Category: Spectator Australia

The criticism of last week’s National Day of Mourning for Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and the media coverage of the most-watched news event in history, is emblematic of the petulant pettifoggery of the republican movement and the ignorance of those who promote it. Queen Elizabeth II reigned for

As if we haven’t had enough of politicians in our faces in the Peoples Republic of Victoria in the last two and a half years, we now have Dr Monique Ryan in the Federal Parliament courtesy of the Woke and bespoke voters of Kooyong. As we Victorians drag ourselves, punch

How will and how should the Bank of England, and the Treasury, react to this morning’s continued fall in the value of the pound? I’ve been talking to former Bank of England executives and ex-Treasury officials, who make clear that the stakes are incredibly high and that reassuring markets will

We all needed a laugh, what with the pound tanking and inflation running away, my old pal Kwasi delivering a Budget, probably for a bet, like Milton Friedman’s last cheese-dream, and the threat of nuclear annihilation starting to seem like a welcome turn up for the books. Said laugh has

After a weekend where the markets digested the Kwasi Kwarteng plan for growth, the pound hit $1.03 in early trading in Asia – the lowest rate since the dollar was invented in 1792. The fall was shortlived – it later rebounded to $1.07 – but the fact that it touched

When it comes to socialist and communist dictatorships, environmental groups fall silent. There is an unwillingness to criticise these oil-heavy nations for profiting off the black gold of fossil fuel, even when things go horribly wrong. This moral double standard makes a mockery of UN-affiliated green groups who routinely heap

When Brett Sutton shot to fame in the wake of the Covid outbreak I admit I fell for him. Hook, line, and sinker. In those early days of the pandemic, when so much was unknown, it was comforting to hear the dulcet tones of our Professor Swoony Sutton as they

Last week, with fewer than 50 days to go before the midterm elections, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy put it bluntly: elect Republicans to save what’s good about America. McCarthy introduced the Commitment to America, a policy plan he insists will put the country back on the right track. In

At the start of the year, largely thanks to the actions of the president, the Republican Party was sitting pretty. It would be generous to say that Joe Biden’s first year in office didn’t live up to expectations. The former vice president who was heralded by his party and the

How did we arrive at the position where, throughout the Western world, political decisions to undermine the cheapest and most reliable energy sources are bringing about economic stagnation and possibly collapse? Notwithstanding evidence of this, why are policy settings intensifying the very measures that have created the breakdown? Europe is

Last week I heard the song Beds are Burning played at least three times in the space of a few hours when I was out and about in a pub and at the Carriageworks for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. It may be a classic Australian song, but the sheer

One of the most powerful speeches I ever heard was delivered in a casual meeting of the NSW Rostrum public speaking organisation. I’m told the club was once a regular haunt of a young and ambitious Tony Abbott – a place where he refined his speech-making skills. The speaker on