March 2023 Volume LXVII, Number 3, No. 594
Central and Eastern Europe after Ukraine
W.H. Auden’s Delightful Teaching
Menzies Before the Liberal Party
Too Few Houses, Too Many People
The Housing Crisis and the Free Market
Pushing the Limits of Irish Tolerance
Contents
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Since 2022, there has been a heightened strategic and diplomatic […]May 29, 2023
10 mins
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Where should we place the extraordinary achievement of W.H. Auden in the long history of contested ideas about poetry, its character and function? The range of his poetry—in subject matter and style—is all but inexhaustible. A reader would be difficult to please if he or she could not find a work resonating with and enriching their experience of lifeApril 8, 2023
18 mins
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In the chapter he contributes to The Young Menzies: Success, Failure, Resilience 1894–1942 , Troy Bramston maintains that, as a direct result of his parents' refusal to approve his enlistment in the Great War, Menzies 'decided to go into politics ... to erase the perceived stain on his name'. This attempt to validate his existence was the genesis of a long, sometimes turbulent and eventually hugely successful political careerApril 1, 2023
11 mins
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Margaret Thatcher’s empowering era of distributing ownership of property through her Right to Buy scheme is now being reversef, with the barriers to stepping onto the housing ladder become ever higher. Property ownership is becoming the preserve either of the financial and legal sectors or of those who’ve inherited, a trend that explains why so much needed housing stock purchased as investments now sits emptyMarch 31, 2023
12 mins
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What is known and knowable about the shortfall in housing stocks is that it did not emerge from so-called free market capitalism, where people are free to buy and sell whatever they own. Rather, it arose from the systemic shock to the global economy caused by, among other factors, the COVID pandemic, short-sighted economic policy and the perverse incentives which that policy createdMarch 30, 2023
8 mins
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There have been ugly protests against the generosity the Irish state has shown to outsiders, especially in deprived areas of Dublin, where an emerging and deeply unpleasant resentment is evident. But to truthfully report and analyse such sentiment would be regarded as endorsing the new mortal sins of racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia. So the Left establishment and its media say nothingMarch 28, 2023
15 mins
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Director Francois Girard's The Red Violin features an evocative Academy Award-winning soundtrack by John Corigliano, with violin solos performed by Joshua Bell. It is one of the most beautiful movies about music I have ever seen -- apart, that is, from its unlikely and unfortunate demonstration of how one might go about playing a glorious instrument while engaging sexual intercourseMarch 25, 2023
17 mins
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Anthony Beevor set aside his first attempt to chronicle Russia's revolution, the subject matter proving so utterly confusing that crafting a coherent narrative eluded him. Readers will appreciate his return to the quest, perhaps inspired by Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917–1921 is the result -- a timely reminder that it pays to study history so as not to repeat itMarch 21, 2023
11 mins
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There's food for thought in the fashionable din of so many modern restaurants, where conversations must be shouted and there is no possibility of intimacy or discretion. This accords with our world of ego and psychobabble, in which people talk endlessly but say nothing. What we hear are monologues whose end everyone awaits in order to proceed with their own, none more than tangential to what has gone beforeMarch 19, 2023
8 mins
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We can see, in retrospect at least, that the likelihood of a new incarnation of the Cold War increased as Putin began to contemplate his place in the textbooks of future generations of schoolchildren. The grandiloquence of this one man, served by the lethal but compliant siloviki, casts a terrible shadow over the worldMarch 18, 2023
20 mins
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For too long, activist groups and NGOs have run the conversation on indigenous affairs. Australia is not better from this. Schools, state governments, businesses and universities shouldn’t treat any Australian as an 'invader' or 'living on stolen land'. This is especially true of children burdened in their classrooms with unwarranted guiltMarch 16, 2023
9 mins
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One only need cast one’s mind back to the darker days of the Covid pandemic to recall the relish with which suddenly famous scientists and omnipotent moral busybodies went about tormenting the populace for its own good. The climate scare is more of the same, playing out over a much longer time frameMarch 14, 2023
8 mins
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The burgeoning ranks of Australia's genocide scholars, advocates of a republic and the Voice and, of course, the Prime Minister have their visions of the nation they hope to leave to their children. Figuratively speaking, of course. If they really do get the Australia they want, there won’t be much left to leaveMarch 13, 2023
8 mins
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As the Soviet Union celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its 'revolution', terror had been unleashed across its entire territory. On the subject of the anniversary the Workers’ Weekly became poetic: 'While Mussolini yelps like a mad dog that ‘Bolshevism must be kept out of the Mediterranean’, the spirit and meaning of Bolshevism is filtering through the nations like a fragrant incense'March 12, 2023
15 mins
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The final activity at a recent conference I attended was a presentation of reworked Aboriginal statistics: in other words, lying. The organisers were quick to remind us that, in the name of 'safety', they would shut down any dissenting voices. They needn’t have bothered. The vibe was more Hillsong than struggle session. I couldn’t help but think we were fiddling while Alice Springs burnsMarch 10, 2023
11 mins
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If Australia finds itself in a real crisis—not a COVID crisis or climate change crisis—when our freedom, our homes and lives are threatened by aggressors, then we’ll wish we had read and absorbed the best of Machiavelli’s advice. In a sense, he wrote a book during violent times for violent timesMarch 6, 2023
16 mins
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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 irresponsiblyMarch 1, 2023
20 mins
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COVID Sestets “The thing with feathers.” That is how hope […]
February 28, 2023
1 mins
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Becoming Dorian This is me, in a certain light; In […]
February 28, 2023
1 mins
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Do I miss him when some raunchy western singer steams […]
February 28, 2023
1 mins
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The Cat Nobody Wants I want the cat nobody wants— […]
February 28, 2023
1 mins
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In Repose In the water she lay in repose, the […]
February 28, 2023
1 mins
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Sunday six days a week I create my world. On […]
February 28, 2023
1 mins
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Rear Vision Navigating the highways roundabouts and cul-de-sacs of memory […]
February 28, 2023
1 mins
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The Nullarbor Plain The Nullarbor is the treeless plain Endless […]
February 28, 2023
1 mins
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Chairman’s Escape for C.W. Years of work passed amidst the […]
February 28, 2023
2 mins
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The Hill Station Between the stubby horns of twin volcanic […]
February 28, 2023
2 mins
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Sangria, Nick Drake and Something like Kindness Hopers and the […]
February 28, 2023
1 mins
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The Golem My fear was inchoate: a blob of clay; […]
February 28, 2023
1 mins
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Xanadu With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge In Moscow town […]
February 28, 2023
1 mins
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Grace That was a short stay the terraced house in […]
February 28, 2023
2 mins
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Just Desserts Which girlfriend will I get in Heaven? Which […]
February 28, 2023
1 mins
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Ex Cathedra In memory of His Eminence the late George […]
February 28, 2023
1 mins
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The Calming Clams About certain clams the ancient Japanese made […]
February 28, 2023
2 mins
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Flammarion If that engraving caught your mind’s eye, making you […]
February 28, 2023
3 mins
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Alexander tracked flight QF95 for its full duration. The aircraft […]
February 27, 2023
15 mins
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A stupid idea, once embedded in the heads of intellectuals, […]
February 27, 2023
5 mins
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James Franklin was a professor of mathematics at UNSW when […]
February 27, 2023
12 mins
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It is going to be all right. The nasty people […]
February 27, 2023
11 mins
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Peter Smith says in his recent Quadrant Online article, “No […]
February 27, 2023
5 mins
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On December 6, 2022, a forty-five-year-old woman was arrested in […]
February 27, 2023
24 mins
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On Fifth Avenue in New York City, in the Metropolitan […]
February 27, 2023
7 mins
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What a strange thing the aftermath of the death of […]
February 27, 2023
33 mins
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In 1868, the English poet Matthew Arnold wrote the beautiful […]
February 27, 2023
22 mins
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This funeral is less a sad farewell to a great […]
February 27, 2023
6 mins
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The garb worn by the radical indigenous politician, Lidia Thorpe, […]
February 27, 2023
12 mins
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Letters Sir: The article “The Relentless Rise of the Authoritarian […]
February 27, 2023
7 mins
