According to Geoffrey Robertson, the most notable Australian item in the British Museum is the Gweagal Shield, which he maintains was 'plundered' at Botany Bay by James Cook, whom he also holds responsible the 'bullet hole' at its centre. Not a word of that is true, as the most cursory checking of readily available sources would have shown

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The pauses in Sandy's monologues were worthy of Beckett. Critics acclaimed  a ‘darkness reminiscent of Philip Larkin’,  ‘Ezra Pound with the lights out’ and a pervading ‘Checkovian melancholy’. Barry more prosaically described Sandy as the voice of a different and vanishing Melbourne 'talking in its sleep'

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Gun violence is almost non-existent among the licensed firearm owners, yet WA Police are diverting massive resources from violent crime to the bureaucratic micromanagement of farmers, target shooters, collectors and other licensed owners. With crime rising, the constabulary's first instinct has been to focus on those least likely to offend

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The first moment to get a Twitter account came when Elon Musk took over and prompted a mass exodus of the Left's in-house speech enforcers, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant among them. Now that the Coalition has joined Labor in seeking to limit what Australians can say and see, getting an account is an essential act of defiance

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Rocking up to the rechargers is when the torture begins for our EV-driving friends. Are the machines working? Is there a line? Can I download the proper app? Are all these other users slowing my charge? And most distressing of all, why won’t the people in that ancient V8 Commodore stop laughing at me?

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I don’t care about the race, colour, religion, ethnicity of a potential immigrant to Australia. My only reason in writing this article is an unwillingness to live next door to people who are unable or unwilling to integrate into our society

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As his latest trial begins in earnest, expect sheet-sniffing news-cycle updates about porn babes and payoffs, plus even more salacious details if Stormy Daniels testifies about her career as a carnal consultant. What won't figure in the coverage are the legal contortions that made this prosecution possible

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The abolition of external exams brought an end to gains in equity and the meritocratic principle that characterised Australian education in the post-war years. The system encouraged students to strive and identified their relative abilities. This should not have been grounds for complaint, yet it was scrapped as an unconscionable burden. The result has been tragic

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As successive small Australian poetry publishers -- has there ever been any other kind? -- go out of business, new ones spring up to replace them. Four new volumes of Australian verse testify that such optimism, so often and ultimately dashed, can and does produce works of lasting worth

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It was not so long ago, historically speaking, that this Ohio town was booming. And then, like so many other communities in America's heartland, it was hollowed out as factories closed down and the main street became a strip of urban blight. The answers are many, but far more interesting is that a new community, conservative in nature, is bringing a town back to life 

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The shallow, overwrought attempt by the latest Quarterly Essay at diagnosing Peter Dutton’s political psychology, in part by way genetic descent, is not the most interesting thing about what is otherwise a predictable exercise in progressive monocularism. The screed's real worth is in revealing much about the general ineptitude of the Left in analysing and understanding their political opponents

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It is with the deepest sadness that I must advise of the tragic passing of David Martin Jones. Intellectually brilliant, a good and kind man, and a great friend to Quadrant, David had so much more to give the world. He will be sorely missed by so many, not least our readers

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The ousted Labor leader noted in his 1973 memoirs that the party had passed 'for the time being from the traditional control by the working class … to quasi trade union-cum white-collar-professional control'. Some 50 years on, the accuracy of that observation is beyond dispute. Also clear is that Labor will never again resemble its former self, its aims and purpose ever more abstracted in this era of woke

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There are compelling reasons to believe that, once enacted, the sort of legislation being pushed by the Australian Human Rights would profoundly erode the rule of law by providing an unaccountable elite with a mechanism to undermine the democratic process. In other words, to force 'woke' biases and those of activist judges on a reluctant or simply disinterested majority

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It came as quite the shock to learn others don't see me as I see myself -- a retired gentleman harmlessly taking in the wonders of the world. That certainly wasn't the perception as I passed through Sydney Airport, where the security team spied the one-inch blades of my Swiss Army scissors and sprang into action with the sort of single-minded illogicality of which only public servants are capable

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Our governments gave you everything, and nothing. We worried for your young girls, your children, and ours. We took some away, you gave some to us. We did it with their well-being in mind, and did it well, and not so well. We were rarely as bad as some of you, and your white supporters,  now want the world to believe

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Daily -- hourly, if truth be told -- we are fed information about Israel on the nightly news, via tweets and social media and propaganda videos on the net, and the majority have no idea whether what they are watching is true, partly true or disreputable nonsense. Today's 'anti-Zionism', the latest iteration of the world’s oldest hatred, is a social contagion of the uninformed

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It's hard to know where to begin when ranking Naomi Oreskes' many prophecies of doom. That an angry planet will kill our cats and dogs is surely high on that list, likewise her laughably delusional admiration for what she imagines is China's concern for the global environment. My favourite, though, is the predicted demise of 26 million heat-ravaged Australians

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The West's delusion, not least that of the US, was that it could do business with Tehran. Instead, while the Obama and Biden administration lavished access to billions of dollars on Iran, opportunism drew Moscow and the mullahs together. The latter hopes Putin will aid their nuclear quest, the former warily appreciative of the drones unleashed against Ukraine -- and, in the last 24 hours, against Israel

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As a young listener I was awestruck by the symphony’s drama and power, as well as Schubert’s depiction of what seemed to be a violent but stunningly beautiful clash between the ineffable extremes of emotion, between pure light and abject darkness. 'Whenever I attempted to sing of love, it turned to pain,' the composer said of his works' duality, 'and when I tried to sing of pain, it turned to love'

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Rochdale’s town hall is considered one of the paragons of Victorian municipal architecture, emblematic of an age when an increasingly prosperous Britain took immense pride in its local communities. Today the town is known for child poverty, 'Asian' grooming gangs the police ignored, and an MP whose return to the Commons owes much to unassimilated Muslim enclaves

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Comintern propagandist Willi Münzenberg guessed that a suitable cause would lure 'innocents' -- earlier dubbed 'useful idiots' by Lenin -- to contribute their prestige and funds. It was this strategy, honed during the Spanish Civil war, that Amnesty's inspiration, the ardent communist Alec Digges, adopted as his own, as a young Claudio Véliz witnessed firsthand

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They aren't quite prepared to put their names to a categorical statement that eruptions bear some relationship with global warming, but if you're sufficiently gullible to heed the hint and suggestion that such might be the case, well scare-mongering careerists won't expend too much energy setting you straight

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No wonder Albo, Bowen and the Davos crowd favour private planes. When I alighted from the flight to Manchester three heavily armed policemen were in the tunnel. Just like a reasonably priced cup of coffee and railway timetables that can be taken at face value, bobbies on bicycles two by two are very much a thing of the fast-fading past

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