Back in 2015, One Nation politician and former Labor leader Mark Latham characterised Bill Shorten as a “flim-flam” leader, “passionately dedicated to symbolism”. “Hold my shandy,” says Anthony Albanese. Anthony Albanese has spoken ahead of the 47th parliament being opened to declare that Australia must seize the “opportunity” offered
Election advertising is not exactly noted for its impartial accuracy, but the Coalition’s 2022 slogan is starting to look all-too real. It won’t be easy under Albanese. Just a few months in, and Mr 32% is giving even Joe Biden a run for his money as an
It may not seem obvious, but a minor item in this week’s news says a lot about where Australia is headed for the next three years. One of Anthony Albanese’s first acts as prime minister (besides jetting off overseas) was cutting parliamentary staffing levels to a quarter of
As I wrote yesterday, Victorian premier Dan Andrews has delivered a masterclass in the sorry-not-sorry insincerity stakes common to petulant teenagers and politicians. In the same breath that he supposedly “takes full responsibility”, he’s also not going to do a damn thing that will actually make a
Any parent is familiar with the sort of surly apology-not-apology of which kids are masters. “Sor-reee!” Most of us grow out of that sort of blatant insincerity. Those who don’t, often become politicians. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has apologised for what he has described as “absolutely
Does Anthony Albanese have the worst advisers in the democratic world? Or are his media team, like Joe Biden’s one suspects, constantly tearing their hair out at their boss’s utter, utter dunderheadedness? Or are they as stupid as each other? Because little else would seem to explain Albanese’
Robert Muldoon might have had a gift for the quip, when he smirked about Kiwis moving to Australia, but that couldn’t disguise the harsh truth. New Zealand is and always was the net beneficiary of the trans-Tasman relationship. New Zealand might be last, loneliest, loveliest and exquisite, but
John Mathews Macquarie University Elizabeth Thurbon UNSW Sydney Hao Tan University of Newcastle Sung-Young Kim Macquarie University John A. Mathews is Professor Emeritus in the Macquarie Business School at Macquarie University, Sydney. He has taught graduate MBA classes for the past two decades and more. Elizabeth Thurbon is a
The definition of insanity is said to be doing the same thing and expecting different results. But as our elites push relentlessly for the same energy policies that have crippled Germany and Britain, blacked out Texas during a winter freeze, and sent electricity prices through the roof everywhere they’ve
In 2015, Australians got a practice run of Trump Derangement Syndrome. We even coined the phrase, except that we dubbed it “Abbott Derangement Syndrome”. Anything Tony Abbott said was guaranteed to send the left and their lickspittle media into fits of screeching outrage. No matter how commonsense or prosaic the
Remember when you were a kid, and your mum asked: if your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it, too? The green-left would already be hurtling down the precipice before they stopped to say “Yes!” Germany jumped off the “renewable” cliff, long ago, with Britain at their
The three years of the Covid pandemic have been an instructive masterclass in the madness of elites. Every supposedly responsible group, from governments to “expert advisers”, collectively lost their heads and ran hysterically screaming to the worst possible policy prescriptions imaginable. One of the stupidest ideas of this conglomeration of
I’m pretty sure Thomas Sowell doesn’t know everything — but what he doesn’t know about certain topics probably isn’t worth knowing. Especially economics. Sowell’s Basic Economics is foundational reading. In it, he devotes an entire chapter to examining the fallacies of government interference in the housing
A problem solved is an existential crisis for an activist. Especially an activist on a fat government pension. After all, if such an activist admitted that the problem they were employed to solve had gone away, or at least dwindled to such an infinitesimal degree that it was literally “micro”
Remember Helen Clark’s “incredibly benign strategic environment” zinger? Oh, how we all laughed. If only we were laughing about Helen’s spiritual offspring, Jacinda Ardern, and her similarly clueless foreign policy witterings. As Australian journalist Nick Cater writes, if Ardern’s recent speech on China is a genuine expression
Anyone who thinks Australia is set for a bright new dawn in China relations, with the election of Anthony “Mr 32%” Albanese, is kidding themselves. China is carrying right on with its bullying ways. The only difference is that now they’ve got the government they paid for — one which
