October 2019 Volume LXIII, Number 10, No. 560
The Revolt of the Nobodies
The Pell Case: A Strong Odour of Injustice
Downer Comes in from the Cold
An Afternoon with Anne Marie Waters
Where the Pell Judgment Went Fatally Astray
The Contradictions of the Choirboy
Contents
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Hired as the house conservative by The Atlantic, the gifted Kevin Williamson found himself immediately subjected to the digital mob's social media pile-on. Three days later he was fired -- a blessing, as it happens, since an editor's cowardice has spawned a splendid book on the noise, dust and heat generated by those who think themselves 'important' when they are notOctober 8, 2019
27 mins
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Supposing I claimed a man entered my house and stole goods from me, but there was no collateral or corroboratory evidence of his having done so: would any court take me seriously? In Victoria, were the man I accused George Pell, my reading of the appeals court judgment strongly suggests I would have the satisfaction of seeing him imprisonedSeptember 30, 2019
8 mins
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Today's big news is that Donald Trump asked Scott Morrison's help to establish Alexander Downer's role, witting or otherwise, in launching the Russiagate hoax. In the October edition of Quadrant, now on sale, Daryl McCann unravels some of those knots. Released early from our paywall, his review of 'Ball of Collusion' makes timely readingOctober 1, 2019
12 mins
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The charge against the For Britain founder is that she is 'a racist'. The evidence for this, according to those on the Left who seek to gag her, is a relentlessly articulated and witheringly explicit analysis of the harm Islam has done to every aspect of British lifeOctober 14, 2019
17 mins
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Anyone tempted to believe that George Pell did what he […]September 30, 2019
21 mins
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The impression we gained from reading the transcript of […]
September 30, 2019
23 mins
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Australia, allegedly, is in peril because Sino-Australian relations went “down the gurgler” due to bunglers like Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison et al who are not sophisticated Sinologists like Kevin Rudd. Almost the opposite, I would argue. Australia is in peril because so-called China experts, such as Rudd, have been playedOctober 6, 2019
26 mins
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Sir: Philip Drew’s and Andrew Botros’s articles on Sydney’s Opera […]
September 30, 2019
3 mins
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A Treasury giving honest advice will be a Treasury in which bright young people want to work. One which retreats into the coward’s castle of 'responsiveness' will quickly earn their disdain and departure, a heavy price to pay. In this regard, Paul Tilley's otherwise worthwhile 'Changing Fortunes: A History of the Australian Treasury' suffers from a crucial failure of insightOctober 18, 2019
17 mins
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Two news film-clips offered a significant contrast in the week […]
September 30, 2019
9 mins
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Experience tells us school achievement tends to 'run in families', but this does not explain if genes or nurture is the more potent factor. Within the world of science and psychology there is no longer any problem posing the question. With other disciplines — pedagogy in particular — any mention of genetics summons the mob for an immediate public burningOctober 17, 2019
21 mins
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One of Australia’s most prolific and impressive writers, Hal G.P. […]
September 30, 2019
20 mins
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When Cardinal Pell famously refused to give communion to gay activists sporting rainbow sashes, he was reminding them that God’s altar isn’t the place for political lobbying and social activism. If they take their sashes off, and leave them in the pews, they are free to receive communion. That’s traditional Christian teaching, not homophobiaOctober 22, 2019
19 mins
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When a chap can get into strife for giving the world twelve rules for life, something’s not quite right. No surprise. Everyone’s aghast because surely the other ten are just relics from the past. Love thy neighbour, for example, is out of favour. And what’s wrong with coveting his or her ass?October 15, 2019
8 mins
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The real innovatory value of mastering -- apologies for the inherent sexism of 'master' -- the Inclusive tongue in which Victoria's public servants are being immersed lies in its application to gender sensitivity, which, along with climate, is now considered the most pressing moral issue of our timeOctober 24, 2019
8 mins
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She doesn’t need or care about apologies, recognition, policy objectives or statements from hearts. She’s got a life and it’s pretty chaotic. Government, even the bloated indigenous bureaucracy, can’t or won’t help her. What she needs and will never get is a culture that recognises individual agency, a colour blind legal system and a decent man in her lifeOctober 19, 2019
19 mins
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As the Church says, it does not make saints; it merely recognises them. On October 13 in Rome, Pope Francis recognised this great Victorian as a saint—the first Briton since the seventeenth-century Scottish martyr John Ogilvie in 1976. From all we know of John Henry Newman, sainthood becomes him.October 29, 2019
11 mins
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The pages of the Argus, advertisements and reportage, represent Australia as a patchwork of colourful but ill-fitting swatches of narrative fabric. The past, in its archived pages, is a chaos from which bits of history are carefully extracted by writers constructing their books and articles. But there is so much more, my forebears' antics amongst themNovember 3, 2019
17 mins
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As conservatism drifts further from its erstwhile anchor in Christian anthropology, it finds itself ever more susceptible to libertarian fantasies, such as the inherent goodness of human beings, moral relativism, and the utopian belief in unconstrained individualism. It is the recipe, in other words, for a Hobbesian nightmareOctober 28, 2019
12 mins
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Stan Grant is handsome, intelligent, educated and enjoying a brilliant career. Few would dismiss him because he is Aborigine, and most wouldn’t even know he had Aboriginal ancestry if it hadn’t been publicised. Having read his rejection of identity in one book and elevation of it in another, it strikes me that the reconciliation for which he yearns is with himselfOctober 11, 2019
12 mins
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Author Per Faxneld's remarkable 'Satanic Feminism' details how the early movement adopted Satan as the antidote for 'patriarchal' Christianity. Take US suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton as but one example: her two-volume 'Women’s Bible' casts Lucifer as a liberator and Eve a heroine for heeding his advice to let no male-issued edict, not even a Divine one, inhibit her lust for knowledgeOctober 20, 2019
10 mins
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To read Peter Corris's stories is to enter a world as past as those of Maigret or Sherlock Holmes. The Sydney he captured, the physical settings, are gone or vanishing. The Toxteth Hotel still stands, but the nearby Harold Park racetrack of his 1985 story The Arms of the Law exists no longer, paved over with apartment blocksOctober 27, 2019
5 mins
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Summing up the ousted prime minister's early years as a student leader in 'Tony Abbott and the Times of Revolution', author Gerard Charles Wilson paints him as 'considered, analytical and concise without the abuse and ridicule he had to swallow from others'. Where the essential Abbott is concerned, not much has changed in forty yearsOctober 10, 2019
8 mins
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I'm glad friends encouraged me to persevere with the five-part HBO dramatisation. Indeed, I now consider it one of the most important works I have seen this year, despite facts being bent and characters presented as other than their real-life selves. Those quibbles aside, it remains a drama much greater than the sum of its partsOctober 5, 2019
16 mins
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One problem with Victoria's schools, and a key reason why we quit the state, lies with the benevolent, malleable majority of teachers who assume the state, its schools and the wider popular culture supplant parents and families as arbiters of the most complex moral questionsOctober 30, 2019
10 mins
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The space pullulated with expectant energy. They’d all been arranged […]
September 30, 2019
13 mins
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Venture a gentle line about mankind’s greatest invention — “Say, what do you reckon about all of this climate change malarkey?”—and you’ll know immediately if your interlocutor is worthy of sharing further thoughts, a fence-sitter or a challenged type for whom you must speak far more slowlyOctober 25, 2019
8 mins
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Hamlet in Suburbia Part of a pattern now, abandoning A […]
September 30, 2019
1 mins
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Leaves in the Wire My mind today is wire […]
September 30, 2019
1 mins
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Finishing The Lord of the Rings As the grey ship […]
September 30, 2019
1 mins
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You’re arguing, and frankly can’t abide that stubborn rubbish from […]
September 30, 2019
2 mins
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Morning Every morning they come Those birds like bullets In […]
September 30, 2019
1 mins
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Bear A bear stands in the forever forest. Still and […]
September 30, 2019
2 mins
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Osiris Over his suddenly virginal limbs breathes sullied air, Made […]
September 30, 2019
2 mins
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What’s Hidden Inside A Serbian Australian imprisoned in Croatia for […]
September 30, 2019
2 mins
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Totem The young man says, “Alan can do anything […]
September 30, 2019
1 mins
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From: The Lazarus Poems XI Lazarus Wept […]
September 30, 2019
4 mins
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Cry Baby Cry baby, For your trust has been sold. […]
September 30, 2019
1 mins
