This Month
- Opinion
- Political leadership
A governor-general from the Chairman’s Lounge
The PM is truer than he knows when he says Sam Mostyn represents modern Australia. It’s a nation of talkers, not doers.
March
- Opinion
- GST
Loser Victoria shouldn’t be a GST winner
Any federal government that’s serious about reforming Commonwealth-state relations would stop rewarding Victoria’s disastrous financial mismanagement.
February
- Opinion
- Liberal Party
Dunkley is the Liberal Party’s chance to advance on Morrison
The timing of the former PM’s departure with the byelection is coincidental but symbolic of potentially a new form of politics on the centre-right that’s democratising democracy.
- Opinion
- Liberal Party
Dutton needs his own version of Fightback
As the Coalition tries to work out a way forward on tax, the focus should be on how it won some of the big policy debates of the past.
- Opinion
- Federal election
Tax cuts reveal Albanese is brazen and cynical
After this, the suggestion that now is a good time to start a discussion about the development of a broad agenda for tax reform is naive.
January
- Opinion
- Liberal Party
Enter the Liberal Party, working-class heroes
The Liberals have won over the battlers before. Now they have a new cause in voters’ fears that their children will never be able to afford a home.
- Opinion
- Culture wars
Existential panic at the ivory tower
The Claudine Gay fiasco at Harvard has triggered a US debate about the purpose of higher education that Australia seems determined not to have.
December 2023
- Opinion
- Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Why Penny Wong and academic elites are wrong on Gaza
Penny Wong demonstrated the moral corruption of the UN and the opinion of many of its members, and Claudine Gay the intellectual corruption of higher education.
- Investigation
- Greens
Libs and Labor should put the Greens last over antisemitism
Australia’s elites in business, the media, and our cultural institutions have for too long humoured the Greens. It’s time for that to stop.
November 2023
- Opinion
- Australian economy
Cost-of-living crisis is a social crisis too
An economically pessimistic society finds it a lot harder to repair and renew itself in other ways.
- Opinion
- Culture wars
The right is out of love with capitalism
Prosperity is taken for granted and freedom is an optional extra. Conservatives are looking for a new sales pitch, and it’s not Adam Smith.
October 2023
- Opinion
- Voice to parliament
Voice loss heralds Labor’s third great split
Two earlier schisms divided the parliamentary party. This time it’s Labor MPs who have split from the people who vote for them.
Bran Black has the hardest job in Australia
The new boss of the lobby group for big business is described as “Mr Nice Guy”, but that will do nothing to push back against the government’s enthusiasm for drowning business in new regulations.
September 2023
- Opinion
- Voice to parliament
Such is politics: Josh Frydenberg departs as Jacinta Price arrives
After having their cosy consensus on the Voice disturbed, the political class and big business are starting to worry about what other issues the Indigenous senator might disrupt.
- Opinion
- Aviation
Game’s up for Qantas’ Canberra crony capitalism
When an airline’s most important stakeholders are politicians, not its passengers, there’s a problem.
August 2023
- Opinion
- Australian economy
Labor is boiling the frog of higher taxes
If you wanted to increase taxes you’d do it precisely the way the government is doing it. Bit by bit and step by step.
- Opinion
- Voice to parliament
Big business has lost its voice in debate on economic reform
CEOs today are more likely to adopt social causes than policy agendas and have opinions more in common with a typical cadet journalist at the ABC than with Milton Friedman.
July 2023
- Opinion
- Culture wars
‘Woke-washing’ has real consequences
It’s difficult to spot the difference between what Coutts did to the Brexit leader and what the Commonwealth Bank does to coal miners.
- Opinion
- Victorian budget
Andrews calculated only political cost of scrapping Commonwealth Games
Regardless of the cost overruns, if the state government felt it needed to stage the Games to win the next election, it would have done so without hesitation.
- Opinion
- Robo-debt royal commission
Not all royal commissions are equal
The media are a lot more interested in scandals like robo-debt under a Coalition government than in Lawyer X under a Labor government in Victoria.