Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
Beijing, Taiwan and Us
Lingering Questions
Sir: Frank Mount’s article “How Xi Misreads the Taiwan Battlefield” (November 2022) makes some valid points, but also appears to miss key aspects of the issue. Having just read Senator Molan’s recent book Danger on Our Doorstep, I was surprised to see no mention of cyberwarfare in Mount’s article. If Senator Molan is correct, a massive cyber-attack from the PRC would cripple the West in the short term, long enough for the PLA to take Taiwan with little or no resistance from the Taiwanese or the US and its allies.
Molan’s book hypothesises that underwater nuclear detonations would neutralise Allied submarine capability. Mount does not mention this point. He uses the example of the bloody nose the PLA received during its excursion to Vietnam in 1979. That is quite true but given that the Vietnamese were working from more than forty years of combat experience, the outcome was not surprising. It’s an open question whether today’s PLA are cut from…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins
