Part of the secret of Tony Abbott’s success is that Labor and Greens underestimate him. The torrent of accusations that he is too dumb to be PM that has followed his election on Twitter and social media generally is proof of this. For a really amusing example of this genre – Tony as ventriloquist’s dummy […]

The Conversation is supposed to be a vehicle for university academics, but it seems to be becoming a repository for the work of anyone even tenuously connected with a university. Which means that advocacy organisations can insinuate their propaganda onto its pages, as long as one of their researchers is studying at a university. Such […]

On Line Opinion invented the genre of the online op-ed in 1999. In the 14 years since we’ve had lots of imitators, but when it comes to openness and balance, no competitors. One of our closest imitators, so close that it not only copied the genre but stole our financial model as well, is The […]

If I’d been paying closer attention I’d have realised that The Butler was probably about race relations. But then again, maybe not. It stars Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey, but the movie blurb seems deliberately anodyne. So anodyne in fact that if I wasn’t a political tragic, I probably wouldn’t have been moved to go […]

It’s coming up to Halloween, and after nearly a month in my native land, I’m spooked. It’s not just the flamboyant (and clever) displays of skeletons emerging from the ground, cobwebs on trees, and assorted ghoulish creatures displayed, red eyes blinking and heads bobbing, in the shops along with the orange candies and pumpkins. It’s […]

Regular On Line Opinion contributor Don Allan has died. An obituary was published in the Canberra Times yesterday, and he gave a preview of his death on his own blog under the title “My death has been suspended (temporarily)“. Don was an interesting contributor – you could never be sure what position he would take, […]

The recent attacks by Al Shebab on a Nairobi mall, and even more recently the slaughter in their sleep of Nigerian students by Boko Haram added impetus to a global movement of moderate and peace-loving Muslims. They are joined by groups opposed to the bombings in Pakistan, the radicalisation of the civil war in Syria, […]

The world really did change on September 7, 2013. Businesses are generally careful not to let their customers know how they vote. So how do you explain the See Ya Kev Specials offered by MBE?   Now we know what most of their customers are telling them.

It’s a bit hard to see how Indonesia can oppose the Australian government buying fishing boats to stop asylum seekers, at the same time as it wants to buy 1.5 million hectares of grazing land to grow beef for its domestic market. Surely there ought to be no impediment to either in what ought to […]

There’s 60 per cent more sea ice in the Arctic this year than there was last year, which means claims that the Arctic would be ice free in summer by 2013 were ridiculously over blown. It does not mean, however, that this happened because of a “chilly Arctic summer”. Rather the summer was chilly because […]