When hostilities erupted in September, 1939, the Labor Party attacked the war effort on all fronts, from unionised wharves to the floor of parliament. If Paul Keating wishes to find a villain, he should drop his scurrilous assault on Sir Robert Menzies and look instead at his own party

The PM swore he valued nothing higher than freedom of belief and would protect it at all costs. Like his pledged loyalty to Tony Abbott, the truth proved otherwise. Smart move! His office risks no harassment or damage, like the ACL's blown-up HQ, and that Mardi Gras invitation won't be withdrawn

Had I been born with the gullible gene found so often on the Left, life would be gloriously simple. I would believe, for example, that climate can be regulated by decree and punishing productive people promotes growth. Alas, a blissful immunity to history's lessons is not my happy lot

Are boys still moved by Group Captain James Bigglesworth? Probably not, as none of WE Johns' titles is available in my municipal library. As the council is infested with Greens, that shouldn't surprise, given the aviator's derring-do in putting down an Aboriginal revolt

Give untalented individuals lots of money for doing not much and you will get people who need to act like pompous thugs to avoid scrutiny and bolster their self-esteem. There, no need for a royal commission! I've just identified the banking system's key fault and folly

Given the Turnbull government's dismal record on energy, citizenship, the deficit and so many other areas where policies have alienated the Liberal Party's traditional base, it should come as no surprise that the education minister is doing his bit to insult and afflict parents with kids in parochial schools

It is dangerous, from start to finish, to tell children that all relationships and forms of sexual expression have equal standing. They don’t. A marriage between a man and a woman from which children come is peerless. Everything else is second-best at best

If we "must believe" women who assert they have been sexually harassed, as the current meme demands, then the most basic logic says any man attempting to defend his reputation must be disbelieved. Can anything be sillier than adjudicating truth  on the basis of chromosomes?

Rejected by the Senate, gay marriage was dead until word of Christopher Pyne crowing of back-room efforts to get it up regardless. This tells us one of two things: Turnbull used Pyne as his sly surrogate in reviving the rainbow cause or, just as damning, he is a leader in name only

Beyond his tireless and always incisive work for the Australia Defence Association, Michael O'Connor represented an Australia rapidly vanishing. Bombed in Darwin as a child, he was a district officer in New Guinea and, in later years, never lost sight of our defence forces' real needs and mission

Something quite remarkable distinguished this year's Melbourne Writers Festival: it was attended by a writer who happens not to be of the Left, Quadrant's James McCann. Here's a small sample from his much longer and still-paywalled piece in our December issue.  Another good reason to subscribe

In a bid to get more media coverage of the nation's need for "cultural leadership", the National Institute for Dramatic Arts has issued a press release under the headline "collaborate or die." While hyperventilated hyperbole is not unknown among theatrical types, this missive is a beaut

From an evolutionary point of view, what's the point of a variant that makes reproduction less likely? The answer would seem to be that a loss of fitness is acceptable if it brings a greater and offsetting benefit -- a theory recently blessed with greater credence by, of all things, facial-recognition technology

My brother, a far better man than our Prime Minister, is battling with cheerful and irrepressible optimism a cancer his doctors say is terminal. The Coalition, laid low by the monstrous ego and principle-free desperation of its current leader, prefers to ignore the tumour that is killing it

Courts that claim a right to vet reporters copy, demands that journalists "register" in order to report proceedings that always have been open to public scrutiny, a judge re-tweeting an obscene appraisal of a minor but mainstream political party -- welcome to justice, Victoria-style

The next election, which may well come sooner rather than later, will see much posturing and many pledges of fiscal rectitude from both parties, who will have the gall to insist they can spend big and still balance the books. Here's a Yuletide hit list of waste and agencies just crying for the chop

The last time Arabs ruled eastern Jerusalem and the Old City all but one of the Jewish Quarter’s 35 synagogues was demolished. Trump's pledge to recognise the city as the capital of Israel will go a long way towards preventing history from repeating itself

Christmas is upon us and who can blame grant-fed catastropharians for rejoicing? While temperatures have flat-lined for 20 years, they have a new paper to explain "the pause" to the satisfaction of all good warmists everywhere. Time to sing 'The First Nobel' and apply for yet more funding

Liberation has wrought two problems. The lesser, as chivalry has died, is sexual harassment by those with power over someone they desire. The greater problem as the old restraints atrophy is that we don’t live in a world without rules but in one where they are unknown until broken

Other than his remaining opinion-page courtiers, Malcolm Turnbull has few champions left to argue for the agile and innovative prime minister who is neither and a lot worse besides. Tot up the negatives for Bishop, Dutton and the other possibilities and only one serious prospect remains