George Orwell, author of the astonishingly prescient book 1984, in 1940 wrote: Almost certainly we are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorships – an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction, The autonomous individual is going to be stamped out of existence. […]

This is the second essay of two where I am trying to encourage ordinary Australians to speak up and have their say in the face of the opposition from the politically correct. I am protesting in my own little way about the restrictions that we face because of political correctness and cancel culture that contrive […]

Part 1 – Covid and Climate Change Most Australians, I fear, are reluctant to take part in the public debate on many important issues. This is because we suffer from political correctness, cancel culture and even infantilisation by the governments we have elected supposedly to represent us. As a result of these various subterfuges we […]

For some time I was on the Council of my local University, the University of Central Queensland. CQU’s motto is Be what you want to be! I was somewhat bemused by this well-meaning but misguided maxim. No doubt it was supposed to promote learning and the notion that University study provided a path to our […]

It is easy to see how surreal the climate debate has become when half the world seems to be in the thrall of a Swedish teenage environmentalist activist named Greta Thunberg with no scientific qualifications but powered by youthful idealism and misinformation. Having failed to convince sufficient adults to worship at the altar of climate […]

I come from a rusted-on Labor family. My father was a Labor councillor on our local council. My sister-in-law was a Labor state member. My father was a strong unionist. His hero was Bob Hawke. He fervently believed in many of the union dictums like “one man – one job”. This philosophy eschewed multiskilling and […]

The question that is inevitably asked of us these days is, “Do you believe in global warming?” Now for most of us this is indeed a question of faith because very few of us have sufficiently interrogated the science on the matter as to be sufficiently informed to be able to objectively make a rational […]

I was flicking through the Review section of the Weekend Australian the other day and I came across an article by Stan Grant titled World of Difference. The article was a critique by Grant of Tom Keneally’s novel, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith. I was most intrigued by the byline to the article which read: […]

I have often written about my dismay about indigenous disadvantage. Despite the fact that many indigenous people are prospering and contributing positively to Australian society, there is still a significant cohort experiencing undue hardship including domestic violence, poor educational outcomes, significant health issues and high levels of incarceration. An emblematic issue for indigenous people has […]

The news these last few weeks has been dominated by various sexual indiscretions allegedly committed by politicians and those close to politics in Canberra. There are many decent men and women in politics and being a politician is a demanding and testing career for both men and women. And it is easy, but wrong, to […]