Spectator Australia · Mike Jakeman
English cricket's structural problem isn't Duckett's average — it's that the money, the audiences and the talent have all moved to the short form, and administrators keep pretending otherwise.
Test cricket's dying because the best cricketers would rather hit sixes for a franchise in Dubai than grind out a draw in Multan, and you can't blame them — the IPL pays in a fortnight what Lord's pays in a career. The ECB built the Hundred to save the long game and ended up feeding the beast that's eating it.
Spectator Australia · Lisa Haseldine
Keir Starmer eyes the Strait of Hormuz while the rest of his government collapses around him, trying to find abroad what he can't manage at home.
Starmer heading to the Gulf to secure the Strait of Hormuz has the energy of a bloke volunteering to bouncer a nightclub he couldn't get into last weekend. Britain lost the Suez in '56 and hasn't recovered the muscle memory — what exactly is the Royal Navy going to do, sternly sail past a Revolutionary Guard speedboat? Palmerston could send a frigate. Starmer sends a statement.
SMH · Shane Wright
One Nation slips slightly in the polls while still sitting at twenty-four per cent, and the commentariat mistakes a pause for a retreat.
Hanson's vote dips a point and the press gallery declares the fever's broken. Mate, she's still polling at twenty-four — that's not a collapse, that's a breather. The majors haven't won anyone back; the protest vote's just resting between sets.
Spectator Australia · Alan Moran
Alan Moran argues the energy crisis vindicates fossil fuels. PJB notes the column is arguing with a position nobody held.
Alan Moran's cracked open the champagne because a war in somewhere-or-other has proven wind turbines can't fuel a destroyer. Mate, nobody said they could. The argument was always about the grid, not the gunboat — but the Spectator's columnists have spent so long shouting at windmills they've forgotten what the actual debate was.
SMH · Matthew Knott
Iran moves to close the Strait of Hormuz over a US blockade, and Canberra's response is to politely ask both superpowers to knock it off.
Canberra's pleading with Tehran and Washington to play nice in the Strait of Hormuz — which is like asking the two blokes wrestling for the steering wheel to mind the pedestrians. We've got no leverage, no plan B for fuel, and a foreign policy that runs on strongly-worded hope. Menzies would have had a contingency by breakfast. Wong's sending a cable and crossing her fingers.
Spectator Australia · Dimitri Burshtein and Peter Swan
Burshtein and Swan declare Australia a failed socialist state — a country with compulsory super, means-tested welfare, and one of the most market-liberal economies in the OECD.
The Spectator's wheeled out the 'failed socialist state' line about a country with compulsory super, means-tested welfare, and a central bank that'd make Friedman blush. Mate, if this is socialism, Menzies was Trotsky. Burshtein and Swan have discovered that taxation exists and filed it as revelation.
Michael West Media · AAP
With economic data thin on the ground, traders are pinning hopes on a fragile Iran ceasefire and the Strait of Hormuz staying open.
Traders praying Trump cuts a deal with Tehran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open is the geopolitical equivalent of leaving the back door unlocked and hoping the bloke who's been casing the joint develops a conscience. Twenty per cent of the world's seaborne oil moves through a waterway narrower than Sydney Harbour, and the contingency plan is a man who negotiates by tweet.
Spectator Australia · James Allan
James Allan leans on a Tom Stoppard anecdote to launch another round of cultural grievances in the Spectator Australia.
Allan's borrowed a dead playwright's parlour game to pad out another Easter weekend column. Stoppard could make despising things sound like Wilde at dinner. The Spectator's version reads like a bloke at the RSL telling you what's wrong with the country between pokies pulls.
SMH · Mike Foley
Canberra is eyeing military contributions to a Hormuz shipping mission while spruiking cheaper petrol by Anzac Day if Iran honours its pledge.
Cheaper petrol by Anzac Day if Tehran behaves itself — the whole strategic posture of a trading nation hinges on the goodwill of the blokes we're considering sending warships to deter. Albanese will send the frigates and take credit for the bowser. Metternich understood leverage; we've confused it with a fuel voucher.
SMH · Mike Foley
Canberra extends the free RSV vaccine program to Australians over 75, citing transmission from grandchildren as the driver.
Free RSV jabs for the over-75s because the grandkids are walking petri dishes — fair enough, and about time. Public health that actually costs less than the hospital beds it prevents. Credit where it's due: not every expansion of Medicare is a press release with a needle attached to it.
Spectator Australia · Ky Wilson
The staged arrest of Ben Roberts-Smith, just weeks before Anzac Day, is not just bad optics. It is a signal…
The post Before the Dawn Service, there was this appeared first on The Spectator Australia.
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Staging a Roberts-Smith arrest three weeks before Anzac Day is the sort of choreography that makes you wonder who's directing. The Spectator reckons it's a signal — mate, it's a dog whistle played on a foghorn. Courts run on evidence; timing runs on theatre. When the calendar does the prosecuting, the verdict's already been filed.
