Kalgoorlie 1920 is no guide to Eden-Monaro today
Contrary to the prevailing mythology advanced by some commentators, there is no meaningful comparison between the Kalgoorlie by-election of December [...]
ABC one-eyed on staff cuts
It is invariably a sad occasion when employees lose jobs through no fault of their own. This applies to the [...]
Acknowledge past injustice without rewriting history
Police guard the Lachlan Macquarie and Captain Cook statues in Sydney’s Hyde park after both were the target of [...]
Left quickly turns on its own in Black Lives Matter debate
It was just a matter of time before the contemporary left started turning on itself. After all, this had been [...]
No link to Australia but protesters will feel virtuous
Today will see what are presented as Black Lives Matter protests in Australian cities and elsewhere. Protesters will be remembering [...]
Hugs are nice, but industrial reform is more productive
Perhaps the only acceptable factor of the coronavirus pandemic is the outlawing of the hug, including the group hug — [...]
Coronavirus has left Australia in better shape than most
In one of his final poems before dying at 59, Australian poet James McAuley wrote: “Winter will grow dark and [...]
Royal commission denies George Pell legal justice
The ignorance of some journalists never seems to surprise. Take, for example, the release last week of the non-redacted report [...]
Coronavirus: Unlike Labor, unions, Scott Morrison is for the workers
It’s only a few months ago that green-left types, including quite a few journalists, took delight in sneering at Scott [...]
Coronavirus: Good trade relationship with China doesn’t mean we’re kowtowing
In the current debate on the Australia-China relationship that has been fuelled by China’s role in the COVID-19 pandemic, one [...]
Malcolm Turnbull’s book omissions tell us more than the inclusions
As readers of Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story Silver Blaze will recall, Sherlock Holmes solves a crime by focusing on [...]
Morrison right to prioritise the wellbeing of the working class
The awareness gap between some Australians and others in the current economic and social crisis was never more evident than [...]
George Pell: Fairness trampled by social media mob
The unanimous decision of the High Court of Australia in Pell v The Queen raises an important question. Can a [...]
Coronavirus: total economic shutdown not in anyone’s interest
This week Deputy Chief Medical Officer Nicholas Coatsworth said that on a per capita basis Australia had one of the [...]
ABC activists in a coronavirus battle
In my working life I will have lived through four recessions: the mid-1970s, early 80s, early 90s and the likely [...]
Coronavirus: Listen to the medics: confused messages create chaos
Scott Morrison responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by announcing the creation of a national cabinet composed of the leaders of [...]
Panic-buying not a sign of despair
It’s just a week since the video of three women yelling and fighting over toilet rolls in a supermarket in [...]
ABC’s journos have always bitten hand that feeds
It was no surprise to see Paul Keating on ABC television last Tuesday accusing the Coalition government of “ideological contempt”. [...]
The insidious force of rising foreign interference
The media’s response to Monday’s speech by director-general of security Mike Burgess tended to focus on his comments about right-wing [...]
Sports grant saga kicks off fresh round of hyperbole
In a public forum at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre late last month, speaker Kim Hoggard declared [...]
Top journos give themselves an ‘A’ for failure in election
The media believes its principal role is to inform citizens about what is going on. A noble cause, to be [...]
A blow as Nationals hero walks away from cabinet
Nationals’ senator Matt Canavan is one of Australia’s most impressive younger parliamentarians. Born on the Queensland Gold Coast in December [...]
ABC’s leading journos out of touch with Australia’s key issues
It is just four months since the ABC’s mission to Bankstown in southwest Sydney. Led by ABC chairwoman Ita Buttrose [...]
The left media’s different treatment of two very different prime ministers
It is a rare occasion when comments made by two former Australian prime ministers make news on the same day, [...]
Somewhere over the ditch there’s an imaginary utopia
It’s a reality of Western democracies that the most estranged citizens tend to come from the most successful and best-educated [...]
Interview more about ‘look-at-me’ Piers Morgan than Craig Kelly
Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly would be well advised to follow the lead of Britain’s Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In [...]
Unhappy new year but fires aren’t end of the world
It is understandable why some Australians are reluctant to use the term “Happy New Year” at a time when many [...]
On the road to Apocalypse Soon with Greta Thunberg and her disciples
Since the world, according to Greta Thunberg and her disciples, faces extinction it came as no surprise that this year [...]
Silly season not the time to convert climate sceptics
It has been said that Christmas is not universally a time of peace and goodwill since many a seasonal get-together [...]
It’s all about feelings for climate change theorists on fires
As with so many contemporary discussions, what is missing from the debate about the impact of climate change on drought [...]
60 Minutes’ problematic Chinese spy scoop is no Petrov affair
What was worrying about the self-proclaimed world exclusive story China’s Spy Secrets on the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes was the [...]
Nation’s diminishing appetite for any form of palace coup
Along with 45 per cent of fellow Australians, I voted “Yes” on November 6, 1999 in the referendum as to [...]
Malcolm Turnbull just can’t let it go
It is said that loss of high public office in a democracy can bring about a psychological condition akin to [...]
Activist reporting to fore again in Pell appeal comment
The increasing blur between the journalist as reporter and the journalist as activist was never more evident than before and [...]
The Conversation and the ABC demean public debate
On any empirical analysis, Australia is one of the most stable democracies in the Western world. Moreover, it suffers none [...]
Opposition realises it’s the conservative vote that counts
It’s a brave Labor Party parliamentarian and self-declared “progressive” who admits to being “on the same side of an argument [...]
Andrews dabbles in foreign policy to state’s detriment
Victoria commenced in 1851 as a colony of the United Kingdom. On January 1, 1901 it became a state of [...]
40 years on, welcome signs of a more constructive Aunty
At the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster, it appears to be a case of in with the new, out with the old [...]
Labor must learn to listen before it can lead
The Liberal Party turns 75 this Sunday. It was on Friday October 13, 1944 that – at the invitation of [...]
Scott Morrison and Alexander Downer tell it like it is, but is anyone listening?
The 70th Anniversary on Tuesday of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) coming to power, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, [...]
Britain’s Supreme Court sides with ‘European’ progressives
On Wednesday, the morning after the unanimous decision of Britain’s Supreme Court in Miller v The Prime Minister, Jonathan Sumption [...]
It’s not a conversation when only one view is allowed
There is nothing new about what some have termed the new intolerance. It’s just that contemporary intolerance is more intense [...]
The pointscoring behind the Liu pile-on
Gladys Liu during Question Time in the House of Representatives Picture: Kym Smith There is a lot to be said [...]
Lesson on Christian leadership ought to begin at home
Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration Kristina Keneally. In Nine Entertainment’s newspapers on Tuesday, Latika Bourke reported Tony Abbott’s [...]
How Cormann saved the election for the Liberal Party
Scott Morrison, centre, with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, left, and Senator Mathias Cormann, right, walk out of a press conference in [...]
Anti-Pell media pile-on has its day despite Weinberg dissent
David Marr is a George Pell antagonist who writes for the left-wing Guardian Australia and appears on the ABC. In [...]
Symbolic gestures do nothing to protect our children
The decision of the Victorian government to force Catholic priests to break the seal (secrecy) of the confessional is the [...]
Labor missed the boat by threatening to raise taxes
Former prime minister Paul Keating’s interview with Laura Tingle on ABC television’s 7.30 last Tuesday has set up a debate within the [...]
Even the Police and 60 Minutes can be Gulled on Occasion
Followers of Nine’s 60 Minutes are used to the hyperbole that invariably is associated with publicising the program. For example, last Sunday’s [...]
Q&A kowtows to Alastair Campbell despite his historical ignorance
It’s difficult to understand the reverence sections of the Australian media give to visiting, or fly-in-fly-out, commentators and intellectuals. Take [...]
Elementary to leave Bob Brown’s wind farm comments unreported
Arthur Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes referred to the curious incident of the dog that did not bark. This week [...]
Concentration camps? You can’t be serious, Tom Keneally
Tom Keneally ‘threw the switch to alienation’ when discussing the issue of refugees and asylum-seekers with the BBC Most Australians [...]
Claiming unwinnable election gives Libs a season of calm
The most important message from Sky News’ two-part documentary Bad Blood/New Blood, which aired on Tuesday and Wednesday, was provided by [...]
Conservative injection should be easy as learning ABC
Illustration: John Tiedemann What’s interesting about the ABC’s headquarters in Sydney’s inner-city Ultimo in recent times turns on that which [...]
Good governance trumps rigid party agendas
Unlike Bill Shorten, Prime Minister Scott Morrison went into the election with a modest platform. Yet it won both votes [...]
Croatian Six: miscarriage of justice unredressed 40 years on
Four decades on from the (alleged) events of February 8, 1979, a dark stain remains on the Australian criminal justice [...]
There was always a path to victory for Morrison’s Libs
It was informative on election night to watch ABC television’s Annabel Crabb and Andrew Probyn, among others, blaming the opinion [...]
Shorten has had his Chifley big-end-of-town moment
Labor’s Ben Chifley lost the 1949 election after he took aim at the ‘big end of town Some say Bill [...]
Linking rise of tolerance to Christchurch is a cheap shot
The Project’s Waleed Aly Australia is a significant nation in world affairs and has been at least since the start [...]
Spare us the abuse, it benefits no one
It’s not surprising why quite a few prominent Australians refuse to appear on ABC TV’s Q&A. Including Prime Minister Scott [...]
Concentration camps? You can’t be serious, Tom Keneally
Most Australians appreciate the cut and thrust of the domestic political debate. However, when talking to foreigners, all of us [...]
Respectfully, Keating is the pot calling the kettle black
Former Australian Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Paul Keating applaud Opposition Leader Bill Shorten at last weekend’s Labor [...]
None so superior as the leftist elite
It’s the tale of two stories, from a left-of-centre perspective. The May issue of The Monthly came out on Wednesday. Its lead [...]
Fabric of democracy fraying under weight of the mob
Isaac Butterfield was, until now, a little heard of stand-up comedian — until he included Holocaust material in his gig [...]
We march to honour Anzacs’ unfashionable truths
A half-century ago, among the Left intelligentsia it was fashionable to predict the end of Anzac Day. Perhaps most memorably [...]
ALP’s poll position far from decisive
A funny thing happened on the way to reporting the Ipsos poll in Nine’s newspapers on Monday. The phone poll [...]
Capacity to pay, not a tribunal, should determine wages
Last week, Bill Shorten said a Labor government “will fix the law so that the Fair Work Commission has the [...]
Turnbull’s poor 2016 poll performance haunts coalition
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in Bondi earlier this month. Picture: Damian Shaw Since the end of World War II, [...]
NZ no progressive promised land
*New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern departs Friday prayers in Christchurch yesterday. Without question, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda [...]
Pell case attracts inaccurate views
R v George Pell was one of the highest-profile cases in the history of criminal law in Australia. Similar in its [...]
It’s not uncommon for jury verdicts to be questioned
The reporting on and commentary about R v George Pell revealed that many journalists have little knowledge of the legal [...]
Pell’s ordeal reinforces the case for judge-only trials
In introducing Sky News’s Paul Murray Live on Wednesday, the presenter said Australia has a legal system “with a pretty simple set [...]
Palmer unlikely to upend our stable two-party tradition
There is frequent reference to Australia as a nation of political instability — reflecting the fact that there have been [...]
Border security policy not based on ‘racism’ and ‘hate’
It was one of the more naive propositions from a journalist so far this year. On Tuesday, ABC TV 7.30 presenter Leigh [...]
ABC’s infatuation with independents is pretty pointless
The obsession of sections of the ABC with the independents, especially those who will contest a winnable seat against the [...]
Aunty’s built-in bias is plain when it fails to question its favourites too closely
There is a lot to be said for the biblical saying “by their fruits ye shall know them”. The same [...]
This nation of immigrants rightly cherishes its rich past
Like any historical moment, January 26, 1788, changed forever the continent that became the Commonwealth of Australia (on January 1, [...]
Our only instability is an infatuation with independents
In the midst of the political instability within many Western democracies, Australia is doing relatively well in the disruption stakes. [...]
Nasties, yes, but we’ve never been fertile soil for Nazis
It was sage advice from an unexpected source. In the wake of the United Patriots Front’s “Reclaim St Kilda” rally [...]
Discussion, conversation replaced by the shrill voice of accusation
Not so long ago individuals got involved in what were termed discussions. Now it is fashionable to speak about conversations [...]
No respite from dog of a year
The Year of the Dog began with the hope that 2018 would usher in a time of luck and wellness [...]
Coalition could benefit from ‘doing the hypocrisies’
Four decades ago, in a private conversation that was relayed directly to me at the time, Malcolm Fraser spoke of [...]
Wilson case offers a study in contrasting coverage
One of the most important legal judgments this year was that handed down by Judge Roy Ellis in the NSW [...]
Jerusalem is not out of our reach
Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. It has been since the creation of Israel in 1948. And it will remain [...]
We can learn a lot about attribution bias from Malcolm Turnbull
It was 6.27am (Donald J. Trump tweeting time) on Thursday when former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull reacted to The Australian’s front [...]
Last thing the nation needs is an unnecessary inquisition
Cathy McGowan, the independent member for the Victorian seat of Indi, presents as a community politician who has many a [...]
Let our leaders speak the truth
Many Australians want their politicians to be authentic and to speak the truth as they see it. The problem is [...]
Leftists ignorant in their assault on Douglas Haig for his war service
There used to be a time when individuals began an argument in the public debate. Now, in the terms of [...]
Turnbull joins miserable ghosts haunting living rooms
It was a Friday night in early March 2008 when I received a call from Malcolm Turnbull on my home [...]
Biggest swing? In Wills, Cleary outpolled Wentworth’s Phelps
On Monday morning, ABC TV News Breakfast co-presenter Virginia Trioli announced that last Saturday’s Wentworth by-election amounted to “the biggest swing against [...]
Aunty offers rising son a platform for ‘crazy’ party claims
Two decades ago I supported the campaign of the Australian Republic Movement led by Malcolm Turnbull. There were two compelling [...]
After Hewson in Wentworth, will Turnbull turn against Liberals?
Since Sir Robert Menzies stepped down as prime minister in January 1966, the Liberal Party of Australia has had 13 [...]
‘Miserable ghosts’: How do you solve a problem like an ex-PM?
For supporters of right-of-centre politics, it’s fortunate indeed that there was no bar on the future careers of what Malcolm [...]
Tear down ABC’s silos of groupthink
Whoever replaces Michelle Guthrie as ABC managing director and editor-in-chief should be capable of acting, and should be willing to [...]
ABC tries spicing up a stew that lacks basic ingredients
From his temporary base in New York City, Malcolm Turnbull appears not to have accepted the legitimacy of the process [...]
Turnbull stirs Liberal turmoil with advice on Dutton
Malcolm Turnbull is primarily responsible for the present turmoil in the Liberal Party. It was Turnbull who destroyed his own [...]
Menzies got the ball rolling on women in parliament
There is no refuge for a Liberal Party leader in the ACT, where the Coalition holds no House of Representatives [...]
Turnbull, not News nor 2GB, was the author of his demise
Amid the hyperbole engendered by Scott Morrison replacing Malcolm Turnbull and becoming Australia’s 30th prime minister, one considered and experienced [...]
With a true Liberal back at the helm, next step is unity
It was known in political circles that about a quarter-century ago Malcolm Turnbull sought to gain preselection as a Labor [...]
Rhiannon says farewell but not ‘I’m sorry’
Support for socialism in general and communism in particular appears to be on the rise in the West - over [...]
Sky News ban: politics of racism defy a black and white interpretation
The Victorian Labor government and Victoria Police do not seem capable of stopping rampant crime by South Sudanese Australians in [...]
Tell Lenin’s victims that wearing his T-shirt is a bit of fun
John Falzon wearing a Vladimir Lenin t-shirt to commemorate the centenary of the Russian Revolution with his wife Hacqui Agius. [...]
Contrary opinions need a public voice for society to flourish
The decision by the organisers of the Brisbane Writers Festival to disinvite Germaine Greer and Bob Carr from participating in [...]
At ABC, only one side of story counts
The essential criticism of the ABC is that it is a conservative-free zone without a right-wing presenter, producer or editor [...]
Labor’s latest rodent, Mark Latham, joins distinguished company
It was the verbal punch-up of the year so far, the debate between former Labor minister and Sky News presenter [...]
Upholding law doesn’t make Dutton a fascist
It’s fashionable these days to regard disruption as a new phenomenon. But it has been with us for eons. None [...]
Albanese, Butler better on business than Shorten, Swan
A funny thing has happened on the way to the next federal election. The Labor left is exhibiting less hostility [...]
ABC presenters never express opinions? Let’s fact-check that
It did not take much time for the assertion of one ABC presenter to be disproved by another. In an [...]
Hewett story reaction shows the left protect its own regardless of the obscenities
It’s the silence of the comrades and the mates. Rosemary Neill’s exclusive story in The Weekend Australianlast Saturday that writer Dorothy Hewett [...]
ABC’s problem with political diversity goes a long way back
During the past 50 years the ABC has been criticised by Coalition and Australian Labor Party leaders alike. The unexpected [...]
Liberal tension a pointless distraction
Dumped: Jane Prentice. Picture: Annette Dew In the lead-up to the 2016 election, Jason Falinski defeated incumbent Bronwyn [...]
Peter Ridd’s sea of troubles
Dr Peter Ridd, the former physics professor who has just been sacked by James Cook University in Townsville, does not [...]
Sorry, no apology for Bean’s past faults
Writing this week in The Guardian, Canadian poet Linda Besner described the refrain “I’m sorry” as Canada’s “second national anthem”. She [...]
Don’t bite government hand that feeds you, Aunty
Immediately after last Tuesday’s budget, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield announced that the ABC “will continue to be exempt from the [...]
ABC plays host to guests of a left-liberal perspective
ABC News Breakfast hosts Michael Rowland and Virginia Trioli. There is more than an ocean between Washington, DC, [...]
Washington’s Canberra mission is in capable hands with James Carouso
Malcolm Turnbull visits Admiral Harry Harris in Hawaii in 2016. Picture: Jake Nowakowski It’s somewhat undiplomatic to say [...]
Anzac Day: field marshal rank the wrong way to honour General John Monash and WWI dead
General Sir John Monash. Picture: AAP/Australian War Memorial This week has seen unity in Australian politics, but not [...]
Turnbull needs shock, awe and Abbott to reunite party
Former prime minister Tony Abbott’s public humiliation has been a missed opportunity for Malcolm Turnbull. Divisions within the [...]
ABC journalists treat child sexual assault as a Catholic problem
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and her Victorian counterpart, Daniel Andrews, were the first to sign up their respective states to [...]
Nick McKim Would Be in Jail if Australia Were A Fascist State
The problem with hyperbole is that it distorts not only political debate but also historical understanding. In Australian national politics, [...]
Shorten’s funding vow to Catholics is clever politics
It’s possible Education Minister Simon Birmingham may have missed some Bible classes when growing up in South Australia in the [...]
Trump’s disruption works to Australia’s advantage
Despite all the hype, the decision of Donald Trump to fire his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, was a rational [...]
Hodgman’s Tasmania win offers lessons for Turnbull
It came as no surprise that Labor and the Greens ran a “we were robbed” line to explain their disappointing [...]
Ainsley Gotto was John Gorton’s secretary, not his mistress
Following the death of Ainsley Gotto last Sunday, there was considerable media interest in the release of her private papers, [...]
ABC’s moralising choir hits a jarring note
You shall know democratic politicians by their fruits, to rephrase Matthew 7:15-20 somewhat. When he was communications minister in Tony [...]
Anti-Catholic news report finds church owns much property
Writer and former priest Paul Collins is not a Catholic in the tradition of emeritus pontiff Benedict XVI. He is what [...]
ABC’s case against Kevin Lyons rests entirely on hearsay
In announcing the appointment of Justin Stevens as the new executive producer of 7.30, ABC management boasted about the role of [...]
Record shows ICAC’s pointless blows, so why emulate it at a federal level?
If the Malcolm Turnbull is really uncertain about whether to support the creation of a national anti-corruption watchdog, he should [...]
Refugees policy: We play bad cop so NZ can afford to be virtuous
The problem with inventing words or phrases is that the clever ones soon become cliches. This seems to be the [...]
Australia Day debate shouldn’t overshadow child abuse
It is unlikely that any government, Coalition or Labor, will change the date of Australia Day in the foreseeable future. [...]
Anti-Trump forces willing to adopt old Soviet methods to topple him
The intolerance of the contemporary left in Western democracies appears to know no bounds. These days it’s all but impossible [...]
Facts give way to mockery in media’s reporting of politics
Western democracies are witnessing a battle of the R-words; namely, respect and ridicule. In recent years, advocacy of respect has [...]
Left’s year of Trump-phobia and other insults
There was much hope that the Year of the Rooster would usher in a time of honesty and moral fortitude, [...]
Bennelong, New England will mean little by next election
When is a by-election not really a by-election? When it’s the kind of event that was held in the Bennelong [...]
Abuse royal commission: Catholic institutions guilty but so are others
In his final address to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Thursday, chairman Peter McClellan [...]
Profumo affair offers lessons best heeded by Sam Dastyari
Labor senator Sam Dastyari is no John Profumo yet both had their political careers thwarted due to what was perceived [...]
Keating’s ‘woeful coward’ slur against Menzies ignores historical truths
It was an extraordinarily vicious attack by one former successful prime minister on the memory of another. Last Monday, Paul [...]
Foreign policy white paper: do business with China, stay close to US
In the nearly half-century that Australia and China have enjoyed diplomatic ties since Gough Whitlam’s Labor government recognised the Chinese [...]
Same-sex marriage: Thanks to Abbott, the people have had their say on marriage
There are only two nations where the introduction of same-sex marriage was widely celebrated as an affirmation of equality by [...]
Dual citizenship decision is brutalist, but the High Court isn’t
Every now and then the High Court overturns a past decision, most notably in the 1920 Engineers case where the [...]
Beersheba serves an important reminder
The current commemoration of the highly successful charge of Australia’s Light Horse Brigade at Beersheba on October 31, 2017 serves [...]
Workers can unite but not with same urgency as in Marx’s time
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern believes that capitalism has failed the nation. So does her deputy, New Zealand First [...]
Left using conspiracies to fuel obsession with Whitlam dismissal
The source of the left intelligentsia’s favourite conspiracy appears to have crossed the Atlantic, from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, [...]
Fabricated claims of racism in Australia give left a drum to beat
Yesterday, a female friend of Indian background had the lift door held open for her by a handsome Anglo-Celtic male [...]
Kezelman saga timely reminder for McClennan royal commission
It was one of those real, not fake, “what a coincidence” moments. Last Saturday, Peter McClellan, chairman of the Royal [...]
Same-sex marriage: Yes vote a plunge into the great unknown
In her final comment on the ABC TV Insiders program last Sunday, Fran Kelly sent out a stay-calm message that New Zealand [...]
Labor faithful never waver in their affection for Lionel Murphy
Despite the release of the Murphy files last week, former NSW Liberal Party premier Robert Askin (1907-81) continues to hold [...]
Turnbull moves toward Abbott policies in quest for success
Only four Liberal leaders have led the Coalition to victory from opposition: Robert Menzies in 1949, Malcolm Fraser in 1975, [...]
Imagine Kim Jong’s-un’s power if CND and NDP had succeeded
ust imagine the world today if the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament had achieved its ambitions within the Western democracies. For [...]
Sanctity of confessional early test of religious freedom
It remains to be seen whether legislation to introduce same-sex marriage in Australia would have an adverse impact on religious [...]
Minchin’s Rant Counter-Productive to Yes Case on Same-Sex Marriage
It’s not familiarity that breeds contempt. It’s alienation. I first learned of Tim Minchin’s song I Still Call Australia Homophobic, supporting [...]
All the News That Fits the Narrative at Their ABC
The concept of the need to know is familiar in government and organisations, entailing that information will not be provided [...]
Imagine Kim Jong’s-un’s Power if CND and NDP Had Succeeded
Just imagine the world today if the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament had achieved its ambitions within the Western democracies. For [...]
Mike Seccombe Errs in Finding Catholics at Heart of NSW Liberals Dispute
The increasing number of sneering secularists in our midst focus primarily on believers of the Christian faith — with particular [...]
MPs Should Know Their Citizenship Status Entering Parliament
Malcolm Turnbull is correct. Greens senators Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters were careless in not checking their citizenship status before [...]
Two Labor Figures, but Only One Gets the Numbers Right
Two recent speeches to the Sydney Institute, one by a current and the other by a former key figure in [...]
Some Free Advice, Think Tank Agony Aunts: Put a Sock In It
It seems that the season for providing gratuitous advice to the Australian government is upon us. How else to explain [...]
Robert Menzies’ success was not based on ‘progressive’ policies
If Malcolm Turnbull had led the Coalition to a convincing victory in the July 2016 election, it is unlikely his [...]
Media Watch: here’s another lesson from the ABC’s bully pulpit
ABC television Media Watch presenter Paul Barry declared last Monday that “there’s long been talk of the Foxification of Sky [...]
Left-liberals need to explain to public why they are such losers
It’s a tale of two Tuesdays, in two hemispheres, which demonstrates that left-liberals (in the American sense of the term) [...]
Left incapable of acknowledging Islamist terrorist threat
The Palm Sunday attacks by the so-called Islamic State or Daesh on Coptic churches in Egypt is the latest manifestation [...]
Christians are under assault
The Palm Sunday attacks by the so-called Islamic State or Daesh on Coptic churches in Egypt is the latest manifestation [...]
Whatever Turnbull says, Menzies was more than small-l liberalism
Only four Liberal Party leaders have taken the Coalition into government by defeating Labor from opposition. In order of their [...]
Conservative values, and money, unsafe in liberal academic hands
I opposed John Howard’s decision in 2006, when he was prime minister, to provide an endowment of $25 million to [...]
Coalition’s multicultural statement shows importance of mixing
I, for one, am not mourning the death of Martin McGuinness, the former deputy first minister of Northern Ireland. Sure, [...]
Australia goes from being power rich to facing an energy crisis
Growing up in Melbourne in the 1950s and early 60s, I could never have anticipated that, a half-century later, Australia [...]
Many Australians resent the ABC’s daily leftist sermons
Last Wednesday the ABC celebrated International Women’s Day by replacing all male presenters with females. Some found this gesture condescending [...]
Hitler, Mussolini … Trump? No, the Donald isn’t a dictator
In the wake of Brexit and Donald J. Trump’s victory in the US presidential election last November, the term fascist [...]
Netanyahu shows failings of Hawke-Rudd call for Palestinian state
Pardon me. But I do not recall ever having heard of a certain David Zyngier. Yet the senior lecturer at [...]
Indigenous school attendance could be the most important gap
In his Closing the Gap speech to the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Malcolm Turnbull said that “acknowledging past wrongs” [...]
Bernardi likely to be a bit player
So much hype. Such little content. Cory Bernardi’s speech in the Senate on Tuesday announcing his decision to resign from [...]
Child abuse royal commission: don’t just target Catholic Church
On Monday, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will commence three weeks of public hearings concerning [...]
Madonna, Streep, Fonda: leaders of opposition to Donald Trump?
Not so long ago, when Western democracies were Judeo-Christian in disposition, sermons were delivered on Sundays for the predominant Christian [...]
Fake news is new, but Left shows fabricated reports are not
The malleability of language is evident in the rapidly changing meaning of fake news. In its early manifestation, the term [...]
Truths need to be told about Australian bushranger Ned Kelly
Victoria Police’s honour roll in Melbourne is just a short walk from Federation Square and down St Kilda Road. It [...]
Block to Israeli-Palestinian peace remains the same as in 1967
The year 2017, like its predecessor, seems destined to be one of memorable anniversaries. There are centenaries such as the [...]
2016: The year that was, in all its wildly inaccurate prophecies
As any useful prophet would have predicted for the Year of the Monkey, 2016 saw much exaggeration, false memories, self-regard [...]
Right empowered as terrorists exploit EU’s immigration policies
This week’s terrorist attack on Berlin reminds us that no Western city is immune from the assault of radical Islamists. [...]
No, there won’t be a republic in Australia anytime soon
I am a financial member of the Australian Republican Movement. Due to a prior commitment, I will not be present [...]
Truth, post-truth and nothing like the whole truth
The term post-truth has been around for a couple of decades, during which time it has had several meanings. However, [...]
Castro death reaction shows Left’s hypocrisy, Trump can be right
It’s a tale of two newspapers that tells a story about the Left. Fidel Castro died on the morning of [...]
Switzer alone cannot redress political imbalance in the ABC, USSC
Thank God for Tom Switzer. Without him how could the likes of the ABC and the United States Studies Centre [...]
Malcolm Fraser’s Lebanese concession became a disaster
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has copped considerable criticism for his comment on Sky News’ The Bolt Report last Monday that [...]
Keating, Wong comments on US alliance are stirring the possum
When Paul Keating entered the House of Representatives in October 1969, about a third of the Labor caucus was opposed [...]
A condescending media misread middle America
So the Republican Donald Trump comfortably defeated the Democrat Hillary Clinton in the big US political match. But the curtain-raiser [...]
Case against Cardinal George Pell falls down for lack of evidence
If there is to be a media prize for unbalanced advocacy in journalism then last Monday’s coverage by the ABC’s [...]
No place in political debate for the Queen’s representatives
“Resign” is the increasingly popular refrain when someone prominent in society is perceived to have committed an error. Often the [...]
Attacks on free speech continue while legislation enables them
The decision of the Australian Human Rights Commission to investigate a complaint against The Australian cartoonist Bill Leak under sections [...]
Offended Left claims exclusive right to freedom of expression
And so it has come to this. Ben Eltham, a Deakin University academic and national affairs editor for the left-wing [...]
Bad old-fashioned anti-Catholic sectarianism colours accounts
The anti-Catholic sectarianism that was so strong in Australia during the first six decades of the 20th century has scant [...]
Turnbull can survive political instability by being decisive
Political instability is not new to Australia. Not even in the modern era, which dates from the beginning of World [...]
Q&A shows why same-sex marriage opponents need campaign funding
Last year, Coalition ministers were banned temporarily from appearing on the ABC’sQ&A program by then prime minister Tony Abbott. After [...]
What’s deplorable is leftist disdain for the ‘ill-educated’
It was as if the disdain of the Left intelligentsia travelled across the Pacific, from the US to Australia, in [...]
ABC cannot deny the reprehensible actions of Richard Neville
I was listening to ABC Radio 702 in Sydney when presenter Wendy Harmer announced that “we have just heard today [...]
Mass murderer Mao Zedong undeserving of any commemoration
Next Friday marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party when [...]
Freedom of speech at risk from advocates of existing section 18C
It was an overwhelming leftist baying mob that rocked up at Docklands in Melbourne last Monday as audience members of [...]
Vietnam war: Australia’s role misrepresented on ABC, Sky News
Just when it seemed that the major myth concerning Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war had been demolished, a replacement [...]
Hindsight has not cleared the vision of an atrocity
It's an irony that much of the alienation evident in the public debate in Australia is funded by taxpayers and [...]
Liberal Party does best when conservative forces are kept close
The Liberal Party has replaced an incumbent Labor governm ent on four occasions since its formation in 1944: in 1949, [...]
Divided Greens can’t see the common good for the trees
Ever since the defeat of John Howard’s Coalition government in November 2007, there has been consistent speculation in the media [...]
Discussing Europe’s failed multiculturalism is not Islamophobic
Hilaire Belloc’s 1929 book Survivals and New Arrivals begins with the proud assertion: “Europe is the faith and the faith [...]
Trump, Hanson and Kruger’s views don’t deserve ridicule
Donald Trump is not my kind of conservative. Yet it would be foolish to ignore his appeal to many Americans. [...]
Bernardi can help Turnbull guard Coalition against Hanson
Now, here’s a confession. Two decades ago I invented the term “Lunar Right”. I primarily had in mind extreme right-wing [...]
Malcolm Turnbull must connect with conservative base, not Mao
One of Malcolm Turnbull’s early interviews as Prime Minister was with Fairfax Media’s Peter Hartcher. On October 24 last year, [...]
Black and white and Rudd all over
The popularity of Kevin Rudd and the Labor Government appears to be boundless. According to the most recent survey the [...]
The public has every right to a same-sex marriage plebiscite
On June 22, Fran Kelly interviewed Scott Morrison on the ABC’s RN Breakfast on several issues, including same-sex marriage. That [...]
New blood will revive Coalition
To suffer a significant downturn in one opinion poll might be due to chance, a statistical discrepancy or whatever. But [...]
Other religions do not preach hate like radical Islam
On Monday I received an email from a Melbourne reader. She concluded her note with an irreverent comment: “I have [...]
Alberici, West, Green and Birmingham follow Obama on Islam
Earlier this week, the ABC’s influential Religion & Ethics Report sided with Barack Obama against Donald Trump concerning use of [...]
Anti-Catholic tax activists blind to good churches do for free
Just when you thought society was safe from metaphors of the military kind, the Australian Sex Party has declared war [...]
Guys, it’s an exciting time to be an offence-taker
In the modern era, there has never been a time when the gap between giving offence and taking offence has [...]
Federal election 2016: Media should just let Turnbull be
With five weeks to polling day, a familiar political refrain has been reworked and restated: namely, let “the real Malcolm [...]
Sex abuse royal commission fails test of fairness
I have had two encounters of the personal kind with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, [...]
Federal election 2016: conservatives show disunity doesn’t mean death
In the lead-up to the July 2 election there has been some focus on a group termed “Delcons”. Translated, the [...]
US freedom of speech harmed as conservative voices are excluded
Free speech will be under challenge following the emergence of Donald Trump as the candidate presumptive for the Republican Party [...]
Flash of credentials can’t disguise self-interest in taxes letter
There is something awesomely pompous about individuals who proclaim their education, present or past employment, awards and the like to [...]
Unsubstantiated sex claims ruin the life’s work of good men
I write in defence of the memory of the Australian Jesuit priest Patrick Stephenson and in support of my friend [...]
Little to celebrate about Ireland’s Easter Rising 100 years on
In 1916, Easter was about as late as it can be. The Easter Rising in Dublin, which was celebrated in [...]
Terror represents an ‘irritant’ at our collective peril
Followers of the thought of Waleed Aly no doubt will regard this week’s homicide-suicide attacks in Brussels as another manifestation [...]
Liberals flirting with Greens send out a mixed message
Discussion of Australian politics tends to be leadership-centred. So it came as no surprise when the media focused on two [...]
Pell’s ‘implausible’ testimony not met with facts to the contrary
The evidence suggests that Justice Peter McClennan QC, AM, chairman of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual [...]
Tension in the Coalition room as Liberals celebrate Howard’s win
Morale was high at the dinner held in Parliament House on Wednesday to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the election [...]
Cardinal George Pell’s enemies sneer as police leak smears
Welcome to what passes for justice and due process in contemporary Australia. Last Saturday, the Herald Sun in Melbourne led [...]
Tim Minchin’s abusive song fires up Cardinal George Pell haters
It’s about a century since Australia experienced a lynch-mob mentality of the kind that has pervaded the debate over Cardinal [...]
Comedic stunts aside, soft borders cost lives
n the asylum-seeker front, it has been a big week for expressive — as opposed to instrumental — politics. In [...]
Double dissolution could be Turnbull’s ticket to corral senators
Perhaps it is just a Freudian slip that so many journalists and commentators refer to the possibility of a double [...]
A referendum would hurt republicans
I am a republican. In 1999, I voted “yes” to the proposal that the Constitution be altered “to establish the [...]
Liberals have lessons to learn from the Robert Menzies era
In 1949 Robert Menzies became one of four Liberal Party leaders to win office from opposition — along with Malcolm [...]
Kerry O’Brien, Germany’s ZDF avoid responsibility in journalism
As journalists, by means of social media, increasingly become activists in the public debate, what is not reported sometimes becomes [...]
Allan Ashbolt’s ghost still haunts conservative-free ABC
Not surprisingly, the appointment of Australian-born, Singapore-based Google executive Michelle Guthrie as the new ABC managing director and editor-in-chief created [...]
George Pell: a scapegoat at the altar of progressivism
Australians concerned about freedom of religion in this country would be well advised to look beyond the present and likely [...]
2015: failed soothsaying, gross hyperbole and rank trivia
For a fleeting moment, it looked as if 2015 might be the year in which prophecy attained credibility. After all, [...]
Muddled thinking makes Australia less resilient in face of terror
Clover Moore, the Lord Mayor of Sydney, reckons that modern-day cities need resilience. So much so that she has appointed [...]
Malcolm Turnbull needs to focus on Coalition unity
The word disruption has become so common a usage it seems destined for cliche status. Yet real disruptions do happen. [...]
George Pell should be given a fair go at royal commission
As far as I am aware, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse had not previously flagged [...]
Some journalists think Tony Abbott should be seen and not heard
As far as the insular Canberra parliamentary press gallery stories go, this surely takes the cake. For 2015 at least. [...]
Paris attacks: Apologists lose plot on Islamist threat
It has to be the most facile comment on Australian television this year. The reference is to Andrew MacLeod, a [...]
Today it’s harder to maintain rage over the Whitlam dismissal
Could it be that the rage that subsumed so many Australians following governor-general John Kerr’s sacking of Gough Whitlam’s Labor [...]
Dismissal a temporary difficulty in our parliamentary system
Anniversaries are invariably accompanied by a degree of overstatement, sometimes hyperbole. As so it has come to pass in the [...]
Anti-coal false prophets lack solutions for world’s poor
Coal is certainly firing up the political debate in Australia. Take the normally mild-mannered Bernie Fraser, for example. Interviewed by [...]
With our way of life under threat, focus on what unites us
In reviewing John Howard’s The Menzies Era in The Times Literary Supplementlast May, Clive James made a tough-minded assessment about [...]
Children in detention: doctors throw switch to moral outrage
Last Sunday’s Herald Sun published one of the most memorable photos of the week. A couple of hundred staff at [...]
Ex-PM Tony Abbott’s ‘Team Australia’ makes a lot of sens
If 60 is the new 50, then 15 should be regarded as the new 20. Many Australians were shocked that [...]
Partisan ABC allows attacks on non-feral Tony Abbott
Some Australians have scant respect for their elected leaders, present or past. In this regard, Tony Abbott has been the [...]
Mal Brough speaks on Senate voting as smaller parties fall in Canning
Interpretations differ as to whether Malcolm Turnbull’s ascension to the Lodge increased the Liberal Party vote in last Saturday’s Canning [...]
Tony Abbott’s accusations against the media have some merit
There is something overwhelmingly self-indulgent when a journalist interviews other journalists about journalism. No exception to this rule occurred on [...]
Christians should be given special consideration in refugee plan
The Abbott haters are in full voice again following the drowning of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian Kurd from the [...]
Christians targeted by sneering secularists at The Saturday Paper
Mike Seccombe, the Sydney correspondent for The Saturday Paper, is one of Australia’s most prominent sneering secularists. Like many left-wing [...]
ABC under Mark Scott facilitates decline in media standards
Mark Latham’s expletive-charged appearance at the Melbourne Writers Festival last Saturday was the most recent high-profile substitute of anger for [...]
How Menzies would have dealt with conscience votes is guesswork
History is, or should be, about the past. Two of the more common historical howlers involve projecting contemporary values and [...]
Plebiscite on same-sex marriage is a reasonable compromise
The debate over what some call same-sex marriage and others marriage equality is hotting up at the top levels of [...]
ABC’s leftist staff monoculture stifles debate of ideas
The ABC board’s decision, announced on Thursday, to move the Q&A program from its television section to its news and [...]
My friendship with the charismatic, unusual Bob Santamaria
B A (Bob) Santamaria rejected, at various times, high honours offered by the Commonwealth of Australia and the Vatican. Yet Santamaria [...]
The Queen’s Nazi salute was just the act of a mimic
Anyone who learns history courtesy of the modern media could well get the impression that, without the king in Buckingham [...]
On criticism and censorship
British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge once remarked that there were not many jokes left since what was humour to one person [...]
Academics inflate nuclear war risk yet deride Islamist threat
In the words of the cliche, it was a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. Writing in The [...]
Zaky Mallah Q&A affair another case of ABC leftist groupthink
The two prime ministers most critical of the ABC have not been Tony Abbott and John Howard but Abbott and [...]
The Pope can have his climate change say, but …
According to Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice — the authority on the upper house’s powers, procedures and practices — it is [...]
The Pope can have his climate change say, but …
According to Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice — the authority on the upper house’s powers, procedures and practices — it is [...]
Wanted dead or alive: confirmed deductions in biographies
Here’s a helpful tip for today’s biographers. If you have an intention to make unproven allegations about your subjects, it [...]
Left-leaning Vanstone starting to emulate a certain former Liberal PM
The ABC and Fairfax Media tend to criticise both the Coalition and Labor from the Left. Liberal Party types who [...]
Broad support of indigenous groups needed for referendum success
There is not much bipartisanship around in contemporary Australian politics. However, the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader are at one [...]
Persecutors of Cardinal George Pell wilfully ignore the history
Cardinal George Pell has become the victim of a modern-day witch hunt. As a social conservative, Pell has a number [...]
1970s Lebanese Commission led to an immigration debacle
It’s the tale of two refugee inflows four decades ago: one from Indochina; the other from Lebanon. Communist forces came [...]
Little respect shown by aggressive ABC interviewers
So the score is Leigh Sales 3, Sarah Ferguson 2. A narrow, but real, victory in the contest about which [...]
SBS’s Struggle Street a condescending picture of poverty
How condescending can you get? Helen Kellie (the chief content officer at SBS, who reports to managing director Michael Ebeid) [...]
Scott McIntyre in poor company as Left loses World War I again
It was a case of the ignorant railing at the (alleged) poorly read. This week Scott McIntyre was dismissed by [...]
Stalin-lovers Jessie Street, the Webbs unworthy heroes for Shorten ALP
Bill Shorten comes from the social democratic, and historically anti-communist, tradition in the Labor Party. This exists side by side [...]
Time to look at contemporary attitudes to our role in Vietnam
It’s just a half-century since prime minister Robert Menzies announced that Australia would commit combat forces in defence of the [...]
Home-grown fascists are a mere blip on the radar
The ABC fact-checking unit could do something useful if it checked what passes for facts on the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster. [...]
Left’s imagination runs rampant over Abbott and Fraser
It’s fashionable these days, especially in journalistic circles and on social media, to mock Tony Abbott. The sneering extends to [...]
Malcolm Fraser’s unreliable memoir makes legacy even more unclear
Yesterday’s state funeral in Melbourne stands testimony to the fact Malcolm Fraser was one of the most important and influential [...]
Labor-Green opposition blocks essential infrastructure in NSW
THE NSW election next Saturday is emerging as one of the most important state political contests in recent memory. The [...]
Radical tolerance for the Left but intolerance towards conservatives
THE intolerant Left was at it again on Wednesday, this time at the taxpayer-subsidised University of Sydney where a group [...]
ABC guilty of double standard in coverage of child sex abuse
WHEN he was the Catholic archbishop of Sydney in late 2012, Cardinal George Pell welcomed then prime minister Julia Gillard’s [...]
Left’s tolerance of Islamists exposes hostility to Western values
BARRISTER Julian Burnside had quite a whinge in the Guardian Australia last Thursday. Burnside’s gripe was that he had been [...]
ABC sees David Hicks, who fought with Taliban, as worthy of an apology
EARLY on Thursday, news arrived in Australia that the US Court of Military Commission Review had “dismissed” the verdict against [...]
We need to have conversation about economic reform
ONE of the leading cliches of our time involves our use of the word conversation. References are made to the [...]
Senate shortfall obstructs economic reform for Coalition
WHETHER or not the Liberal Party changes its leader next Tuesday or later, one situation will remain unchanged. The Coalition [...]
There’s no need for such pessimism — our democracy is a world-beater
IT’S just on five years since the Queensland-born and Sydney-based Tony Fitzgerald QC delivered what he declared would be his [...]
What’s in a name? For the Liberal Party, often a big disadvantage
SOCIAL libertarian Fiona Patten and social conservative Rachel Carling-Jenkins demonstrate the diversity of the Victorian Legislative Council in the wake [...]
Intelligentsia ignores ugly new phase in French anti-Semitism
AS the English writer George Orwell well understood, you can invariably rely on members of the Western intelligentsia to make [...]
ABC must confront the inconvenient truth about Islamic terrorism
SO Paris is the most recent city to experience a dose of what Monash University academic and former ABC Radio [...]
Sydney siege: If it looks, smells and feels like terrorism and the perpetrator says so, then it is
I FOLLOWED the Sydney siege from Jerusalem, the capital of a nation that does not distinguish much between lone wolf [...]
ABC’s bias against the Abbott government has its parallel in Britain
IF the self-proclaimed Friends of the ABC really believe that the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster is getting a hard time from [...]
Alienated Bryant’s Rise and Fall misses the point that world leaders respect, admire Abbott
TONY Abbott may be facing problems on the home front. However, following a visit to Washington, DC, it is obvious [...]
Constant negotiation is key to Senate victory
SO Tony Abbott appears to have conceded that the Coalition will have to change at least some aspects of its [...]
Unlike his Cairo speech, in Brisbane Barack Obama offended his hosts
IT’S the case of a presidential address in two cities. Last Saturday, President Barack Obama spoke to an audience at [...]
ANU’s alarmist Hugh White gets it wrong each time on US-China ‘tensions’
AS the G20 meeting begins in Brisbane, the situation seems relatively quiet on the Asia-Pacific front — contrary to the [...]
Libertarians like Leyonhjelm naively dismiss terrorists as ‘dickheads’
THIS week ABC TV’s The Drum program is running a let’s-be-comfortable-and-relaxed message about Ebola, the budget deficit, the so-called Islamic State and [...]
ABC’s Scott reckless to take on his only friend on the Coalition frontbench
THE contemporary ABC has only ever had one strong supporter within Tony Abbott’s cabinet — Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull [...]
John Kerr acted more honourably than Whitlam and Fraser in 1975
THE death of former prime minister Gough Whitlam now leaves one survivor from what has been depicted as the major [...]
Sorry, Mike, Nazism was a secular movement — unlike today’s Islamic State
THE alienated left-intelligentsia invariably enjoys a comfortable life in Western societies. Unable to complain with any credibility about personal oppression, [...]
Let’s celebrate the party as we fondly remember Menzies, the father of the Liberals
SUCCESS, as the saying goes, has many fathers. But not always. It’s true that numerous people played a part in [...]
Minority groups should engage in self-reflection, not victim mentality
IN 2007 I interviewed, among others, Labor frontbencher Tony Burke for my monograph Islam in Australia, which was published later that [...]
ABC must present both sides of the debate on terrorism
THE Attorney-General’s assessment of the present danger is correct. Last Wednesday, George Brandis told the Senate that Australia faced a [...]
Commentators need terror guides for dummies
WRITING in the New Statesman last month, Mehdi Hasan reported that two young British men, who pleaded guilty to terrorism offences, had [...]
Not much rotten in the state of NSW that PR won’t exaggerate
TO get an idea of what the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption is really on about, check out the August [...]
It’s the lefties and their love-ins — not Abbott — who oppose freedom
IT’S just a year since the Coalition, under Tony Abbott’s leadership, attained one of the biggest election victories in Australian [...]
Human rights chief shows little appreciation for her brief as an impartial inquisitor
IT’S quite a time for judicial or semi-judicial inquiries. Followers of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual [...]
War pact between the Nazis and Stalin left out of history
IT’S a busy time for commemorations. Earlier this month, Australians reflected on the start of World War I a century [...]
ABC preys on conservative Catholics over church response to sexual abuse
THE ABC seems to have gone into defensive mode. Journalists at the public broadcaster are paid by the taxpayer to [...]
On the issue of terrorism, the libertarian lobby has been cosying up to the Green-Left
ON Tuesday, Tony Abbott stated his intention to introduce new counter-terrorism legislation in the parliament, including metadata retention. The decision [...]
Why did editors take so long?
IT’S not surprising that The Sydney Morning Herald finally moved to discipline its Saturday columnist Mike Carlton. What’s surprising is that it [...]
Historically, action taken by our politicians and military forces in Great War stands up well
IT’S just a century this week since Germany invaded neutral Belgium and the guns began firing on what became known [...]
An unfair focus on Gaza toll
AS the 75th anniversary of the start of World War II approaches, this week the foreign ministers of France, Germany [...]
Palmer and Fraser need to think of the real victims before they employ hyperbole
THE emergence of the 24-hour news cycle and the growth of social media have changed word usage — in politics [...]
Putting meat on the bones of a 1957 agreement
IT has taken nearly six decades. But, finally, the importance of the 1957 Australia-Japan Agreement on Commerce is being understood. [...]
Someone tell Friends of the ABC it’s not run by board
SO the self-proclaimed Friends of the ABC are having another whinge, this time about the Abbott government’s decision to appoint [...]
Who’s the narcissist now?
MORRY Schwartz’s The Monthly is a publication of the inner-city Left, by the inner-city Left, for the inner-city Left. So [...]
Dangerous ideas — Fraser’s Lebanon Concession, for example — should be handled with care
THERE is something frightfully twee in the self-proclaimed Festival of Dangerous Ideas inviting a radical Islamic activist to deliver a [...]
‘Occupied’ East Jerusalem stunt confuses fact and fiction
JUNE 4 in the Senate foreign affairs and trade estimates committee resembled the Labor-Greens alliance of recent memory. Greens senator [...]
PM cops all the news that’s fit to print, and all of the spite that isn’t
AS the saying goes, we’ve seen the movie before. It’s called“Coalition PM Travels Overseas and Embarrasses Australians”. The original starred [...]
Strong relations without fawning: a lesson for the campus Left
FOREIGN Minister Julie Bishop was loudly heckled by radical students when she opened the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University [...]
Populist attacks can make Abbott stronger
AND so it has come to this. On Wednesday, ABC managing director Mark Scott canvassed the possibility of junking the children’s [...]
No Right to make your case
SINCE my days at university, I have supported police who are confronted by radical students and their somewhat older cohort [...]
Fraser’s dangerous delusions on US alliance will find favour with no one but the Left
IN the mid-1980s, I asked a prominent figure in the Australian business community why Malcolm Fraser, who led the Coalition [...]
Shock headlines ruin lives and reputations
IN the 1970s and 80s, I worked for a total of 11 years as a political staffer in both government [...]
Deficit levy right idea for a difficult problem
THERE is one thing that Tony Abbott is not short of right now. Namely, advice. This is invariably accompanied by [...]
Parliament will be interesting enough without the myths
TONY Abbott’s Coalition government has completed about 20 per cent of its term. It makes sense, at this relatively early [...]
Chasers have more power than Mark Scott
THERE is a wide perception that ABC managing director Mark Scott is a nice kind of guy. Which raises the [...]
A great read with deeply troubling insights into the mind of Carr and his Israel-lobby obsession
BOB Carr’s ‘Diary of a Foreign Minister’ is a great read. It’s well written, funny in places and informative without [...]
Reality becoming a boring, distorted place as inner-city Left displaces the conservatives
THE perceived moral superiority of the inner-city Left is evident in David Marr’s article in last weekend’s ‘The Saturday Paper’, [...]
Pot, kettle, black: Latham a joke as arbiter of standards
CAN you bear it? In last weekend’s ‘The Australian Financial Review’, Mark Latham argued that journalist Michael Smith should not [...]
Taxpayers funding Left ABC agenda
ABC managing director Mark Scott sees part of the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster’s role as projecting Australia’s “soft power” into the [...]
Republicans may feel entitled to sneer, but it won’t help their cause
DESPITE all the ridicule and hyperbole, Tony Abbott’s unilateral decision to restore the position of the knight/dame Order of Australia [...]
Freedom’ marchers trample on hopes of real refugees
THE March in March protesters last Sunday raged against Tony Abbott and his government on a range of issues — [...]
Pro-pederasty past deserves an ABC apology
THE line in last Monday’s Four Corners program on ABC television, The Boy with the Henna Tattoo, was unequivocal. Reporter [...]
Press Council overshot its remit on James Ashby coverage
AUSTRALIAN Press Council chairman Julian Disney seems to be a frustrated newspaper editor. However, it would be in the interests [...]
Pell an easy target for anti-Catholic commentators
PAUL Collins, the author and former Catholic priest, is a “go to” contact whenever the ABC is seeking comment on [...]
Media Watch all bark, no bite and very few facts
THE ABC declines to acknowledge the point. But a greater plurality of views can be heard on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox [...]
Sectarian effort to smear PM
ANTI-CATHOLIC sectarianism has been part of Australia since European settlement in 1788. It waned in the 1940s and was substantially [...]
Public opinion shows sympathy for some, but never the Catholic Church
Pedophilia is now regarded, in the West at least, as the vilest of crimes. So much so that most pedophiles [...]
It’s easy being Green when you can sneer while on the public purse
AN ongoing consequence of the challenge of the traditional print media has seen the move of some leftist journalists from [...]
John Pilger deploys a bludgeon against ‘racists’ like us
AUSTRALIA Day, in its current manifestation, seems to have developed a bifocal format. Increasingly large numbers of Australians, long established [...]
No room in the workplace for IR Club rules
JOE Hockey told The Australian this week that "the government should not be subsidising poor workplace practices". This suggests that [...]
Totalitarian slurs ignore the truth of ASIO activities
MEET Haydn Keenan, the writer and director of the four-part Persons of Interest documentary, by Smart Street Films, which started [...]
Prophet of doom fails to get real
THERE was a time when prophecies of the false genre discredited an academic's reputation. Not any more, it seems. Hugh [...]
Forecasters take care to avoid truck with facts
IT seems that 2013 was destined to become a year of untrammelled hyperbole, fallible soothsaying and poor judgment of an [...]
Pragmatic Tony Abbott no man’s acolyte
WHEN Tony Abbott became Liberal Party leader four years ago, much of the ALP and quite a few commentators declared [...]
ASIO acting to prevent Australians fighting in Syrian war is not racist
So now it has come to this. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, headed by David Irvine, has been depicted as [...]
Abbott’s anguish: inner-city types in media dislike him
Only three months ago, Tony Abbott won one of the biggest victories in modern Australia's political history. The Coalition's vote, [...]
Spying on Indonesia: ABC disclosures in conflict with its ‘soft diplomacy’
The ABC, under managing director and editor-in-chief Mark Scott, is seriously conflicted. Appearing before the Senate's environment and communications legislation [...]
Great moderniser often disturbingly old-fashioned
In Kerry O'Brien's ABC1 four part documentary Keating: The Interviews, the former Labor treasurer and prime minister presents himself as the [...]
Tony Abbott is the Prime Minister so get used to it
Much of the political and media comment over the weekend suggested that quite a few Australians want Tony Abbott's ''stop [...]
Julian Assange, Edward Snowden hypocrites over Vladimir Putin, Ecuador
There is much to be said for the biblical injunction ''You shall know them by their fruits''. The warning is [...]
Future for Labor is hit and myth alongside Greens
In February, Senator Christine Milne announced that the Greens would be unilaterally junking their alliance with Labor. The Labor-Greens agreement, [...]
Twisted logic links the tragic NSW bushfires with the Prime Minister, climate change and abolishing the carbon tax
According to Adam Bandt's logic, the Greens are responsible for the devastating bushfires sweeping parts of NSW. Last Wednesday, the [...]
Bill Shorten win puts paid to emerging conspiracy theory
Thank God Bill Shorten was elected Labor leader on Sunday. At the very least, it will diminish an emerging conspiracy [...]
ABC checks facts of others but does not check its own
ABC managing director Mark Scott appears to be the only editor-in-chief in Australia who declines to make editorial decisions. Interviewed [...]
All smoke and no smoking gun: Cardinal Pell was quick to act on abuse claims
According to David Marr, the influence of the Catholic activist B. A. Santamaria (1915-1998) lives on. In Marr's view, one [...]
Blame game should start with party names
Conspiracy theorists have always been with us. It's just that, due to the 24-hour news cycle, they appear more prominent [...]
Labor's problem not a personality issue – it's about poor policy
As Labor frontbencher Tony Burke has acknowledged, the ALP underestimated Tony Abbott. When Anthony Albanese said about Abbott that ''in [...]
Detractors fail to recognise Abbott’s astounding success
Last September, David Marr began his essay Political Animal with an unequivocal statement: “Australia doesn't want Tony Abbott. We never [...]
Assault on Abbott over Catholicism made in bad faith
If Tony Abbott is sworn in as prime minister next week, he will become the second Catholic to lead Australia's [...]
Abbott emerges stronger in the adaptation stakes
John Howard is correct. It would be foolish to regard the election as over. However, at this stage of the [...]
ALP’s preference strategy unwise and unnecessary
If anyone votes for the Labor group above the line in all states except Queensland on September 7, his or [...]
Rudd wedded to an idea that may backfire on him
No surprise that tweets during the leaders' debate on Sunday peaked at the discussion on same-sex marriage towards the end [...]
Rudd has taken a leaf out of the negativity book
Strange as it might seem, there is a bipartisan pitch in this election campaign. Both the Prime Minister and the [...]
Chameleon Rudd keeps opponents and voters guessing
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is a most unusual political leader - both in government and when he is in opposition. [...]
‘Sorry’ would give Rudd credibility
Successful politicians are invariably long on broken promises but short on extending mea culpas for errors. Kevin Rudd's recently announced [...]
Dr No? Why Abbott is Captain Positive
Without question, the return of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister has made Labor very competitive in the lead-up to the [...]
A Problem Shared Demands Solution
Once upon a time, many members of the intelligentsia criticised Coalition and Labor governments for being too beholden to the [...]
Single and atheist an issue for voters, as are gay unions
According to the British born spin-doctor John McTernan, his former boss Julia Gillard lost her position as prime minister due [...]
Best of enemies: Labor relives its great depression
From a historical perspective, Labor does division and hatred well. It would be foolish to speculate about the outcome of [...]
Assange’s acts of defiance have narcissistic edge
There are a few citizens in democracies who hand over state secrets to foreign governments, or non-state entities, for money [...]
Fraser’s green spin won’t stop with Abbott win
Until the advent of the 24/7 news cycle, there was no clear role for former political leaders, including prime ministers. [...]
Pell, Hart were leaders in addressing child sex abuse
Cardinal George Pell in Sydney and Archbishop Denis Hart in Melbourne have become public targets for criticism concerning sexual abuse [...]
Civil libertarians not so convincing after murder in London
The murder of Drummer Lee Rigby, on a south-east London street in daylight last week, has reignited the debate in [...]
Abbott, O’Farrell have equal claim to Menzies’ legacy
Premier Barry O'Farrell is a proud follower of Robert Menzies (1894 to 1978), the founder of the modern Liberal Party. [...]
Coalition must be smarter when it issues preferences
Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and Greg Combet appear to believe Labor will win the election. Who knows? They may be [...]
Left-footed ABC needs to get on the right track
The appointment of Paul Barry to replace Jonathan Holmes as presenter of the ABC1 Media Watch program has drawn attention, once again, [...]
See what public thinks on same-sex marriage
The media in Australia is obsessed with same-sex marriage. It is far from clear, however, that this is a priority [...]
The time has come for blunt talking
In the lead-up to the death of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and arrest of his brother Dzhokhar in Boston, there was much [...]
Thatcher’s critics neither balanced nor respectful
The death of Margaret Thatcher demonstrates the double standards among sections of the left. In Britain, Thatcher-haters are running an [...]
Foster ties with China, but do so in broad context
Perhaps the most compelling of the paintings in the 2013 Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW is Xu [...]
Policy, not gender, will decide Gillard’s fate at ballot box
If Julia Gillard's supporters really believe the Prime Minister's political discontents are due to prevailing misogyny in a contemporary patriarchal [...]
Labor so lost that even its confused diehards stagger
When Julia Gillard deposed Kevin Rudd in June 2010, she declared Labor had lost its way. However, the Prime Minister [...]
‘National interest’ is in Labor’s interest
Suggestions elsewhere in the media that Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's attitude to the print media resembles that of Josef Stalin [...]
Labor must learn art of government
The sad truth is that Labor has run only one efficient government at the federal level since the Second World [...]
Spotlight on Labor failings misses what Abbott has got right
Prime Minister Julia Gillard's political pilgrimage to western Sydney once again focuses the debate on Labor's problems. Whether they be [...]
Talk of dual-citizen disloyalty in Zygier affair simply irresponsible
The concept of dual loyalties in Australia has an unpleasant connotation since it invariably implies disloyalty. A century ago, some [...]
Papal pundits should repent of unforgivable ignorance
The advent of the 24/7 news cycle has led to an explosion of opinion in which politicians, former politicians, opinion [...]
Ministers turn judge and jury in sport case
Hands up Herald readers who believe the Home Affairs and Justice Minister, Jason Clare, and the Sports Minister, Kate Lundy, have gone [...]
Political success does not hinge on how popular you are
On the evidence so far, Tony Abbott is the most successful opposition leader since Gough Whitlam four decades ago. Certainly [...]
Howard’s popularity key asset in Abbott’s push for The Lodge
In this election year, it's clear that history is not bunk. Last week, a Galaxy Research poll found that the [...]
War on terrorism needs a united front
The fashionable left-wing view of former president George W. Bush is he invaded Muslim lands and instituted draconian national security [...]
Arrogant Assange digs his own rave with delusions of grandeur
If, as the saying goes, you can't judge a book by its cover, then you certainly cannot assess a biography [...]
Abbott wants ABC to flush out bias but Turnbull does not see its stacked deck
Put it down to the onset of the media silly season. Perhaps. The fact is that, for whatever reason, ABC [...]
Margaret Thatcher and The Falklands
Gerard Henderson’s Sydney Morning Herald column for 1 January 2013 I concluded 2012 reading Margaret Thatcher’s secret evidence given on [...]
Turns out Mayans weren’t alone in getting carried away about 2012
WITH Mayan followers foretelling the end of the world before Christmas, it was to be expected 2012 would be replete [...]
Minority rule makes fools of both sides of the house
The Australian body politic is clearly afflicted by the minority obsession - which has been around since Julia Gillard's formation [...]
Royal prank should trigger media soul-searching, but not regulation
There is little point in punishing the 2DayFM presenters Michael Christian and Mel Greig, who conducted the hoax call concerning [...]
UN vote unlikely to help fragile Labor
On Meet the Press on Sunday, presenter Paul Bongiorno put it to the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, that the “Israel lobby and [...]
The polls mislead – people living in suburbia will decide next federal election
President Barack Obama's convincing victory this month reinforced the truism that, in the United States, what matters is the support received [...]
Hamas will never achieve a Palestinian state while killing Israeli civilians
On Friday, Julia Gillard, the social democratic Prime Minister of Australia, said that her government ''condemns the repeated rocket and [...]
Eyes are averted to indigenous abuse
The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard's, decision to establish a royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse has received [...]
White paper risks obscuring long history of engagement with Asia
According to reports, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, will be spruiking her government's Australia in the Asian Century white paper at [...]
Fashionable or not, Mundine’s views strike a blow for free speech
I"m with boxer Anthony ""Choc"" Mundine - in his most recent battle, at least. Last Thursday, during a media conference [...]
Short-sighted see hate at every turn
According to the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, it is wrong to talk down the economy since Australia has one of [...]
The ultimate dilemma – freedom to preach v freedom of speech
Jenna Price claims to be just an ""ordinary"" person who is ""sick of the way that Alan Jones speaks to [...]
Commander’s regret over Afghanistan proves the case for public silence
Major-General John Cantwell (Retired) is a fine, brave man with a distinguished military record. It just happens that Cantwell is [...]
Media response to inconvenient truths reveals hidden agenda
Life has seldom been more difficult for a politician in a Western democracy during peacetime. Take the United States Republican [...]
Multiculturalism still has a long road to travel to reach all
There was much intimidation and considerable violence to and from the Muslim demonstration outside the United States consulate in Sydney [...]
Condemnation by long memory tends to stretch matters
Ronald Reagan is reputed to have once said, in a private conversation, that some of his clearest memories were of [...]
It’s not destroying the joint, but this double standard is a cow
Who would have thought that a throwaway piece of old fashioned Australian slang could, within a few days, become a [...]
Left closes ranks to consign Kerr to wrong side of history
You have to admire the sassy and media savvy Louise Adler, the managing director of Melbourne University Press. Since Saturday [...]
The lessons of Goulburn resonate in schools 50 years later
It"s just gone 50 years since what is now called the Goulburn Schools Strike. On Friday July 13, 1962, six [...]
Boats will keep coming until someone waves the red flag
It"s not often that a government loses control over key areas of domestic or international policy. Yet it happens occasionally. [...]
Toss ‘The Boss’ palaver, leader’s economic legacy the real issue
Wayne Swan"s apparent addiction to Bruce Springsteen certainly cut through last week. Very few treasurers get such media attention away [...]
Abbott’s realistic approach to China only offends fawners
In any debate on China, the voice of the ""whateverists"" can invariably be heard. This term was invented to describe [...]
Dumping PM won’t stem bleeding caused by thorny Greens
Sometimes politicians are deauthorised not so much by defeat as by their response to failure. The late Liberal Party leader [...]
Pell and the church are scapegoats for a multitude of sins
The status of Cardinal George Pell, the Catholic archbishop of Sydney, seems to differ according to the issues in which [...]
Old hatreds resurface in party afraid of a hiding
Politics, like much of life, is replete with mythology. A current myth, much embraced by journalists, is that Julia Gillard [...]
WikiLeaks founder does not merit a different set of rules
It"s not surprising that a narcissist such as Julian Assange has one standard for himself and another for everyone else. [...]
Power of the press a lot less muscular than some imagine
There is delusion. And then there is self-delusion. When both forces come together, what follows is an absence of reality. [...]
His story, but certainly not history
You"ve got to take your hat off to him. Bob Katter, the independent MP for Kennedy, now has the most [...]
Well may we not sing God Save the Queen, but let it play on
Put me down as a supporter of the Prime Minister on this one. Julia Gillard has been criticised by some [...]
Modern hostility to mining poses some worrying questions
The former Liberal Party leader John Hewson went missing in action on Q&A last week. After members of the panel (with [...]
Lame duck Labor likely to waddle on to term
In politics there are plans, even cunning plans. And then there is resignation, perhaps best described as the Micawber option. [...]
Time to put to rest claims of Abbott’s DLP tendencies
In politics it does not take long for throwaway lines to become established mythology and later perceived truth. The possibility [...]
Absence of competition breeds unions’ contempt for members
Perhaps, in modern parlance, it seemed like a good idea at the time. However, the insistence of the independent MPs [...]
Sexist abuse of PM fits a general deterioration in political discourse
Media focus before today"s budget turned on the Gillard government"s intention to bring down a surplus. However, the real impact [...]
Newstart and unfair dismissal laws pour salt on wounds of jobless
There is a sound economic argument for the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, to bring in [...]
Gillard the ace negotiator deals Labor into trouble again
The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has many political skills - otherwise she would not be in her position. However, the [...]
Left-wing critique of US alliance is a little hit and myth
The Australian-American Alliance is a constant feature of national politics since at least the Pacific War and certainly since the [...]
Supporters hope Abbott PM will be Fraser with teeth
These days, Malcolm Fraser is much beloved by the left. As readers of Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs (which Fraser co-wrote [...]
Media’s soft treatment of Brown opens door to the little Greens men
Imagine the media reaction if the atheist Julia Gillard or the Christian Tony Abbott raised the possibility, in a major [...]
Maybe it’s Habib who should apologise for outlandish claims
Mamdouh Habib, 2: Australian government, zip. That's a fair interpretation of the media's assessment of the findings of Vivienne Thom, [...]
Well-off get a free ride on taxpayer for children's education
These days, it's all the fashion to condemn middle class welfare - except when such largesse is enjoyed by relatively [...]
Swan’s indulgent essay sidesteps the important questions
What's so strange about Wayne Swan's essay ''The 0.01%'' in this issue of The Monthly is that it appears to be [...]
Lawyers and academics propose more regulation? It’s hardly news
In November, I wrote that I had declined an invitation to express an interest in participating in the public hearings [...]
Hold the hyperbole, Labor’s problems are just same old same old
According to Barry Jones, a minister in the Hawke Labor government, the "current national situation" is at the lowest point [...]
Forecast is for continued fog of delusion and conflict over policy
The term fog of war has become something of a cliche. In domestic politics, from time to time, reality is [...]
PM’s steadily declining authority is all of her own making
The problems of the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, turn not on her gender but, rather, on her authority. The Lateline presenter [...]
Threat from enemy within makes anti-terrorism laws indispensable
Decisions have consequences, even if decision makers sometimes go into denial. In the weekend edition of the Herald, Debra Jopson provided [...]
Abbott creates handy diversion as carbon tax hobbles Labor
The unintended riot near the Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra on Australia Day serves as a reminder that Labor has [...]
No vote at all is better than a win for the No
It is always a good time to remove racially discriminatory provisions from the constitution. Except when such a sensible act [...]
Fair work for some, but small business is not so easy
To most of us, June 2009 seems quite a while ago. But not, apparently, to the public servants employed by [...]
Shackle the free press? Crikey, it just doesn’t bear thinking about
As the saying goes: ''Can you bear it?'' In much of the Western world, the established media is under threat [...]
ABC’s leftish drift still needs to be corrected by its deeds
When minding grandchildren at the beach in shallow water, there is not much to do except listen to the radio. [...]
Laying it on thick from the masters of embroidery
Without question, 2011 was a year replete with hyperbole and false prophecy, which, come to think of it, is typical [...]
Asylum seeker tragedy: why the figures speak for themselves
Some naive, albeit well meaning, types never learn. Interviewed on ABC metropolitan radio yesterday, the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young defended [...]
Dead letter used on Abbott as Cameron’s climate commitment slips
In July, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, wrote to his Australian counterpart, Julia Gillard, supporting Labor's legislation to introduce [...]
Iran remains at the heart of Middle Eastern instability
Despite what eco-catastrophists believe, forecasting the medium to long-term weather is an uncertain science. However, the current signs indicate that [...]
European culture of entitlement is mercifully absent Down Under
I am currently in Jerusalem, wondering whether I will be able to make it to London later this week. There [...]
Whoever started it, the US embrace has turned into a group hug
Like many successful entities, the Australian-American alliance has numerous parents. Interviewed on The Bolt Report this month, the ALP operative John [...]
The media are picking up good vibrations but can’t shake off the facts
Talk about a serious case of "the vibe". Australians returning from a period overseas who turned on Insiders last Sunday might [...]
Survival the key for media, not to be broken on the rack of regulation
On Thursday I received an email from the Independent Inquiry into Media and Media Regulation. The organisation's secretariat advised that [...]
Qantas workers must face global facts of life
In all the commentary on the Qantas dispute, perhaps the most salient point was raised by journalist Claire Harvey. She [...]
Placards aplenty at protest but it’s hard to see the good for the pleas
Visiting the Occupy Sydney demonstration outside the Reserve Bank in Martin Place on Friday was something of a surreal experience. [...]
In times of uncertainty, these hereditary celebrities reign
If you are an Australian in London and seeking to hang out with a group of expatriate republicans, it would [...]
Unions choose masters over members in carbon tax debate
Now, here's a test. Name one leading trade union figure in the US or Canada who is calling for a [...]
Sectarian rant against Abbott is full of holes, despite QC’s excitement
The designations QC and SC invariably suggest a barrister who is considered and skilful in cross-examination. Court reporters usually take [...]
Australia has always had its own opinion on Israel policy
A few years ago I met a group of Arab journalists, whose visit to Australia was sponsored by the Department [...]
Comedy or not, the producers are green
It was not so long ago that anyone who proclaimed that "the end of the world is nigh" was regarded [...]
Explanation required when a judge's verdict gives rise to disquiet
According to Tom Bathurst, recently appointed Chief Justice of NSW, judges should speak out more. Chief Justice Bathurst was reported [...]
Activist judges give mixed signals
Julia Gillard has received considerable criticism for her comments on Chief Justice Robert French and the High Court's decision in [...]
Literary festivals and prizes champion politics over quality
Premiers come and premiers go. But premiers' literary prizes, like state government-funded writers' festivals, do not change much at all. [...]
Road to ruin for traditional Labor
Julia Gillard and her senior colleagues are confident that Labor's political fortunes will begin to improve when the carbon tax [...]
Ex-blacksmith may be needed to hammer out Senate deals
The resumption of Parliament after the winter recess will see the Democratic Labor Party's Senator John Madigan give his first [...]
Now more than ever, tax and red tape are an economic deathtrap
When the global financial crisis struck in late 2008, there were two obvious and cost-free responses available to Australia. Namely, [...]
Right-wing extremism forces rethink on civil liberties
The essential message from Anders Behring Breivik's mass murders in Norway is that it is foolish to rush to judgment [...]
Murdoch critics bury the lead in premature obituaries
On ABC Radio, 702 presenter Deborah Cameron described the appearance of Rupert Murdoch and his son James before a House [...]
Jews know acceptance still has its exceptions
A century ago, Australia was a relatively tolerant society. Even so, Jews and Catholics were banned from Protestant-dominated gentlemen's clubs [...]
It’s not so easy being Green in this jungle
A little hubris is a dangerous thing. And a large dose of arrogance can prove fatal. Yesterday in the Senate, [...]
Cool heads needed for climate talk
It's just two sleeps until Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, addresses the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies [...]
It’s not personal, it’s policy – why Labor is flatlining
On the occasion of the first anniversary of Julia Gillard's so-called assassination of Kevin Rudd, the fact is that it [...]
A time for Australia’s consolidation, not isolation, on carbon emissisons
For a nation that is globalised and has one of the best economies in the Western world, domestic debate in [...]
Nod to greats would supplement Abbott’s negative energy
Last Thursday, the former prime minister Bob Hawke stood outside Parliament House, next to Julia Gillard, and declared: "Now, I [...]
It's all hot air from the jet-setting eco brigade
The Sunday Telegraph"s "Carbon Cate" headline should have come as no surprise. Sure, it was a clever journalistic line in response [...]
Prime ministerial baton will never be in Turnbull’s reach
In April last year, not long after Malcolm Turnbull lost the Liberal Party leadership, I suggested he should stick by [...]
Middle-class welfare tag insults the noble art of raising children
Much of the post-budget discussion has turned on whether what is fashionably termed "middle-class welfare" should be curtailed or continued. [...]
Look to Canada for a good carbon copy
It is unwise to make predictions - even about budgets on which the electorate has been widely briefed in advance. [...]
Tanner’s lack of self-awareness clear in tale of media pandering
Lindsay Tanner is not the first to have gone from privately educated schoolboy to university student socialist ... and on [...]
Labor’s nifty footwork hasn’t saved it from ‘big tax’ label
In politics and elsewhere, it is wise to challenge orthodoxies. These days the fashionable view is that Kevin Rudd erred, [...]
Cold War secrets and the spies who came out of Canberra
It is one of the many myths of Australian history that the 1950s was a boring decade in which nothing [...]
Political conversation sours with Nazi comparisons
At the end of each year I write a column devoted to the exaggerations and false prophecies of the previous [...]
Credit where it’s due – they just didn’t see him coming
No one - with the exception of full-time writer and occasional prophet Bob Ellis - falsely anticipated the result of [...]
Bush and his allies deserve respect after earlier push for Arab democracies
The establishment of a UN-sanctioned no-fly zone over Libya has led to the destruction of the left's position on the [...]
A beautiful set of numbers? It depends on how you look at it
Statistics, like beauty, can be very much in the eye of the beholder. Take yesterday's Herald-Nielsen poll, for example. It [...]
Long-term unemployed pay the price for Labor’s regulation
The official unemployment figure for February is due out later this week. Unemployment in Australia is 5.1 per cent, which [...]
Get used to Gillard and Abbott until at least 2013
Amid all the political noise out of Canberra last week, one comment had a piercing clarity. Darren Chester, the Nationals [...]
Don won’t, but Libs can stop left
Many of the characters in David Williamson's Don Parties On, which premiered in Sydney on Friday, have become supporters of [...]
World of the anarchists: many conspiracy theories but just one enemy
A century or so ago anarchists vowed to bring down the state. Modern day anarchists have a similar intention. It's [...]
Leaders are right to confront failures of multiculturalism
The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is no redneck member of the lunar right. On social issues, his positions tend [...]
After an early stutter, George did his best to defeat Nazis
The Battle of Britain ended six decades ago but fire is still being directed at the royal family over its [...]
Time to celebrate, and few will be feeling guilty about it
At the Australia Day lunch in Sydney last Friday, Germaine Greer delivered a brief and dignified address. She spoke on [...]
Historical amnesia not helpful in floods
Eco doomsayers are blind to history and are rarely held to account for unfulfilled predictions, writes GERARD HENDERSON . Senator [...]
Eco doomsayers: blind to history, unreliable tipsters
Senator Bob Brown is old enough to know better. Literally. At the weekend, the Greens' leader blamed the coal industry [...]
ABC needs to rein in the rise of abuse posing as analysis
The attempted killing of United States Democrat congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, allegedly by 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, has sparked a blame [...]
The intelligence and the luck that saves us from murderers
The bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt, at the weekend, apparently by a radical Islamist, was widely reported [...]
Year’s dish was hyperbole, with a dash of exaggeration
Could 2010 have been the year in which exaggeration and false prophesy reached their nadir? You be the judge. JANUARY [...]
Hold on tight, the next three years will leave us feeling a little bit green
It's a controversial judgment, but the evidence indicates the two most successful prime ministers in Australian history were Labor's Bob [...]
We have the right to secrecy
If Julian Assange had been accused of sex crimes after attending, say, the CIA Christmas party, it would be understandable [...]
Don’t mock the frock – Benedict speaks from the heart
The Vatican, apparently like God, works in strange ways. A series of official meetings at the Holy See last week [...]
Only a fool would play nice with a thorny North Korea
There is a certain predictability about international diplomacy in north-east Asia. Once again, the communist regime in North Korea has [...]
Stop the boats and empty the centres to end the suffering
The recent tragic suicide in Villawood Detention Centre serves as a reminder of the causal link between self-harm and incarceration. [...]
Coalition generals plan to fight them on the outskirts
The decision of the Liberal-National Coalition to place the Greens last on its how-to-vote card in the Victorian election, in [...]
Australians deserve chance to reassess the Great War
Next Thursday in Seoul, Julia Gillard will take part in a commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the start of [...]
Scott needs to take control to ensure ABC represents diverse views
Whether you agree with his policies or not, Mark Scott deserves the extension to his contract as the ABCmanaging director, [...]
Hicks has little to say about his memoir – and says little in it
It's a tale of two memoirs. John Howard's Lazarus Rising will be launched in Sydney today by the broadcaster Alan [...]
Out of touch bureaucrats fail to cross the river
The term "disconnect" has become increasingly fashionable. Yet, at times, it has some resonance. As the response to the Murray-Darling [...]
Party leaders closer on Afghanistan war than you may think
The skirmish as to whether Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott is playing politics with the Opposition Leader's recent visit to [...]
Alliance may not play well for Gillard
Great pictures. But what about the message? Last week the Prime Minister announced the formation of her government's climate change [...]
The power of one is all Labor needs
Australia may, or may not, be in the grip of a new political paradigm. But old fashionable hyperbole is still [...]
Turnbull must learn to pull his head in
On Sky News last week, Tim Costello declared his (political) love for Malcolm Turnbull. It was all very touching - [...]
How to make a new paradigm: take old one, add frills
There is something to be said for a hung parliament, albeit not much. At least the onset of minority government [...]
Beware risks of change when political system is working well
How strange it is that the calls for greater accountability of elected politicians have been accompanied by scant attention in [...]
Coalition can lay blame at its own door
Perhaps the least reported fact of the election is that the Greens candidate Adam Bandt won the seat of Melbourne [...]
Abbott’s detractors must be in denial
The Labor Party needs more Graham Richardsons and fewer Karl Bitars, irrespective of whether Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott is [...]
Hung parliament would be a pain in the neck for everyone
On Sunday, the Gary Morgan poll predicted the election would end in a hung parliament. The previous Wednesday it forecast [...]
Latham and Fraser can afford to intervene in the news
The Stockholm syndrome, the phenomenon by which the kidnapped grow fond of their captors, is well known. Less so is [...]
Labor top of the list misjudging Abbott
It's official. According to Julia Gillard, from now until election day, we will see the "real Julia". It's true Labor's [...]
Radical roots seep through at the heart of Greens
Most of the political interviews and debates before the election will be useless in the news sense. Skilled politicians are [...]
MPs ignore job needs of the less educated
Most of the political interviews and debates before the election will be useless in the news sense. Skilled politicians are [...]
Before moving forward, have a look in the rear-view mirror
Julia Gillard's address to the Lowy Institute last week was titled "Moving Australia forward", one of the cliches of our [...]
NZ puts nation first, war second
New Zealand may be a nation of warriors when it comes to football codes. But such courage does not extend [...]
It’s game on with some new rules
Julia Gillard is correct. Following her appointment as prime minister, it is "game on". The leadership change restores Labor as [...]
Here God is anything but dead
Religion still matters if last night's roll-up at the 2010 Make It Count event, organised by the Australian Christian Lobby, [...]
High-handed intransigence can sink even a new PM
Contrary to the prevailing cliche, history does not repeat itself - either as tragedy or farce. However, at times historical [...]
Polls, hype and a dose of reality
The latest Herald/Nielsen poll had the Coalition ahead of Labor by 53 per cent to 47 per cent and the [...]
Angry old leaders – Libs lots, Labor 1
Malcolm Turnbull's implied criticism on Sunday of Tony Abbott's policy on asylum seekers was not surprising. It's unclear what role [...]
Disdain from a lofty height, but funded by the masses
From New York to Sydney and on to Melbourne, many an inner-city intellectual is full of contempt for their fellow [...]
Lesson for O’Farrell in Tories’ uneasy power deal
In 1974 the Liberal Party leader, Billy Snedden, obtained some unintended notoriety when he declared that the Coalition was not [...]
Rudd’s task is to justify mining tax
Gone are the days when treasurers delivered budgets that contained at least some significant surprises and set the likely economic [...]
Admirers suffer a Rudd awakening
It seems Kevin Rudd has become a significant disappointment to many members of the parliamentary press gallery. Quite a few [...]
Stick to your guns, Malcolm, the party doesn’t need you
The question about Malcolm Turnbull's political future evokes the refrain: will he or won't he? A more appropriate query is: [...]
Significant change still eludes PM
Most politicians declare that they do not take much notice of opinion polls, that election day is the only poll [...]
Let’s ignore snobs of Old Europe
Proudly plebeian, Australia has no need to apologise for its egalitarianism and should celebrate its achievements more self-consciously, writes Jens [...]
Laugh at your peril: Joyce is not a joke
The National Party's "you can change your world" advertising campaign started on television last night. Its message is: you do [...]
Tony Abbott: separating myths from facts about the Liberal leader
In politics it is often difficult to separate fact from myth. Labor parliamentarians and some commentators are now running the [...]
High jobless youth numbers fit under the health umbrella, too
Kevin Rudd challenged Tony Abbott to a debate on health at the National Press Club today, the invitation was accepted [...]
Your ABC’s growth strategy: take more of your money
Tonight is the ABC's annual soiree in Canberra, when the ABC management team and the public broadcaster's leading presenters and [...]
Tony Abbott proves he really has people skills
Not long ago, the words "people skills" was used about Tony Abbott mockingly, especially among journalists and political commentators. Abbott [...]
Abbott picks wrong target in battle for hearts and minds
At this stage in the election cycle opinion polls cannot tell us which party will win the forthcoming election. But [...]
Labor’s loose cannons allow friendships to turn frosty
How has it come to this? Australia has strained relationships with, in modern parlance, two of its "besties" in Asia, [...]
Rudd must dump dead ducks and tackle what really matters
There is something noble about the advocacy of lost causes. Provided it is recognised they are lost. The alternative is [...]
Fair Work laws are not helping the young and other unemployed
Last Friday, Kevin Rudd made an uncharacteristic error. The Prime Minister claimed he had not said, before the 2007 election, [...]
Australia’s ‘racist’ tag is myth heavily hyped
There are two pragmatic tests to ascertain the real level of racism in a country. Namely, the level of ethnic-motivated [...]
Human rights act slips down the list
The first big Australian political story of the year has raised surprisingly little attention. This is likely to change when [...]
Little room to change tack on matters of national security
Barack Obama has been in the White House for almost a year. During this time he has substantially increased troop [...]
Student assaults teach some harsh lessons about racism
The brutal killing in Melbourne of Nitin Garg, a young Indian man with permanent residence in Australia, has put added [...]
Did they say that? Traps for the sages and soothsayers
This year witnessed the demise of the George Bush/Tony Blair/John Howard axis of annoyance which had so dominated the first [...]
Labor’s good intentions fail to guarantee jobs for youth
This festive season has witnessed the return of the once cyclical Christmas strike, with disruptions in the postal and transport [...]
Courageous MacKillop was not beholden to boundaries
When the Catholic Church in Rome is determining who will be canonised, it is the number of miracles that matter. [...]
Doomsday prophecies exposed as mere fantasies of the left
The election prophecies of the Canberra psephologist Malcolm Mackerras are really just harmless entertainment. Last week he predicted that the [...]
Lodge is a long way off, but new man will shore up base
SINCE its formation in 1944, the Liberal Party has won office from Labor on three occasions. Robert Menzies defeated Ben [...]
Howard not the man to give advice on changing leaders
The initial big political story last Sunday focused on Joe Hockey's two-hour conversation the previous day at the home of [...]
Holding Liberalism together: THE LIBERAL MELTDOWN
There's little prospect the Liberal Party will follow Labor down the disastrous path of a big split, writes Gerard Henderson. [...]
In this climate, it’s stupid to air your dirty linen
This week the Coalition should not be the political news. Yet it is, due to the insistence of the Coalition [...]
Meddling in our politics not a good look from right or left
It's all about double standards and fashions. When Tom Schieffer, the former US ambassador to Australia, interfered in the domestic [...]
Pilger loath to hear the roar of dissent
Contrary to the cliche, silence can be deafening. Certainly this seems to have been the message of and the enthusiastic [...]
Big is beautiful in a land that thrives on foreign affairs
More than six decades ago Arthur Calwell, immigration minister in the Chifley Labor government, called on Australians to populate or [...]
Wielding the whip on asylum seekers: both sides have done it
The task facing Kevin Rudd over asylum seekers is not an easy one. Yet Rudd Labor has demonstrated its ability [...]
Judges and juries called it as they saw it
Last week the ABC 702 radio presenter Deborah Cameron referred to the so-called terror trial in Parramatta. On Friday, after [...]
Given the climate, Turnbull’s the right man for the job
Any international visitor who flew into Sydney last week, and has followed the domestic news since then, could well have [...]
Rudd’s attitude to China gets the balance just about right
According to Queensland mining executive Clive Palmer, a long-time supporter of the National Party, Kevin Rudd and his colleagues are [...]
Rudd changed the world order, says Rudd and compliant media
It is important that Australian prime ministers travel internationally. And it is understandable that they tend to regard their contributions [...]
Rewards on one hand, revenge on the other
Kevin Rudd's decision to appoint Kim Beazley as ambassador to the United States and Brendan Nelson as ambassador to the [...]
Nazi remarks go way over the top
The outrage against Kyle Sandilands's comment that Magda Szubanski would lose more weight if you put her in a concentration [...]
Rudd will need reform for recovery
Just more than a week ago in Canberra, Kevin Rudd called on Australians to move beyond the arid intellectual debates [...]
Enter the young conservatives
The forthcoming byelection for Bradfield is widely viewed as the last chance for Malcolm Turnbull's leadership. Certainly it will be [...]
No need to be concerned about hurting China’s feelings
There is only one significant problem in the present Australia-China relationship: the incarceration in China of the Rio Tinto executive [...]
A fatal dalliance: Liberals who want to be loved
On the current evidence, Malcolm Turnbull appears to be best equipped to lead the Opposition to the next election. No [...]
Bagging religion is hardly dangerous
It seems that danger, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. St James Ethics Centre in Sydney has [...]
Rudd’s essay shows his tribal loyalty
Don't include me among the critics who believe Kevin Rudd should not have spent time last week writing a 6100-word [...]
Liberal history ambushed by left-wing pundits
If you want to work out who won what was billed as "the culture wars" during the time of the [...]
Fair Work makes no sense in GFC
The July 1 arrival of Fair Work Australia suggests claims about the death of the Industrial Relations Club were somewhat [...]
Close the gate on the beaut ute
It's now almost mandatory media style for any political controversy within a democracy to have the word "gate" attached to [...]
Labor’s work laws key: compromise
Some trade unions are revolting against the decision of Kevin Rudd and his deputy, Julia Gillard, to allow authorities to [...]
Obama and the tactics of truth
In 2007 I referred to the United States President as Barack Hussein Obama. This seemed to me to be nothing [...]
Israeli economy banks on peace
Collapse of the Middle East peace process will sound the death knell for much-needed economic reform in Israel. THE Jerusalem [...]
Kerr’s Matter Of Sound Judgment
SIR John Kerr was a cautious man. As such he liked second opinions. Last Wednesday former High Court Chief Justice [...]
Australia Comes of Age
Published in The National Review; Jul 8, 1991; 43 In the 1980s and early 1990s modern Australia grew up. The maturing [...]
Australia Turns (New) Right: The Pacific
The re-election of the Labor government of Prime Minister Bob Hawke Saturday is bound to rekindle rather than extinguish debate [...]