In-depth analysis of the day’s news, plus stories and gossip from Australian politics.
Do they just want it all to be over?
Late this afternoon, the Turnbull government lost a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives, 61 to 69.…
It ain’t choice, Joyce
In 1995, I was there when, one question time, John Howard’s reinvigorated opposition so niggled prime minister Paul Keating that…
Behind Bill
David Marr appropriately titled his Quarterly Essay on Bill Shorten, ‘Faction Man’, for the Labor leader was shaped by the…
God is good but mammon pays the rent
I am a small business. Things are not exactly great and the world isn’t flush with funds and every dollar…
Their ABC on Barnaby’s bother: biased and banal
So, how’s the ABC responding to Barnaby Joyce’s little spot of bother? With all the class that you’d expect. Its…
Leadership means real promises on real policy
Bill Shorten probably can’t believe his luck. The Liberal Party has spent the entire Winter break and the first week…
Australia’s deindustrialisation
High energy prices are causing Australia to deindustrialise. Earlier this month mining giant Glencore’s chief Peter Freyberg’s called for the…
I believe the children are our future?
What do German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Theresa May, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon,…
Their ABC: entirely unaccountable
It is a thesis of Media Watch Dog that no one really runs the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Not the chairman…
Chinese whispers overs North Korea
Australia could – and should – play a vital if silent role in the (literally) frightful face off between the…
Driving Christianity from the public square
Children are once again being used in an aggressive Green/Left campaign aimed at imposing a hard line secular orthodoxy, contrary…
Domestic violence: more money, wrong priorities
The sturdy snowball of the feminist driven domestic violence industry is accumulating more and more layers of funding. What a…
Their ABC dumps impartiality with gay abandon
This morning The Australian reported ABC staff had been warned to zip it over marriage equality: ABC News Editorial Policy…
Pat Dodson’s sense and sensitivity
A refreshing note of practicality, even sanity, was injected into the sound and fury of the same-sex marriage debate this…
Energy policy: the meatgrinder of the poor
The outstanding success of the South Australian government of giving their people the highest power prices in the world is…
Big government’s war on young Australians
The major parties, unions and the bureaucracy have declared economic war on young people which threatens to create an invisible…
A politically incorrect three-point plan for government
Same-sex marriage off the agenda? Here is my politically incorrect list of what any right-of-centre political party in Australia needs…
Christian Leaders oppose assisted dying, The Age plays shocked
The Open Letter from Christian Leaders to Premier Daniel Andrews on assisted dying has drawn criticism from ‘the usual suspects’.…
When campus claims of sex abuse meet politics
For nearly thirty years I served as a university college head in four different institutions. Before that I was myself…
The republican suicide squad
When Bill Shorten gave the keynote address the Australian Republican Movement annual dinner last month, Peter Fitzsimons gushed at how…
United in idiocy
The two major political parties may well be goofing around playing a tag game of dumb and dumber at the…
The Dean Smith Five
Watching Liberal senator Dean Smith on the ABC’s Insiders on Sunday morning, I was impressed by the quiet and dignified…
What would Menzies make of marriage equality?
What would Sir Robert Menzies have made of attempts to conscript his name to the cause of redefining marriage in…
Somewhere in Sri Lanka, someone is making something.
Researching history with the hope that your research will eventually turn itself into a book can take you places. It’s…
The Age’s big week
It’s been a big week for Fairfax Media and The Age — a big week in their decline. First there…