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.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at the Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at the Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pfd.
| 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.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australians website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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”.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to access the column at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to access the pdf at The Australian's website or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| Coronavirus_Daniel Andrews treads historic path to segregation shame_Fri 10 Jul | [ ] | 3198 Kb |
Click/tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click/tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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”.
Click/tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click/tap here to read the oped at the Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to access the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to access a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website or check back here next week to download a pdf.
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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at the Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's subscriber website or check back here next week to download a pdf.
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”.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
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.
Click here (login required) to read the oped at The Australian's website or check back here next week to download a pdf.
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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to access the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to access the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to access the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website or check back here next week to download a pdf.
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.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's webpage (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click/tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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”.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at the Australian's website or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| ‘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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at the Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf version.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (password required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
You can read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Read the oped here (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click or tap here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| 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.
Click here to read the op-ed at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week for the pdf.
| 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.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf version.
| 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 |
Today in The Australian:
It may be that the light at the end of the Brexit tunnel is a train coming the other way. But once the blood has been cleaned off the tracks, Britain’s political crisis is likely to be behind it, making it easier for the country to adjust to whatever economic shocks Brexit may bring.
| Sensible Boris can lift Tories back to ‘dizzy’ heights_Fri 2 Aug 2019.pdf | [ ] | 109 Kb |
Today in The Australian:
As the debate on the proposal to enshrine an indigenous voice in the Constitution gathers momentum, the proposalʼs supporters have advanced four arguments in response to its critics. The proposal, they say, simply addresses past injustices which, in the words of Murray Gleeson, a former chief justice of the High Court, create a “case for special treatment of indigenous people”.
| This voice would have us shouting over the walls_Fri 26 Jul 2019.pdf | [ ] | 64 Kb |
That indigenous Australians lived on this continent for thousands of years before European settlement is a fact whose recognition in the preamble to the Constitution is long overdue. And it is also a fact European settlement inflicted many miseries on indigenous people, not least through policies that excluded them from the free and prosperous society that was being built around them.
| It is best we all sing from the same sheet of music_Fri 19 July 2019.pdf | [ ] | 87 Kb |
Today in The Australian: As Labor struggles to find its bearings, it would do well to consider what is happening in Europe. Syriza, which was trounced by the conservatives in last Sundayʼs elections, was not merely a Greek phenomenon when it swept to office four years ago; rather, it was hailed as the flag-bearer for a much broader radicalisation of the global left.
| Lessons for ALP in demise of European left populism_Fri 12 Jul 2019.pdf | [ ] | 67 Kb |
Today in The Australian: According to Scott Morrison, the government will, by the end of this year, introduce legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion, along the lines of the anti-discrimination provisions covering race, sex, gender preference, age, ethnic origin and disability. The fundamental question is whether that legislation will resolve or deepen the mess we’re in.
| With rights can come a complex tangle of burdens_Fri 5 Jul 2019.pdf | [ ] | 106 Kb |
Scott Morrison is right: no one would gain were the trade conflict between the US and China to escalate. But he is also right that difficult issues must be addressed if an open trading system is to survive.
At their heart is China’s ongoing refusal to play by the rules.
| International trade_China must be pushed to play by the rules_Fri 28 Jun 2019.pd | [ ] | 139 Kb |
Today in The Australian
The platitude du jour, repeated at every turn by the Treasurer and the governor of the Reserve Bank, is that no one wins a trade war. Pleasing as that homily may be, it reflects neither theory nor experience.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| Some trade wars have been a win for the world_Fri 30 Aug 2019.pdf | [ ] | 122 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Trump is living up to a long U.S. tradition
With the turmoil in Hong Kong, and now the apparent explosion of a Russian nuclear propulsion device, focusing attention on the threats Australia faces, there is a growing chorus of voices casting doubt on the stability and predictability of American foreign policy — and hence on the wisdom of continuing to rely so heavily on the alliance.
Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
Today in The Australian
Whatever one thinks of John Setka, this much is clear: expelling him from the ALP will do nothing to prevent the lawlessness that has become the hallmark of the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
On June 4, 1989, as the tanks rolled into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement won a landslide victory over its communist rivals in the first democratic elections to be held in Poland — indeed, in Eastern Europe — since its forcible integration into the Soviet bloc.
Click here to read the oped at The Australia's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| China’s future clouded by the road not taken in 1989_Fri 14 June 2019.pdf | [ ] | 118 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Like Aldous Huxley, I am capable of being very stoical about other people’s misfortunes — and never more so than when they afflict Labor and the disastrous policies it took to the election.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's webster (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| Albanese cannot just be Labor’s new contortionist_Fri 24 May 2019.pdf | [ ] | 81 Kb |
Today in The Australian (with Jonathan Pincus)
Labor’s tax attack on savings counter-productive
Australia may find itself next week on the path to the largest peacetime tax increases since Federation. It is not simply the magnitude of the tax rises that makes Labor’s plans exceptional — both in historical terms and relative to global trends — it is that they are so heavily focused on penalising saving.
Click here to read the oped at the Australian's website or check back here in a week to download a pdf.
| Labor’s tax attack on savings counter-productive_Mon 13 May 2019.pdf | [ ] | 150 Kb |
Today in The Australian
According to Labor and the Greens, climate change is fundamentally a moral issue. That, they say, means there is no need to cost their policies, which must simply be accepted as the right thing to do.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (subscription required) or check back here next week to download a pdf
Today in The Australian
It is, as Gibbons said about Corsica, easier to deplore the fate, than to describe the actual condition, of the National Broadband Network.
And with the campaign now under way, Labor’s announcement that, if elected, it will launch yet another review of the NBN only makes the network’s future all the more uncertain.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf version.
| NBN remote from ground control_Fri 12 Apr 2019.pdf | [ ] | 197 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Having proven herself to be a phoenix rather than a cooked goose, Gladys Berejiklian should move as quickly as she reasonably can to contain the effects of a recent decision by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal.
Legal reasons preclude a detailed discussion of the substance of that decision. Briefly stated, it quashes the convictions of a former senior politician in the Keneally Labor government, and of his close political ally, to whom that politician granted a lucrative licence. After a lengthy investigation, the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption concluded that the grant of the licence involved the misuse of public office. It also found the politician’s ally complicit in the offence, with those conclusions being confirmed by a trial that sent both men to jail for lengthy terms.
Click here to access the oped at The Australian's website or check back here next week to download a pdf.
Today in The Australian
Jihadis, neo-Nazis — they have always been brothers
How often in recent years have we thought, as Hannah Arendt did on learning of the death camps, “many things are possible, but this ought not to have happened”? Now, after another week of terrorism, and yet more innocent blood, we also think: this will not end.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
Today in The Australian
With the opinion polls showing no improvement in its prospects, any remaining optimists in the Coalition look increasingly like wishful sinkers.
The end, when it comes, will leave plenty of scope for recriminations; as ministers and members pack up their offices, blame is the one thing that will not be in short supply. The question, however, is to understand the broader forces at work.
Click here to read the oped at the Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
Today in The Australian
Last month, the NSW Land and Environment Court ruled against a proposed coalmine at Rocky Hill in a decision I criticised in these pages. Since then, public debate about that decision, which is likely to have far-reaching effects, has been astonishingly muted.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
Today in The Australian
According to Tim Anderson, who was sacked from the University of Sydney last month, academic freedom entitles him to display, as teaching material, the flag of the state of Israel with a swastika superimposed on it.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
Today in The Australian
While the Queensland government’s review of the Adani project is a farce, the decision of the NSW Land and Environment Court to block the proposed coalmine at Rocky Hill is a tragedy.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
Today in The Australian
Even those who delight in life’s little ironies will have been troubled to see the major culprits, in this case the banks, emerge from the financial services royal commission with what so far is barely a scolding, while the mortgage brokers and financial advisers, who were bit players in the drama, are hauled to the guillotine.
Click here (login required) to read the oped at The Australian's website or check back here next week for a pdf.
Today in The Australian
As US and Chinese negotiators struggle to reach agreement before higher American tariffs on Chinese goods come into effect on March 2, it is increasingly clear that the Trump administration has two distinct, and potentially inconsistent, goals.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website or (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| China might dance to Trump’s tune – for a while_Fri 1 Feb 2019.pdf | [ ] | 87 Kb |
Today in The Australian
We came, we saw, we made the very best of it
As long ago as January 26, 1817, only a few years after the colony of NSW had come into existence, some 40 guests celebrated its founding at the Sydney home of Isaac Nichols, a former convict who was the settlement’s postmaster.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week rto download a pdf.
| We came, we saw, we made the very best of it_Fri 25 Jan 2018.pdf | [ ] | 93 Kb |
Today in The Australian
In 1923, as the Weimar Republic struggled with chaos, the German polymath Carl Schmitt wrote a short but enormously influential book, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. Schmitt later destroyed his reputation through his collaboration with the Hitler regime. But if his work is increasingly cited, it is because its contemporary resonance is undeniable.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week for a pdf version.
| Are we headed towards high noon for democracy_Fri 18 Jan 2019.pdf | [ ] | 88 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Lost in the shouting match over the partial shutdown of the US government were the striking findings of a study released late last year. The study, carried out by demographers from Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, concludes that the number of illegal migrants in the country has been greatly underestimated.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week for a pdf.
| Donald Trump wall is a tall order, but migrant issue is heating up_Fri 4 Jan 201 | [ ] | 119 Kb |
Today in The Australian
As 2018 draws to a close, it is hard to find a Western leader whose authority has survived the year intact. Donald Trump’s presidency may not be derailed by the chaos in Washington but it compounds the sense of a drama veering towards a grim conclusion. Theresa May’s prime ministership hangs by a frayed thread as Brexit edges towards a hard landing. After a string of electoral routs, Angela Merkel has been forced to step down as party leader and announce her departure from the chancellorship. As for Emmanuel Macron, his standing and credibility have been shattered, and his reform agenda with them.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week for a pdf.
| Yellow vests’ anger sums up our spreading Western malaise_Fri 28 Dec 2018.pdf | [ ] | 94 Kb |
Today in The Australian
As the global economy sputters and stockmarkets sag, a mere $140,000 will buy the pick-me-up to which every family aspires: the full kit of the Twelve Days of Christmas, from the first partridge to the last drummer, with all the doves, hens, geese, swans, maids, ladies, lords and pipers in between.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (log in required) or check back here next week for a pdf.
| Less time for the present even as cost of giving declines_Fri 21 Dec 2018.pdf | [ ] | 270 Kb |
Today in The Australian
In a year best characterised as “plot by Dostoevsky, script by Groucho Marx”, it was perhaps fitting that the Senate celebrated Christmas by considering legislation that would have prevented Christian schools from teaching the doctrines of Jesus Christ.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| If you have true Faith, prepare to defend your rites_Fri 14 Dec 2018.pdf | [ ] | 104 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Watching Malcolm Turnbull’s recent conduct, it was hard not to think of Enoch Powell’s famous conclusion to his biography of Joseph Chamberlain. “All political lives,” Powell wrote, “unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and human affairs.”
Click here to read the article on The Australian's website or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| Spirit of Ajax won’t help Liberals_Fri 7 Dec 2018.pdf | [ ] | 193 Kb |
Today in The Australian
“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism,” France’s President Emmanuel Macron declared on Armistice Day, before adding, in a thinly disguised swipe at US President Donald Trump, “those who say ‘my interests first, regardless of others!’ rob a country of what gives it greatness: its moral value”.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a PDF.
| Frenchman with a forked tongue_Fri 16 Nov 2018.pdf | [ ] | 89 Kb |
Today in The Australian
The American people spoke on Tuesday, but quite what they said will remain contentious for years to come. What is certain, however, is that American politics will be as tumultuous in its next phase as it was in the last.
Click here to read the article at the Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week for a pdf.
| It’s a mess, but history shows that the US can rebound_Fri 9 Nov 2018.pdf | [ ] | 196 Kb |
As Bill Shorten noted in his address to the Lowy Institute on Monday, China is likely to remain Australia’s largest trading partner “for the foreseeable future”. However, that doesn’t mean our interests are necessarily aligned.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian website (login required) or check back here next week for a pdf.
| Leninist logic says China must be checked, and soon_Fri 2 Nov 2018.pdf | [ ] | 143 Kb |
Today in The Australian
It’s time liberals put away childish things
One of the beauties of democracy is that when things don’t work out, there is plenty of blame to spread around. What happened in Wentworth is no exception.
Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| It’s time liberals put away childish things_Fri 26 Oct 2018.pdf | [ ] | 116 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Greed is a deadly sin perhaps, but it helps drive our economy
Anyone who has followed the evidence being given in the financial services royal commission will not be surprised that Kenneth Hayne refers to “greed” more than 50 times in the interim report.
Click here to access a copy at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week for a pdf.
| Greed is a deadly sin perhaps, but it helps drive our economy_Fri 5 Oct 2018.pdf | [ ] | 199 Kb |
Today in The Australian
It is hard not to feel uneasy about the treatment being meted out to Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s nominee for the US Supreme Court.
Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (login required) or check back next week to download a pdf.
| Thumbs down for Trumps man_its spiteful theatre_Fri 28 Sep 2018.pdf | [ ] | 525 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Perhaps the royal commission is the new form of the Last Judgment. As the wicked are exposed and the innocent — should there be any — exonerated, the commissioner, observing the proceedings from an elevated podium, impassably records their fate.
Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (login required) or check back next week to download a pdf.
| Common sense has died along with truth and trust_Fri 21 Sep 2018.pdf | [ ] | 136 Kb |
Today in The Australian
After repeated rampages in Melbourne by African gangs, Australians are hardly likely to find the election results in Sweden surprising. With a sharp rise in violent crime, including a wave of attacks using hand grenades, since the country received an influx of refugees, the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats emerged this week as the kingmakers in what is certain to be a hung parliament.
Click here to read the oped at the The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week for a pdf of the article.
| Like Sweden, we’re ripe for the anti-immigration vote_Fri 14 Sep 2018.pdf | [ ] | 264 Kb |
| History of regicide can shed light on Turnbull’s downfall_Fri 31 August 2018.pdf | [ ] | 400 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Exactly 50 years ago, I spent my birthday protesting against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. At a co-ordinated time, I believe it was Prague’s midnight, a minute of silence was observed in places that circled the globe.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's webpage (login required) or check back here next week for a pdf.
| Our political class lacks moral courage_Fri 24 Aug 2018.pdf | [ ] | 704 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Like a python that has swallowed a pig, we are struggling to digest the population bulge the resources boom left behind. Unless immigration levels are reduced, the costs of that adjustment will only continue to mount, undermining public support for the migration program and jeopardising our ability to continue reaping the large gains migration brings.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's webpage (login required) or check back here next week for a pdf.
| Road to a big Australia is in poor repair_Fri 17 August 2018.pdf | [ ] | 571 Kb |
Today in The Australian
Fuel-efficiency regulation impact draft is a fantasy
Just two good things can be said for the government’s draft regulation impact statement on “improving the efficiency of new light vehicles”.
Click here to read the oped at The Australian's webpage (login required) or check back here next week for a pdf.
| Fuel-efficiency regulation impact draft is a fantasy_Fri 10 Aug 2018.pdf | [ ] | 181 Kb |
Today in The Australian: "NEG might be the answer but Turnbull needs to explain why"
Experts agree that a steady diet of fudge, cream pies and french fries is far healthier than consuming grains and vegetables. Or at least they do in 2173, according to Woody Allen’s movie Sleeper (1973).
Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
Today in The Australian
That genius of modern politics, Edmund Blackadder, could have had Labor in mind when he said “we in the Adder Party are going to fight this campaign on issues, not personalities … because our candidate doesn’t have a personality”.
Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| Labor’s broader narrative resonates at the ballot box_Fri 3 Aug 2018.pdf | [ ] | 572 Kb |
Were there a prize for the slogan that best captures the spirit of the age, it would surely go to the ACTU’s “Change the Rules!”
Stingy bosses? “Change the Rules!” Mean-minded bankers? “Change the Rules!” Spiking electricity prices? “Change the Rules!”
Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (login required) or check back here next week to download a pdf.
| ACTU counts on Shorten to change the rules, AER on Turnbull_Fri 27 Jul 2018.pdf | [ ] | 143 Kb |
With NATO and Putin, Trump’s cleaning up after Obama
In a widely acclaimed column in last weekend’s The New York Times, Bret Stephens argued that Donald Trump’s foreign policy aimed at one result and one result only: “The collapse of the liberal international order”, even at the cost of leaving America hated, feared and alone.
| With NATO and Putin, Trump’s cleaning up after Obama_Fri 20 Jul 2018.pdf | [ ] | 256 Kb |