Australia
Leading article Australia
Ditch Direct Action
It’s time for the Coalition to ditch Direct Action. This piece of foolishness, cobbled together to assuage the consciences of those Liberals who, like Malcolm Turnbull, toss and turn in… Read more
Profligate Liberals
‘Hey, fellas, you’re borrowing to fund the current spending. The easiest cut you’ll make is the stuff you never go into.’ So said Peter Costello in an interview on ABC… Read more
Tweet and sour
A disturbing by-product of new media proliferation is the frequent lack of restraint and good manners, especially on Twitter. To say that social media is incapable of understatement is an understatement… Read more
Floored by carbon
According to News Ltd’s Steve Lewis, our Climate Change Minister Greg Combet recently returned from a taxpayer-funded trip to Europe to deliver a keynote speech at the ‘Towards a Global… Read more
Diary Australia
Nick Cater
Rupert Murdoch’s omnipresence in News Ltd is exaggerated by his critics. Securing two minutes of… Read more
Julie Bishop
Moscow With the recent release of Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept for President Putin’s third term… Read more
John Howard
As the bus taking a group of us to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral left Fleet Street… Read more
Australian Notes
18 May 2013
Good news that the Institute of Public Affairs is mounting a campaign for a No… Read more
11 May 2013
It didn’t take long. Nick Cater’s The Lucky Culture had barely reached the shops when… Read more
4 May 2013
Every 50 years or so Australians need a new book marking the end of an… Read more
27 April 2013
Public, pundits and pollsters agree the Gillard government will be wiped out in September —… Read more
The worst of friends
Go back three or four years and try to remember what your honest answer to the question, ‘What do you think of coalition governments?’ would have been. Certainly there were… Read more
The freedom wars
One of the most alarming political developments during the period of the current Labor government is the multi-front war it has waged, both directly and through its surrogates and apologists,… Read more
Ich bin ein Berliner
It was dazzling prospect, but it was also as exotic and unexpected as you could imagine: Barry Humphries narrating the story of his enthusiasm for the music of the Weimar… Read more
Harry Seidler’s umbrella
It has been seven years since the death of Sydney architect Harry Seidler, who left a legacy of some great buildings in Australia and around the world, a reputation as… Read more
27 October 2012
The great breakthrough in Rebecca Weisser’s life has been the invention of fire. It’s not easy living in a darkened cave while editing the Australian’s opinion page and Cut and… Read more
18 May 2013
I don’t like to praise politicians too much as it only encourages them. But you have to hand it to Tony Abbott for so deftly finessing the Coalition industrial relations… Read more
Across the aisle
These days, book launches, like election campaign launches, come well after a new book is actually released to the public. So it is with Nick Cater’s The Lucky Country, launched… Read more
Terra nullius
Hachette, pp.386, $49.99, ISBN: 9780733628504
For many people these days, exploration means peeking into some of the more unusual corners of the internet. This massive book goes some way to correcting that idea, reminding us… Read more
The lady means business
Gina Rinehart: The Untold Story of the Richest Woman in the World By Adele Ferguson PanMacmillan, $34.99, pp 490 ISBN 9781742610979 This massive but unauthorised biography of Gina Rinehart —… Read more
Progress and its critics
The Lucky Culture and the Rise of an Australian Ruling Class By Nick Cater HarperCollins, $29.99, pp 309 ISBN 9781743098134 Australia is a ‘lucky country’, said Donald Horne in his… Read more
Hunting for bogeymen
Allen & Unwin, pp.247, $24.99, ISBN: 9781743312933
Somewhere along the line, belief in climate change became something like a religion, complete with high priests and searches for heretics. Clive Hamilton, although a senior academic, appears to be… Read more
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- A point of order, Your Royal Highness
- Scotland’s 2013 Eurovision triumph
- Eurovision was as hilarious as ever
- Britain can now afford to send a man into space. Pity we can’t afford a proper navy
- UKIP, Pierre Poujade and a political class that’s seen to be “out-of-touch”.
- Will Nigel Farage and UKIP help ditch Alex Salmond?
- Some anti-fascists are very fascistic
- Writers in a state of fear
- Labour tries to defuse civil partnerships row – by backing government amendment
- Cameron has reached the tipping point
- Writers in a state of fear
- David Cameron has caused a crisis in conservatism
- Scotland’s 2013 Eurovision triumph
- Will Nigel Farage and UKIP help ditch Alex Salmond?
- "The right hero" - Douglas Murray reviews Jesse Norman's Burke biography.
- Some anti-fascists are very fascistic
- Get the church out of the state, and the state will stay out of the church
- Tanya Gold reviews STK London
- Cameron has reached the tipping point
- Nigel Farage Comes to the Brave New Scotland
- Some anti-fascists are very fascistic
- MPs defeat ‘wrecking amendment’ as Cameron tries to patch things up with grassroots
- David Cameron should be out there making the case for gay marriage
- Cameron has reached the tipping point
- Cameron’s tax tightrope
- Britain can now afford to send a man into space. Pity we can’t afford a proper navy
- Will Nigel Farage and UKIP help ditch Alex Salmond?
- William Hague: Case for changing arms embargo on Syria ‘compelling’
- David Cameron has caused a crisis in conservatism
- Scotland’s 2013 Eurovision triumph
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