Something happened to newly installed Treasurer Jim Chalmers a few days after the May 21 election, when he suddenly discovered a previous government could indeed be blamed for conditions inherited by a new government. This perspective neatly inverted his initial eagerness to claim credit for the more cheerful aspects of Morrison & Co's economic management

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Japan's midget submarine attack is a story everyone knows -- or think they do. Little mentioned has been the blithering incompetence of the brass. Not only did the two most senior commanders refuse to believe an attack was underway, the small-ship captains and crews who hunted down the intruders were denied any recognition. Eighty years on, it remains an injustice in need of a remedy

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We need to keep a weather eye on Mr Albanese. Sure, he may be limited and incompetent, and in that respect differ little from many across the parliament. This may lead him to extremely silliness, such as his recent hailing of the ABC as a paragon of unbiased reporting. But there is also the possibility that he might have a particularly loose attachment to the truth

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Despite a majority of Australians not being keen on the Big Australia concept, this isn't reflected in the political sphere, where immigration's boosting of the population by an additional million every four years sees both major parties on the same page. Yet, when critics Judith Sloan, Ross Garnaut and Karl Marx find themselves in accord, there's clearly an issue of substance to be discussed. Sadly, it isn't being

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The oppression of democracy and the legal persecution of its supporters is fostered by the conscious erosion of political responsibility, resulting recently in that ultimate farcical pantomime of the one-horse election for Chief Executive. These developments are relevant to the future standing of the courts, the last institution not yet entirely under Beijing's control

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I have written for Quadrant as a moonlighting academic and a friend of Australia. Today I am writing as an American. Too many Australians agree with the media class that Donald Trump is beyond the pale and deserves everything the State can throw at him. But after the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago this is no longer about one man. It is about individual liberty and democracy under the rule of law

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'I look forward to meeting with my counterpart, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, to discuss our plans for construction of a joint naval and port facility with our Chinese Belt & Road partners in the Gulf of Carpentaria,' said the tribal elder. Ever since the Voice referendum was carried and the Albanese government finally revealed what it would mean, there had been any number of surprising developments....

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There are quirks and tics within the Russian mindset entirely foreign, and often incomprehensible, to those imbued with Western sensibilities. Take 'spravedlivost', for instance, which the unaware translate simply as 'justice'. What they overlook is that the term is perceived as meaning 'nobody should have more than I do'. Should that be the case, action is warranted

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This week marks another year since waves of Diggers left their Gallipoli trenches and were immediately cut down by Turkish machine guns, a scene best known from the climactic moments of Peter Weir's 1981 film. That, however, is fiction. The truth about the attack, the slaughter and the heroism, is even more horrifying

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One doesn't need a streak of paranoia to notice that Big Pharma, medical bureaucrats and politicians with an undeserved reverence for 'experts' have dismissed and denounced ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Of all the tragedies associated with the coronavirus, this campaign to suppress cheap and effective early treatments is one of the greatest

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People grow accustomed to comfort very quickly and experience its loss as a real trauma. Thus, when Germans and other Europeans proclaimed after the invasion of Ukraine that they wouldn’t mind if Russia turned off the gas supply, I was immediately sceptical -- a thoroughly sound suspicion as subsequent events have demonstrated

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When Pope Francis imposed severe restrictions on the celebration of the Tridentine Rite he suggested that the faithful who prefer the Latin Mass are motivated not by a sense of heritage and history but a desire to reinforce the divide between traditionalist and progressive factions within the Church. On this issue the Pontiff could not be more wrong

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On the strength of not much evidence at all the UN expects the global population to flatten over the decades to come, a presumption at odds with what is happening in sub-Saharan Africa and 'high fertility' nations elsewhere. Inject a little reality and one prospect becomes clear: there is no way poor, teeming countries desperate for energy will join the green West in pinning their hopes on renewables

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Land under Aboriginal native title now amounts to 49.3 per cent of the Australian continent, with another 13.4 per cent in the pipeline. Although ordinary Australian citizens will be paying all the bills, under the Makarrata treaties proposed by the Voice taxpayers would nonetheless be trespassers in what was once their own country. With talk of the Voice front and centre, this must be an issue

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The lack of any compelling case against Indian democracy reflects very poorly on the three major international democracy rating organisations. The least they could do in commemoration of independent India's 75th anniversary is offer an apology to the country—and to its proper rulers, the Indian people

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While it was encouraging to see the Treasurer capable of articulating a basic principle of fiscal policy -- 'governments shouldn’t make it harder for the RBA on the demand side but, more than that, we should be working to address problems on the supply side', this has been followed by the cold, hard mendacity of Labor’s spin doctors feeding the usual nonsense to an eagerly gullible press gallery

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The University of Tasmania is feeding the Apple Isle’s primary schoolers a classroom diet of apocalyptic scaremongering about global warming, then checking to see how traumatised the deluge of misinformation leaves them. Despite the laughably, just-plain-wrong plethora of doomsday assertions, the ongoing program is rated an 'outstanding' success by its promoters

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Hypocrisy is always with us, but something different and more virulent has become the norm. Principles no longer matter. Uttering feel-good platitudes is an end in itself, and the mere appearance of virtue is now synonymous with actually being virtuous. To appear good, just post some dim-witted platitude on social media and wallow in the glowof self-satisfaction

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Douglas Murray’s 'The War on the West' is simultaneously droll and distressing, a fine overview of the destructive Left and its determination not to rest until we all submit to its ever-expanding totalitarian ambitions. The duty of all sensible people is to resist.

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When history is sourced in fantasy and fabrications, as is increasingly the case in regard to pre-contact Aboriginal society, we are denied insights other than recognising the Rousseauean urge to frame the primitive past as a damning indictment of the present. If the past is to be viewed through rose-coloured glass, best to know the tint is that of blood, war and slaughter

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Given the decline of Melbourne's CBD and the sorry stewardship of its councillors, the title 'deputy mayor' raises no expectation of insight or competence, even less of common sense. In advocating the adoption of Aboriginal words in everyday language, the ultra-woke Nicholas Reece ticks all those boxes and one more: a brand of stupidity simultaneously patronising and divisive

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Speaking personally and not being a voyeur, I make a point to ignore the sexual preferences and activity of others. Perhaps I should pay more attention because there's a question that baffles me: what does 'gay pride' actually mean? Pride in what exactly? I take no specific pride in being heterosexual, so I'm stumped why homosexuality should be a different kettle of fish

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In the First Book of Samuel, Saul consults a witch at Endor, having previously forbidden his subjects to engage in any form of necromancy. This hypocrisy leads to his downfall -- a lesson that appears not to have been absorbed by the Catholic bishops at the recent Plenary Council, which followed its smoking ceremony with a summoning of ancestral spirits. Yes, really

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Chris Kenny holds feet to the fire when the topic is climate change hysteria, energy policy and woke nonsense, but the Sky commentator ventures far beyond the bounds of common sense in his ardent advocacy of an Aboriginal Voice to Parliament. What he fails to see is what none yet knows and the Albanese government is reluctant to detail: just what authority would such a body be awarded?

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