Keen travellers that most Aussies are, many of us suffered agonies locked down during the pandemic. Happily, with the borders open again we’ve been making up for lost time. In a random quiz at an airport near you, some recently returning travellers told us how their trips went

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Convinced of their importance to the planet, three warmist academics are calling on colleagues to stop producing climate research. This, so they believe, will persuade governments to finally, you know, do something. While such a result seems highly unlikely, the notion of academia's grant-fed alarmists falling silent holds a definite appeal

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Many viewers of Her Majesty's funeral would not have known they were watching an ordinary, entirely normal service -- or, to be more correct, what was until recently the standard rite. Then liturgical re-inventors sacrificed the Book of Common Prayer on modernity's altar, replaced the King James Version and made even the simplest of clerical dress optional

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If you've not heard of Italian physicist Gianluca Alimonti, no surprise there. As the lead author of a study that rates the so-called climate crisis as so much overblown nonsense, his is not the kind of news welcomed by vendors of green snake oil, rent-seekers and the climate hysterics in their thrall. So here for the record are some of his team's findings

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The wagon of state will rumble on towards the same cliff edge no matter who holds the reins. And with cliffs as nice as those in Wentworth and Warringah, who’s to mind? Teal is the new black, and Albanese wears it more comfortably than Morrison ever did. Oligarchy never looked so elegant

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At its best, the monarchy incorporates a profound solidity to be passed from generation to generation. To declare a republic and give the nation a new charter requires something metaphysically deep, a foundation of rock not of sand. Unless and until that is the case, I will not be voting, as in my youth, for severing us from the monarchy  

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The problem, writes Joanna Williams in her important new book, 'How Woke Won', is that viewing the world through the lens of Critical Theory has come to be accepted as common sense by a cultural elite that dominates the media, corporate life and the academy. Finding the courage to speak out is the first step on the road back to sanity

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Better known as Lord Northcliffe, Alfred Harmsworth was the dynamo who built a newspaper empire the like of which would not be seen again until Rupert Murdoch bettered him many years later. The lord of Fleet Street might have appreciated that, since it was his mentoring of Keith Murdoch that put ink in the family's veins, as author Andrew Roberts details in a new biography

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'The movement of Australian women artists to Paris in the first half of the last century was a pilgrimage, a lay pilgrimage, but a pilgrimage just the same,' note Clem and Therese Gorman in 'Intrépide: Australian Women Artists in Early Twentieth-Century France', a worthwhile addition to the history of Australian art

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I have in the past had one or two struggles with young sub-editors over the new moral correctitude of language, and so far I have been able to gain my point. I am, however, under no illusion that my little victories can be anything other than local and temporary, as the linguistic police are now every­where and insistent

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In 1984's dystopian world New­speak cripples the expression of clear thought in plain speech, thus making 'thoughtcrime' impossible as there are no words in which to express it. The Left saw that as a really neat idea and assiduously promote the hobbling of language and meaning, especially in our schools and universities

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The fact that Sir John Kerr feared Whitlam would recommend his recall to the Palace constrained him from explicitly warning the rogue prime minister he would invoke his reserve power were his hand to be forced.  Contrary to Paul Kelly's recently repeated assertion, it was Whitlam who threatened the doctrine of responsible government, not Kerr

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The jaw-dropping thing about the Australian Academy of Science is that is supposedly devoted to the the unbiased pursuit of truth, but you would never guess that from the things its oh-so-woke fellows and execs get up to. Formal pledges to advance 'diversity', reams of nonsense about a dying Reef, Aborigines and climate -- this and worse, all underwritten by taxpayers

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Not to put too fine a point on it, but central bankers have bungled their jobs. What we're seeing was entirely predictable yet seems to have come as a complete surprise -- another instance of being led astray by the same old error-strewn Keynesian script

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'I’m afraid I have some very sad news,' a parish priest told the soup-kitchen mendicants and volunteers after being alerted by text message of the Queen's passing. We bowed our heads to pray for the repose of the Queen’s soul and 'for the King'. It was then, at those words and at that instant, the news from Balmoral really hit home

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In the humble service of her people up to the last, Elizabeth II mere days ago welcomed her fifteenth British prime minister, the most recent in a conga line of leaders who have butchered Albion and created a nation not remotely recognisable as the one which greeted its new Sovereign in 1952. Our sad, vulgar, aggressively ignorant era has just grown darker

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Widespread love for 'Lord of the Rings' meant 'Rings of Power' drew a vast global audience to its first two episodes. What they saw is terrible acting, a script loaded with asinine gaffes and goofs, rampant wokeism and characters seemingly crafted to repel viewers' affection. This billion-dollar travesty of a series is worse than bad, it's excruciating

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Her Majesty's withdrawal from public duties became increasingly apparent in the months prior to her death on September 8, two days after a clearly frail monarch appointed Liz Truss as Prime Minister. She died with the love of her subjects and the respect and admiration of the whole world.

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Many will find the idea of King Charles III a difficult notion to accept at first, not for reasons of personal disdain but because Queen Elizabeth II reigned so long and has been part of so many lives. In Quadrant's February 2022 issue, Mark McGinness marked those 70 remarkable years with a tribute to an equally remarkable woman, an appreciation we today reprise

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Predictably, the Queen's death saw Greens leader Adam Bandt demand a republic. He will not be the last, with all arguments against constitutional monarchy rooted in ideology rather than a case, however tenuous, for improved function and practicality. 'National unity!' cry republicans, hoping none will notice the very divisions they sow and aim to exploit, as contributor Ben Pattison noted in this essay republished from 2018

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'Mental health problem' sounds clinical but is, in fact, a euphemism for having some difficulties, not feeling happy, perhaps a bit grumpy. Will asking after friends' state of mind change anything? Were we to develop a more caring, supportive culture, the suicide rate would drop. But, as Victor Hugo said, 'If you want to civilize a man, begin with his grandmother'

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You may have noticed that today’s progressive activist, busily toiling away at the latest cause, has something like an allergy to merriment. This lack of chirpiness, as Noah Rothman persuasively explains in 'The Rise of the New Puritans', is a mark of pious commitment to the tasks still to do: remaking our entire social, political and cultural order

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An ad we should have seen by now: 'Positions vacant: Electricians to upgrade the wiring of 3.8 million households by 2030, to upgrade all substations and wiring to and from those substations'. Well, nothing close to it can be done. What those spruiking renewables refuse to grasp is that resistance comes not from carbon lovers and coal companies but from reality

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In applying the fruits of a prodigious imagination the father of the Stolen Generations myth is saying he has extensively researched Aboriginal child removals and is therefore competent to make up 'facts' about a specific case. Garnish with florid prose -- 'She turns to stare at the aching blue of the Harbour' -- and what you get isn't history or anything like it

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