Author: Malcolm King

This story was in The Guardian (Australia) recently, written by Martin Ingle. Some years ago I made the same observation for a newspaper in Adelaide. There’s no forward drive, no optimism in film and writing. Same old depressing, naval-gazing stuff. “There has been much talk about our hunger for a “return to optimism”. Our world…

How Green was my trans-gender valley? Not very. These days I rarely comment on political issues but at the last Federal election, the Green’s leader Adam Bandt was turfed out of his Melbourne seat which was won by Labor’s Sarah Witty with a swing of more than 8 per cent. Even so, the Albanese government…

This is from By Charlotte Wilkes at the ABC Some fairly dodgy stats here trying to measure qualitative effects. Social media has destroyed reading for many and I’m not sure how popular non-fiction is for blokes these days. But one key reason is the feminisation of literature. Women write stories women want to read but…

I rarely read Jenna Price in the SMH, as she’s the epitome of a soft left, over-educated, inner suburban wanker. But this story hit the nail on the head. I taught at RMIT for 14 years and saw courses put online and die, people leave in droves and some of the worst teaching possible. There…

Anson Cameron is one of my favourite writers. Fantastic turn of phrase, witty and a down-to-earth vocabulary that even pashmina wearing trendies who read The Age can understand. Anson writes a regular column in The Age. Thank God. By Anson Cameron Gloom begets gloom. Darkness is the perfect environment for anxiety. As I’m taking nightly…

This election Australians have a stark and historical choice: vote for Dutton and his seven nuclear reactors or build ocean wind farms off the coast. The Coalition reckons reducing the roll out of renewable energy, extending the life of ageing coal plants and building publicly funded nuclear plants after 2040, will be cheaper and more…

In the next five to 10 years, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics will transform every sector of Australian society, from the cars we drive, the books we read, to the jobs we work. Yet the two major parties in the federal election have failed to detail how AI will be managed, if at all. It’s like…

This blurb is from the SMH and it identifies what is wrong with much immature published fiction. It’s as if a whole generation or two have carved V for victim on their forehead. I don’t mind a bit of trauma in my fiction like I don’t mind helping an old lady across the road. But…

By Anson Cameron, The Age, April 11, 2025 I had a good hoot over this as it is so true. No one in the so-called ‘progressive movement’ today reads Marx. They bow before multiculturalism and various PC gods, but I know what he means. “The Australian Left were once a carnival of zealots fevered with…

This is from writer Sonia Orchard, who might have gone to RMIT when I ran the writing programs. There were plenty of young women like Orchard, who, in another time, would have made solid cadres for the Cultural Revolution. Looks like Orchard, who reminds me of an over-educated Madame Defarge, has just read The Knowledge Gene and…