The new PM can drink a beer without any apparent discomfort at finding himself surrounded by garden-variety Australians, which I suppose is a plus.But on Paris, submarines, free speech, reforming universities and winning back the base he's no better than Turnbull-lite
A Florida woman took a huge loss rather than sell her home to a Trump supporter, yet one more indication how deep the lunacy has spread. After Obama, when the Left thought it had won once and for all, bitter disappointment has spawned a sweeping, often violent and ominous hysteria
It is past time to bluntly confront leftist thought at every opportunity. Did being polite save Brett Kavanaugh from slanders that will adhere for the rest of his days? Reserve and good manners are the conservative way, but they are of no use when the enemy's motto is 'by any means necessary'
Sins of political commission (alienating the base, for starters) and omission (standing for nothing other than ruinous energy prices) sealed the former PM's political fate. But there was an element of bad luck as well. Rather than Sydney, he should have been born in Manhattan, island of the main-chancers
Traffic in Vietnam is 'organised chaos'. Double white lines are ignored, traffic lights turning red are regarded as suggestions rather edicts, and the reminders of the carnage can be harrowing. I think in particular of a dead little girl and the roadside memorial that chills me every time I ride past
The prohibition enthusiasts of our age dislike just about everything invented after the Industrial Revolution -- though not Twitter and mobile phones, without which they could not run their campaigns to inflict cost and inconvenience on those less ostentatiously virtuous than themselves
Victims of crime live with the consequences of those attacks long after perpetrators have done their time and been released, more often than not to re-offend. Taxpayers also suffer, as the public purse must cover the steep cost of incarceration. Why not oblige offenders to make whole all those they harm?
When writer Sarah Jeong was hired by the New York Times and her history of ugly tweets about 'dumbass f-ing white people' came to light, the paper's exquisitely PC editors defended their Asian hire against her pallid critics. The melanin-challenged, you see, had it coming
Until the Constitution is changed or the High Court changes its collective mind, all federal parliamentary candidates need to think carefully about Section 44 -- and that includes independent Wentworth contender Kerryn Phelps
Tell me I'm never happy, accuse me of delight at hearing the door slam behind Malcolm Turnbull only to whine about what, in my estimation, is the lacklustre Cabinet assembled by his successor. And call me a dreamer as well, because this is the all-star front bench that occupies my reveries
The furious, unhinged and ongoing reaction to Hillary Clinton's 2016 defeat reveals the extent to which leftist poison has penetrated not just Washington but the whole Western political class. Trump's task is to lance the abscess while there are healthy parts remaining
Why would an American professor of psychology imagine she was once nearly raped by a handsome young man? Extensive research in her own field shows such a fantasy comes with her feminist territory
The divisive myth that the Australian nation is composed of three population waves – Aboriginal, British, and post-war immigrant – has seduced many, most recently Paul Kelly, who believes it ‘true and inclusive’. We should acknowledge the nation we inhabit today is the product of only one of these social assemblages
If you are an accountant, engineer, doctor, pilot, even an AFL footballer, check what your society, association or federation has to say on your behalf about, for example, Aboriginal constitutional recognition. You may well find they are promoting a Left agenda with which you radically disagree
Violence by women against men receives little attention, yet nearly four decades of research reveals they are also targets of physical abuse. Why the silence? Because the activists' ultimate goal is to tar all men, not just the relatively few perpetrators, as a collective and universally guilty group
James Cook University will most likely continue to sweep allegations of shoddy research under the carpet, seemingly oblivious that its reputation for serious, credible scientific inquiry is going into the dustpan at the same time. The Governing Council not only should intervene, it must
When Peter Minter banned Quadrant's poets from his magazine's pages on the grounds that they had published in what he likened to a Nazi journal, the curious might have wondered just what sort of verse he actually favours. Here's a hint
Readers can form their own judgement as to whether this first-person account would count in Andrew Bolt’s challenge to Robert Manne to “name ten” Aborigines stolen purely for racial reasons
PM Stephen Harper has three election victories under his belt and, from a conservative point of view, not much to show for them. Being nice to political enemies is all very well and good, but it leaves your supporters less than impressed
If "Indigenous culture" is to be recognised in Australia's Constitution it is vital to understand what the term means. Rap songs and break dancing, perhaps?
Double standards are far more consistent than hemlines in an industry which recently saw Teen Vogue, published by the decidedly capitalist Condé Nast, honour the anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth with a gushing article describing how he exposed the evils of, yes, capitalism
The company he once led continues to pleasure the warmists by bowing and scraping before Gaia's carbon-free altar, but ex-chief Jerry Ellis has had enough: the Paris accord is "a farce" and a sane government would exit the pact in a heartbeat
You can't expect much from the Fairfax rags at the best of times -- and it's never the best of times at the company's Daily Life website for readers who value those quaint jounalistic values of fairness, curiosity, preliminary research, straight-bat reporting and, well, sanity
Until we know more about why the board terminated Michelle Guthrie it is impossible to tell what the prospects for reforming the ABC are likely to be. What we do know is that her replacement will almost certainly fail to see the charter observed and nothing will change
Aesop would no doubt have endorsed compulsory super in this Age of Entitlement which sees so many lead spendthrift lives on the assumption that others will take care of them later. His is the moral position, whereas mine somewhat reluctantly recognises the economic case for forced contributions
They Marched in March -- the usual suspects in all their serried shades of anger and incoherence -- because, well, it would have made even less sense to bemoan the fact that Tony Abbott and the Coalition won an election last September by April-ing in April. Zeg is fearful of such antics' impact on the easily impressed.
At the University of Wollongong there is so much diversity to honour, especially when Christians are demanding all the attention with their mangers and tinsel, that staff have been sent a chirpy reminder that Christmas is about much more than the Messiah
Climate change is torching Australia, according to the likes of Tim Flannery and his fellow warmists at the Bureau of Meteorology. If only the money now spent on computer projections and big-ticket fire fighting gear could go toward fuel reduction
A New Zealand court has rejected the argument that one can claim asylum from the alleged ravages of climate change. For the plaintiff, it is back to teeming Kiribati, where the real problem is a booming population
A cash-strapped America no longer has the resources to continue as the world’s policeman, as its craven capitulation to Tehran makes clear. For Australia the message is chilling
Arnaud Beltrame: a most unusual Frenchman
By now, after years of assiduous preaching in our schools, our parliaments and by taxpayer-supported human rights bodies, all sensitive and caring souls know that stereotypes are wickedly wrong. Thus does everyone now grasp that Melbournians cannot be said to be besotted with AFL, it should not be assumed that Sudanese youths on your doorstep at 2am are there to rob you, and the incidence of Islam's devotees involved in terrorism is just an unfortunate coincidence. Still, it can be hard to avoid generalisations about certain groups when they seem determined to confirm the worst suspicions. Take the French, for example, who have long bristled at the popular caricature that the other side of their Tricolour is virgin white for ease in surrendering. Now read this:
A French police officer who heroically saved a hostage from an ISIS terrorist will not be honored in public over fears of offending Muslims.
Arnaud Beltrame, a police officer from Marseille, France, negotiated with an ISIS terrorist during a Mar. 2018 hostage situation in which he traded himself for a female hostage and was later stabbed to death. Attempts to name the city’s 15th district after Beltrame were recently rejected over concerns of offending the Muslim community, Voice of Europe reported Saturday.
Stephane Ravier, Marseille’s 7th district National Rally mayor, said that the proposal was refused during a Marseille town council meeting.
“Leftist elected officials, socialist and communist, refused that a place in the 15th district be named after Arnaud Beltrame, in the first time, they’ve said, under fallacious pretext, that this place wasn’t prestigious enough, before telling the truth in these terms: we are on the field, we witnessed that the population has changed and if we give the name of Arnaud Beltrame in this district, the population will take that as a provocation,” Ravier said.
For the full report follow this link or the one below.
It's funny how you don't notice things that are supposed to be noticed. Take the labels on wine bottles, for example, which tell you when, where and by which vineyard your meal's lubricant was made. That relevant information tends to be the only thing we notice when reaching for the corkscrew, the eye skating over a little nest of symbols so ubiquitous they simply don't register. There's the triangle of twisted arrows, for example, urging drinkers to recycle the bottle when empty. A wine glass in silhouette informs how many "standard drinks" were in the bottle before there were none. Another little pictogram depicts a pregnant lady tossing one down, the image transected by a thick diagonal line that says, in effect, 'don't ever do this.'
That last symbol, voluntarily placed over the last few years by some 70% of Australia's alcohol producers, will soon be mandatory on every bottle containing alcohol sold in Australia and New Zealand, a development hailed by a nannyish organisation called DrinkWise, which has been promoting such labelling for the best part of a decade. Drinking while pregnant, in case you didn't know, can do immense harm "to your baby", as DrinkWise board member Amanda Vanstone puts it.
Pre-natal harm was a theme the former immigration minister explored in 2016 while chatting with Professor Elizabeth Elliott on Radio National. "If you're drinking, your baby is drinking as it's trying to grow," she said, her voice tinged with amazement that anyone could be so selfish and irresponsible. The life emerging in the womb is sacred and must be given every chance to take a place in the world as a healthy, happy little human.
Who could disagree? Well it seems Ms Vanstone has no problems disagreeing with herself, as she is also a defender of abortion and scourge of those who don't like the procedure -- critics such as Cory Bernardi, for example, who became the subject of an acidic column in The Age when the then-Liberal dared to say abortion is a nasty business and Australia sees far too many of them.
"If they are seeking to have abortions removed in the Medicare items..." she earlier told the SMH, "...it certainly won't have my vote."
As both a voice to be reckoned with at DrinkWise and a critic of misleading advertising, Ms Vanstone might want to suggest at the next board meeting that the new and obligatory alcohol labels be slightly amended with the addition of just few simple words. Something like this, perhaps:
'Drinking while pregnant harms your baby, a terrible thing. But if you want to kill it, go right ahead.'
Ms Vanstone is no longer in politics. To be reminded why that is no great loss to the parliament or the Liberal Party, follow this link or the one below.
-- roger franklin
According to the Hansard, the last prime minister before the current one was a certain Malcolm Turnbull, who often spoke of "my government" and sought to give the impression that he was fully in charge of the seat by the dispatch box where the buck is said to stop. The "Turnbull Liberals" and "Team Turnbull" certainly left many with that impression. But apparently that wasn't the case, as a report in The Australian quoting the New York exile makes clear.
That $440 million for preserving the Great Barrier Reef which has caused such a fuss? Well he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Nope, not a jot. Even though various members of the body's board are acquaintances of Mrs Turnbull -- indeed, one has been entertained in the Harbourside Mansion -- handing that vast sum to a body which hadn't asked for so much was the fault of ... yes, you guessed right ... someone else.
A number of people, actually: the current PM, his Treasurer and the Finance Minister, all of whom gave him the sort of loyalty he appears incapable of showing to anyone but the face in the shaving mirror. The Australian quotes his letter to one of the sillier Greens, which is saying something, Senator Whish-Wilson (emphasis added):
...the Treasurer (Mr Morrison) and Finance Minister (Mathias Cormann) were open to funding a substantial package for the reef so long as it was expensed in 2017-18,” Mr Turnbull said.
This was because government revenues were promisingly strong in 2017-18 and they believed the budget in that year could accommodate the substantial investment proposed for the reef. However, that may not be so in subsequent years.
This was the reason why a partner outside the Commonwealth Government sector was sought; it also brought with it the possibility of leveraging the Commonwealth’s contribution with private sector contributions ...
... In terms of the meeting on 9 April, the Minister asked me to join him in a meeting with Mr Schubert to establish the willingness of the Foundation to participate in the Partnership. I attach some notes provided to me prior to the meeting. I assume they were prepared by departmental officials with input from my office, but they set out what I was asked to discuss...
... Mr Turnbull said it was then environment minister Josh Frydenberg who “asked me to join him in a meeting with Mr Schubert
In the next epistles from Central Park West we can expect to learn how Tony Abbott stabbed himself in the back and someone else insisted Australians must light their homes with expensive, mercury-laden "green" Turnbulbs. As to those chic French submarines, they were ordered without his knowledge by Christopher Pyne (whose phone was probably hacked once again when the order was placed).
And the Australian people? We failed him by being unworthy of such greatness.
For The Australian's report follow this link or the one below.
In Anzac and Its Enemies, Mervyn Bendle explores the origins of the Anzac Legend and dissects the long campaign against it by leftist politicians, intellectuals, and sections of the media, and argues why their case is seriously flawed.
Essays by Tony Abbott, James Allan, Chris Berg, Ian Callinan, Sinclair Davidson and more.
