Unwittingly, the latest Gonski plea for yet more support -- read "money" --  for Australian education's jargon-infested pedagogic hierarchy of bureaucrats and excuse-makers illustrates the reason why Johnny and his mates can't read. Teachers were a lot smarter in 1911

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One species’ bedlam can be endured, as those attending the Dawn Service managed to do when the rookery came alive. And the other? No matter how loudly they howl and sneer and posture for each other's approval, there is nothing worth hearing in such a parade of hollow virtue and empty souls

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The ADF's banning of bloodthirsty 'symbology' will be harder than Angus Campbell knows, not least because the RAAF flies transports known officially as 'Spartans'. If Hellenic hyper-masculinists set a poor example for the modern soldier, there is an alternative mascot

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The Fairfax press casts a monocular green eye over the Monash Forum and finds something both sinister and hollow in the ambition to see a stable grid and power prices reduced. Reading the group's manifesto before misrepresenting it was, apparently, just too much trouble

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In addition to supporting a woman who built her reputation within the arts community by defecating in rainbow hues, The Australia Council recently distributed a lot more cash to her creative neighbours. Here is a sampling of recipients from just one tranche of grants to just one electorate

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A recent address by Rupert Myer, chairman of the Australia Council, on the joy and beauty of publicly funded art set Quadrant Online to looking at recent grants in the seat of Gellibrand, where we found a woman who makes art out of her own excrement. She has just been gifted $10,000

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The play Kill Climate Deniers has opened to mixed reviews, but where there can be no disagreement is in noting the production's grant-funded progress from the mind and pen of a Canberra writer and expert in obtaining taxpayer funds. As he puts it, learn to play the arts game and "get wealthy"

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Yesterday Quadrant Online took a look at the slick PR moves that earn Tim Flannery & Co's panic factory endless and favourable news coverage. Today, how a lie -- in this case a catastropharian marketing campaign that harms Australia -- goes around the world before the truth gets its pants on

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In a recent annual report the Climate Council crowed about its skill at planting stories in the media and how compliant journalists   have provided "$50 million" worth of free publicity for the catastropharian cause. Those tactics are brazenly laid bare in the Council's latest press release

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When a news organisation comes into possession of deep national secrets, studies them, divides them across two cities and offers only the most incredible account of their acquisition, one might expect a police raid followed by public hearings. This government just sent over a couple of safes

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