As I wrote recently, the small target strategy has been the prevailing wisdom in Australian politics since 1993. That was the year John Hewson launched his Fightback! campaign, a year out from an election. Hewson was perhaps the last politician to try a degree of honesty: he told everyone, in
Every joke is a tiny revolution, as Orwell said. Which is why authoritarians so detest comedy. Actual comedy, that is. What is passed off as ‘comedy’ on late night US television, or Australia’s ABC, for instance, are very much not. They’re Maoist Struggle Sessions pretending to be comedy.
I don’t know whether to laugh or quietly curse in disappointment. On the one hand, the first explicit attempt to leverage sectarian politics in Australia in half a century is allegedly imploding. On the other, a potentially fatal wedge against the Labor party is imploding. I’m talking, of
Listening to independent journalist Tim Poole recently, he made a point about free speech which changed much of my previous thinking. Free speech, yes, Poole said. But only for people who actually believe in free speech. Free speech fundamentalism, advocating free speech even on behalf of people who avowedly do
I’m not a huge fan of racial vilification laws (as distinct from incitement laws), such as Australia’s notorious Section 18C, but, if we must have them, then surely they must be equally applied to everyone? Yet, to date, there’s been a notable slant in the few prosecutions
Spare us the hypocritical pearl-clutching of the elites. Yesterday, it was ABC journalist Patricia Karvelas finger-wagging about “misinformation” – even as she peddled gross misinformation of her own. Today, it’s the lefty politicians’ turn. Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has warned that democracy in Australia is under attack from
Viv Forbes Degree in Applied Science Geology, Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and executive director at the Saltbush Club. Wind and solar energy have a fatal flaw – intermittency. Solar generators won’t run on moon-beams – they fade out as the sun goes down and stop whenever
Sooner or later, lefties in a love-affair with Islam come unstuck. In the ’70s, it was the Iranian communists, supporting the Khomeinists against the Shah. Once the Khomeinists came to power, they immediately rounded up the communists and shot the lot of them. More recently, pathologically altruistic “asylum seeker advocates”
In the German movie Das schreckliche Madchen (The Nasty Girl), a high school girl is determined to win an essay prize by writing about her little town’s brave resistance to the Nazis during the Third Reich. Everyone is delighted. But, as she delves deeper, she finds the terrible truth:
It’s gaslighting on a massive scale. Ann Coulter’s Law writ far and wide. Propaganda of the dimensions and determination not seen since the Soviet Union or Maoist China. The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command
The fallout from the Fatima Payman affair continues to rock the Albanese Labor government. The growing political crisis is raising a raft of issues and covering few of the participants in glory. For all her whining about being “intimidated”, the truth is that Payman was treated with kid gloves by
I’ve asked before, and I’ll ask again: when do we start spitting on teachers? It’s a rhetorical question, of course. I’m not really advocating hawk tuah-ing on random chalkies. Most of them are more-or-less dedicated professionals who do a pretty good job. Some are actually brilliant
Well, it looks like Andrew Forrest has learned a thing or two indeed from his paymasters in China. Not just how to literally sell your country to a foreign power, or how to undermine your own, democratically elected government by toadying to the bully-boys of communist dictatorships. Now, his company,
The Dutton opposition in Australia is going big and bold. Ever since John Hewson was belted so thoroughly in 1993 for daring to lay out his policies in detail two years out from an election, the received wisdom has been small-target strategy. Don’t tell anyone what your policies are
He may be as white as the driven snow, but Bruce Pascoe is certainly keeping himself very nicely in the black. Mostly courtesy of the taxpayer, it seems. But then, we’re only too used to being bilked by phony “Aborigines”. But when they have the cheek to go begging
