In the hands of authors Ross Fitzgerald & Ian McFadyen, Grafton Everest's latest adventure -- the ninth in the much loved series -- is a device for exposing the absurdities and unintended consequences of wrong-headed NGOs, disingenuous environmentalists and crony capitalism

Is there any point in being a satirist in the […]

If the High Court were to conjure up indigenous sovereignty, would not this be succumbing to the same phenomenon which European peoples struggled to exclude from operation within a civilised state: laws arising from religious belief and imposed upon the general population by priests or, in this case, indigenous elders and activists

The attempt to resist the undermining of democratic rights in Hong Kong has proven futile and the consequences are easily observed. There are fewer ex-pats on the streets and shops and much diminished numbers of European tourists. My wife’s former job at one of the large banks, and many of the hundreds of positions around her in Hong Kong, have all been moved to the Philippines or Singapore, much to the chagrin of the island's tailors

Viewers who endured the ABC's predictably dyspeptic and frequently inane coverage of the coronation will draw solace from Nigel Biggar's Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. Unlike, say, former newsreader and now full-time complainiac Stan Grant, the author grasps that the past is a different place. It's a simple concept, but one that remains beyond the ken of many

There is not much in the way of plot, compelling characters or dramatic story telling in Duncan Smith's novel Conquest by Concept. That said, the reader will find summarised through the dialogue most of the arguments one needs to counter the smelly little orthodoxies of our time

There is much that is worthwhile about My Last Drink: 32 Stories of Recovering Alcoholics, not least the significant difference between Alcoholics Anonymous and government programs. AA customers, by and large, understand that, from a life-management point of view, they are nobody's victims but their own and the solution to their own problems

Niki Savva's latest book concerns itself with Scott Morrison's fall and is spiced with anonymous insiders' quotes about a government that rated conservative principles of little account while marching resolutely into the electoral abyss. A more interesting exercise would have examined Canberra's hollow men and women and why the journo-politico clerisy encourages them to conduct themselves irresponsibly

The 'dangerous ideas' tag is, on one reading, intended as ironic, in the sense that the ideas served up are 'dangerous' only because they are expected to disrupt what participants imagine to be the blinkered thinking of the conservative element. Thus does Simon Longstaff's carnival for the like-minded roll on, year after unchallenging year