Wet season is here, and COVID won't leave but starts to behave

Dear ,

We had a great function yesterday with Hon Tony Abbott AC, despite the best efforts of the COVID pandemic to derail it. First scheduled for July last year 7 months later it actually happened. If you want to know what you missed, we recorded it  and it is up on YouTube (to view click here). We also have some photos up on our Facebook page.

Now we have two more great functions coming up. My dad would have been 108 if he were still alive today, and he used to complain how it always rained at Christmas down the Gold Coast when he was a child. It seems those days have returned, which confirms that climate change is real, because it climate changes, but not always in the one direction.

And perhaps our children will write emails reflecting on our memories of the Great COVID Pandemic of 2020-2022, when governments performed so badly that no one could think a centrally controlled economy was capable of providing what people need when they need it. That takes a whole lot of self-interested actors trying to do what their customers want them to do, when they want it. Hopefully the COVID panic will not repeat itself.

The Great Covid Panic

Understanding how that panic happened and what we might do about it, is the subject of The Great Covid Panic: What Happened, Why, and What To Do Next, to be launched by one of the authors, Gigi Foster. Gigi is a professor of economics at the University of New South Wales, awarded Best Young Economist of the Year in 2019, and co-presents The Economists with Peter Martin on ABC Radio National.

The function is Friday 11 February, in our offices, starting at 6:00 pm. You can book by clicking here. Gigi is a coal miner's daughter from Pennsylvania. She's feisty, funny, and smart. I disagree with many of the conclusions of the book, and I'm hoping this function can produce some creative tension and produce some solutions to our current situation. To book, click here. To buy the book and have it signed by Gigi, click here and select "pick-up", otherwise you can have it delivered directly.

Green Murder

Professor Ian Plimer is a fighter for the truth and as a geologist he takes a longer view than even my dad did. My dad could tell you that in 1930 there were three big sand dunes between the houses at the front on Currumbin Beach and the ocean. Ian Plimer can tell you that distance was about 30 kilometres 12,000 years earlier. Likewise he can put our current climate into perspective.

Ian believes that by pushing for anti-human policies the Greens have effectively killed millions of people, and would kill many more if their extreme policies were implemented. Green Murder is his J'accuse - an indictment of Green ideology. The function is Sunday February 20, at the home of James and Patrice McKay in Paddington. The function starts at 3:00 pm and will be in- or outdoors, depending on the weather. To book click here. And to buy the book, click here and select "pick-up".

Barty Party

And finally, January always brings test cricket and the Australian Open Tennis tournament. This is a tribute I wrote to Ashleigh Barty, published yesterday in The Spectator, which identifies not just skill, but almost a spirituality, in how she plays, and determines it is authentically Australian, in contrast to the look-at-me narcissism of Nick Kyrgios. Kyrgios represents the postmodern malaise, and Barty the stoic grit that made the Australia of today.

See you soon,

GRAHAM YOUNG
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR