In the 1980s, it was assumed that the great threat to Western freedoms was the “theocons” of the religious right. To an extent, this was true enough: groups such as the Moral Majority tried to muscle their particular brand of fundamentalist Christianity into everything from government to artistic expression. But,
This will be a familiar story to The BFD readers: a gutless council caves in to unhinged activists and tries to shut down a speaking event by a visiting public figure. The only differences are that it’s Australia, not New Zealand, and the public figure is an Aboriginal woman.
In the first part of this series, I looked at just how flawed assumptions lead to wrong answers about how Australia and New Zealand should shape their strategic response to the “Rise of China”, especially its increasingly blatant efforts to turn the Pacific into a Chinese lake. Australia and New
If you’re sick of ‘woke’ corporations caving to the increasingly extreme demands of noisy far-left activists, you’re not alone. The Morrison government is putting corporate Australia on notice that it sorely needs to get back to its fulfilling its proper function: making money for shareholders, building the economy,
Australian Rules Football really is becoming as soft as rugby fans have always said it is. We’ve got fans getting kicked out for correctly observing that an umpire is a “bald-headed flog”, over-zealous security guards rushing on to the field to break up a couple of players going the
Tasmanian state politics rarely get much notice in the outside world; which is more their pity than ours, because they’re missing out on a clown show that would be endlessly entertaining if you weren’t being directly impacted by it. I often describe Tasmania’s parliament as a cross
In a previous series of articles (here and here), I examined the “hard strategic choices facing New Zealand” (and Australia), as outlined by national security academic Hugh White. As I noted in those articles, while many of White’s assumptions were dubious at best, he at least brings into sharp
As BFD readers will know, I have been nothing if not forthright about the threat that the Chinese communist regime poses to Australia, New Zealand and indeed the entire Pacific region. Time and again I have warned that Beijing is steadily infiltrating our institutions, seeking to influence politicians, stealing state
Leonardo Di Caprio and his superyachts. James Cameron and Harrison Ford and their respective fleets of cars, planes and boats. The private jets, mansions and endless, long-haul Business Class flights of celebrities, activists and politicians. It’s a given by now that the louder the screeching of climate activists, the
One of the most memorable characters in Michael Crichton’s climate-thriller State of Fear is the pompous, egotistical actor-activist Ted Bradley. Bradley, who serves as both the avatar of Hollywood’s ignorant self-importance and as a foil for the book’s skeptic-heroes, comes to a hilariously bad end. As the
Presented in association with The Unshackled. Trans-Tasman Talk (TTT) is hosted by Tim Wilms from Melbourne and Dieuwe de Boer from Auckland. The show debuts every Tuesday at 9pm New Zealand time (and 7pm Melbourne time). The first episode was broadcast on The Unshackled Youtube channel, but future episodes will
Although Clive Hamilton has been dismissed by some as a paranoid crank for his polemic, Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia, he is being rapidly vindicated by events. Not only did many publishers refuse the book explicitly because they feared reprisals from Beijing, recent events have indeed shown just
When Alan Jones and John Laws were infamously caught out offering “cash for comment”, they were rightly pilloried for their shocking behaviour. Even if you accept – which hardly anyone did for an instant – that they are “entertainers” rather than journalists, and thus free from ethical obligations, their actions were an
The funniest thing about satirical Twitter personality Titania McGrath is just how often “she” traps the unwary into thinking that her woke psychobabble is the real thing. The left today have become so unhinged from reality that they really are beyond satire. Case in point: the socialist Victorian government’s
The biggest problem for the left-elite class, all across the Western world, is their inability to pull their heads out of their collective arses and realise that there is a whole other world of people outside their quinoa-proof fence. People who not only don’t think like they do, but
In all the undeserved hoo-hah about the grifting illegal immigrant Tamil family and their anchor babies, “refugee advocates” oddly avoid one key issue: why, exactly, is it supposedly “unsafe” for the parents to sod off back home? It’s not as if at least their father hasn’t gone back
