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
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
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