Actuaries have not unfairly been described as “people who didn’t have enough personality to be accountants”, but when it comes to crunching numbers, they’re the folks you go to. Especially if you want to analyse mortality statistics and risks. According to the Actuaries Institute, Australia ought to greatly
It was surely one of the most staggering moments of hypocrisy in Australian history: in the same week that the Labor government connived to censure a former PM for the first time since Federation, it was indulging in an orgy of lionising former PM Gough Whitlam. Where’s the hypocrisy?
Are the pack hunters of the Australian media-political left about to get their own taste of the Kyle Rittenhouse/Covington Kids medicine? For months, the pack have been howling for the blood of Bruce Lehrmann and, by proxy, the Coalition. For nearly two years, they’ve had an unchallenged run.
The Greens, as I have often said, are a toxic party full of toxic people. They’ve been doing little, lately, to disabuse me of that notion. Of course, when the party’s CV of scandals — mostly covered up as assiduously as possible, the Greens, despite their pious rhetoric, being
I wonder if cartoonist Mark Knight has changed his mind about the “Indigenous Voice” referendum? Knight wanted to show his support for the “Yes” case, you see. So, as cartoonists will, he drew an editorial cartoon to promote it. And got a short, sharp lesson in just how the “Voice”
The rape trial that shook Canberra may have fizzled to an end, with the ACT prosecutor dropping all charges, but the legal action — and the bombshell revelations — roll on. Everybody’s lawyering up, all over the place. First off is accused Bruce Lehrmann, who says he is broke and broken
As we all know now – and indeed suspected all along – the whole pandemic regime was moored in a thin tissue of lies. Worse than that was the rampaging hypocrisy. The same people who were sternly fingerwagging us to stay home and wear masks were repeatedly caught out sunbathing maskless, or
The most explosive court case in recent Australian history has ended with a spectacular squib from the accuser. All charges against the accused have been dropped, essentially because the accuser is refusing to return to court to give evidence. This follows the failure of rushed attempts to change the law
It hasn’t taken Jordan Peterson long to upset the self-righteous and censorious, on his current visit to Australia. Like all of us who’ve taken a plane flight lately, Peterson found himself enduring the fatuous drivel of an in-flight “welcome to country”. Unlike the rest of us, the good
The Greens must have thought they’d hit the jackpot with Lidia Thorpe: a strident, militant leftist, a woman, and an “Indigenous”? If only she was gay or disabled, they’d have swept their intersectional bingo card clean. Instead, it turns out to be very much a case of buyer’
If Anthony Albanese learned anything from Australia’s 1999 Republic referendum, it’s clearly: Don’t tell them what you’re really up to. The best thing John Howard ever did was to force the Republicans to ‘fess up to the Australian people exactly what they were up to. Confronted
I’ve never voted National in my life — after all, you need to have a big hat and a farm to do that, right? On the other hand, I’ve lived in the country most of my life. (By way of explanation for BFD readers, the Nationals in Australia shouldn’
When you talk to the left, does it ever feel as if you’re talking to a visitor from another planet? A planet where lockdowns saved us all from the Black Plague, where socialism has never failed because “real socialism” has never been tried, and where the world stands on
In a great little scene from Australian film, Idiot Box, protagonists Mick and Kev cross a pedestrian overpass above an arterial packed with rush-hour traffic. Mick wonders about all the people in all the cars: “Where do you reckon they’re goin’?”. Kev glances over and sagely observes: “Fuck ‘em”
