Australia's ageing population is routinely presented as an economic problem, a demographic time bomb that threatens to overwhelm government finances, undermine productivity and impose an intolerable burden upon younger generations. The familiar argument is that as the proportion of elderly Australians increases, there will be fewer workers supporti...
There is something extraordinary, almost beyond satire, about the idea that private corporations should be permitted to interfere deliberately with the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth. For thousands of years, humanity has depended upon the Sun for warmth, agriculture, ecological stability and ultimately life itself. Yet we have now reached a ...
European leaders are increasingly warning their populations to prepare for the possibility of war with Russia. Military expenditure is rising, civil defence planning is expanding, and political rhetoric is taking on a distinctly confrontational character. Yet Russia repeatedly denies any intention of attacking NATO countries. This contradiction rai...
Three hundred. That's how many students graduated with a humanities major from the University of Texas at Austin last year, out of roughly twelve thousand. Three hundred people, out of an entire graduating class, chose English, History, Philosophy, Art History, or any of the other disciplines that once formed the beating heart of the Western univer...
A recent article in The Spectator Australia, entitled "Voters Should Have the Right to Remain Silent," presents a case against compulsory voting and compulsory preferential voting. Its central argument is that democratic freedom must include the right to abstain from political participation altogether. Drawing an analogy with the legal right to sil...
Walk into any Australian clinic and describe a constellation of complaints: fatigue that sleep doesn't fix, headaches that migrate, brain fog that makes spreadsheets feel like algebra, a vague anxiety that wasn't there before, and you'll watch a doctor's eyebrows knit together. Bloods come back clean. Thyroid is fine. Iron is fine. Vitamin D is fin...
The possibility of nuclear war in the Middle East is one of those subjects that most people would prefer not to contemplate. The consequences are so appalling that the natural psychological response is to dismiss the prospect as remote, exaggerated or simply unthinkable. Yet the fact that a catastrophe is improbable does not mean that it is i...
October 2026 is rapidly drawing to a close, and once again the internet's prophets of catastrophe are warning that civilisation may be approaching its final hours. This month's particularly ominous contribution comes under the label "Blacktober," a name apparently intended to evoke a combination of cyberwarfare, collapsing electricity grids, financ...
The science-fiction nightmare of the Terminator, the humanoid machine capable of pursuing and killing human beings, has moved another step closer to technological reality. On October 21, 2026, Chinese robotics company Unitree released promotional footage of its H2-X "Kung Fu Legend Guardian," a humanoid robot demonstrating extraordinary physical ca...
One of the recurring contradictions of modern politics is the considerable distance between the public rhetoric of politicians and the lifestyles supported by their political organisations. Nowhere is this more apparent than among those who build their careers upon denouncing wealth, privilege and economic inequality, while simultaneously operating...
This November will mark a full year since my son Billy and his sweet wife Jenny were killed in a devastating car crash. It's the kind of anniversary that no parent ever believes they'll experience, the death of their child. In a different world, our family would be celebrating their one-year wedding anniversary. But I will never be able to hold my ...
The humble afternoon nap, one of life's simplest pleasures, has become the latest subject of scientific controversy. A new study suggests that frequent daytime napping among older people may be associated with an increased risk of dementia. For those who enjoy a brief afternoon sleep, this sounds like another example of medical researchers discover...
One of the great paradoxes of modern political life is that governments continually promise to solve society's problems, yet the expansion of government itself can become a major source of those problems. Every crisis seems to produce another department, another regulatory authority, another programme and another demand for public expenditure. When...
The Middle East may be approaching another exceptionally dangerous phase of the war between the United States, Israel and Iran. Although the conflict has already caused extensive destruction, disrupted global energy supplies and destabilised neighbouring countries, there are increasingly credible indications that a new and potentially much more int...
When even The Economist, one of the most influential defenders of liberal internationalism and the European political establishment, begins warning about the possible collapse of Europe's centrist political order, something significant is happening. Its editorial of 22 October 2026, entitled "The Agony of Liberal Europe," presents a remarkably blea...
When Will Everyone Notice a Mercenary Army of Occupation? Sometimes I bore myself: because what is so obvious to me, which I convey in messages I try to scream from various metaphorical rooftops, is often not obvious at all to many others; and then, history almost inevitably bears out my creepy, Cassandra-ish warnings. I ...
The Australian government's campaign to control social media has entered a new and potentially decisive phase. Communications Minister Anika Wells has announced that the government expects legal proceedings against some of the world's largest technology companies over their alleged failure to enforce Australia's ban on social media accounts for chi...
Imagine a business manager approaching the shareholders of a large corporation with an ambitious proposal. The company would establish an expensive new division, employ additional administrators, finance numerous outside organisations and undertake a long-term programme whose benefits were described in glowing but largely unquantifiable language. T...
The battle between men and women has taken another peculiar turn, this time with the emergence of what commentators are calling the femosphere, the female counterpart to the much-discussed manosphere. Where sections of the manosphere portray modern women as manipulative, demanding and impossible to satisfy, the femosphere increasingly depicts men a...
There are scientific developments that should cause us to question not merely whether something can be done, but whether humanity has any business doing it in the first place. The latest experiments combining living human brain tissue with humanoid robots belong firmly in this category. What was once the territory of Frankenstein novels and dystopi...
