Make Australia Great Again!

It’s not hard to make the argument that on many fronts Australia has regressed in recent years. Our standard of living in real terms has diminished over the term of the Albanese government. Whilst our GDP, masked by record migration might have increased, our percapita GDP has fallen. We have endured high levels of inflation […]

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Breaking Through the Woke Barrier

Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist. In his 1979 book Distinction, Bourdieu introduced the concept of symbolic capital. In contrast with more conventional notions of resources, such as wealth and material assets, Bourdieu argued that symbolic capital is the resource available to an individual on the basis of prestige, celebrity status and public recognition. A […]

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The Palestine Dilemma

On 7 October 2023, Hamas terrorists emerged from Gaza to commit an horrendous atrocity against Israeli civilians. This deadly incursion has been well documented so I won’t elaborate on the gruesome details. Inevitably Israel responded with deadly force in order to deter further aggression and to rescue the civilian hostages that Hamas had kidnapped during […]

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The Downside of a University Education

At the age of eighteen, I left my family home in Charters Towers to start an engineering degree at James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville. In those days it was quite an extraordinary thing to do! In my high school years I can only remember two students in the cohort that I knew ahead of […]

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Educating for Victimhood


Trigger Warning: This essay, among other things, discusses trigger warnings in a way (somewhat intentionally) that may offend some poor sensitive souls. It does so not to intentionally offend them but to engage them more realistically with the world! _______________________________________________ It is easy to be impressed with the constant march of technological progress. We all […]

August 22, 2015

My Revelation


I was ensconced in my office, (which is really my den,) on this particular Sunday evening. My well-being was at a particularly high point. I had just partaken of a magnificent curry and was indulging myself with a wee dram (as is my wont) whilst listening to a glorious Mozart piano concerto. Then all of […]

August 16, 2015

Taking Stock


Often when we are absorbed in meeting the exigencies of everyday life we lose our broader perspective. We “can’t see the wood for the trees”! Consequently we fall into the trap of feeling insecure and convincing ourselves that our lives are somehow threatened by modernity. I suppose reading the newspaper doesn’t help. Bad news dominates […]

August 9, 2015

Ordinary Happiness


It is an admirable thing that people assume responsibility for their own well-being. Heaven knows there are so many who want to take on the mantle of victims or expect the state to provide the largesse or the escape mechanism to extract them from their misery. But even those with the praiseworthy ambition to deal […]

August 1, 2015

Accepting the Negative


There is a tape running in my head of a song I remember from my youth. As I recall the words exhorted us to “accentuate the positive; eliminate the negative.” It is certainly in our nature to strive for happiness and avoid pain, discomfiture and negative emotions. But in this essay I want to convince […]

July 19, 2015

A Few Comments on Current Issues


There is a lot happening in the world, and this week, instead of devoting my essay to a specific topic I am going to indulge myself by making a few comments about current issues. Let me first make a comment on the Recognition Referendum debate. The Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition joined this […]

July 12, 2015

What’s Happening to Work?


Thirty or more years ago I became involved in a couple of organisations that were trying to get a handle on the future. In particular I was interested in the future of work. Over the next ten or fifteen years I was invited to attend many national conferences and presented papers on the subject. At […]

July 4, 2015

The Confessions of a Conservative Environmentalist


Most of us when we are younger are more idealistic. We see the world embodied in a framework of rights and wrongs, black and white with very little grey! With little understanding of how the world works we believe our idealistic stances will change everything and then all will be well. I was little different. […]

June 27, 2015

The Importance of Productivity


Australia is currently in a rather parlous position. Our economy is in trouble with rising debt and projected deficits extending out to the far horizon. Growth in the economy has stalled and consequently we are faced with high levels of unemployment. The intergenerational report depicts an aging workforce and anticipates further budget difficulties as the […]

June 20, 2015

Lifting the Muslim Veil


We human beings are a gullible lot. We are often inveigled into believing the implausible when it seems attractive to us. The Spanish Conquistadores returned from the New World full of stories about El Dorado, purportedly a city of gold. The myth spurred many expeditions devoted to discovering the wealth of this fabled place. Whilst […]

June 13, 2015