If it’s villains the public want, then the media are shamefully quick to oblige. With selective reporting and spin they made the bushfires a vehicle for blaming coal mining in general and the PM in particular. He was, were you to believe The Guardian, ABC and other outlets, the perpetrator of one of the greatest outrages against human decency in living memory

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A viable nation takes advantage of trade, which goes without saying. At the same time, it must foster and husband an abundance and range of skills and talents, plus the capacity to fend for itself when circumstances and crises demand. Having no manufacturing capacity is a national death wish

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Whatever else he might be, the Labor leader is no simpleton -- he hopes instead that it's voters who are sufficiently dim to buy a green scheme that would see Australia become carbon neutral within 30 years. Run the numbers and he'll achieve his ends: we won't have an economy of any shape or description

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Mary Berry, John Neale and Thomas Helmore all experienced exile of one sort or another, and each found rescue in their quests for lost music, immersing themselves in forgotten books and dead languages to bring light and beauty out of the gloom

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There is a real danger the latest and newly announced bushfires royal commission -- the 58th inquiry to date -- will be overwhelmed by climate change concerns, yet history demonstrates beyond doubt the causes and answers are primarily rooted in human factors that determine the effectiveness of land and fire management

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There really is one aspect of the recent bushfires that is genuinely 'unprecedented', that favourite word of climate alarmists and journalists so eager to be gulled: this year, as much of Australia burned, it became acceptable to use the misery and deaths of fellow Australians to advance a political agenda

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The terms of reference for the just-announced Royal Commission, as anticipated, concentrate on hazard reduction and climate change, but will also cover the role of the Çommonwealth in bushfires. This is the opportunity to re-define the role of aviation as much more than an afterthought

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There are key questions about the priests who concelebrated Mass with Pell in December 1996, questions that should have been asked at the cardinal's trial. They would have told a very different story to the lurid tale of Pell’s accuser. Yet the prosecution’s tactic to airbrush them out of the picture won out

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For those who enjoy a bit of look-at-me hysteria, one of warmism's attractions is the near-daily stream of excuses to declare the end is nigh. Just lately it was the widely reported claim -- misreported, actually -- that an Antarctic base was roasted by a "record" Surfers Paradise-style temperature spike. Fact is, it wasn't a record, isn't inside the polar circle and may not even have happened

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History, of its very nature, is subjective to some extent, with different writers putting different interpretations on events. But my quarrel with 'Dark Emu' is not a disagreement with Pascoe’s interpretation of history. It is with his shameless distortion of facts and sources. Here are yet more examples

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