Flat White

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

A bank inquiry: what happens if the parliament and executive clash?

26 August 2016 5:26 pm

Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson has received advice from the Clerk of the Senate, Rosemary Laing, that the Senate and House of Representatives…

Richer, safer, healthier, vacuous, lost and depraved

26 August 2016 3:20 pm

Sixteen years or so too late, but I’m presently inhaling Peter Hitchens’s The Abolition of Britain. Though a diehard Hitchensonian…

Free speech? Shut up and drink your hemlock!

26 August 2016 7:25 am

When Socrates was tried and executed by his fellow Athenians, his speech was found to be outside the acceptable realm…

Safe Schools’ sleazy Trojan horse

25 August 2016 6:35 pm

The Australian’s latest major Safe Schools revelations have exposed the farce of Pamela Blackman’s new sexual health curriculum Transmission. It hijacks…

Shorten’s mandate theory falls short

25 August 2016 1:32 pm

One thing about close election results is that they give rise to a lot of waffle about mandates. The Labor…

What is behind the left’s sympathy for Islamist right?

25 August 2016 7:19 am

In 2015 Nick Cohen announced his ‘resignation‘ from the left in protest at its open support for the Islamist extreme-right.…

What do we want? Less free speech!

24 August 2016 3:33 pm

For years comedians across America have been lamenting the suffocating political correctness sweeping their country. This growing aversion “offensive” views,…

Time for business to remember its values and cut the Kofi breaks

24 August 2016 7:15 am

Back in the days when Kofi Anan possessed the biggest blue helmet of them all as UN Secretary General, a…

Good governance goes to the dogs with Baird’s barking mad policy

23 August 2016 6:33 pm

New South Wales Premier Mike Baird appears to be emulating characters from American history with his barking mad bill banning…

Indigenous disadvantage: time for a royal commission into why good intentions achieve so little?

23 August 2016 1:06 pm

It might well be Chrenkoff’s First Law of Welfare that all the poverty- and disadvantage-reducing government programs are most successful…

The plight of the middle class white girl

23 August 2016 7:14 am

When the noxious Left are in full self-righteous flight, the societal archetype they show the most contempt for is the…

The real Gosford Anglican Church outrage

22 August 2016 7:49 pm

None of us are wanting for a reason to abhor Nick Folkes’s stunt at the Gosford Anglican Church. It was…

Toxic masculinity, noxious lies

22 August 2016 7:19 am

It’s one of the most pervasive and dangerous myths propagated by radical feminism: that our culture of ‘toxic masculinity’ has…

Waleed Aly’s indigenous deaths in custody myth

20 August 2016 3:17 pm

Waleed Aly has again taken to his favourite medium – the smug rant – ignoring facts to push a popular…

Annastacia Palaszczuk and the latest city-country divide

19 August 2016 10:50 am

Nothing reveals the clear divide between inner city and regional Queensland than the long, tumultuous history of land clearing. The…

Those upper house blues

19 August 2016 7:28 am

Here’s a question for all you readers.  Of course I don’t expect anyone who’s gone through an Australian high school…

Lindt II: Death by multiculturalism

18 August 2016 6:13 pm

Ideas about nations matter – especially when those ideas shape the attitudes and actions of those in positions of authority.…

The Lindt siege: our lives are in the best of hands

18 August 2016 2:04 pm

In early December, Sydneysiders and Australians in general will remember the second anniversary of the deadly Lindt chocolate café siege.…

The biggest rort of them all

18 August 2016 7:32 am

A stopped clock is … well, you know the rest. And so it was with Buzzfeed yesterday when the Australian…

#blackfathersmatter

17 August 2016 7:56 am

Milwaukee, Wisconsin is recovering from brutal rioting. The unrest grew out of protests over the death of Sylville K. Smith,…

Finally, Shorten stumbles

16 August 2016 8:41 pm

When Malcolm Turnbull finished the election with all the grace of Shaunae Miller’s win in the women’s 400 metre final in…

If business shuts the door to debate the fringe will flourish

16 August 2016 9:54 am

Among the many losers of the 2016 election, big business is near the top of the list, which might teach…

The anarchist bookstore and the Lodge: a parable

16 August 2016 7:25 am

Walking past the Newtown Anarchist’s Club/Bookstore, I noticed their shopfront window was smashed. “Fitting”, I thought, before walking on. But…

The Party of Freedom and the Gosford Anglicans: pity both sides can’t lose

15 August 2016 4:07 pm

Yesterday, a group of yobbos known as the Party for Freedom staged a noisy anti-Islamic protest during the Sunday mass…

Captain Catholic’s confession

15 August 2016 7:23 am

Catholicism can be ridiculously simple. Confess your sins in a spirit of true repentance and — te absolvo — you…