Today in The Australian
Although the High Court has dismissed Peter Ridd’s appeal against the termination of his appointment by James Cook University, its unanimous decision is an important step forward in the defence of intellectual freedom.
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Today in The Australian
ICAC … even the Star Chamber did better
It would be a mistake to call the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption a new Star Chamber. After all, despite the injustices that marred its later years, the Star Chamber was, by the standards of its time, a model of procedural fairness.
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 ICAC … even the Star Chamber did better_Fri 8 Oct 2021.pdf | [ ] | 116 Kb |
Today in The Australian
That the climate of lawlessness that the CFMEU has done so much to instil in Victoria’s building industry contributed to this week’s ugly scenes in Melbourne is beyond doubt. But no matter how richly John Setka deserves to reap what he has sown, the police clearly had a duty to protect the union’s headquarters, as well as to arrest and charge the thugs who participated in the violence then and in the following days.
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| Protecting our freedom to protest peacefully_Fri 24 Sep 2021.pdf | [ ] | 128 Kb |
It is undoubtedly true that preventing people who choose not to be vaccinated from engaging in activities that are open to the vaccinated involves a degree of coercion. But that hardly means any such restrictions ought to be opposed by those who place a high value on liberty.
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| Even true libertarians can support vax passports_Fri 17 Sep 2021.pdf | [ ] | 105 Kb |
Today in The Australian
When Australians woke up on September 12, 2001, to the images of the twin towers collapsing, it seemed, to use Marx’s famous phrase, that suddenly all that was solid had melted into air. Unmistakably, in that terrible moment, everything had changed, with the horrifying photos of a man leaping from a crumbling skyscraper epitomising the terror that had been unleashed on the world.
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| Enduring jewel of democracy is our tribute to the fallen_Fri 10 Sep 2021.pdf | [ ] | 111 Kb |
Today in The Australian
With the last American soldiers having left Afghanistan, the pall that hangs over this week’s celebration of the ANZUS Treaty’s 70th anniversary is as thick as it is unmistakeable. Perhaps the only, however feeble, ray of sunshine is the claim made by several highly respected commentators – including Paul Kelly and Greg Sheridan on these pages – that the US’s international standing recovered quickly from its humiliating defeat in Vietnam.
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| US comeback from Kabul harder than Saigon_Fri 3 Sep 2021.pdf | [ ] | 121 Kb |
As unending lockdowns fuel an increasingly widespread sense of war-weariness, a great deal of ugliness is coming to the surface. Few incidents are as troubling, however, as the reaction to an engagement party that was held at a private house in Melbourne on August 14,
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| In age of identity politics, some less equal than others_Fri 27 Aug 2021.pdf | [ ] | 116 Kb |
Today in The Australian
The fall of Kabul will resonate every bit as loudly among the Islamists and their supporters as the collapse of the twin towers. Next month, as Americans commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the fall of Kabul will resonate every bit as loudly among the Islamists and their supporters as the collapse of the twin towers.
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| Having lost its way, the West lost the war_Fri 20 Aug 2021.pdf | [ ] | 125 Kb |
Long before the many accounts of the last days of humanity were committed to writing, tribal lays had recorded disasters that would presage the demise of life on earth.
The end of the world, it seems, is here to stay. No doubt, today’s climate scientists, armed with computer models that spit out mountains of projections, are a far cry from the doomsaying prophets of old.
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| It’s the end of the world as we know it – again_Fri 13 Aug 2021.pdf | [ ] | 126 Kb |
Today in The Australian
That Australia’s athletes put in a splendid performance at the Tokyo Olympics is beyond doubt. Yet the pattern of results is almost as striking as the overall performance itself.
There is, in effect, a substantial difference between that pattern and both Australia’s results in previous Olympics and the results at Tokyo of the countries we usually view as peers. What stands out is not only the very high ratio of gold to silver medals but also of bronze medals to fourth places.
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| Lesson from our athletes is still who dares wins_Thu 12 Aug 2021.pdf | [ ] | 113 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Once upon a time, schoolchildren were taught that the coming of Federation in 1901 was the work of providence, whose bounteous hand was guided by an omniscient and benevolent deity.
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| Legacy of a federation born much too soon_Fri 6 Aug 2021.pdf | [ ] | 128 Kb |
Last Sunday Helge Braun, the head of Germany’s powerful federal chancellery and a close ally of Angela Merkel, suggested it was only a matter of time before restrictions were imposed on access to public venues by “people who are not vaccinated, even if they have been tested for Covid, because the risks of infection are too high”.
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| Unvaccinated risk exclusion from ordinary joys of life_Fri 30 Jul 2021.pdf | [ ] | 241 Kb |
Today in The Australian
It is one thing to say, as I did on these pages last week, that Covid-19 should ultimately be managed like the flu, and quite another to imply that there is little difference between Covid and the flu. Let’s be clear: Covid is not the Black Death. But neither is it merely the flu with some punch added.
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| Covid is not the plague, but neither is it the flu_Fri 16 Jul 2021.pdf | [ ] | 102 Kb |
Today in The Australian
As other countries prepare to live with Covid, Australia and lockdowns remain joined in a fatal embrace. The problem is not just the harm wreaked by the unpredictable disruptions to daily life, the drastic restrictions on domestic and international travel and the myriad other erosions of basic freedoms; it is that the elimination strategy has degenerated into a policy at war with itself.
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| Covid-19 elimination strategy is a war no one can win_Fri 9 Jul 2021.pdf | [ ] | 119 Kb |
Today in The Australian
If there is one thing we have learned it is that if a conclusion doesn’t make much sense, it is wise to treat it with caution, no matter how carefully it has been derived.
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| Red tape the problem rather than monopoly.pdf | [ ] | 82 Kb |
Today in The Australian
As the Chinese Communist Party celebrates its centenary, the goals at the heart of Marxism – of achieving a world in which private property and commodity exchange have been abolished, the state has “withered away” and resources are allocated on the basis of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” – scarcely figure in its program.
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Today in The Australian
If only Australians had been told the truth, claimed Bruce Pascoe, they would have known that Indigenous societies, as they existed before European settlement, were anything but primitive communities of “mere hunter-gatherers” whose “simple lot” was to “wander haplessly” across the continent’s length and breadth.
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| Scholarly light cast on Dark Emu claims_Fri 18 Jun 2021.pdf | [ ] | 116 Kb |
Today in The Australian
In 1920-21, as the influenza pandemic that had cost 15,000 Australian lives drew to an end, the nation turned inwards. Compared with the rest of the world, Australia had been spared, with a death rate barely half Britain’s. But coming after a war that had reduced much of Europe to rubble, that made the blessings of isolation seem only so much greater.
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| Failure to heed lesson of the flu pandemic_Fri 28 May 2021.pdf | [ ] | 87 Kb |
Today in The Australian
On Monday, as Hamas launched hundreds of missiles against Israel’s population centres, prompting Israeli strikes at Hamas’ war-waging capabilities, Jews celebrated Shavuot, the “Feast of Weeks”, which commemorates both the first wheat the Israelites harvested in the Land of Israel and the anniversary of the giving of the Torah (the Hebrew Bible) and its law by God to the Children of Israel at Mount Sinai in 1312 BCE. Coming 50 days after Passover, which marks the Israelites’ flight from Egypt to the promised land, the coincidence of the events celebrated at Shavuot is anything but accidental.
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| Israel strikes on Gaza_We must defend the custom of just war and restraint_Fri 2 | [ ] | 118 Kb |
Today in The Australian
In July 1993, when The New Yorker presciently captioned Peter Steiner’s iconic cartoon with “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”, the implication was obvious: to be online is to be anonymous.
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Today in The Australian
On May 27, 1971, as the second attempt to ban Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint failed miserably in the NSW Court of Quarter Sessions, literary censorship in Australia effectively came to an end.
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Today in The Australian
This Sunday, on Anzac Day, we will remember those who gave their lives for this country, most recently in Afghanistan, and honour their bravery and devotion. Yet in a culture that places victimhood on a pedestal, the future of the values which shape that tradition of service seems increasingly uncertain.
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| Victimhood casts shadow on the virtue of valour_Fri 23 Apr 2021.pdf | [ ] | 123 Kb |
Today in The Australian
On December 22, 1988, Ralph Willis, who had recently become minister for communications in the third Hawke government, met with George Maltby, the managing director of the Overseas Telecommunications Commission, and demanded his resignation.
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| Australia Post turns drama into soap opera_Fri 16 Apr 2021.pdf | [ ] | 116 Kb |
Operation Vest: Anonymity courts malicious intent, blights rule of law
The rule of law suffered yet another blow late last month when the NSW police launched Operation Vest, encouraging the public to register anonymous complaints against alleged offenders on the Sexual Assault Reporting online platform.
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| Operation Vest_Anonymity courts malicious intent, blights rule of law_Fri 9 Apr | [ ] | 111 Kb |
Today in The Australian
The Liberal staffers who videoed themselves masturbating in Parliament House are morons, not monsters. And if we gasp at Andrew Laming’s conduct, it is less because it was manifestly unethical than because it shows, all too clearly, that while you are only young once, you can be immature forever.
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Today in The Australian
Coming after a year of unprecedented restrictions on basic freedoms, Zachary Gorman’s new book on Magna Carta, which is now available from the Institute for Public Affairs, could not be more timely.
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| Magna Carta_still shining bright for freedom_Fri 12 Mar 2021.pdf | [ ] | 110 Kb |
Today in The Australian
As extremely serious accusations proliferate about behaviour by senior politicians that is claimed to have occurred years or even decades ago, the greatest damage is likely to be to the cause of justice itself.
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| Public shaming can’t replace justice_Fri 5 Mar 2021.pdf | [ ] | 110 Kb |
Today in The Australian
With the outcome of the High Court appeal in Peter Ridd’s case highly uncertain, the government seems to have an almost touching faith in the capacity of its model code of conduct to protect academic freedom.
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| Competition best way to wake up our universities_Fri 26 Feb 2021.pdf | [ ] | 113 Kb |
Today in The Australian
As COVID-19 hit these shores, the country’s medical bureaucrats must have felt like the members of a small and rapidly diminishing cargo cult when they finally glimpsed ships on the horizon.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.| 'Official Socialism’ skulking beneath the cover of Covid_Fri 19 Feb 2021.pdf | [ ] | 124 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Released by the Treasurer in the midst of the pandemic, the report of the Retirement Income Review has received far less attention than it deserves. While the report covers a great deal of ground, it is disappointing and dangerous in important respects.
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| Problem is the tax on our super is too high_Fri 12 Feb 2021.pdf | [ ] | 106 Kb |
Today in The Australian
It was predictable, but nonetheless a pity, that the row over Australia Day would prove to be all heat, no light.
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| Australia Day ‘invasion’ rhetoric perpetuates victimhood_Fri 5 Feb 2021.pdf | [ ] | 110 Kb |
Today in The Australian
It is one of the paradoxes of the modern world that while the concept of honour has about as much influence on daily life as that of chastity, honours abound, and — as this week’s polemics showed — so does the controversy that surrounds their award.
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| Honours without a shared sense of honour_Fri 29 Jan 2021.pdf | [ ] | 117 Kb |
Today in The Australian
150 years on, Germany’s past shows fragility of freedom
One hundred and fifty years ago this week, on January 18, 1871, the German empire was proclaimed in Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors, which the troops of the German states had just captured in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.
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| 150 years on, Germanys past shows fragility of freedom_Fri 22 Jan 2021.pdf | [ ] | 112 Kb |
Today in The Australian
The genius of democracy lies in converting adversaries into rivals, channelling their enmity into organised and orderly political competition. But because that competition relies on passions as much as on interests, there is always a risk that the antagonisms it mobilises will spiral out of control, unleashing the violence that democracy itself is intended to avoid.
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| Americas democracy designed to survive Trump crisis_Fri 14 Jan 2021.pdf | [ ] | 111 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Coming at the end of a year in which Australians have been subject to restrictions that are unprecedented in peacetime, including widespread and persistent border closures, it may well have been appropriate for Scott Morrison to remind us that we are — or should be — “one and free”.
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| America’s democracy designed to survive Trump crisis.pdf | [ ] | 111 Kb |
Today in The Australian
“Anno bisesto, anno funesto” — leap year, fatal year — goes an ancient Italian saying, whose origins apparently lie in the devastating plague that hit the Italian city-states in the leap year of 1348.
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| 2021_The year of open societies_Fri 1 Jan 2021.pdf | [ ] | 117 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Christmas is for columnists: please give generously
It was three weeks before Christmas when the dreaded telegram arrived. I refer, dear readers, to 40 years ago, when I was not only young and gay (as we used to say in that more innocent age) but, best of all, in Paris.
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| Christmas is for columnists_please give generously_Thu 24 Dec 2020.pdf | [ ] | 519 Kb |
Today in The Australian
The silence that has greeted the former US president’s description of Nicolas Sarkozy in his book reflects the normalisation of casual anti-Semitism on the ‘progressive’ side of politics.
The words leap out and grab you. After all, in countless pages of prose, no other world leader is characterised by Barack Obama in anything like those terms.
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| Why casual bigotry of Obama’s 'Jew' slur about Sarkozy must be called out_Fri 18 | [ ] | 70 Kb |
Today in The Australian
When the Black Death reached Europe and the Mediterranean in 1346-47, Egypt and England were roughly comparable economies, with similar populations and income levels.
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Today in The Australian
As so often happens with mass production, the quality of China’s lies has plummeted as their number has increased. However, the purpose of its latest outrage was not so much to deceive as to humiliate.
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| Calculated show of contempt by China_Fri 4 Dec 2020.pdf | [ ] | 97 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Having held out for many months, All Souls capitulated last week, erasing the name “Codrington” from its world-famous library.
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| Oxfords All Souls has shed its own by erasing Codrington name from library_Fri 2 | [ ] | 119 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Since the brutal assassination of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded on the street by an Islamist for showing his students a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed, the ABC has distinguished itself by publishing one piece after the other that pins the blame for the French terrorist attacks not on the fanatics and their murderous ideology but — you guessed it — on France.
| ABC blames France when jihadis murder its innocents_Fri 20 Nov 2020.pdf | [ ] | 146 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Much like the BBC, the ABC was formed, and its mission framed, on the basis of two beliefs that emerged from the trauma of the First World War.
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| Public interest_ABC betrays its founding principles_Fri 13 Nov 2020.pdf | [ ] | 114 Kb |
Today in The Australian
As the West battles the corona virus, the terror attacks in France and Austria come as a stark remind er of the threat for which there is neither a cure nor a vaccine. And the terroristsʼ choice of targets — a schoolteacher, decapitated for displaying a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed; churchgoers in Nice, murdered for their Christian faith; innocent Viennese, shot as they enjoyed their evening close to the cityʼs central synagogue — highlights every bit as starkly that threatʼs horrific nature.
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| How the West can crack down on Islamist terror_Sat 7 Nov 2020.pdf | [ ] | 645 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Many decades ago, in that fleeting parenthesis between the ravages of Marxism and those of the assault on Dead White Males, there raged in academia something of a great debate about Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War.
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| US election_Elusive virtues that would help nation heal these scars Fri 6 Nov 20 | [ ] | 379 Kb |
Today in The Australian
As pillars of probity, ASIC pair should know better
Whether Christine Holgate, the CEO of Australia Post, acted properly in distributing designer watches to the senior executives who had secured a major contract will be determined by the inquiries that are now under way. But whether she acted wisely is another question.
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| As pillars of probity ASIC pair should know better_Fri 30 Oct 2020.pdf | [ ] | 116 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Islam and the West: We must strike back or soon we’ll all be Samuel Paty
Samuel Paty, the French schoolteacher decapitated last Friday for showing his students a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed, did not lose his life in a clash of civilisations; he lost it in a clash between civilisation and barbarism.
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| Islam and the West_We must strike back or soon we’ll all be Samuel Paty_Fri 23 O | [ ] | 119 Kb |
Today in The Australian
The past week has hardly been kind on our political system’s image. In NSW, Gladys Berejiklian’s previously untarnished reputation was battered by revelations of her relationship with Daryl Maguire, a disgraced former Liberal MP.
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| Berejiklian and Andrews_A tale of two crises_Fri 16 Oct 2020.pdf | [ ] | 160 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Recent polls that show a majority of Australians support tough restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 may well reflect public perceptions of the risks associated with the disease.
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Today in The Australian
Eyes wide shut – Victoria’s debacle shows the public service sector remains steeped in political expediency
“When I leave home to walk to school / Dad always says to me / ‘Marco, keep your eyelids up / And see what you can see.” So begins the classic 1937 children’s book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street by Dr Seuss.
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| And to think that we saw it on Spring Street_Fri 2 Oct 2020.pdf | [ ] | 46 Kb |
Sophocles’ legendary tyrant was supremely political, imbued with the casual ruthlessness of those whose craft is power. This cynicism is also on display in Queensland and Victoria.
Almost 2500 years after it was first performed, Sophocles’s Antigone has seemed more relevant — ever since Queensland refused Sarah Caisip, a 26-year-old Canberra-based graduate nurse, permission to attend her father’s funeral.
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| Annastacia Palaszczuk and Daniel Andrews prove a match for cruel King Creon_Fri | [ ] | 75 Kb |
Today in The Australian
The cruellest thing one can do to Daniel Andrews’s explanation of Victoria’s strategy for dealing with COVID-19 is to read it a second time. After all, given the costs that are being inflicted on Victorians and on the country as a whole, one might assume, on a first reading, that a cogent justification for the strategy lay hidden in the explanatory material Andrews used last Sunday.
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| Force Daniel Andrews to bear the costs of the damage he wreaks.pdf | [ ] | 86 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Whatever else it may do, the BBC’s decision first to drop the lyrics of Rule, Britannia from the last night of the Proms and then, faced with public outrage, reinstate them, should lay to rest any remaining doubts about the abject ignorance that underlies today’s cancel culture.
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| Cancel culture warriors try to silence a nation’s song of pride_Fri 4 Sep 2020.p | [ ] | 118 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Enshrined in article 13 (2) of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and reaffirmed in article 12 (2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the principle that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own and to return to his country” has always been regarded as foundational to a free society.
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| Public health is one thing — basic freedoms another_Fri 28 Aug 2020.pdf | [ ] | 370 Kb |
Today in The Australian
There is a great deal to dislike, and not much to like, in West Australia’s Iron Ore Processing (Mineralogy Pty Ltd) Agreement Amendment Act 2020, which overrides the outcomes of the state’s long-running dispute with Clive Palmer and extinguishes Palmer’s rights to damages.
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| WA government has shifted the sands beneath Clive Palmer’s feet_Fri 21 Aug 2020. | [ ] | 113 Kb |
Today in The Australian
As our aged-care homes battle COVID-19, the sector’s longstanding problems have come dramatically to the fore.
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| Waves of boomers will test aged-care foundations_Fri 14 Aug 2020.pdf | [ ] | 130 Kb |
Today in The Australian
As the deficits being incurred by Australian governments continue to spiral, the claim that we are “borrowing from the future” has become increasingly widespread.
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| Problem is we’re not borrowing from the future, but taking from it_Mon 10 Aug 20 | [ ] | 79 Kb |
Today in The Australian
“Are they any use?” Rambert, the journalist, asks in Camus’s The Plague when he is told to put on a mask of cottonwool enclosed in muslin before entering the hospital. No, not really, his guide replies, although they “inspire confidence in others”.
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| Our face work diminished, we cannot mask the cost_Fri 7 Aug 2020.pdf | [ ] | 117 Kb |
Today in The Australian
A missed opportunity at best, an inconsistent and questionable judgment at worst, the decision of the full Federal Court in the dispute between Peter Ridd and James Cook University deserves to be reviewed by the High Court.
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| Ridd decision abandons the point of universities_Fri 31 Jul 2020.pdf | [ ] | 304 Kb |
Today in The Australian
This has been a hard year for the traditional virtues, not least that which used to be known as prudence.
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| Prudence seems a lost virtue in coronavirus pandemic response_Fri 17 Jul 2020.pd | [ ] | 551 Kb |
Today in The Australian
With families cowering in apartments surrounded by police, Victoriaʼs lockdown of its housing commission towers could only be described as barbaric.
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| Coronavirus_Daniel Andrews treads historic path to segregation shame_Fri 10 Jul | [ ] | 3198 Kb |
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| The pens of reason wrote their way to our future_Fri 26 Jun 2020.pdf | [ ] | 109 Kb |
Ten days from now, when the bulk of the Powerhouse Museum is closed down, one of the greatest acts of cultural vandalism in Australian history will be committed not by the lunatic left but by a Liberal government. Twelve months later, the remaining parts of the museum will also be shuttered, bringing to an end a presence in the Sydney district of Ultimo that began in 1893.
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| Unusual suspect behind act of cultural vandalism_Sat 20 June 2020.pdf | [ ] | 1066 Kb |
Today in The Australian
When Thomas Woolnerʼs statue of Captain James Cook was unveiled in Sydney on February 25, 1879, The Sydney Morning Herald described the event, which attracted 70,000 spectators, as the “grandest spectacle” in Australian history, while Henry Parkes, whose government had commissioned it in 1875, proclaimed that “the genius of the thing quite thrilled”.
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| James Cook spoke to us then, and speaks to us now_Fri 19 June 2020.pdf | [ ] | 395 Kb |
Today in The Australian
In the midst of the Weimar Republic’s disastrous hyperinflation of 1923, Eduard Koppenstatter, a prominent astrologer, correlated movements in the value of the German mark with those of the planets. Having concluded that there were “law-like relations” between monetary indicators and “the course of the stars”, he produced economic forecasts for the years ahead.
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| Do we understand the debt burden behind COVID-19_Fri 3 Jul 2020.pdf | [ ] | 437 Kb |
Today in The Australian
If separatism is such misery, do we try integration?
That indigenous Australians, who make up 3 per cent of this country’s population, account for 30 per cent of its prisoners is a national disgrace. That by the time they reach the age of 23, 75 per cent of young indigenous people in NSW will have been cautioned by police, referred to a youth justice conference or convicted of an offence in a criminal court — compared with just 17 per cent of their non-indigenous counterparts — makes the disgrace all the more searing.
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| If separatism is such misery, do we try integration_Fri 12 June 2020.pdf | [ ] | 637 Kb |
Today in The Australian
With America’s cities descending into lawlessness, it would be easy to conclude that the country is on the verge of collapse. In reality, the problems gripping the US are both more enduring and less apocalyptic than that impression suggests.
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| Racial politics — it has always been a riot in the US_Fri 5 June 2020.pdf | [ ] | 435 Kb |
Fifty years ago this month, 200,000 people marched through Australia’s cities in the first Vietnam moratorium. The period leading up to the demonstrations had been tumultuous on campuses across the country, including at the University of Queensland. Already by 1967, opposition to conscription had merged there with protests against the state government’s restrictions on civil liberties, unleashing an escalating tide of agitation.
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Today in The Australian
With China’s trade war against Australia escalating, the scene seems distressingly contemporary: a fraying global order, riven by mounting tensions between states; an ascendant, brutally authoritarian power, determined to throw its weight around; and dependent economies which, though formally independent, find their room for manoeuvre increasingly compromised as the rising power uses its economic clout to punish them for stepping out of line.
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| China ties_History shows trade can lead to servitude_Fri 22 May 2020.pdf | [ ] | 110 Kb |
Today in The Australian
“No one could have foreseen five or 10 years ago the situation we face,” Emmanuel Macron declared in early March, as he sought to explain the shortages of personal protective equipment and respirators that had plunged France into a devastating crisis.
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Today in The Australian
In December 1919, as the Bolsheviks struggled with a typhus epidemic that killed more than five million people, Lenin famously declared “either socialism will defeat the louse or the louse will defeat socialism”.
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| Coronavirus__Australia’s tough fight to defeat ‘the louse’_Fri 1 May 2020.pdf | [ ] | 272 Kb |
Today in The Australian
On April 25, 1920, as he prepared to return to Britain, Sir Ronald Munro-Ferguson, governor-general of Australia, attended the Anzac Day service in the NSW town of Inverell, before spending the afternoon with more than 20 returned soldiers from the shire who had lost their legs in the war.
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Coronavirus: Return to sender — economists’ letter is gibberish
HENRY ERGAS and JONATHAN PINCUS
Like some books, there are petitions that deserve to be forgotten, not for the sake of their potential readers but to protect the reputation of their authors. The open letter by a bevy of economists urging Scott Morrison to keep the COVID-19 restrictions in place is a case in point.
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Today in The Australian
When Albert Camus set out to write The Plague, the novel that more than any other work earned him the Nobel prize for literature in 1957, words almost failed him.
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| Coronavirus_Grim reaper will kill off our words first_Mon 13 Apr 2020.pdf | [ ] | 97 Kb |
Today in The Australian
While the response of federal and state governments to the spread of COVID-19 is understandable, there must be a danger of going too far.
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| Coronavirus_Grim reaper will kill off our words first_Mon 13 Apr 2020.pdf | [ ] | 97 Kb |
Today in The Australian
On March 24, 1976, as the US prepared to celebrate its bicentenary, president Gerald Ford faced a decision which could only damage his chances of winning the election that was to be held that November.
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| COVID’s covert impact will alter the face of politics_Fri 20 Mar 2020.pdf | [ ] | 148 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Cosmic catastrophe always there if you look for it
In one of his last works, written a decade after he had defined enlightenment as “daring to know”, Immanuel Kant identified what he regarded as one of the greatest threats to reason: the human tendency to seek, in ever-changing realities, a sign of the End of Days.
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| Cosmic catastrophe always there if you look for it_Fri 13 Mar 2020.pdf | [ ] | 146 Kb |
Ironically, the virus firms up Xiʼs position – for now
As governments and central banks scramble to restore confidence and support economic activity, the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic remain clouded in uncertainty.
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| Ironically, the virus firms up Xi’s position – for now_Fri 6 Mar 2020.pdf | [ ] | 71 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Whatever its intentions, the High Court’s decision in Love and Thoms does indigenous Australians no favours.
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Today in The Australian
When the great cholera epidemics of the 19th century began in 1820, no one had any idea what had struck. Here was a disease of astonishing ferocity, as terrifying as the plague and seemingly as unstoppable, that was rapidly making its way from the Far East towards Europe.
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| China’s flawed reaction to the coronavirus_Mon 10 Feb 2020.pdf | [ ] | 112 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Seventy-five years ago, as the war raged with unrelenting ferocity, Australia’s daily papers reported, typically in a snippet at the bottom of page 4, that on what is now Australia Day a “terrible concentration camp” had been captured at Oswiecim, in southwestern Poland.
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Today in The Australian
It may be the fate of most public intellectuals to become more and more public and less and less intellectual; it was never that of the late Roger Scruton.
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| Roger Scruton, heroic champion of art and truth_Mon 20 Jan 2020.pdf | [ ] | 740 Kb |
Today in The Australian
With the flames still raging, it is too early to tell how great the losses from this season’s bushfires will be. Already now, however, the commonwealth government has pledged $2bn for a National Bushfire Recovery Agency, while the NSW government has announced an additional $1bn in recovery funding.
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| Bushfires_Pennies on prevention could save the states millions_Mon 13 Jan 2020.p | [ ] | 128 Kb |
Today in The Australian
As the children, “running and running, running to a standstill”, brought news to the volunteer firefighters in Patrick White’s The Tree of Man of yet another outbreak in the terrifying fire at Durilgai, “passionate volumes of smoke towered above the bush, and in that smoke (writhed) dark, indistinguishable bodies, as if something were being translated forcibly into space”.
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| Bushfires a chance to restore our national character_Mon 6 Jan 2020.pdf | [ ] | 87 Kb |
This Cold War is more messy, complex and dangerous If the decade that is about to end saw Chinaʼs emergence as a global power, it also witnessed an extraordinary resurgence of the US. With the EU sinking into insignificance, the world is once again bipolar, but in a more complex and uncertain way than it was during the lengthy era of the Cold War.
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| This Cold War is more messy, complex and dangerous_Fri 27 Dec 2019.pdf | [ ] | 112 Kb |
Today in The Australian
How fortunate is the true love in the Twelve Days of Christmas! From the first partridge in a pear tree to the last drummer drumming she receives exactly 364 gifts: a present for each and every day of the year to come, excluding Christmas Day.
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| ‘Exhausted majority’ can rejoice over a year of averted catastrophes_Fri 20 Dec | [ ] | 723 Kb |
Today in The Australian
According to Kenneth Hayne, former High Court judge and commissioner of last year’s financial services royal commission, Australian company directors need to spend more time worrying about climate change.
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| Adjusting to climate risks is only prudent_Fri 13 Dec 2019.pdf | [ ] | 352 Kb |
Today in The Australian
It is ironic that just as President Emmanuel Macron, along with the UN Secretary-General and a bevy of “world leaders” at the UN Climate Change Summit, calls for a dramatic acceleration in the transition to low-emissions sources of energy, France’s nuclear power industry faces a future that is more uncertain than ever.
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| The French nuclear revolution is rusting away_Fri 6 Dec 2019.pdf | [ ] | 172 Kb |
Today in The Australian
According to Ephraim Mirvis, the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, “the overwhelming majority of British Jews” are “gripped by anxiety” at the possibility of a Labour victory.
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| Why Australia’s Jews also hope that it’s not time for Jeremy Corbyn_Fri 29 Nov 2 | [ ] | 90 Kb |
Today in The Australian
With the House of Commons finally agreeing to an early election, the polls point to a substantial Conservative victory.
That is partly because Boris Johnson — who was widely dismissed as a clown when he took over the party’s leadership at the end of July — has raised support for the Tories from the catastrophic low of 20-25 per cent it had reached before he became Prime Minister to 35-40 per cent today.
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| A tunnel, a light … but Brexit express a mystery train_Fri 1 Nov 2019.pdf | [ ] | 146 Kb |
Today in The Australian
There’s need for secrecy — it’s a question of balance
As the blacked-out front pages of Monday’s newspapers reminded us, a free press is the foundation of liberty. In a world in which the abuse of power comes as no surprise, its vigilance helps to expose injustice, deter those who would perpetrate it and ensure governments are held to account.
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| There’s need for secrecy — it’s a question of balance_Fri 25 Oct 2019.pdf | [ ] | 131 Kb |
Today in The Australian
“Extinction rebellion” is not a protest against governments — it is a protest against the voters who elected them. And its message to those voters is as simple as it is manifestly undemocratic: adopt our policies or we will make your life impossible.
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| These minnows would besmirch the names of giants_Fri 11 Oct 19.pdf | [ ] | 109 Kb |
Judges may disagree, but history backs Boris Johnson
The legal question of whether the UK Supreme Court, in unanimously finding against the government of Boris Johnson, was correct will be debated for decades to come.
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| Judges may disagree, but history backs Boris Johnson_Fri 27 Sep 2019.pdf | [ ] | 66 Kb |
Today in The Australian
As China’s leaders celebrated 70 years of Communist Party rule on Tuesday, the fate of the Soviet empire hung like a ghost over the jackboots and missiles parading through the streets of Beijing.
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| China celebrates — but history is certain to catch up_Fri 4 Oct 2019.pdf | [ ] | 117 Kb |
Today in The Australian
The Committee for the Economic Development of Australia last week released the results of a survey of the attitudes the general public and corporate leaders have to business.
Launched to great media fanfare, Company Pulse 2019 contributed to a torrent of commentary about the need for companies to act more ethically.
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| Acting in the interests of shareholders matters_Fri 20 Sep 2019.pdf | [ ] | 63 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Last Saturday, at a packed conference in Kyoto of the International Council of Museums, delegates voted overwhelmingly against an ill-conceived proposed change to the internationally accepted definition of the nature and functions of a museum.
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| Trying to redefine museums_a disease of our times_Fri 13 Sep 2019.pdf | [ ] | 102 Kb |
Today in The Australian
For the past few months Britain has been a nation busily engaged in building its own funeral pyre.
This week Britain leapt into the roaring flames.
Perhaps something will be saved from the conflagration but, regardless of how Brexit ends, it is becoming harder and harder to believe that Britain will ever be the same again.
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| Brexit reveals what parliament thinks of the people_Fri 6 Sep 2019.pdf | [ ] | 101 Kb |
Today in The Australian:
Even were the situation in Hong Kong to deteriorate further, it is clear that the turmoil poses little immediate threat to the stability of Chinaʼs communist regime.
| Trotsky to Xi_no need to throw everything at them_Fri 9 Aug 2019.pdf | [ ] | 112 Kb |