Campbell Newman has no choice, so should make a virtue of it. Ros Bates, the Arts Minister, and Michael Caltabiano, Director-General of Transport and Main Roads both need to be sacked. The longer he leaves it, the worse it will get, so best to get it out of the way as soon as possible. Bates […]

According to the government Tony Abbott is a “mouse“, even though he is also a “bully boy”, because he allegedly failed to raise his policy of towing back refugee boats with the Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhyono. Given Labor’s disastrous handling of our relations with our nearest large neighbour, it’s not surprising that they don’t […]

Whoever thought that it was a good idea for the government to label Tony Abbott a misogynist ought to think again. It’s a losing strategy. It will antagonise blue-collar conservative voters, the voters who actually decide elections in Australia In 1996 Paul Keating lost as heavily as he did partly because he broke his word […]

I’m wondering if Bob Carr intends to follow Alan Jones in apologising to Julia Gillard for capitalising for political purposes on her loss of her father, because you’d have to put him and Alan Jones in a similar boat. Certainly the last person who ought to be apologising for anything is Tony Abbott. A week […]

Lewandowsky’s paper is cross-disciplinary. It combines psychology with economics and political science, but none of the authors has any academic qualifications in that area. As a result the questions that seek to measure adherence to “laissez-faire free-market economics” are nonsense. To start “laissez-faire” (Fr, “to leave things be”) and “free market economics” are one and […]

The federal government’s decision to ban the “super trawler”, while popular with the GetUp mob, is another example of how this government trashes the rule of law. The rule of law is the concept that the law applies equally to everyone. It is the basis of civilised and modern society. Its obverse is tyranny. By […]

Part 1 showed that the Lewandowsky study was not of >1200 people. The questionnaire posted on the web was actually to recruit people so that those who showed “conspiracist ideation” could be selected and studied further. The total number of people who accepted one or more of Lewandowsky’s conspiracy theories was actually 553, and the […]

If you thought that a Labor politician would be happy to know that the government was selling some commercial assets so that they would have more money for the homeless you’d be wrong if the name of that politician was Kevin Rudd. This extraordinary fact came to light inadvertently, but courtesy of my co-panellist on […]

How wonderful to arrive in Hong Kong and find an excellent Australian television channel available. It is that feeling of getting closer to home that will sustains me during one month in China. Having taught many Chinese students, it is appropriate to see how they live in their own country. Will China ever become a […]

The Prime Minister says it is defamatory to say she advised on setting-up a trust fund for former partner and client Bruce Wilson to hold funds for his re-election campaign. It was her reason for calling her snap media conference last week, but it is hard to see how the  claim could actually be defamatory in […]