Victoria’s desalination plant Sir, NCC president Peter Westmore was far too generous to the previous Victorian Labor government in his costing of the Wonthaggi desalination plant at $4 billion dollars (“Labor leader in hot water over ‘dirty’ campaign”, News Weekly, August 16, 2014). The original capital cost was estimated at $2.9 billion, which quickly blew out to $3.5 billion and finished at over…

The United States minimum wage is not the cause of high unemployment among American blacks, nor are large amounts of government-to-government aid being siphoned off today by corrupt leaders in developing nations, as claimed by Hal G.P. Colebatch. These claims were made in Dr Colebatch’s review in News Weekly (August 16, 2014) of Jason L. Riley’s book, Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals…

Lucy (rated MA 15+) and The Expendables 3 (rated M) are reviewed by Symeon J. Thompson. As a film critic, I see more films than I have the chance to comment upon. I often watch a few at time, one after the other. It can be quite interesting to see the impact that watching one film might have on subsequent films. Scarlett Johansson…

  INVENTING THE INDIVIDUAL: The Origins of Western Liberalism by Larry Siedentop (UK: Allen Lane / Penguin) Hardcover: 448 pages ISBN: 9780713996449 Price: AUD$39.95   Reviewed by Bill James   There are some allegedly self-evident things which modern Westerners take for granted themselves, and assume have always been taken for granted by everyone else. These include individualism, in both its psychological and socio-political…