Let’s stop pretending the Liberal Party believes in free speech
You'd need a heart of stone not to laugh at right-wing think-tanker Tim Wilson becoming a Human Rights Commissioner. Whatever the merits of his appointment, it’s an ace piece of...
Rewriting the Gillard years
Credit Julia?
Martyrdom is part of the Australian Labor Party’s mythology. For a generation now, there’s been an understanding that genuine progressive reform is a suicide mission....
The Tea Party takes its medicine
For the other countries of the first world, a US government shutdown is a real curiosity. It might even be exciting, if it wasn’t for the consequences. We all have political...
The delusion continues post-election
What Labor hasn’t learnt
What does the Labor Party value most? We can answer that by looking back to the time before the election, when polling predicted not just defeat but catastrophe. The party...
A cabinet of sausages
I once asked a right-wing poet (they exist) about the pitifully low number of female contributors published by conservative magazines. Why was it so? In response he took me on a...
Bogans and boat people (Pt 2)
Read part 1 here
Western Sydney and the shallows of abundance
“We are a wealthy country” is a familiar phrase of entreaty in refugee advocacy. Implicit in it is...
Bogans and boat people (Pt1)
The failure of the pro-refugee movement
The Papua New Guinea solution marks the symbolic failure of the humanitarian case for refugee resettlement in Australia. More than a...
So this is what it's like to be English
The Australian cricket team’s painful declension from the Invincibles to the Washington Generals has paused, thanks to Ashton Agar’s defiance. He might spark a...
How NSA surveillance destroys privacy and undermines our sovereignty
The largest black chamber ever constructed is being built now, in Utah. Called the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data...
Hunting Canberra's Loch Ness Monster
Today we know that a petition ended the political career of Julia Gillard. But we don’t know if the petition ever really existed. Even when this mysterious document was...
We Need to Fall Out of Love With Obama
It’s hard to imagine the current scandals wreathing the White House will do much to dim the glowing image of Barack Obama over here. The fact various administration...
But The Australian is Elitist, Too
David Flint must be kicking himself. Watching the debate started by Nick Cater’s book The Lucky Culture, among John Howard, Mark Latham, Janet Albrechtsen (and many, many...
Not Craig Thomson
I’ve come to admire Craig Thomson. Like many people, I underestimated him at first, writing him off as an ordinary, flawed person in an extraordinary situation, frozen into...
The Sport Doping Enquiry Isn’t Just Stupid - It’s Wrong
‘UNITE THE FIGHT AGAINST NATIONALLY SIGNIFICANT CRIME’. That’s the awkward, shouty slogan of the Australian Crime Commission, turning its attention to...
Why I Am Not A Conservative (Any More)
Perhaps it’s another sign of the Triumph of Selfishism, but Margaret Thatcher’s death got me thinking about myself, and my own political development. It’s the...
Whatever happened to Mamdouh Habib?
‘Who?’ That was the response when I mentioned that Mamdouh Habib had won the right to sue the NSW Police for racism. He failed the pub test not once, but several times...
Is Graham Richardson psychic?
In the course of last week’s Crean Immolation, there was only one commentator who finished the day of chaos with a perfect record of prediction. That man was Graham...
Laughing Gas
When Lieutenant John Pike was filmed pepper-spraying cross-legged Occupy protesters with the nonchalance of a retiree hosing down the garden, it took a day for the image to make...
