Proponents of Voluntary Assisted Dying may think they are acting in good faith, but it seems they are unaware of the unspoken and unconscious cultural factors that now determine how we conceive of death. After a century of industrialised slaughter, an individual's life counts for little against the cost-benefit calculations of an increasingly intrusive administrative State

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Speaking as an academic, the news that the High Court had ruled against Peter Ridd was a chilling moment. The suppression of free speech has become a very real thing in many of our universities, with the silencing of minority opinion quite systematic. James Cook University's legal victory has made open and honest debate a dangerous undertaking

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The national broadcaster's bedrock 'truth' is that some ideas are superior and thus can only be reported and expressed in ways which conform to rigid standards – the world of policed 'narratives', 'story-telling' and 'conversations'. That this is in gross breach of the ABC Act (1983) doesn't trouble the ABC or, apparently, the Coalition

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In an indication that the actual running of a business requires more applied intelligence than making broad and illogical generalisations about the sector's future, the Business Council actually claims Australia can flourish by making haste along the road to net zero. Simply put, there is madness afoot in the land

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You have to admit that Victoria's Premier has been remarkably successful for a figure blessed not with great intellectual gifts or imagination but only a brazen rat cunning. That has been enough, however, to debase Victoria Police as his political enforcers, to gut Melbourne's CBD, ruin businesses by their thousands and, China-style, stomp on traditional liberties

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I can grasp why Dominic Perrottet must keep onside the likes of Matt Kean and an education minister who refuses to boot Bruce Pascoe from the classroom, but in decreeing the unvaccinated must only appear in public behind their face nappies he has drawn the mask of political expedience over principle, evidence and the face of his own good sense

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Alas that I lack a team of COVID 'case' tabulators, doomsday modellers and specialists in cold-shiver statistics, every single one of which appears to have been copyrighted by rival TV talkers. But I'm game to do my own calculations -- readers are invited to critique my methods, by the way -- and what I've concluded is that all the experts omit the most important element of all

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Not so long ago the 'minimalist model' struck me as the way to go. But given the vacuity of current public debate, the power of social media and the culpable bias of the mainstream press, it's not hard to imagine some high-profile climate or ‘human rights’ activist being anointed to the presidency. President Grace Tame, anyone?

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An important feature of Lee Boldeman’s excellent book 'Mau Mau Whitewash. Britain Slandered' is its examination of revisionist historians peddling confected narratives that conveniently align with the academic Left's currently fashionable anti-colonialism. That much of the approved narrative is just plain wrong doesn't bother them in the least

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One way or another Australia is going to take the pledge to reduce Australia's emissions to net zero. So perhaps the Coalition could seize the moment as a means to push the nuclear power option. The Prime Minister swears the government's carbon-abatement policies are based on science and technology, not taxes. This would be an opportunity to prove it

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