An award-winning livestock auctioneer went viral last year after selling a trucker cap on a Melbourne tram. Harry Cozens, a sheep and cattle auctioneer from Albury, was handed the cap by a fellow passenger and challenged to sell it, before launching into his call. First published by Guardian Australia December 13, 2023 Continue reading »
politics
Catholic and independent schools had the biggest declines in the OECD’s Programme of Student Assessment (PISA) test results since 2009. Their students lost 1½ to nearly two years of learning in reading, mathematics and science. The falls in test scores were far bigger than for public schools. The learning loss in Catholic and independent schools Continue reading »
“He who laughs has not yet heard the terrible tidings…”. A collection of stories from the late, great, veteran political reporter Mungo MacCallum: Australia’s true journalistic believer. MUNGO MACCALLUM. The patience of our first nation, while remarkable, is not inexhaustible. MUNGO MACCALLUM. Cook and the continuing culture wars. MUNGO MACCALLUM. In the Continue reading »
A major problem for a settler society like Australia is to reconcile our history and our geography. In the last 10 years we’ve lost ground in reconciling the two. Editor’s Note: In 2023, the world continues to witness significant changes and turbulence. As we approach 2024, we conducted in-depth interviews with leading strategists from various Continue reading »
America is falling into a trap. It thinks the future will be decided by military dominance, despite losing one war after another. China, on the other hand, recognises that the future will be decided by economics. (A repost from October 2023). Pearls and Irritations has posted an outstanding series of articles by Percy Allan on Continue reading »
Terrorism takes different shapes and forms, and it is important always to be perceptive. A lot has been written about terrorism and terrorists these days, and most writings blame Muslims. It is true that there have been Muslim groups that have acted against both civilians and the military with great violence and savagery, and they Continue reading »
Australia added 518,100 people through net migration in the 2022-23 financial year, according to new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). This is a record high by a very wide margin. The strain is obvious to all, in the rental crisis and infrastructure crowding. The Albanese government knows this is both unsustainable and Continue reading »
The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip has surged to 20,674, the Health Ministry in the territory said yesterday. Some 1,000 children have had limbs amputated without anaesthesia in the Gaza Strip since Israel began its brutal bombing campaign on 7 October, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said. It Continue reading »
Events of the last three months or so will shape the way large cohorts of the Australian population assess the character, integrity and fitness for office of federal politicians and parties on issues of fundamental importance to them, much as happened during the years of the Vietnam War in the 1960s. But whereas the Vietnam Continue reading »
In January, 2023, Ezra Klein from the New York Times interviewed Yuen Yuen Ang. Professor Ang is a widely published, China scholar at Johns Hopkins University in the US. Towards the end of this long interview, Ang provided an acute summary of what US-China competition came down to. What matters most, she argued, is: Which Continue reading »