streamed on social media, has…

ANU students want to ban Churchill – but with no traumatic debate, please

3 September 2020 5:00 am

Australia’s preeminent university, Australian National University is the latest institution to take part in the importation of cancel culture, with…

Good leaders minimise fear and explain their responses to a crisis. We’ve seen the opposite

2 September 2020 5:35 pm

Framing the coronavirus response as freedom vs. tyranny is counterproductive, because the government has so successfully stoked fear in Australians.…

Governments have made this recession worse. They can’t now impede recovery

2 September 2020 2:48 pm

A 7 per cent fall in GDP during the June quarter is pretty much to have been expected. Led by spending falls…

Recession 2020: you ain’t seen nothin’ yet

2 September 2020 12:02 pm

It’s official. We’re in recession, after two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Matters couldn’t be clearer. As the official release…

Mad at the witches

2 September 2020 11:08 am

All is not well in the dark world of Mad F***ing Witches. While they’re attempting to keep up appearances with…

The WHO has let the cat out of the bag: COVID-19 is now more about politics than public health

2 September 2020 5:00 am

The World Health Organisation’s Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last Friday that “we will not – we cannot – go back…

The Bushfires Royal Commission: saving reputations, not lives and property

1 September 2020 7:14 pm

The Interim Observations of the Bushfires Royal Commission are extremely disturbing. Not because they reveal any frightening facts about climate…

Extra infrastructure spending won’t build a road out of the corona recession

1 September 2020 3:50 pm

Increased government spending on infrastructure has been proposed yet again to revive the economy from the government-imposed recession.  The latest…

Daniel Andrews’ deplorables moment

1 September 2020 11:32 am

The clock has struck thirteen in Victoria and no man, woman, or child is free. Writing this sentence, according to…

Superannuation reform requires more than putting lipstick on a pig

1 September 2020 5:00 am

H.L. Mencken once wrote that “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong”.  But when…

Great Barrier Reef platitudes: more dangerous than sharks

31 August 2020 6:22 pm

It has always been the case that the individual is expected to conform and that there is hierarchy within myths.…

What you didn’t hear at the Press Club last week

31 August 2020 4:06 pm

Last week Wang Xining, China’s Deputy Chief of Mission in Canberra, addressed the National Press Club, a speech widely reported…

Forget the Wuhan flu, the Chi Comm virus is a bigger threat to our way of life

31 August 2020 11:30 am

Over the last six months, we have witnessed an unprecedented global outbreak of politicians and journalists declaring how much they…

Corona crisis-mongering is scaring our kids to death

31 August 2020 5:00 am

Enough with playing politics with people’s lives and gambling with mental health. The majority of the country may well have…

Justice delayed and delayed – then delayed by coronavirus

30 August 2020 6:22 pm

One of the “much loved and respected“ inmates of Hobart’s Risdon women’s prison, Sue Neill-Fraser, has had to keep deferring her hope…

Why is it ‘critique’ when leftists cut close to the bone – and cause for outrage if it comes from the right

30 August 2020 5:00 am

It’s no secret, that I generally prefer news commentary I see on Sky News, in the Daily Telegraph, The Australian, and Quadrant—and naturally, I find The Spectator very informative. The reason…

Trump’s RNC speech: the great middle America gamble

29 August 2020 2:02 pm

The Orange Man is cheating.  He’s Teleprompter Trump but we want Rally Trump crazy that will play badly on middle…

Appointing Tony Abbott to the Board of Trade is an inspired move by Boris

28 August 2020 3:51 pm

Whatever one thinks of the reported appointment by Boris Johnson of Tony Abbott as a Co-President of the Board of…

Coronavirus: a look at the numbers that matter

28 August 2020 1:34 pm

If there is one thing that has been missing from the public discussion on Covid-19 it’s a meaningful interpretation of the numbers.   Day by day…

Why bother with real change when a Facebook like will do? 

28 August 2020 5:00 am

Have you ever wondered how different the world would be if the passengers on Rosa Parks’ bus had iPhones? Probably…