Allowing for the sake of argument that Tony Abbott envisions a return to The Lodge, how might he atone for his disappointments, from placing his usurper in charge of the ABC to doing nothing about Section 18c? Speaking against climate alarmism would be a good start

Unthinkable as it may be after all these decades of nuclear-enforced peace, Beijing's determination to make the South China sea its own is day-by-day raising the likelihood that a full-blown shooting war will erupt. Australia's prospects in such a conflict are especially parlous

The basis of a sound national defence, or so it increasingly seems, has come to be construed as the honouring, hailing and hawking of half-baked notions of Aboriginality. Running a close second, but likely to surge, the canard that women are the equal of men under fire

Stop the presses, she's a woman! While this remarkable fact has been sufficient in itself to win the new Defence Minister a broad acreage of front-page acclaim, many statements, pronouncements and views suggest her stewardship of the portfolio will be a very interesting exercise indeed

There will be differences between the Abbott years and what we will see over the course of however long his successor holds the lease on The Lodge. But the chief distinction will be a matter of small degrees between what might have been done and wasn't and what should be done but won't

The assassin's backers seem not to have considered that they were replacing a lacklustre leader with one actively detested by many in their party's base. The Liberal Party is a divided, make no mistake, and yet that rift presents an opportunity for reform, renewal and renaissance

Homosexuality is part of the human condition. But so is marriage, which is more than a mere societal construct, as those who are keen to change the long-established norms of mating and reproduction would have us believe.  A successful culture wouldn’t mix the two. A degenerate culture might.

If war were to erupt with the Middle Kingdom -- a prospect that grows darker with every fresh manifestation of Beijing's expansionist agenda -- we may well discover that the enemy is neither militarily unassailable nor, when the shooting stops, vital to the rest of the world's economic health

Humans, we're a strange species -- not least for the peculiar inherited traits and propensities that so often seem innate as the colour of eyes and hair. Social engineers advocate legislation as the great leveller, but stubborn genes just aren't listening