Turnbull vs evolution
Economists offer one way to understand the world. Evolutionary psychologists offer another. Sometimes they overlap. Sometimes they don’t. Let’s consider what these two worldviews have to tell us about...
View ArticleDesperately seeking Pax Americana
Remember this fateful sequence of events. It began on 21 August 2013, when Bashar al-Assad gassed 1500 of his own civilians. His deadly brother Maha al-Assad, and their Alawi loyalists, had just dumped...
View ArticleKing Cnut
Next year will see the millennium of Cnut becoming King of England. It is an anniversary which must be high on the radar of many of the politicians in Canberra. However I must confess to being...
View ArticleWhy I support BDS
I’m writing this article with my Jerusalem travel notes on one side of my desk and a box of documents on the other. These contain my father’s family tree, Ashkenazi Jews from Berlin with a line to the...
View ArticleBusiness/Robbery etc
It’s as questionable in business as it is in politics: when facing the prospect of disaster, just change the leader and everything will be OK. As the slide in profits and share-prices of Australia’s...
View ArticleManicurist nation
Do you lie awake at night fretting about the prospect of a Manicure Gone Wrong? A bungled pedicure? I do. I have mani nightmares. The local shellac parlour may as well be the Malaysia Airlines...
View ArticleDope ‘em up
Australian athletes only managed to get two silvers at the Beijing World Athletics Championships. But the good news is that one of them, Jared Tallent, is now a shoo-in for a gold at the Athens...
View ArticleAux bien pensants
If Malcolm Turnbull is remembered for anything, it will be for his supreme act of treachery in bringing down a successful prime minister merely to achieve, illegitimately, the office he has so long...
View ArticleOn books and pollies
I am a lover of books. Reading has been one of the great pleasures of my life. In some ways, it has defined my life, and my political identity. It was reading Mill’s On Liberty when I was at school...
View ArticleFeeling the guilt
The picture of the dead Syrian child is a high water mark of the politics of feeling. In a world of hollowed out identities, particularly in the post-religious societies of Europe and Australia, the...
View ArticleSyrian Anzacs
Let me be the bastard who states the obvious: there’s no refugee crisis in the West. There’s an economic refugee crisis. And it’s not the same thing. A refugee is defined by the United Nations 1951...
View ArticleCan Turnbull win over Tony’s tradies?
I’ve just moved away from the ‘cashed-up bogans’, bling and boats of Melbourne’s bayside suburb of Patterson Lakes. Goodbye to the Kath and Kim house, that symbol of outer suburban culture. Goodbye to...
View ArticleI come to praise Tony, not to bury him
Senator George Brandis did a nice impression before the last election of wanting to be a latter day incarnation of John Stuart Mill, the go-to man to protect the core Western value of free speech. He...
View ArticleNSW: racists welcome
The failure of NSW authorities to prosecute the Australian head of Hizb ut-Tahrir, who called for deadly violence against Jews, means anyone is now free to call for the killing of racial minorities....
View ArticleWill the intelligentsia fall for polygamy?
Recent momentous events in Ireland and the United States regarding the legal status of same-sex marriage have triggered a debate reverberating around the world – what’s next? The Chief Justice of the...
View ArticleLabor’s renewables target doesn’t add up
It has long been the standard fare of green evangelists to prosecute their cause with persuasion by emotion rather than sticking to the facts at hand. Labor’s recent decision to opt for a 50 per cent...
View ArticleBusiness/Robbery etc
What a difference a ‘u’ can make. On this side of the ditch, without a ‘u’, there is irresponsibility and hypocrisy but on the New Zealand side there is a rational concern for the national interest....
View ArticleSingapore singalong
Whenever I am feeling low I look around me and I know There’s a place that will stay within me… This is home truly. Where I know I must be Where my dreams wait for me… So we’ll build our dreams...
View ArticleSwill? Moi?
The internet is driving the biggest change to society since the industrial revolution drew people from the land to the city. Institutions in business, politics, education, media and entertainment are...
View ArticleLet’s just keep on voting until the plebs get it right
Treasurer Joe Hockey has done what no minister has ever done without resigning − thrown in his lot with the opposition to implement one of their key policies. This is not about joining some benign...
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