First published in The Spectator UK, 27 October 2018 It’s pretty hard for Britain’s friends, here in Australia, to make sense of the mess that’s being made of Brexit. The referendum result was perhaps the biggest-ever vote of confidence in the United Kingdom, its past and its future. But the British establishment doesn’t seem to…
When I was about your age, older people were good enough to take me under their wing. One of them was John Howard – Australia’s second longest serving prime minister, in whose government I later served. Another was BA Santamaria, whose movement had helped to keep my side of politics in office for 23 years,…
Well thanks Tom. It’s wonderful to be here, it’s wonderful to be amongst so many great Australians. I’m particularly pleased that my state parliamentary colleague, Damien Tudehope, is here. I’m delighted that the former chairman of my Economic Advisory Council, Maurice Newman, is here. And I’m told that the former long serving secretary of the…
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…