When Louise Adler appeared on ABC TV’s 7.30 on Tuesday, she certainly threw the switch to delusional – or delulu in modern-day slang. The former director of the Adelaide Festival’s Adelaide Writers Week was interviewed by Michael Rowland about the decision to cancel the 2026 AWW and her choice to step down as its director. As is [...]
Could Nine’s Sydney Morning Herald be heading for a hat-trick in reverse? On January 7 it listed Cathy Wilcox’s cartoon titled “Grass roots” in its “best cartoons” category. Arsen Ostrovsky, who was injured in the terrorist attack on the Jewish community celebrating Hanukkah at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on December 14, has described Wilcox’s work as [...]
It was perhaps the angriest personal exchange concerning the terrorist attack on the Australian Jewish community at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on December 14. And it took place between a former NSW Labor premier, Bob Carr, and a former Victorian Labor MP, Philip Dalidakis. The latter is a Jewish Australian. Early in his public life, Carr [...]
Morale was high on New Year’s Day as the good people of Australia looked forward to the year of the snake and the onset of wisdom. But, alas, it turned out that 2025 was riven with false prophecy, hyperbole, historical howlers, fake news, sneering pomposity and denial – month after month. January: Nostradamus fans are [...]
Former prime minister John Howard has a sharp political mind along with a deep sense of history. In the aftermath of the march to Sydney Opera House on October 9, 2023, Howard described the event as a “catastrophic descent from civility”. It was the occasion when, two days after the Hamas terrorist organisation’s attack on southern Israel [...]
I'm often asked about the metamorphosis of Malcolm Fraser, who was first elected prime minister of Australia 50 years ago today, the 13th. When I was a student at the University of Melbourne in the 1960s, Fraser occasionally gave talks at the campus. He was one of the few Coalition MPs who could defend Australia's [...]
Next Saturday is the 50th anniversary of the Malcolm Fraser-led Coalition’s victory over the Labor Party led by Gough Whitlam. It was a stunning result, just over four weeks after Fraser had been sworn in as a caretaker prime minister following the dismissal of the Whitlam government by governor-general Sir John Kerr on November 11, 1975. [...]
COMMENT BY GERARD HENDERSON FOR THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN, SATURDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2025 The most disturbing political photos of the year so far took place in Alaska on Friday, August 15 (local time). There was United States President Donald J. Trump standing and clapping for Russian Vladimir Putin as he walked up the red carpet to [...]
It was very much a “home ground” event when last Wednesday Hugh Marks addressed the National Press Club in Canberra for the first time as managing director and editor-in-chief of the ABC. The Canberra Press Gallery contains but a few political conservatives. Most Canberra-based journalists regard themselves as what, in private, they would term as [...]