On Wednesday, the morning after the unanimous decision of Britain’s Supreme Court in Miller v The Prime Minister, Jonathan Sumption appeared on Adam Boulton’s All Out Politics program on Sky News UK. Lord Sumption retired from the Supreme Court late last year. Earlier this year he delivered the Reith Lectures on BBC Radio 4. Boulton [...]
Gladys Liu during Question Time in the House of Representatives Picture: Kym Smith There is a lot to be said for the biblical injunction “by their fruits you will know them”. This is of relevance to claims that Gladys Liu, the Liberal member for the eastern Melbourne seat of Chisholm, is not a fit and [...]
Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration Kristina Keneally. In Nine Entertainment’s newspapers on Tuesday, Latika Bourke reported Tony Abbott’s speech to the Policy Exchange think tank in support of Britain exiting the EU — Brexit. The heading was “Tony Abbott quotes the Bible in London Brexit speech”. The biblical quote occurred close to the [...]
Scott Morrison, centre, with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, left, and Senator Mathias Cormann, right, walk out of a press conference in July. It’s just over 100 days since the Coalition’s crushing victory over Labor at the federal election in May. Speaking on the occasion of Scott Morrison’s first anniversary as Prime Minister last Saturday, John Howard [...]
Western democracies are witnessing a battle of the R-words; namely, respect and ridicule. In recent years, advocacy of respect has almost become a cliche. Even so, in the public debate, ridicule is increasingly present. On CNN’s State of the Union program last Sunday, Dana Bash interviewed Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of Watergate fame. The presenter asked [...]
There was much hope that the Year of the Rooster would usher in a time of honesty and moral fortitude, which would fit in with the search for individual and collective wellness throughout the land. And there were good signs when it was realised that, contrary to many a prediction by Canberra academic Hugh White, [...]
When is a by-election not really a by-election? When it’s the kind of event that was held in the Bennelong electorate last Saturday. It’s a rare occasion when a sitting member, such as the Liberal Party’s John Alexander, recontests in a by-election a seat they had previously held. There are four such occasions in Australian [...]
In his final address to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Thursday, chairman Peter McClellan said: “The greatest number of alleged perpetrators and abused children, in church-managed facilities that we are aware of, were in Roman Catholic institutions.” That’s true. However, it is also true that the Catholic Church, in [...]
ust imagine the world today if the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament had achieved its ambitions within the Western democracies. For starters, North Korea’s communist dictator Kim Jong-un would be able to achieve his aim of uniting all of Korea by eliminating South Korea and would prove a deadly threat to Japan and, in time, the [...]
It remains to be seen whether legislation to introduce same-sex marriage in Australia would have an adverse impact on religious freedom. This would depend on the plight of institutions or individuals who continued to teach that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others, subsequent to any [...]