Rinse, repeat

Here’s my free election analysis that won’t get me on a panel show where people shout about their feelings or have you marching in the street like some private school cry-baby sobbing over the carbon emissions of their polo mallet: the Coalition had three terms in office and this is about the maximum any federal…

Am I a bad parent?

This existential self-indulgence is out in force during the new Nine Network Allison Langdon vehicle, ‘Let’s experiment on the kids’ where a group of parents do cool things with their own children while being filmed with a hidden camera like seeing if they will walk off with a stranger when the stranger has a cute…

My daddy issues

Prince Harry wants to talk about his childhood and work out whom to blame. So do I. I grew-up in Mount Waverley and they really were a bunch of secateurs wielding, lawn mowing bastards – especially the old guy with the Labrador and heart-monitoring device. New piece in Spectator Australia… I asked my father-figure therapist…

Australia’s problem Arts culture

The ideological closed shop that is Australia’s creative classes isn’t really a secret even if the artists themselves insist on how open-minded they are. It was on display yet again recently when Scott Morrison announced a $250 million arts funding package. New piece in Spectator Australia here…. For many arts commentators and creators the great…

Why it’s ok to laugh at Greta

Can we look beyond the marketing, the she’s only a child tactical angst and brieflyconsider the Greta phenomena – as opposed to the child Greta herself? And if it is all about the cool marketing then why shouldn’t it be critiqued like any other of the seemingly endless mass marketing ploys of the 2000s like the Kardashians, planking or being selfied with untalented rich people?  Read more at Spectator Australia… Here’s the counterintuitive Greta marketing logic – you are expected to listen to Gretaand take action like she’s…

Notes from a climate protest

Gretas The protest Coralines are looking enviously at the blonde-haired Scandinavian Gretas in the hiked up school uniforms that keep getting all the attention from TV crews wanting to film them as they walk in a straight line with flowers in their hair arm-in-arm singing ‘save the world’ Manson Family style. One of them wants…

More stuff banned by edgy culture crowd

Last week, a show was pulled from the forthcoming Melbourne Fringe Festival after a backlash and accusations of racism. The show, by Kate Hanley Corley, was called Aisha the Aussie Geisha. It was billed as ‘a cross-cultural love story’ about a ‘dairy farmer who becomes the world’s first foreign geisha’. In the show, Corley appears in geisha garb….

Cricketing cry babies

Latest in Spectator Australia on our cricketing cry babies. Steve Smith cried on national television and so did Darren. Dave will no doubt also have a cry though Cameron didn’t at his media conference…..