Only four Liberal Party leaders have taken the Coalition into government by defeating Labor from opposition. In order of their years of tenure in office, they were Robert Menzies (1949), John Howard (1996), Malcolm Fraser (1975) and Tony Abbott (2013). Viewed in this light, it’s easy to see why so many contemporary Liberals associate themselves…

I opposed John Howard’s decision in 2006, when he was prime minister, to provide an endowment of $25 million to the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. The USSC received ­additional support from the NSW government and the taxpayer-subsidised University of Sydney. Certainly there were financial contributions from business and individuals, channelled…

I, for one, am not mourning the death of Martin McGuinness, the former deputy first minister of Northern Ireland. Sure, in the last two decades of his life the leader of the essentially Catholic Sinn Fein party played an important role in implementing the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement in co-operation with Ian Paisley and…

Growing up in Melbourne in the 1950s and early 60s, I could never have anticipated that, a half-century later, Australia would have an energy crisis. Throughout the 20th century, Victoria’s relative economic prosperity was sustained by cheap brown coal from the Latrobe Valley area. Coal extraction led to job creation and increasing living standards. Other…

Last Wednesday the ABC celebrated International Women’s Day by replacing all male presenters with females. Some found this gesture condescending while others thought it uplifting. But what’s certain is that the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster’s line-up on March 8 did not do what it claimed to do. According to ABC Publicity, the whole of the exercise…