June 2020 Volume LXIV, Number 6, No. 567
The Possession of Australia
Margaret Thatcher: Retired, but Far from Retiring
Sheep Playing at Shepherds
Count me a Philistine
COVID-19 and the Problem with Official Science
The Arts in Australia
Contents
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According to the traditional account, James Cook took formal possession of Australia's east coast on a little island on to the west of Cape York in the Torres Strait. There is a problem, however, with what the official account of this ceremony. It probably never happenedJune 17, 2020
8 mins
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Conventional wisdom holds she stayed too long. It’s an than arguable view, but does it do justice to the achievements of her final years? Shepherding South Africa out of apartheid was one of the quiet triumphs, while her moral support for the besieged Boris Yeltsin shamed leaders who accepted the attempted coup as a fait accompliJuly 18, 2020
9 mins
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It is one thing to be against authority under a dispensation that will imprison you or even kill you and it is quite another under a dispensation that will do neither of these things, and may even reward you, for your supposed or alleged revoltJune 24, 2020
8 mins
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Ever since David bumped off Goliath with a stone slung from a cowardly distance, the Philistines have suffered from bad press, although sometimes recalled as sophisticated, well-travelled, well-off and blessed with a sense of humour. How else to explain the gift of five golden haemorrhoids?June 25, 2020
8 mins
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All models are wrong but some are useful, which cannot be said of the casualties projected for a disease that has proven about as lethal as a seasonal flu. Recall that 1969's Hong Kong flu killed an estimated one million worldwide but did not stop the Woodstock festival. Yet driven by fear and folly we have trashed an entire economyJune 15, 2020
25 mins
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Sir: In response to Giles Auty’s “The Lost Virtue of Timelessness” […]May 28, 2020
7 mins
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In the media release accompanying the first draft of the government’s Religious Discrimination Bill, the Attorney-General stated that while its intent was to protect people from discrimination on the basis of their religious belief or activity, it did not create a “right to freedom of religion”. Confused? You have plenty of companyJune 28, 2020
18 mins
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VicPol trawled for "victims" and declined to seek out witnesses who could refute a fanciful tale of sodomy in the sacristy. Meanwhile, with the ABC's smear machine leading the charge, the media piled on. George Pell was the victim this time. Next time, who knows which of us might be lynched?June 26, 2020
25 mins
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Outright theft or incompetence by the mighty, even in plain sight, is seldom if ever punished in Ireland, rather as if this were a cold wet Sicily and omerta were spelt with an apostrophe. Far more certain than any evidence of probity is the certainty that, yet again, things will end badlyJune 23, 2020
12 mins
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The stifling by China of democratic development didn’t prevent Hong Kong making one of the few successful transitions from Third World poverty to prosperity and modernisation, not only in Asia, but anywhere. On present trends, it looks set to make the journey in reverseJune 1, 2020
21 mins
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Addressing the nation in one of his “Australia Man-to-Man” broadcasts […]
May 30, 2020
17 mins
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While COVID-19 has wrought havoc across the world, one of the things for which we can be thankful is that it has exposed the true and dangerous character of the the Chinese communist regime. And by 'China', lest someone cry 'Racist!', I mean the Chinese Communist Party, not the Chinese peopleJune 3, 2020
12 mins
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If Australia is to survive, what Marcuse termed the 'subversive majority' and Hillary Clinton excoriated as 'deplorables' must ensure that federal and state governments stop subsidising self-hatred, hostile immigration and multiculturalism — a program that is a contradiction in terms given that so many cultures are mutually exclusiveJune 11, 2020
12 mins
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Bruce Pascoe has robbed Aboriginal Australia of its essential and millennial experience of hunter-gathering and its associated beliefs and traditions and replaced them with an elderly counter-culturalist’s fantasy of Earth Garden agriculturists, hippie cooking and Green Left Weekly village/commune dwellersJune 4, 2020
11 mins
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Something is not right here. Those mothers who chose to abort a disabled child, while they may be sincere in the belief that they are doing a kindness in saving their offsprings from suffering, fail to appreciate the fundamental value inherent in the child’s very existence.August 4, 2020
11 mins
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Benedict XVI summarised the Church’s essential life thus: it worships […]
May 30, 2020
7 mins
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With the only commentary about the European Union in recent […]
May 30, 2020
12 mins
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As the eyes are the window to the soul, so […]
May 30, 2020
9 mins
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Malcom Turnbull's memoir is a good read, but not because of the score-settling final chapters' account of how he lost the prime ministership. No, the good parts detail his adventures as the invincible young lawyer who won case after case, which rather suggests both he and Australia might have been better off had he remained at the barJune 2, 2020
8 mins
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The decision to publish 'Portnoy’s Complaint' pitted Penguin against Australia's censors and their crusade against indecency. Patrick Mullins' fascinating new book, 'The Trials of Portnoy', dramatically chronicles how the publisher and a legion of readers, academics, lawyers and journalists not only won but reshaped antipodean cultureJune 27, 2020
9 mins
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As Edmund Burke understood, past, present and future generations are linked in time by the longitudinal glue which constitutes “the great stream”. Serial immortality, as Tom Wolfe put it, elevates civil society to a higher order of reality, available to those of a secular as well as religious frame of mindJuly 11, 2020
9 mins
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While Australia proved no Arcady for two of his sons, Alfred and Edward, a land where 'mediocrity would rise triumphant', as one biographer puts it, perhaps explains Mr Micawber's elevation to the bench in 'Port Middlebay', the Melbourne of the novelist's imaginingAugust 23, 2020
13 mins
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My first thought was that the queen of crime could not have ended her novel as the BBC has its adaption -- 'adaption' in this instance being very broadly defined indeed. Yet the mini-series still makes for rewarding viewing right up until the re-written final chapter. That's when the wheels fall off with a thudJuly 4, 2020
17 mins
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I stood at the window of our Los Angeles airport hotel while waiting for the flight back to Sydney and surveyed the runways, empty as country paddocks. The interconnected world-taken-for-granted was gone, economic chaos and depression in its stead. Will we ever again be allowed to regain so much we took for granted?June 18, 2020
18 mins
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The parish priest was adamant. If I continued to insist […]
May 30, 2020
6 mins
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Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, […]
May 30, 2020
7 mins
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“Whatcha lookin’ for, mate?” A dead body, Greg thought as […]
May 30, 2020
9 mins
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Left-leaning journalists of recent decades perform a cute little two-step. First they demonise their targeted white conservative as a wicked Nixonian figure, and then they commence what they imagine to be an honourable Watergate-style destruction of that targetJuly 8, 2020
8 mins
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The Strangler Fig I sauntered back towards my former school […]
May 30, 2020
2 mins
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Home Economics Counting down from blocked bancomat to rent day, […]
May 30, 2020
3 mins
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In Praise of Boring Boredom, that scourge of my youth […]
May 30, 2020
2 mins
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Time Poor My solution to most crises, these days, can […]
May 30, 2020
1 mins
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I Said Left, at the Fork, Robert—LEFT! Two roads diverged […]
May 30, 2020
1 mins
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Poori and Lime Pickles Denver days: I walked the streets, […]
May 30, 2020
2 mins
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Phoney war For weeks we had history’s second phoney war. […]
May 30, 2020
1 mins
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Prologue: I’m sitting in Saint Petersburg on my postgraduate study […]
May 30, 2020
2 mins
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Crete When the standard schedule got too much for them, […]
May 30, 2020
1 mins
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Petals on a wet, black bough (With apologies to Ezra […]
May 31, 2020
2 mins
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First Lady Either Billy or Ed said I ought to […]
May 31, 2020
1 mins
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Smoke Ceremony They are holding a smoke ceremony at our […]
May 31, 2020
1 mins
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How can we trust multinationals if they are prepared to traffic with the Devil simply to maximise profits. Sure, locally made goods cost more than those flowing from China's sweatshops, but who, apart from those with vested interests in seeing a tyranny remain untroubled, wants to contribute even a dollar to the grand imperialist ambitions of Beijing?July 1, 2020
20 mins
