Australian history

28 November 2022

“History, as a discipline taught in Australian universities, is no longer about a study of the past, it has turned into a woke political project to erase our memory,” said Dr Bella d’Abrera, Director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Project at the Institute of Public Affairs. The IPA has released a landmark audit of the 791 history subjects offered

28 November 2022

History as a discipline as taught in Australian universities is no longer about a study of the past, as it has been replaced by post-modernist theory. In The Idea of History, the great English philosopher Historian RG Collingwood wrote that ‘history is for human self- knowledge. The only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The

30 June 2022

Democracy, the rule of law and freedom of speech might all be ideals originating in Europe, but the legacy of the history and tradition of “the West” is today in Australia either ignored or cancelled. Never has it been more important for Australians to have a sense of their nation’s identity and purpose, yet such a sense is now almost

28 June 2022

The Rugby Football Union and Rugby Australia’s joint decision this month to rename the Cook Cup the Ella-Mobbs Trophy is not only pointless virtue signalling but also a gross misrepresentation of one of the most remarkable figures in our recent history. In the past few years James Cook has gone from being revered as a courageous hero to being vilified

31 March 2022

All 224 Homogenised Temperature Series – Including the Bombing of Darwin I can hardly be accused of cherry picking if I present all the temperature series – all four iterations of the homogenised ACORN-SAT temperature series charted with the raw historical series from the Australia Data Archive for Meteorology (ADAM). ADAM is a little-known data set that contains the unhomogenised values: the temperature values as

30 March 2022

Only last week, the Northern Beaches rural fire brigades were helping to clean up after the second one-in-100-year flood to hit the Hawkesbury in just 12 months. Yet despite the clinging mud, the ruined furniture, the lost possessions and the financial cost of rebuilding twice, in an area where flood insurance is almost impossible to get, the general sentiment was stoical: the

19 March 2022

On March 19, Australians come together to celebrate what may be one of the least appreciated aspects of our democracy. That is, our ability to vote privately inside a polling station without having someone watch over our shoulders. It was this day, 166 years ago in 1856, that the Victorian Parliament first legislated what has come to be known as

4 March 2022

Having recently obtained the special permission needed to leave Australia on government business, my fellow advisors to the UK Board of Trade were curious to know how life was going in the place they’d dubbed “Aus-catraz”. Not since the convict era, I suspect, would Britons have regarded their lives as freer and more easy-going than life in Australia but that,

21 February 2022

On this day 115 years ago, the Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club was established, arguably making it the first organisation of its kind in the world. The 23 blokes who selflessly came together to set up an association that would rescue distressed swimmers on February 21, 1907 was a defining moment in our national story. We have been a

11 February 2022

Australia is a sovereign state with a unique national character that it is entitled to preserve, not just because it is ours, but because it is good. The Australian character, rooted in a profound respect for individuals and their freedoms and duties, is a particular expression of the English-speaking variant of Western Civilisation and its values, which are responsible for unparalleled