Housing propaganda from your state-owned media

Jacinta Allan says she is 'helping deliver more options for renters'.

The housing debate has devolved into government overreach and ideological posturing, with policies mismatched to Australian values. Prioritising urban density and renewable energy projects that consume vast tracts of land is a green-left idea that dominates Labor-Greens governments in Australia.

Detached family homes have defined the nation’s way of life since the post-war boom.

When you have room to breathe, you have room to think, but when you are crammed into future slums, you vote Labor-Greens.

This mismatch in values and policy is evident and insidiously promoted in the state-owned media’s coverage.

In the Unfiltered newsletter, Alexandra Marshall had this to say:

Okay enough of the ABC’s petty propaganda! For a billion dollars a year, you’d imagine the quality of our so-called ‘impartial’ public broadcaster would be better… Instead, we’ve got the ABC pitting ‘YIMBYs’ and NIMBYs’ against each other in the housing debate.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Housing propaganda from your state-owned media.

"The ABC’s latest article on the ‘YIMBY vs NIMBY battle’ exemplifies taxpayer-funded propaganda that distorts the conversation, favours big-government solutions, and undermines free-market principles essential to solving our housing woes."https://t.co/nfYKmApRT8

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) July 14, 2025

The Smart Energy Council’s love letter to Chris Bowen

I want to... give a big shout out to... Chris Bowen – a highly effective minister.

From the National Press Club: Picture this. A room full of journalists, some scribbling notes, others stifling yawns, as John Grimes, CEO of the Smart Energy Council, takes the stage. His speech is less a policy address and more a love letter to the Labor Party, complete with effusive praise for the ‘highly effective’ Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen.

The air is thick with partisanship, and one can almost hear the faint strains of a Labor campaign jingle in the background. It’s a performance so one-sided that even the most ardent Labor supporters are blushing.

That’s what happened today.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, The Smart Energy Council’s love letter to Chris Bowen.

From the National Press Club: Picture this. A room full of journalists, some scribbling notes, others stifling yawns, as John Grimes, CEO of the Smart Energy Council, takes the stage. His speech is less a policy address and more a love letter to the Labor Party, complete with… pic.twitter.com/57TiJ3KSyN

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) July 13, 2025

The Battle of Britain: A boy’s dreams and a family’s legacy

My great-grandfather called me ‘Baron’, after the Red Baron, indulging my dreams of becoming a fighter pilot.

July 10 marks the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. While it was far away from Australia, as a lad growing up in 1980s Far North Queensland, my boyhood imagination soared over the skies of 1940 Britain.

The Battle of Britain wasn’t just history to me. It was an obsession. Fuelled by Paul Brickhill’s Reach for the Sky and my hero-worship of Sir Douglas Bader, Airfix models of Hurricanes, Spitfires, Me-109s, and Me-110s filled my bedroom, each plastic kit a tribute to the RAF’s defiance.

Now in my 50s, that fascination endures, reinvigorated by a recently discovered family connection to another wartime theatre and a career that brought me tantalisingly close to my boyhood dream of becoming a fighter pilot.

In the Unfiltered newsletter, Alexandra Marshall wrote:

Today marks 85 years since the Battle of Britain. Michael de Percy writes, ‘The Battle of Britain, fought from July to October 1940, was far from dull. Hitler’s Luftwaffe aimed to crush the RAF, clearing the skies for an invasion of Britain. Outnumbered, the RAF’s pilots in Hurricanes and Spitfires, often barely out of their teens, fought back with ferocity. Churchill’s ‘The Few’ speech captured their sacrifice: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”’

My latest in The Spectator Australia, The Battle of Britain: A boy’s dreams and a family’s legacy.

July 10 marks the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. While it was far away from Australia, as a lad growing up in 1980s Far North Queensland, my boyhood imagination soared over the skies of 1940 Britain.https://t.co/NgevON4KDa

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) July 10, 2025