Culture

28 October 2022

Dr Bella d’Abrera, Director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program at the Institute of Public Affairs, has today welcomed Peter Dutton’s Budget Reply speech and his statements on Australia’s culture, and what children are taught in schools. “Peter Dutton has declared he will move the Liberals back into the political mainstream and that he will fight for the values

18 November 2021

There’s a joke that, unlike a tub of yogurt, Australia hasn’t developed any culture after 200 years in the sun. The truth is that Australia has a distinct culture. Those who make such jokes just don’t like it. It’s part of our national character as Australians to not take ourselves too seriously, but this poses a dilemma when we’re confronted

30 January 2021

In the middle of the 15th century, Italian philosopher, bishop, and humanist Francesco Patrizi of Siena wrote a number of important political treatises second only in popularity to that of Machiavelli. In one volume on political education, Patrizi tackled the perennial problem of incivility in society, proposing that the solution lay in educating the ruling classes in the virtue of

29 January 2021

Before The Economist magazine became the in-house journal for the woke business elite, it printed a fascinating article entitled “The burden of history” about how the past is viewed in the different countries of the European Union. The piece began by quoting Javier Solana, then the EU’s foreign policy spokesperson who talked about how Americans and Europeans each interpret the exact same

7 June 2019

Anyone who’s ever been to London and travelled on the Underground will know the words “mind the gap”.The phrase, together with concepts such as parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, freedom of speech and freedom of the press is one of Britain’s great contributions to the world. “Mind the gap” is a useful description for one of the reasons why

23 November 2018

Stan Lee’s contribution to modern pop culture was nearly without comparison. His creations in the pages of Marvel Comics – the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, the Daredevil and many more – have infused Western mythology. Few writers could write the aspirational hero better than Lee, and his creations have said more about responsibility, leadership, integrity and

18 May 2018

The ideology of identity politics, the theory that individuals should be judged not on their personal merits but according to their gender, race, and class, has escaped from university lecture theatres and hit corporate boardrooms. The Australian Stock Exchange wants at least 30 per cent of company directors of each of our 300 largest listed companies to be women. The Labor

26 January 2018

If you were a tourist attending the Australian Open, and you happened to have been perusing the papers in between sets, you would be forgiven for thinking that the entire country is suffering from a collective identity crisis. This is because every year, like clockwork, a minority of apparatchiks of the Left up the ante and push to change the

20 July 2017

Corrupted by identity politics, high culture in the West is no longer about the search for truth or beauty, but merely a tool for the advancement of leftist social engineering. So argues Wall Street Journal editorial writer Sohrab Ahmari in The New Philistines, a polemic about contemporary art. Ahmari’s target is not any contemporary art form or style. Instead, he

26 May 2017

Two great and venerable Australian institutions are facing profound challenges. Each is suffering from a combination of circumstances beyond their control as well as from their own mistakes. Each is confronted by a range of competitors eager to erode their once-assured market dominance. Each has a long and proud history embellished with significant achievement. Yet each has lived for too