The Liberal-National coalition is much better than the alternative across border protection, defence and probably economic management. These aren’t small things. They are vital things. But so is having a sane climate policy and social policies which align with traditional Western values

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Is it conceivable that the Ukraine war will end with Russia defeated and repentant? Seems as unlikely as a democratic Afghanistan. A negotiated compromise might be possible over coming months. But what if the war, fuelled by weaponry without limit, goes on and on for years? What then?

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A cricket ball is a spherical object of specified weight and size with a cork core inside tightly wound string covered by a leather case. Were an eccentric neighbour to insist his orange is a cricket ball, we might let it pass out of kindness but would not go so far as to actually use it in a cricket match. Why, one wonders, are woke definitions of male and female not subjected to reality's likewise scrutiny?

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I have read that Scott Morrison, fresh from an abrasive encounter with a testy pensioner, will continue to meet and greet. Good on him. No doubt Labor/Greens apparatchiks will try to embarrass him. Maybe, too, the Libs will be able to dig up a couple of bright sparks to embarrass Albanese. Who cares? No one, really. It’s pantomime

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As Zali Steggall demonstrated in Warringah, the well-heeled can be persuaded to vote for a chimera, provided it is attractively packaged and feeds a desperate need to feel virtuous. That's a greater problem this time than last for Morrison & Co., whose focus on Anthony Albanese might well see it outflanked by the seductive charmers of Climate 200

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Sanctions are ineffective, partially effective or cripplingly effective. I think we can say that while Russian oil and gas are needed, the sanctions will fall in the middle category. Stranger than fiction, is it not? We’re sanctioning Russia and its rich citizens as comprehensively as possible yet pleading with them to keep the oil and gas flowing

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Here's an opportunity for Scott Morrison to take the high ground and maybe win the election by making it clear that coal, oil and gas will remain the dominant form of energy in Australia. It's a a matter of national security, he might begin, explaining that wind and solar farms and transmission lines running every which way are the very definition of sitting ducks

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Tribalism explains the way politics is played these days, not just here but all over the democratic world. It is that blind loyalty to side rather than principle which explains why voters from Labor's traditional base persist in backing a party in the thrall of elites and fashionable opinion. My party right or wrong sums it up -- a tragic mindset as the election draws near

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It is possible -- nay, probable -- for rational folk without barrows to push being of two minds about the failed Religious Discrimination Bill. No law, as I see it, should license schools to discriminate against students for their sexual orientation, but it is also proper to insist on adherence to behavioural protocols such as boys dressing as, well, boys

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As in wartime, pandemics can justify the curtailments of freedom, but they must make sense and be applied only for a well-defined and temporary set of circumstances. That isn't what Australia has endured and continues to endure, with no end to the python grip of autocratic edicts anywhere in sight. What we can see is worse than failure. It is a betrayal of everything a healthy democracy holds dear

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