Terry Barnes is a Melbourne-based contributor for The Spectator and The Spectator Australia.
Two unrelated acts of stabbing violence, first the random murderous rampage of a knife-wielding man in Sydney’s Bondi Junction, followed by the livestreamed knife attack on an Assyrian Christian bishop in his church, have led to a crackdown on freedom of expression in Australia. Misinformation and disinformation, our politicians have concluded, caused these grim incidents.
In her new book, Liz Truss says she likes Australia and Australians. The country is, she says, ‘like Britain without the hand-wringing and declinism’. But had Truss cared to scratch beneath the surface on her visits Down Under, she might have realised that Australians today are anything but the laid-back, easygoing, and ‘she’ll be right’
Sydney has been rocked by another stabbing rampage – just days after six people were murdered in a knife attack in the city’s Bondi Junction. A bishop of the Assyrian Orthodox Church, Mar Mari Emmanuel, was knifed at the altar during the incident yesterday afternoon in the working-class suburb of Wakeley. Several other parishioners were
Bondi Junction, in Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs, is well known to many British backpackers and tourists. Close to the city’s most famous beaches, it is where locals and visitors go to shop, enjoy the many cafes, or catch the train to town. The sprawling Westfield shopping complex there is a popular place. This Saturday afternoon,
While the King and the Princess of Wales both battle cancer, the business of monarchy goes on. In the realms of the Commonwealth that includes ensuring the Crown is represented in each respective constitutional government. In Australia, though, the choice of candidate for governor-general is far from reassuring news for the monarchy. Samantha ‘Sam’ Mostyn, an
Captain James Cook has fallen. Not on the shore of Hawaii’s Kealakekua Bay on Valentine’s Day 1779, but in the Melbourne bohemian bayside suburb of St Kilda. His statue was sawn off at the ankles in the dead of night with an angle grinder; his plinth daubed in a blood-red, anti-colonial slogan. The culprits haven’t
If you attend almost any public meeting or event in Australia these days, you’ll be greeted – some would say confronted – by a mandatory statement before it starts. Even the nation’s parliament now starts the day with this statement, ahead of the centuries-old ritual of reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Known as the Acknowledgment of
What do you do if you have dozens of combat helicopters you don’t want? If you’re the Australian government, you dismantle them and turn them into landfill. That’s the imminent fate of 45 Australian Army and Royal Australian Navy MRH-90 Taipan helicopters, grounded since a crash in Queensland last summer and withdrawn from service. Australia
Australia’s government has been determined to ‘do a Barbados’ and ditch the British monarchy for an Australian republic with an Australian president. But now, it seems, prime minister Anthony Albanese has lost his nerve. In the week that the first Australian coins of Charles III’s reign entered general circulation, and it was confirmed the King
According to opinion polls, more Australians want to ditch the country’s ties with the British monarchy than retain it. The Labor government of prime minister Anthony Albanese includes an assistant minister for the republic. King Charles is being dropped from Australian banknotes. Most major Australian media outlets, including News Corp’s flagship newspaper the Australian, and
In the days after the 7 October attack on Israel, Australia vowed to stand with Israel. It appears to have forgotten that pledge. When the United Nations General Assembly voted in October in favour of an immediate humanitarian truce in Gaza, Australia abstained because the motion failed to explicitly mention, let alone condemn, Hamas. James
Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, urged his fellow Australians to take ‘the opportunity to make history’ today. And they did, but not in the way that Albanese had so fervently hoped. His government’s referendum, which aimed to change the country’s constitution to entrench an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advisory voice to Australia’s parliament and
Almost 250 years after European settlement, many of Australia’s Aborigines still face appalling socio-economic disadvantages compared to fellow Australians: lower life expectancy and school completion but high welfare dependency and incarceration rates, domestic violence, and endemic unemployment, truancy, alcohol and substance abuse. These are sad realities in such a prosperous nation as Australia. Government statistics
The illicit moment of surreal euphoria from snorting a line of cocaine comes at a heavy price of misery and death for so many others – a dreadful toll that is plain to see on the streets of Sydney. The competition between criminal gangs for the city’s drug users has become deadly on a scale
Almost sixteen years after he lost office and his own parliamentary seat, former Australian Liberal prime minister John Howard is still an influential political figure. Idolised by the right and demonised by the left, when Howard speaks, Australians still take notice. When Howard spoke to the Australian newspaper to mark his 84th birthday this week,
In world sport, the Commonwealth games are a bit of a sideshow. In swimming and athletics, at least, they are seen as something of a mid-cycle training event for the Olympics. Australians, however, love the Commonwealth games. Not just because they are about friendly sporting rivalries and promote goodwill between the nearly 60 nations of
Today in Sydney, Australia’s most decorated soldier, former Special Air Services corporal Ben Roberts-Smith VC, was found by a civil court, on a balance of probabilities, to be a likely war criminal, a murderer, a liar and a bully. Roberts-Smith is a huge man, towering over all around him. When he was presented alongside other
Cynically dressed up as a coronation-related gift to the Canadian nation, just days after the coronation, the country’s leader Justin Trudeau has unveiled a Royal Crown of Canada. Trudeau is paying lip service to the monarchy Canada shares with Britain and the King’s other realms Not a physical gold and jewelled crown, mind you, but a virtual
It was not just Barry Humphries who died on Saturday. It was that towering skewerer of pomposity and humbug, and gate-crasher of Royal boxes, Dame Edna Everage. It was Australia’s roving cultural attaché and Australian Minister for the Yartz, Sir Les Patterson. It was pathetic Melbourne suburban pensioner, Sandy Stone. It was colonial hellraiser Barry McKenzie. It was a host
There are few surprises in the Aukus nuclear-powered submarine programmed announced by Rishi Sunak, his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese, and US president Joe Biden overnight. Australia will get its fleet of nuclear submarines. The United States will supply Virginia-class boats to Australia for the 2030s; US Virginias and Royal Navy Astute-class boats will be stationed
