Well, you’ve got to hand it to Australia’s secret service – they’re very secretive. Of course, a certain level of discretion goes with the spook territory. We’d hardly expect ASIO to letterbox the neighbours, informing them that they’re surveilling the suspected foreign spy at No. 2
Damian Wilson rt.com Damian Wilson is a UK journalist, ex-Fleet Street editor, financial industry consultant and political communications special advisor in the UK and EU. Aussie spy agency head Mike Burgess risks international confusion as he caves in to the wokelords and dumps universally understood labels for extremists like
Michelle Grattan University of Canberra Michelle Grattan is one of Australia’s most respected political journalists. She has been a member of the Canberra parliamentary press gallery for more than 40 years, during which time she has covered all the most significant stories in Australian politics. ASIO is changing the
In the war that gave birth to ANZAC, Australian and New Zealand soldiers enjoyed a reputation as formidable soldiers. But lately, it seems, our militaries are being asked to be less effective fighting forces than Boy (and Girl) Scouts with guns. At best (and honourably) as a kind of militarised
The definition of insanity, it is said, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. On that score, the Australian media can be forgiven their periodic pack-hunts because until now, depending on how Attorney-General Christian Porter’s defamation case against the ABC goes, they’ve not
As Jacinda Ardern showed, COVID panics might have caused global economic havoc and stripped civil rights on a grand scale, but they sure are a sweet vote-winner for the incumbent. Liberty dies, as Padme Amidala sadly observed in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, “with thunderous applause”. The
The ABC-led media-elite witch hunt against Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter has followed a drearily familiar script. Trumped-up allegations, an unfashionably conservative target and an unscrupulous media whipping up a frenzied lynch-mob. The method is the same whether the target is a frumpy church-goer (Lindy Chamberlain), an unashamedly conservative clergyman (Cardinal
The viciousness of the campaign of vilification against Cardinal George Pell by Australia’s taxpayer-funded broadcaster was at times astonishing. The ABC aired uncritically the most lurid and outlandish accusations against the cardinal. Following Pell’s now-quashed conviction for child sex abuse, the ABC could barely hide its glee. When
New Zealand Labour governments have a noteable track record in poisoning trans-Tasman relations more thoroughly than Trevor Chappell bowling a grubber. David Lange trashed the ANZUS alliance in order to pander to the watermelon left. Jacinda Ardern, though, is making Lange look like a rank amateur. Ardern has steadily white-anted
As the New Zealand government prepares to pay off its most loyal allies by ploughing tens of millions into the dying legacy media, Kiwis ought to learn a lesson from Australia. Australians are forced to hand over more than a billion of their tax dollars to a state-funded broadcaster. Despite
As China flexes its muscles in the Asia-Pacific with increasing aggression, many of its neighbours are naturally wary. Especially as so many of them have already experienced first-hand being monstered by the thousand-pound panda. Whether it’s Taiwan listening to the sabres rattle across the Strait, Japan watching Chinese fighter
The dangerous, illiberal witch-hunt being peddled by the left-media in their unconscionable pursuit of Attorney-General Christian Porter has been correctly labelled a threat to democracy and the most basic principles of the rule of law. But there is an even more objectionable aspect of the Press Gallery’s trial-by-media which
You can blame it on the glaring lack of anything resembling an opposition party in the state, or you can blame it on a population who’ve lurched so far left that it’s a wonder they haven’t triggered earthquakes in Bordertown. Either way, Victorian voters will find themselves
As I reported for The BFD last year, Victorian premier Daniel Andrews’s attempt to whitewash away his hotel quarantine disaster with the Coate Inquiry was surely not going to be the end of investigations into the affair. In a supremely fitting irony, the very “industrial manslaughter” laws brought in
Amidst all the palaver and virtue-signalling in the media, and the strangely contradictory cavalcade of back-slapping and pearl-clutching whining of International Women’s Day, there is one group of Australian women who go almost completely ignored by the great and good of the Lady Pages and Mummy Bloggers. While we’
Dave Pellowe goodsauce.news It’s big of John Sandeman, editor in chief at Eternity News, to clarify they don’t think Martyn Iles or I advocate violence or revolution. This back-handed retraction instead accuses us of “silly and possibly callous banter.” Instead, Iles and Pellowe engaged in silly and
