Crime dominates Northern Territory election
‘Speckles’, the Adelaide River crocodile, got it wrong; Labor did not win the election. Instead, Australia is wondering if they…
Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested in France
Pavel Durov, the 39-year-old CEO and founder of the encrypted social media app Telegram, has been detained in France. He…
The Life of Zye – who will cry?
Here’s a macabre little story that illustrates where humanity is headed – let’s call it The Life of Zye even…
They nicked how much from her pay?!
Ah, Australia. The land of sun, surf, and … taxation that would make even the most die-hard Balmain or Brunswick…
Albanese’s inevitable slide into a Whitlamesque economy
A common mindset held by too many on the left is that production is inevitable, and will be maintained irrespective…
Biology bows to gender identity
It’s a bad day for biology. Sall Grover, founder of The Giggle for Girls app, has been ordered to pay…
To ensure support of key allies, Australia must get serious about defence
Amidst the bluster of Paul Keating’s recent intervention into the security debate by declaring Australia’s the Aukus pact risks turning…
Green foods fail Olympics
The first occupants of the Olympics village in Paris quickly taught the caterers that athletes did not favour their ‘climate-friendly’…
Déjà voodoo economics
The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it.…
The class lines of rape
Whenever I write about rape the articles are usually pretty popular around my own set of feminists, I’m not sure…
Picking your poison
There are no perfect choices in human affairs. We are always in the game of trying to find the least…
The ‘corporate greed’ fallacy
At a recent campaign event in North Carolina, Kamala Harris became the latest politician to diagnose corporate greed as the…
Multiculturalism – a good idea at the time?
Once upon a time the Australian national anthem was played at sporting fixtures and when the cinema lights went down.…
Follow the money
There is a rumour going around that, prior to the CFMEU revelations hitting the press, Prime Minister Albanese was planning…
Business/Robbery, etc
Whenever Paul Keating provides one of his frequent uninvited cantankerous contributions to the public debate, Australians should recognise the debt…
I still call Australia, er, a hotel
From time to time, an event presages a change of more general significance than the circumstances appear at the time.…
Diversity is not our strength
It was encouraging to see Albo’s government recently appoint a Special Envoy for Social Cohesion, Wills MP Peter Khalil, in…
Australian Entry Visa
It gives me no pleasure to give you this world exclusive, never before revealed to the public. Years ago, when…
Australia’s gold standard attack on religious freedom
As the flame goes out on the Paris Olympic Games, one image left smouldering in the minds of those of…
Trumpenomics
What are the economic implications of a second Donald Trump presidency for the US, the world and Australia? As we…
The arrest of Pavel Durov raises awkward questions
Pavel Durov, Russian-born founder of the Telegram messaging and social media app, has been arrested in France for failing to…
Are Labour about to u-turn on the winter fuel payment?
Could Labour be about to water down its removal of the winter fuel payment for pensioners? The chorus of muttering…
Israel’s strikes on Lebanon bring Jerusalem one step closer to regional dominance
As the dust literally settles across southern Lebanon in the aftermath of the Israeli airstrikes, we are starting to see…
The Islamists want to silence music the way they have free speech
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack on Friday at a festival in Germany that left three people…
Why are so many young people abandoning New Zealand?
Heading to the UK is a longstanding rite of cultural passage for many Kiwis. People like my youngest son, who…
Kiwi life
New Zealand in crisis Given the destruction the previous Labour government inflicted on this country, and the damage caused by…
New Zealand’s carbon sequestration problem
Ongoing concern about climate change has fuelled debate about the part carbon sequestration might play in reducing New Zealand’s net…
Why New Zealand is cracking down on immigration
The government of New Zealand this week tightened the country’s working visa rules in order to stem historically high numbers…
The persecution of ‘the plebs’
A man of incomparable beauty
It was sad to see that great French actor Alain Delon had died the other day. He was a man…
The power of surprise
You would think that Andrew Bovell, the man who wrote Lantana, would not be subject to the petty indignities of…
The standard of beauty
Maxim Vengerov is touted as one of the world’s greatest violinists, the kind of musician who can fill Carnegie Hall…
Deranged and fantastic horrors
For a century King Lear has been thought of as the greatest of Shakespeare’s tragedies and the title role as…
The song of the bearded seal and other marvels
In his satirical Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defined the ocean as ‘a body of water occupying about two thirds of…
A romantic obsession: Precipice, by Robert Harris, reviewed
London in the long hot summer of 1914. A city of gold sovereigns, chaperones and muffin men, but also a…
More curious canine incidents: Dogs and Monsters, by Mark Haddon, reviewed
Mark Haddon’s latest collection of short stories, Dogs and Monsters, uses myth and history as springboards into mesmerising accounts of…
A choice of thrillers for end of summer escapism
Publishing has never much distinguished between fame and notoriety, and it’s hardly Charlotte Philby’s fault that her grand-father was the…
How weird was Oliver Cromwell?
One of the most notorious episodes in the siege of Drogheda, when more than 3,000 Irish people were killed by…
Can W.H. Auden be called a war poet?
Nicholas Jenkins takes, as a point to navigate by in this rich and ingenious study of the early Auden, a…
Two young men in flight: Partita and A Winter in Zürau, by Gabriel Josipovici reviewed
Two books in one: you flip it over, and it becomes the other. A Winter in Zürau is about Franz…
Iris Apfel’s talent to amaze
This is a book like no other. Part artwork and part compendium of a lifetime’s experience in design, it is…