Opera Australia's 'Butterfly' isn’t set in Japan, so why bother with an Asian lead? Don’t think too much. Just enjoy Koreans singing Italian in Japan in Australia and feel virtue fill your soul. Back in scorned, multi-ethnic Western Sydney, however, Puccini survives unadulterated, with Penrith’s Joan Sutherland Centre staging its 'La Bohème' set in Paris (of all places). That’s culture for you

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Unless you are emotionally invested in the contest for control of Kashmir, there is every chance you have never heard of 'The Kashmir Files'. Yet the film -- a jingoistic, nationalist, anti-Muslim, anti-intellectual version of Indian history -- was recently Australia's fifth-ranked box office attraction. Those of us who must read the subtitles have the most to learn

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Electioneering is a blood sport, and it’s blood the US voters are out for. No one watches 'Squid Game' for the victories. Democracy, too, is all about the losers. Nothing beats the satisfaction of stepping into the voting booth, pulling a lever, and whispering to the losing candidate, 'You’re fired'

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Why does Vladimir Putin hate dolphins? And is the entire Ukraine war a fabrication invented by Big Oil to distract us from the real emergency: climate change? And what of bio labs and nasty Soviet-era bogs. Only one thing is certain: we're all relieved to be talking about something other than coronavirus

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There is no apparent reason for a free speech policy to hail the ancient learning of indigenous Australians, as Sydney University makes a point to do. But once someone suggested doing so, it would have taken a courageously committed philistine to argue the toss with an insufferably self-righteous administrative class of guilt-ridden, virtue-signaling white professionals

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DFAT's fifth Reconciliation Action Plan is due in April. How many more will be required before Australia’s diplomats finally achieve reconciliation with the country’s indigenous peoples? Mathematicians have a word for a series of numbers that starts small but increments at fixed intervals forever: infinity

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The European Union has more than ten times the GDP and three times the population of Russia. It may not maintain collective military forces, but economically it could swat Russia like a fly. Yet we see nothing more than muted protest and pro forma denunciations of the Ukraine invasion. So much for Biden's boast that he would unite and lead the world's democracies

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Australia's Indian diaspora community has avoided the exported conflicts that plague other countries, but that peace is tenuous. Have you heard, for instance, of the Hindu student jailed for assaulting Sikhs in western Sydney and hailed as a hero in his native Haryana? No, probably not, because the transformation of Australian society is happening in the suburbs, far from the disinterested gaze of inner-city media types

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Australia is a land of superlatives, most of them having to do with death. The dry continent is home to the world’s deadliest snake, the world’s two deadliest spiders, and the flightless but ferocious cassowary. Its surrounding oceans are filled with man-eating sharks, toxic jellyfish and even (sorry, Nemo) a killer octopus. If the saltwater […]

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In the spirit of the times, prosecutors seldom bring charges for offences that have been reclassified from crimes to misdemeanors, since the maximum penalty is a mere and rarely imposed six months in jail or a $1000 fine. In the likely worst case scenario most thieves will thus only be required to return the stolen goods. Stealing is, essentially, legal

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