Event: Mark Steyn - Australia Tour 2012

28 January 2012

The Spectator Australia and The Institute of Public Affairs presents:
FREEDOM OF SPEECH UNDER THREAT
Mark Steyn’s Australian Tour 2012

Other speakers joining the discussion:
Tom Switzer, editor, The Spectator Australia
Janet Albrechtsen, columnist, the Australian
John Roskam, executive director, IPA

Wednesday 29 February
Tattersalls Club, 181 Elizabeth Street, Sydney
7p.m. - 8:30p.m. Doors 6.30pm

$50* ticket.
$40* ticket for subscribers and IPA members.

CLICK HERE TO BOOK

Postal payments to: PO...

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The vacuum of her eyes

28 January 2012
Rowan Dean

‘When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose,’ said Bob Dylan, when asked to comment on Julia Gillard’s approach to matters of political principle and moral conviction. Actually, he was singing about another arrogant, untrustworthy woman, identified only as ‘Miss Lonely’, who also lost her way in a morass of dodgy deals and broken promises. Nonetheless, his words hit the nail on the head when it comes to defining what is really wrong with the whole Wilkie/Slipper/Gillard shenanigans that the Australian electorate has been forced to endure over the past 12 months.

When you hold no principles, you...

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Australian Notes

28 January 2012
Peter Coleman

Only the simple-minded believe that any of the proposed laws to control addictive poker machine ‘gamblers’ will work. Legal restrictions never worked with addictive drinkers. Alcoholics Anonymous works, but it is voluntary and not imposed by the government. Meanwhile, the political mess over pokies illustrates again the fiasco of federalism today. State governments, always hungry for tax revenue, facilitated the suburban poker machine casinos. But they are only too glad to offload the crisis they created onto the federal government, which in turn will only fiddle with it as it did with gun control after the Port Arthur massacre in...

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Diary

28 January 2012
David Flint

Why did the expert panel on Aboriginal recognition in the Constitution overplay its hand and try to slip in that mini-Bill of Rights? Australians are too smart not to sniff that one out. And what good would constitutional recognition be anyway — except for the profession in which I was trained? The fact that government and opposition are in favour will put everyone on their guard.

And while we’re on constitutional change, why haven’t the British woken up to the fact that there is not going to be a referendum on Scottish independence? It’s a plebiscite.

With a loaded...

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Contemptible

28 January 2012

‘I hold myself in contempt!’ shouted Jim Carrey in the 1997 film Liar Liar, in which he found himself cursed to tell the truth after a lifetime of hiding behind evasion, half-truths and outright porkies.

A sequel could well feature our very own Julia Gillard. After all, she clearly holds her own word in complete contempt, having repeatedly shown a talent for blithely abandoning promises and commitments.

Sussex Street’s fondness for breaking election commitments, wasting time and resources on ‘trials’ and the like simply to postpone a difficult problem, trashing expensive projects on a whim and generally treating politicians’ promises...

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Living Doll

28 January 2012
Peter Craven

Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is the first play by an Australian to command the world’s attention and it is still one of the greatest. The new production of Ray Lawler’s 1955 classic which was first put on in Melbourne by the Union Theatre (from which the Melbourne Theatre Company descends) is by Neil Armfield and was originally seen at Belvoir in Sydney. It is not a flawless production of the Doll, some of the performances are a bit too much on one note, but it is directed with an effortless authority that our theatre hardly dreams of, it has...

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