It is only a personal observation but it seems to me that the sympathy and sums governments are spending on deradicalisation programmes, Muslim sports and outreach campaigns just aren't working. Indeed, the more indulgences granted, the more pronounced that separatism becomes

What have they done to you, long-abused city of my youth? The pathetic, provincial insecurity of old is still there, just that these days it is expressed vertically by thickets of high-rise eyesores obscuring and overshadowing the architectural remnants of the gracious city that was

The party whose leadership Malcolm Turnbull schemed so assiduously to seize was once a big tent with seating for all, from old-school Tories to libertarians. Now, sacrificed on the altar of one man's egomaniacal ambition, there is nought but division, betrayal and disgust

The methodology of John Cook's infamous paper purporting to demonstrate global warming must be real because almost all scientists believe in it has long since been demolished. But there is another flaw hitherto overlooked: the extent to which humans are thought responsible

The Secular Party is unlikely to be a major player in upcoming elections, representing the monocular obsession of a cranky minority fixated on erasing the influence of religion in public life. Small it may be, but also useful as a reminder of the need to be very careful when making a wish

The proceedings will begin with a committal hearing at which a magistrate determines if there is sufficient evidence to go to trial. But surely the first matter must be whether, because of leaks and the character assassination, the Cardinal enters court beneath a dark cloud of presumed guilt

The party of Menzies now stands for what exactly? Don't answer because it's a trick question: the Liberals' ruling clique stands for nothing that Labor and the Greens don't do a better job of representing. From its ruinous advocacy of "renewables" to the appointment to the ABC board of a chairman who insists the national broadcaster is the very essence of impartial truth, the one thing Turnbull & Co have mastered is betrayal

The ABC is tickled pink about the enormous splash its Canberra editor made on social media with a fact-free, opinion-heavy diatribe against Donald Trump and his administration. It seems the national broadcaster's yardstick for excellence is the number of visitors it gets from Twitter's sewer

Few can rival the Race Discrimination Commissioner for spotting what isn't there, the latest example being his gripe that too many white men occupy board positions he would prefer to see allocated to quota'd minorities. Somehow, though, racist policies afflicting Indigenous kids escape his attention

You expect the Left's scribblers to work themselves into a foot-stomping lather about Donald Trump -- outrage is, after all, what the Left does best. But what of your normally more sensible commentators? If he doesn't fit the presidential mould, so what! His policies are terrific

Three federal ministers recently were given the rounds of kitchen by Victorian judges, who declined to lock them up for alleged contempt. No doubt, through  gritted teeth, the politicos resented their humiliation, but they should have rejoiced. Little people are granted no such indulgence

If you go by the mainstream media's lockstep 'coverage' of the US president's first six months, he is no more nor less than a tweeting buffoon. A comforting narrative for cant-addicted newsroom hacks and groupthinkers, it handily avoids any and all mooting of Australia's need to follow his lead

Leftists didn’t 'get' Bill Leak, who made them incandescent, but they love Michael Leunig’s silly doodles because his palaeo-anarchist platitudes speak to their simple hearts. Leftist 'thought', be it an attempt at humour or sober analysis,  is seldom more than intolerant vulgarity with a public subsidy

Back in 1974, the US physicist and polymath warned graduating students of 'cargo cult science' and the careerist urge to confirm the flawed orthodoxy of earlier and inaccurate results. Climate "science" was then in its infancy but the trajectory of its corruption has confirmed all his worst fears

As an ex-Muslim, one intimately versed in the Koran and the mindset of so many who take literally its arrogant and intolerant admonitions, few things distress me more than seeing every latest massacre followed by the warm and fuzzy pieties of those in the West who find convenient not to understand

Alan Finkel's otherworldly prognosis is bad enough. But toss in Malcolm Turnbull's advocacy of renewables and then add an imported American chief regulator who would have been happier working for Hillary Clinton and where are you? The simple answer: thoroughly stuffed

The pursuit of George Pell by leak, smear and ABC-style journalism has crystalised in charges and a court appearance set for later this month. It was a shocking process to watch, but not unprecedented. When the Left sets out to destroy an enemy no quarter is given

A young reporter of literary bent is sent in the late Sixties to cover a council meeting, subsequently filing an account that, much to the amazement of the chief sub, invokes Rabelais’ ‘Gargantua’. Spiked in 1967 and only recently re-discovered,  it deserves a run

The new measure of a government's competence is the same as the old: the number of bills passed into law. It is a line we haven't heard since the incompentocracy of the Gillard years, but the PM and his apologists have revived it as substitute for principle

Addressing the Centre for Independent Studies this week, Tony Abbott laid out the flaws and folly of re-working French nuclear submarines into Australian diesel-electric ones. While the more quotable elements of his speech were widely reported, that analysis warrants consideration in full