If there’s been one constant in the Wuhan plague, it’s been the utter incompetence of so many governments and bureaucracies. The almost-unbroken rule is that the more authoritarian they’ve been, the more completely, disastrously, useless they’ve been. Every time, “COVID dictators” have pursued policies that have
If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember sitting in class, robotically reciting the times tables. You’re probably hearing the sing-song in your head, right now: “One times two is two, two times two is four…” It was dull, repetitious – and absolutely foundational. You can probably almost
Effectively selling the Port of Darwin to a Chinese-owned company is one of the most spectacular strategic idiocies of recent decades. When the Northern Territory government handed a 99-year lease over the port to Chinese owners in 2015, even the strategically inept Obama administration questioned the decision. Because, let’s
One significant outcome of the Tasmanian election has gone barely without mention by the mainstream media: the apparent lack of a “COVID bounce”. Premier Peter Gutwein was surely banking on one, when he called an early election on the flimsy excuse of having been pushed into minority government. After all,
Well, this weekend’s Tasmanian election seems to have been much ado about nothing. The result has left Peter Gutwein’s Liberal government exactly where they started: with a one-seat majority. Still, that’s quite an achievement in itself for Gutwein. Tasmania has long been a Labor-dominated state, and its
My old Mum had a wise saying about bullies: They can dish it out, but they can’t take it. The same is particularly true of cry-bullies: those who self-righteously harass or intimidate others while playing the victim. Jacinda Ardern is having a bit of a sissy-Mary over alleged “bullying”
Phillip W. Magness aier.org Phil Magness is a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research.He is the author of numerous works on economic history, taxation, economic inequality, the history of slavery, and education policy in the United States. This has been a year of astonishing
Now I know how the left feel whenever they get someone cancelled. Maybe. Not, I should hasten to add, that I delude myself that I had any hand in the matter, nor, for that matter, would I have wanted the cancellation – or postponement as it really is – to happen. I’
One of the most cutting scenes in Dickens’ Oliver Twist is when the thin, ragged boy tremulously asks for more gruel. The master, “a fat, healthy man” is outraged. As are the board of the workhouse, “eight or ten fat gentlemen” who are almost suffocating in their fake piety. There’
When wartime Australian PM John Curtin announced Australia’s foreign policy reorientation away from Britain and towards America, he did so “More in sorrow than in anger”. What Curtin meant was that it was now obvious that Britain’s war priorities differed from Australia’s. The issue was brought to
It’s said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Australia’s education bureaucrats must be barking mad. For the past few decades, Australia’s international education rankings have steadily fallen. In line with demands by education bureaucrats and teachers’
Jacinda Ardern famously thinks that Australia deporting Kiwi-born crims home to New Zealand is “corrosive”. Australians might think that bleeding-heart bureaucrats and lefty quangos letting foreign-born monsters continue to lurk among us is even worse. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal is the perfect embodiment of O’Sullivan’s Law: Any organization
Scott Morrison should convert to Islam. Of course I jest, but just as a thought experiment, it’s a delicious prospect. The left continually vilify Morrison for his religious beliefs (conveniently ignoring the number of Catholics on the Labor benches), while viciously attacking anyone who dares criticise, say, Mehreen Faruqi’
Survey after survey, poll after poll, shows that the majority of Australians want to see the country’s immigration drastically curtailed. The only difference between the polls is the size of the majority. No matter what the left-elite may sniff, this is not “racism”: Australians continue to support migration in
In news that should surprise absolutely no one, this year’s Oscars drew record-low audiences. In fact, the only real surprise is that they drew an audience at all. The Oscars have faced plummeting ratings for years, but this year they still fell further by an astonishing 60%. Apparently one
