The Spectator Australia

The Spectator Australia is Australia's favourite weekly politics and culture magazine. Subscribe now; only $10 for 10 issues.
Editor: Rowan Dean @rowandean

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

ROWAN DEAN

The Iran War was never popular. From the get-go. Trump launched the Iran War because it was the right thing to do, not for any populist motivations. He said it was the right thing to do 40 years ago, and he has never wavered in that opinion.

Trump was correct then and Trump now is correct.

Destroying the Iranian regime is the right thing to do, and the very opposite of the populist thing to do. If Trump were a populist, he never would have launched the war in the first place.

...

The theory that Trump lived and died by being a populist is absurd. Yes, populist influences helped bring him to power. But it was Trump defying populism and ignoring the siren populist voices of the podcasters, that turned voters away from Trump.

The so-called ‘woke right’ podcasters used their astonishing influence to turn people against Trump because he didn’t do the populist thing, he did what he thought was right. He stood by his principles. And he is still standing by them.

Article | https://t.co/74mym99X2x

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

Expectations that Donald Trump is finished or even reduced to a lame duck are unlikely to be realised.

What must go is the tenuous modus vivendi he maintained with his own party in the legislature. Those Democrats who imagine they won – rather than that the Republicans lost – may lack the common sense to do what the constitutional system is designed for and Americans and the free world expect: build their own consensus with a fundamentally worthy President.

Article | https://t.co/pIJmCSZ53H

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen demonstrated his formidable negotiating skills even before he landed at COP31 this week, securing a coffee contract for the Australian pavilion at the bargain price of $32,000.

The $32,000 coffee contract is a mere bagatelle compared with Bowen’s pre-COP Fijian foreplay, which racked up $34.6 million in contracted commitments.

Even that pales beside the $147.8 million allocated to COP-related activities overall. And all of it is small change compared with the cost of making Australia’s electricity supply increasingly expensive, unreliable and weather-dependent.

Article | https://t.co/dXldWCUIKy

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

In the fantasy world of the Albanese Labor government’s ‘renewable energy superpower’ dreams, yet another unachievable critical minerals policy change, linked, of course, to renewables, was quietly introduced late last month.

Article | https://t.co/yWIxbQ7dj1

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

The plan is simple. Tax a legal product until the illegal version is a goldmine, then act surprised when criminals dig for gold.

Canberra has done exactly that with spirits.

Excise rose in August to $110.15 per litre of pure alcohol. Outside Scandinavia, that is the highest rate in the world. It climbs automatically twice a year with inflation, so no minister ever has to stand up and defend it.

Article | https://t.co/52mNSg2h6k

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

For various reasons, I have spent virtually all this year in Melbourne.

Being here month in, month out, really focuses the mind on the challenging problems that confront the good citizens of this state.

Victoria has the highest taxes in the country yet has the highest government debt. 

The roads are in a shocking state of repair and crime is everywhere. Victoria takes the ‘crown’ when it comes to the incidence of shoplifting.

Article | https://t.co/zALhnLgQpE

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

It is a bad, bad US midterm election result to lose over eight per cent of the party popular vote from the election two years previously. And losing 63 seats in the House of Representatives is really, really bad.

So first thing to say is that I got the midterms badly wrong...

Article | https://t.co/IzWYSDTqtN

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

FRANCE | What was once the greatest country in Europe has become a nation in decline, beset by destructive and competing interest groups.

Even France’s national identity is under attack. The far left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s regularly equates patriotism with racism. 🤔

His LFI deputy, Antoine Léaument, argues France was only born in 1789 at the end of the Revolution, denying more than a thousand years of French history. Syrian-born member of the European parliament, Rima Hassan Mobarek, quotes French philosopher, Frantz Fanon, that, ‘For the colonised, life can only emerge from the decomposing corpse of the colonist.’ Such is the contempt the left has for la France.

Article | https://t.co/6i1Lk4ThFm

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

Trump’s Maga has suffered a spectacular rebuke. But the demand that gave it life – for a country that works for ordinary Americans – is available to anyone who can argue for it. Some Democrats have noticed.

Article | https://t.co/Lh6YZW4LMq

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

One of the more enjoyable tasks that descended on me during my epoch-making time as a minister in the federal government was to attend international conferences.

They were a wonderful chance to travel around the world at the taxpayer’s expense, dress up in Hawaiian shirts, be addressed as ‘Your Excellency’, give everyone the benefit of my reflections on world affairs and at the same time avoid controversy at home by abstaining from voting on any resolution that might conceivably do anything worthwhile.

I was guided in this momentous work by the principle espoused by an old hand in diplomacy that the most important item on the agenda of any international conference is the fixing of the date of the next meeting.

After all, once you had got a new gravy train up and running and the shakedown of Western countries who were expected to pay for it had begun, we professionals had a vested interest in keeping it alive.

And the venue for the next meeting was also important; it would be far more effective in keeping an issue alive if delegates were summoned to a conference in the Germanic splendour of old Vienna, rather than the slums of Dar es Salaam...

Article | https://t.co/McTDZzOviY

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

ROWAN DEAN | "We need a Second Dismissal, a Dismissal 2.0, if you prefer." 🧐

The Albanese government is out of control. It is ruining businesses, livelihoods, households, family fortunes, dreams, aspirations and social harmony.

On every front, this is a government of failure, lies, deception and fraud. Fifty-one years ago this week a previous Labor government was sacked. Sadly, the same will not be happening anytime soon.

Article | https://t.co/okKYS3EXDt

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

As I left for my truck run in Central NSW this morning, the Flanders poppies stood at attention along the tessellated path leading out of our Federation cottage.

My Australian flag 🇦🇺 and personal banner (which reads the Artillery motto – Quo fas et gloria ducunt and ubique – along with the emblems of 105th and 101st Field Battery) waved in the damp air.

A storm was approaching.

Article | https://t.co/1CPUjPwLRN

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

JAMES ALLAN | I think I am the most pro-free speech law professor in the country.

I will mud-wrestle anyone who pretends to my title.

But we have here a conflict between 1) a desired short-term outcome and 2) the long-term benefits of plausible, honest interpretation that leaves social policy-making with the elected branches.

Article | https://t.co/9e8wVEMEb3

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

Haiti is no ordinary security crisis.

It is a place where the collapse of state authority has become so profound that a mission involving thousands of foreign troops can be justified as a response to the disappearance of four soldiers.

It is also a place that increasingly invites a troubling question: Has Haiti become the world’s enduring laboratory for external intervention?

This is not a conspiracy theory and should not be treated as one.

No credible evidence suggests that Haiti was deliberately designed as an ‘experiment state’.

Article | https://t.co/zfTHYW67FG

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

The Department of Public Integrity and Efficiency...

PIE is my proposal for a powerful oversight department within the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio.

Answerable to the Prime Minister and Cabinet but legally required to report publicly to Parliament, it would be staffed largely by outsiders and have real-time access to departmental budgets, contracts, staffing structures and performance data.

Article | https://t.co/rOwQwaFZOJ

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

Speaking to Trevor Phillips, poached by Bari Weiss to bolster CBS, the presidential frontrunner Marine Le Pen warned those who despise her culture that the door is open for them to leave Europe.

Article | https://t.co/26seVBihSh

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

There was something missing from the Scottish government’s official X account on Remembrance Sunday: Remembrance Sunday.

The account, which has 426,000 followers, made no mention of the commemoration at any point yesterday.

Instead, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the SNP-run administration posted: ‘Happy Bandi Chhor Divas. The Scottish Government sends warm wishes to Sikh communities in Scotland and around the world as they celebrate Bandi Chhor Divas.’

At best, the timing of this tweet, at exactly 11 a.m., looks like a deeply disrespectful oversight; at worst, it looks like a provocation by a government that seeks out every opportunity to drive a wedge between Scottish and British identities and their national symbols.

Article | https://t.co/aCzab8g9Vw

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

Why did people ever watch Brand?

What was his appeal?

Finally, these questions are being asked.

Brand is not funny. He is not talented. Apparently intelligent individuals thought he was ‘entertaining, inquisitive and provocative’.

They were entranced by his ‘flawless’ way of speaking. In fact, all he did was say dull things quickly. It came without hesitation because it required no thought.

Brand was a bore, intellectually and sexually.

How could you see him any other way?

Article | https://t.co/2rIPYzzILI

[The Spectator Australia @SpectatorOz]

The backdown by Prime Minister Albanese on the sale of Victoria Barracks in Sydney (and, I believe, two other heritage sites) is welcome, but it seems to me the plan to open it to the public is misguided.

The best way to preserve a heritage site is to continue using it for its original purpose, if that purpose still exists, as it does in the case of Victoria Barracks.

Article | https://t.co/3YLtlMU4pV

[Alexandra Marshall @ellymelly]

Are mortgage holders going to survive Jim Chalmers and the continuous interest rate hikes? 🤔

Labor tried to blame 'Iran' - but this economic disaster is on them.

[Alexandra Marshall @ellymelly]

The Albanese government's 5% deposit scheme was a total betrayal.

People were lured into huge mortgages in an economic environment where Labor declared its intention to rebalance house prices.

How many will be stuck with negative equity in a cost-of-living crisis with rising interest rates?