Terry Barnes is a Melbourne-based contributor for The Spectator and The Spectator Australia.
This is a summer that Australians want to forget. Australia was shocked and outraged by last month’s Bondi massacre of the innocents by Islamist fanatics. Its government and parliament have descended into angry chaos in Bondi’s wake. Massive bushfires devastated much of the states of Victoria and New South Wales this month, and a tropical
This has been a week when Australia could no longer deny the dark stain of anti-Semitism on our national soul. When our Prime Minister, faced with the horror of Bondi and Islamic jihadist fanatics, failed to rise to the crying need for genuine national leadership. When all Australians, not just our Jewish brothers and sisters,
It’s hard to disagree with the verdict of former Australian cabinet minister Josh Frydenberg on the Bondi Beach attack. ‘Guns may have stolen the life of 15 innocent civilians,’ he said, ‘but it was radical Islamist ideology that pulled the trigger’. Despite that furious denunciation of Australian government inertia on antisemitism since 7 October –
After four days of looking like a rabbit in the headlights, embattled Australian prime minister, Labor’s Anthony Albanese, finally started to act like a national leader willing to do what’s right. Yesterday, Albanese announced his government’s response to a plan to combat anti-Semitism proposed by his hand-picked special envoy on anti-Semitism, Jewish community leader Jillian
It’s been three days since the jihad against innocent Jews at Sydney’s Bondi beach. A nation’s grief is swiftly turning to anger and Australia’s prime minister is floundering. As more is learned about the father-and-son killers who took 15 lives and wounded many more, questions are piling up. How did the father enter the country?
As the appalling story of Sunday’s anti-Jewish mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach continue to unfold, and 16 people are now dead, there have been few glimmers of light in the darkness. Ahmed’s cousin, Mustafa, said Ahmed saw an opportunity to tackle the shooter The men identified as the shooters are a father and son,
It breaks my heart to write this piece. Today, the resurgence of anti-Semitism that has percolated and festered in Australia for the last two years has come to a murderous, horrific climax. In a balmy early summer evening a few hours ago, Sydney’s Bondi beach was the scene of appalling carnage, At least 11 people
It’s all too easy to get hooked by the online world, to fall headlong into it, to spend hour upon hour immersed in it. Cyberspace has its good, but also much bad. Staying in control of their social media lives is difficult enough for many adults, but for children it can be an especially dangerous
What a letdown for lovers of Test cricket in both England and Australia. After just six playing days, the Ashes series between the two old enemies is all but decided. England needs to win all three remaining Tests to regain the Ashes, a feat that only one side has ever achieved: the 1936 Australians, who
Thursday dawned bright and warm over the beaches of northern New South Wales. It was a perfect morning to enjoy sun, surf and sand. One young couple, tourists escaping the Swiss alpine autumn, couldn’t resist the temptation of a 6 a.m. swim at the remote Kylies Beach in Crowdy Bay National Park, a beautiful and
Australia’s parliament is a curious place when it comes to its dress code. Suits without ties: frowned upon. Dresses made from the national flag: absolutely not allowed. Keffiyehs in solidarity with the Palestinian cause: most definitely permitted. On Monday, another piece of clothing caused an uproar in Australia’s Senate, so much so that it had
When it comes to major decisions certain to anger Donald Trump and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, seeking safety in numbers is a wise idea. For that’s what the joint decision by Britain, Australia and Canada to recognise a state of Palestine actually is. It isn’t a bloc of Anglosphere nations showing a united front
On Tuesday evening, my six-year old’s suburban Melbourne primary school staged a wonderful concert, an all-school celebration of contemporary song, dance and collaboration. It was, however, preceded by an elaborate Acknowledgement of Country and Aboriginal Australians, in which a group of children led incantations to the ‘Old Ones’ that the rest of the school echoed
Geographically, eastern Australia is about as far from Israel and Gaza as anyone can get. But given the Australian government’s provocative decision to recognise a Palestinian state while Hamas still exists, you could be forgiven for thinking the conflict is being fought on our doorstep. And on Tuesday, it was revealed that, in a very
Australia and Israel are – were – traditional allies. A former leader of Australia’s Labor party and then president of the United Nations General Assembly, Herbert Evatt, played a significant role in the establishment of Israel in 1948. In recent decades, Labor prime minister Bob Hawke was one of Israel’s staunchest international supporters, once observing
In 1968, the American broadcaster Walter Cronkite told his national TV audience the United Stated was losing the war in Vietnam, causing then-president Lyndon Johnson to remark, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America’, soon after declaring he would not stand for re-election. As he moves to implement a total occupation of Gaza in his
Victoria’s capital, Melbourne, has a dubious meteorological reputation. Our weather is so predictably unpredictable that Melbourne can easily have four seasons in one day. At any time of year, a typical Melbourne day can start off beautifully until the clouds gather, the winds freshen and turn bitingly chill, and it’s time to haul in the
Notoriously, the Australian state of New South Wales was founded as a penal colony. Since it was granted responsible government by Britain nearly 200 years ago, more than a few of the state’s MPs have gone from parliament to prison. Not all that long ago, the New South Wales corrective services minister was convicted of
After an eight-week trial followed avidly around Australia and the world, and a week’s jury deliberation, Australia’s answer to Lucrezia Borgia today has been found guilty of murdering three of her dinner party guests and attempting to murder the fourth. The jury of five women and seven men decided, beyond reasonable doubt, that the presence
America’s policy undersecretary of defence, Elbridge Colby, is one of the brightest brains in Donald Trump’s administration. Having served in the first Trump presidency, Colby has an outstanding reputation as a defence and strategic thinker. He is also, however, very much aligned with Trump’s America First thinking in respect of foreign policy, and the United States’
