The rabble who harassed those wishing to hear Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux weren't there to attack an event as such. They were there to attack and violate the rights of those attending the event. Victoria's disgrace of a police minister professes not to see the difference

Advance publicity asserted Josh Frydenberg, minister for obscenely expensive power and keeping it that way, would be a force  in Canberra, it being alleged by admirers that he is smart and very much his own man. Alas, as a round of correspondence established, it's just not true

Our paths crossed briefly, just long enough for me to recognise in Sergeant Tom Birnie a good man, soldier, father and husband. It would not be until decades later that I came across one of the poems he wrote between patrols in Vietnam

ABC Chairman Justin Milne took up his position only a few months ago, an ascension he celebrated by assuring one and all that bias is not to be found at the national broadcaster. It was a theme he repeated this week, but his claims do not withstand even the most perfunctory fact-check

Sydney University swears its students are already exposed to the foundational elements that have shaped the West and the world, but that's simply not true. As it stands, the approach focuses on the way topics are studied, rather than the core subjects themselves. That's why the Ramsay Centre is vital

We all know about projection and the human inclination to perceive one's own frailties, flaws and follies in others. These days the concept is reradily observed. Look at those on the Left so loudly denouncing as 'fascists' all and sundry who disagree and you will find the genuine lovers of jackboots

Speculating on what figures from history might have done can be an engrossing armchair diversion, be it the authorship of Shakespeare's works or the case -- false, as it turned out -- that Anastasia of the Romanovs survived. Jane Austen's purported link to Australia is more of the fascinating same

According to academic Samina Yasmeen, Islamic women endure greater rates of assault at the hands of their husbands because ... yes, you guessed it ... 'Islamophobia' drives them to such fits of impotent rage that many simply can't resist lashing out at the easiest targets

There are stories -- and then there are ABC's versions of events as presented on its News website. In just one single day, July 16, this is the spin and perspective the national broadcaster inflicted on reports from Bangla Desh to Canberra, with stops at the Helpmann Awards and Gaza along the way

Perhaps you know him as the BBC presenter and celebrated author, but the backstory of his parents and circle are a good deal more fascinating. Child of the 'Britain's most beautiful woman', his life was one of privilege and a window on his class and times

The New Zealand leg of Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux's speaking tour has been denied the use of an Auckland Council auditorium, the city's red-raggin' mayor admiring his media profile while thundering about 'hate speech'. This same parish-pump potentate raises no objection to Hezbollah

The hallmark and genesis of the Great Patriotic War, as Russians call it, was the political incompetence of the Soviet leadership, their naiveté, paranoia and blind reliance on a Marxist interpretation of world events. Marx is no longer the Kremlin's sacred text, but all else has changed little if at all

An increase in an already excessive minimum wage is another manifestation of economic self-harm, along with business and corporate taxation, onerous regulations, environmental zealotry and crippling power prices. Who cares about those priced out of gainful employment? Not the ACTU, apparently

An organisation whose effectiveness hangs on moral authority joins with thugs to put a further obstacle in the way of free speech. Hard to credit, true, but that is what is going on Victoria, where a royal commission into policing would draw widespread public support

Like dogs with a taste for worrying sheep, politicians' destructive meddling with our energy regime appears to be a compulsion. As Australia's debacle grows ever more ruinously absurd and an election approaches, has it not occurred to them that betraying the flock invites summary justice?

Like the concerned locals of Britain and, increasingly, of Europe, who every day must confront a new world not of their making, many Australians also feel something fundamental has changed. To put that sentiment in a few words,  'We have lost our country'

Spend your career roosting comfortably in the nest of accepted wisdom and it can be more than a little hard to get one's mind about the left-field likes of Donald Trump. That he is delivering conservative agenda items in wholesale lots goes unremarked, as Paul Kelly's readers must surely be noticing

Australians confront a grim choice: a purported conservative who is nothing of the kind and an unctuously insincere main-chancer who makes the skin crawl. Labor doesn’t deserve to win and the Liberals deserve to lose, but one party will -- and the country will go right on being stiffed and stuffed

We school more but educate less, and our institutions, experts and policy makers are decidedly not helping matters -- least of all in demanding even more public money to underwrite and expand a failing educational establishment whose return on investment continues shockingly to decline