Guest Notes
Hungarian notes
Merkel’s nemesis Before German Chancellor Angela Merkel picked a fight with her Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orbán in 2015 by opening…
Diversity notes
Abstractionitis revisited In its recently published survey, Leading for Change: A Blueprint for Cultural Diversity and Inclusive Leadership Revisited, the…
Kiwi notes
The Socialist Ardernative New Zealand politics has thrown up some wonderful invective over the years. A favourite of mine originated…
Cricket notes
From little sins big sins grow The Australian cricket team are a bunch of cheats. There is no other way…
Home & away notes
Over the space of a decade or so, a number of young Australians managed to bring themselves forcefully to international…
Cautionary notes
It strikes me sometimes as a fortuitous coincidence that the word communism shares its start with the word compulsion because…
Western civ notes
Ramsay Centre’s Name Earlier this year, Dr Bella d’Abrera admirably drew attention to the backlash against the Ramsay Centre for…
iPad notes
Distractions I sat nervously in the waiting area, tensely anticipating a diagnosis. After five minutes that seemed like five years,…
Satirical notes
Night of the Black Hands It was a dark mid-March weekend night in Adelaide. The fine citizens of South Australia’s…
High horse notes
For me, at least, one of the less edifying sights of recent times was watching Australia’s Prime Minister and his…
Neo-Marxist notes
I can best explain my temporary absence from these pages by saying that I agreed to write a ‘short’ book…
Dietary notes
Flopsy, mopsy, cottontail & peter Remember Beatrix Potter’s little rabbits that live in constant fear of Farmer Brown? Well they…
Arch-conservative notes
A devoutly Catholic Polish couple I know who came to Australia thirty years ago to escape the extreme unpleasantness of…
New Year’s musings
Love me do I think we all understand how ‘user pays’ works. Say you go to the local municipal swimming…
Seasonal notes
Abbott and Trump are right It is one year since Tony Abbott, recalling the role of the Australian Light…
Jolly notes
La la land ‘Tis the season to be jolly, Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la, Don we now our gay apparel … Oops,…
Australian notes
Watching the feral soap-dodgers Any other celebrity would be dozing in the VIP lounge, but I write from Sydney…
Teacher’s notes
School makes you smarter In the most popular TED talk of all time, Sir Ken Robinson makes the case that…
Twilight notes
Economic, political and diplomatic decline Australia under the Howard government was riding high, a nation almost uniquely debt-free, well governed,…
Dis-con notes
No more shilly-shallying When Parliament sits on Monday, it will (I assume) be greeted by another Newspoll. The last one…
Rhetorical notes
Some decades ago in Britain a better than average advertising copywriter came up with the following rather clever slogan: ‘Tern:…
Hawaiian notes
Under Hawaiian eyes The Pearl Harbour memorial to the 1,177 American sailors and marines (1,102 still entombed) who lost their…
Citizenship notes
It could have all been so much easier… Whatever the deal done by the Coalition and Labor, there always was…
New York notes
Tantamount to a speechcrime New York is wonderfully offensive. Offensive to nature with its gravity-defying towers. Offensive to the tragic,…
Trump notes
Trump’s America is doing better than it seems The other week I was trying to elicit some interest in politics…