Category Archive: POLITICS
Douglas Murray
“Uncomfortable Conversations”, Norwood Town Hall, 21 March 2024 Douglas Murray, well-known pundit and author (The Madness of Crowds, The War on the West, The Strange Death of Europe), appeared in conversation with Josh Szeps in a wide-ranging exchange of sometimes provocative, and always entertaining, common sense ideas and propositions (Hallelujah! – Ed.). TVC ground staff (in our main image flanking Mr. Murray) attending the talk in Adelaide, were disappointed to confirm that Adelaide maintains its reputation for the polite allowance of discourse. No aggro here, alas – we’d been hoping for the kind of protest and cancelling tactics attempted in…
Continue Reading →Menzies versus Evatt
By Anne Henderson (2023) Robert Menzies and Herbert Evatt were both born before Australia was – in 1894 to be exact, in the colonies of Victoria and New South Wales respectively, but they would blossom under the soon-to-be-created Federal Commonwealth. Their natural intelligence and Victorian work ethic set them on the path to success, and to some degree, Australia became the better for their struggle, in that they brilliantly represented, and advocated for, different yet necessary principles and practices of the nation’s democracy. Menzies went to the Victorian bar, and still in short pants lead in the Engineers’ Case (1920),…
Continue Reading →Ring the Division Bell
Recently, we were sent an interesting take by George Monbiot, published in the Guardian, suggesting the likely Republican nominee for U.S. President this year, Donald Trump, was “king of the extrinsics.” Now we have expressed concerns about George before, but felt he deserved respectful consideration none-the-less. By ‘extrinsic,’ Monbiot did not mean a “basket of deplorables,” exactly. He wrote: “Some psychologists believe our values tend to cluster around certain poles, described as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance. They tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in…
Continue Reading →The Modern Metternich
Henry Kissinger (27 May,1923 to 29 November, 2023) Like Klemens Metternich, he’d been a refugee, entered into the realm of international diplomacy early on, and took a realist, conservative view of world order, based on the equilibrium of power and interests. Always a ‘foreigner’ in his adopted country, one could impute to him, after Metternich, the line: “I governed the World sometimes, America never.” Kissinger became a bête noire of the left: for example, Christopher Hitchens wrote an incendiary polemic about him, declaring him guilty of war crimes. One doubts not that Henry cringed when remembering the coup in Chile, the…
Continue Reading →Voicing Doubts
As October 14, Referendum Day, beckons, Australians are asked whether to say “Yes” or “No” to the insertion of a new Chapter (IX) with a single section, s.129, into the Commonwealth Constitution. The key Chapters in the existing Constitution set out the main sources of power, and how that power is balanced, between the Federal Parliament (Chapter I), the Executive Government (Chapter II), the Judicature (Chapter III) and the States that complete our federal system (Chapter V). In Australia’s Federal system, the States have exclusive legislative power over their territories, but the Federal Government can override this by having the…
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