Australia has a new prime minister and a new opposition leader. Just who is new Liberal leader Peter Dutton? Is he the leader the Liberals need, to capitalise on the tremendous shift in political allegiances that showed in the election result? Scott Morrison only narrowly beat Peter Dutton in the
In Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein cautions against dumping a leader you don’t like, just because you don’t like them. Make sure whoever’s going to replace them isn’t even worse, he warns. Americans are getting an object lesson in Heinlein’s warning: they swapped
Twitter’s original slogan was “Tell us what you really think.” Reading some people’s tweets, you often have to ask yourself: what the hell were they thinking? Twitter has become notorious for ruining people over a single, thoughtless tweet. Usually, they’re low-level former nobodies, mindlessly thumbing out their
Ryan Anderson mercatornet.com Ryan Anderson is an essayist based in Melbourne, Australia. His work has appeared in Quillette, Quadrant, the UK Mallard and assorted other publications in the UK and Australia. The Victorian Liberals have expelled an outspoken anti-abortion MP. Followers of Victorian politics have probably heard of Bernie
As I write this, the song “1999” by Prince is playing through my headphones and it certainly sums up what must have been happening in the Scott Morrison household in recent days. Had he been re-elected, he would have continued being – horror of horrors – a target for the media and
As the washout of last weekend’s Australian federal election continues, more and more interesting facts are emerging from the post-poll entrail-reading. The most obvious takeaway from the election result is that a great many Australians walked away from the two-party system in disgust. For the moment, this has favoured
As Jacinda Ardern plays Harry Potter dress-ups and basks in the adulation of the five people who still watch Stephen Colbert, not all international commentary is the sort of uncritical adulation she’s become accustomed to buying. Even on American tv shows that people actually watch, like Tucker Carlson Tonight,
One of the harsher lessons of the last decade in Australian politics is that honeymoons are getting shorter and shorter. Most of the time, the end of the affair is self-inflicted by newly-minted leaders who think that the old rule of getting the dirty work sorted as soon as possible
As I wrote some time ago, about new Australian PM Anthony Albanese: Nice bloke, terrible politics. His first few days in the PM’s chair are going a long way to confirm that view, particularly the first part. As we all know, there are just two rules of public debate
One of the greatest litmus tests of the Albanese government will be how it handles the issue of border security. Borders, which, given Australia’s geographic reality, means boats, are an electric issue in the country. On its first day, the Albanese government signalled that it would resist the powerful
Well, there’s one thing Australia’s new parliament will be good for — testing how far to the looney left Anthony Albanese’s Labor will let themselves be dragged. Because the truth is that Labor barely won the election at all. Its primary vote was a near-record low and its
The wake of an election campaign always brings a flood of beard-stroking “analysis” from Monday’s Experts. So, why shouldn’t I join in? Well, I already have but why stop when we’re having fun. And the most fun, post-election, is poking through the entrails of the losing side.
Well might Anthony Albanese have overturned his own party’s rules in his rush to be sworn in as PM. Because, as it happens, Labor hasn’t technically even won the election yet. That’s not what you’ll read in the legacy media, of course. If you were fool
Whenever I’ve tried to debate climate cultists on facts, rather than slogans, it’s astonishing how little they really know. Which is probably no accident. Because, if they stopped and did even a rudimentary beer-mat calculus, their treasured beliefs fall apart. Far easier to just keep shouting, really. One
As I wrote for Insight yesterday, one clear lesson from Australia’s federal election is: rich people vote left. The idea that the Liberals are the party of the rich is so fixed in the minds of the Australian left that they simply cannot, will not, countenance any suggestion to
