Turnbull is now just a few party-room votes away from getting his marching orders. A rash of Cabinet resignations would speed that exit and establish for the record those best qualified to begin repairing the immense damage this Prime Minister has wrought, not least bringing back the base
Today’s events might come to be regarded as the instant when a remedy began to counter the ills this vainglorious usurper inflicted on a once-great party. Hopeless optimism, you say? Perhaps, but finally there is hope of a return to a broad church with ablended liturgy of Burke and Mill
The score after this morning's Liberal party room meeting in Canberra: Malcolm Turnbull 1, Good Sense 0. How does 'Bill Shorten, PM' roll off the tongue? Borders opened to herds of prospective Labor voters. Electricity prices even more ruinous than now. Every fashionable theory about gender fluidity enshrined as law....
The ALP deserves to win the next election. Not because they’re any better, but because the Liberal Party ate itself alive years ago with branch-stacking, back-stabbing and a contemptuous indifference to the grass-roots. Bill Shorten and Labor's wretched crew are no more than we deserve
Uluru's custodians swear that climbing the monolith defiles it, yet they don't accord a documented truth any respect at all. The proof is a long forgotten ABC interview with Toby Naninga, who confirmed there is nothing sacred about the summit and urged tourists to avoid only a few small, fenced-off areas
You're a Green with all goofy self-importance that implies, but as a representative of the people -- all the people, that is -- could you quit slandering your adopted homeland? I mean, if Australia is a hotbed of injustice and oppression, how does that square with your defence of arranged marriages?
Can you believe this for-the-moment Prime Minister shared the NEG legislation with Labor while giving his own government the mushroom treatment? Not so long, and even allowing for Malcolm Turnbull's arrogant incompetence, I wouldn't have found it credible. But that's exactly how a leader without nous treated a party without pride
Studies purporting to establish why conservatives and so-called progressives think they way they do have been all the rage of late, with brain scans and the like alleged to have established that political orientation is influenced as much by biology as reason. An interesting notion, it is well worth a closer look
Classical liberal thought long predated Menzies, as John Manning Ward demonstrates in a new biography of Joseph Carruthers, who observed in 1902 how the infant nation was 'the most over-governed and over-taxed country in the world'. One can only wonder what he would make of Australia now
The Left conquered and colonised our universities long ago, but the long march didn't stop there. In kindergartens across the country, while taxpayers and parents pay through the nose, kids not much more than tots are getting a full grounding in the politically correct gospel
A century ago this week, German forces on the Western Front were destroyed, thrown back or captured at Amiens -- a rout that finally broke the four-year stalemate and introduced the integrated 'battlecraft' that would forever change the face of modern warfare
My friend Peter Bauer dedicated his life to exposing supposed wisdom as folly, knowledge as ignorance, compassion as cruelty, and orthodoxy as absurdity -- and to a large extent he succeeded in striking telling blows for common sense. Sadly, his was an incomplete victory
I was praying at the Western wall of Solomon’s Temple, the holiest place of Judaism, the place which witnessed the beginning of the transformation of pagan humanity into Western civilisation. The experience of touching the hewn stone blocks, polished by a myriad kisses and caresses, was profound
While there is no historical evidence Edmund Burke played any direct part in British plans to establish a penal colony in New South Wales, his tradition of Whiggism arrived with the First Fleet and arguably shaped the character of colonial Australian liberalism
Bill Shorten and his economy-sapping policies are in the wings. The Coalition's leftist-inclined leader is a dud surrounded by wets. The corporate world's chieftains think their job is to promote fashionable social causes rather than profits. Yes, we've got troubles with worse ahead
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?
As in Orwell’s fictional Oceania, our very own Ministry of Power has its own 'facts', all parroted by a political class that would never dream of milking consumers to line the pockets of mates. Banish that thought and all others, fellow citizens! Our betters are better because they know what's best
Australians who gaze across the Pacific at America and its First Amendment can only feel short-changed, thoughts of Bill Leak and police charging promoters to protect free speech from thugs coming readily to mind. Look at New Zealand, however, and know that things there are even worse
The same lack of nous that inspired the double dissolution and an avalanche of lost seats is now confronting those promised corporate tax cuts, which the polls tells us will do little to win the electorate's hearts, minds and votes. Count on this Prime Minister, as always, to get it hopelessly wrong
Long before VicPol couldn't decide if Sudanese gangs exist and, if they do, what level of threat they represent, Melbourne had its problems with thugs of other varieties. A visiting Sydneysider who found a knife at throat recalls that incident and his brusque treatment as a complainant
What's 'rabble' in a Kiwi accent? 'Rubble', which is what the usual suspects' bid to silence Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux became after the standard slur-spit-and-scream tactics. Yes, their Auckland gig had to be cancelled, but they reached a far wider audience as a consequence
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
As reported in the Adelaide Advertiser on August 6, 1931
A quite remarkable story in The Weekend Australian by Indigenous Affairs editor Stephen Fitzpatrick informs us that Captain Cook did not discover the east coast of Australia, as is commonly believed -- it was Aborigines who discovered him. Apparently the fires Cook observed from the Endeavour's landfall until his departure from the coast were smoke signals relaying his progress from tribe to tribe as he made his way north. Let Chris Ingrey, chief executive of the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council, explain how it was done:
"From what we understand, the use of fire was a signal up the coast and this was a method of signalling people that something was happening.
Our old people would have witnessed the ship off the coastline, and followed it up the coast to where their cultural boundary ended, and at the start of the next cultural boundary it was that particular tribal group that then would have done the same.”
Readers inclined to scepticism will particularly appreciate the comments thread, which lends little credence to the tale of the original NBN, the Native Burning Network. Unlike the newspaper's indigenous affairs roundsman, commenters remain caustically unconvinced.
And some might even wonder why fires were needed at all, given the 1931 explanation by David Unaipon, whose face graces our $50 bill. That's his revelation in the screen grab atop this post, which can be read in full at Trove via this link or the one below.
Alan Moran, a much smarter and far more honest man than our for-the-moment Prime Minister, writes:
The idiocy of Turnbull’s handling of electricity policy now, once again, looks likely to cost him the leadership of his party. Faced with termination, he is seeking to extricate himself while pretending to reform the policy that has revealed his incompetence. His new proposals at modifying the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) are bromides that leave intact his destructive objectives for the electricity supply industry.
Alan's analysis can be read via this link or the one below.
At the start of tonight's big game at the MCG in Melbourne, where a supremely competent Richmond meets a resurgent Essendon in a match that will help shape the final eight, each captain will be accompanied to the coin toss by a Muslim teammate. This, we are told, will be the AFL's refutation of Fraser Anning's infamous maiden speech demanding an end to Muslim immigration. But is that enough to celebrate multiculturalism's contribution to the Australia we inhabit today?
Of course not!
To really get the message across, arriving barrackers should be spared the now-standard bag search and body scan (above), a measure deemed necessary lest someone bring a bomb into the stadium. As the AFL endorses only the nicest thoughts about Islam, surely such measures can only serve to detract from the evening's exercise in amity and acceptance.
And before that, as the crowd filters through the donut vans and souvenir stalls on the stadium's outer concourse, those concrete barriers that protect the ground from car and truck attacks might be repainted. The game doesn't begin until 7.30. There is still time to stencil 'Bollard of Peace' on each.
Why celebrate only the contributions of two superb players, who just happen to be Muslim, when there is so much more Islam has brought us?
For more on the conditions of entry to the MCG, follow this link or the one below, paying particular attention to edict number 6.
These memoirs offer a series of sparkling vignettes by the man who counts as blessed his twenty-six years as MUP’s Director.
In this celebrated book a retired journalist turns himself into one of our great essayists.
