First published in The Daily Telegraph, 17 August 2018 Ask people what they want from energy policy and the answer, overwhelmingly, is lower power bills. In this week’s Newspoll, 63 per cent said the government’s priority should be cutting prices, 10 per cent preventing blackouts, and just 24 per cent reducing emissions. The message is pretty…
First published in The Spectator, 4 August 2018 This is Greg Sheridan’s best book because it is his bravest. He tackles an important subject in a challenging way and breaks cover about the things that really matter to him. Journalists, even those who mostly write commentary, normally retain a critical detachment from their subject matter….
To constitutional conservatives, plebiscites are an aberration, even an abomination. To me, they’re sometimes a way to resolve really big questions that do not require constitutional change. But I do agree that plebiscites are completely toxic for anything that can only be resolved by the people at a referendum. There have been three plebiscites in…
Originally published in The Australian, 27 July 2018 Back in 2002, in his first Inter-Generational Report, then-Treasurer Peter Costello forecast that it would take 40 years, until 2042, for Australia’s population to reach 25 million. In fact, we are going to reach this milestone within the next month, 24 years early. We are in the midst of…
Originally published in The Australian, 12 July 2018 Whatever our judgement on the Trump presidency so far, he’s got two and half more years in the world’s biggest job and has every chance of being re-elected. He is the reality we have to work with. For Australia, Trump has been a good president. Despite a…
Even 18 months into his presidency, the world is still having trouble coming to grips with Donald Trump, the most unconventional president ever. Still, he’s not a bad dream from which America will soon wake up, or a fool to be ridiculed. For someone the legion of critics say is a compulsive liar, he’s been…
It takes character to do what’s right and it takes courage to disagree with your peers. On this score, Bob Carter was a good and brave man whose memory we should honour and whose example we should strive to emulate. As Professor Carter found, and later his James Cook University colleague Peter Ridd also, this…
Originally published in the Sun, 12 June 2018 Less than a year before Britain formally leaves the EU, it’s still not clear what sort of a Brexit the government wants. Because some senior members of the government don’t want to leave at all, they’re investing far more energy in “remoaning” than in getting the best…
Originally published in Quadrant, April 2018 Paul Ramsay was an unlikely billionaire. On his own admission, he was not a dominating personality; not an organisational expert; not an intellectual giant; not an impresario of ideas; and not a financial genius. Yet he founded a business from scratch and turned it into one of the world’s…
Originally published in the Australian, 23 February 2018 One thing I am not going to cop is gratuitous criticism from ministers who are only in government because I led them there. It is the prime minister’s right to choose his ministerial team and, given some of the policies of this government, I’m happy to serve…
