Lucy Hamilton
Lucy Hamilton is a Melbourne writer with degrees from the University of Melbourne and Monash University. She is a doctoral student at the University of Technology Sydney.
Lucy's recent articles
18 April 2023
Secrecy is our enemy: whistleblowers must be defended
One of the most hated aspects of the Morrison government was the secrecy. Over and again, we continue to shock to revelations of hidden wrongdoing long after their defeat last May.
28 March 2023
Infiltrated by extremists, what will the real Liberals do now?
The Labor victory in NSW this weekend has put the Liberal Party on notice. While many local issues were in play, the increasing radicalisation of the party at federal and state levels is making it unelectable. The usual drongos voices cry, Liberals must go further right to win, but Australias superior electoral system will make it hard for a radical right Liberal Party to win government.
26 March 2023
Why do police high five Neo-Nazis?
On some level it is straightforward for a Neo Nazi protest to be easy for police to handle. As we saw on the streets of Melbourne last weekend, and repeatedly over recent years, a high five for white supremacist protesters is an easy gesture for some police officers.
24 March 2023
The Voice: Newscorps dangerous zero sum games
As the wording of the Voice referendum question is released, the Murdoch medias news drives resentment with propaganda as constant as drums of war. The pounding message for its audience is that every development is a zero sum game, one that only defrauds this conservative base.
28 February 2023
We are not America
Australia is transitioning from our old colonial master to a self-selected new colonial master. We have those with power nostalgic for the glories of imperial Britain.
10 February 2023
How much blood are we prepared to let extremists spill?
JK Rowling recently tweeted a defence of her bigotry, conflating trans people with, in her words, violent, duplicitous rapists.
20 January 2023
The Ultra High Net Worth Individuals strongest weapon: News Corp
We are at a crossroads. The Ultra High Net Worth Individual (UHNWI) class is creating a new international feudal order, assisted by the professional enabler class including politicians in pursuit of their money. One of those enabling mechanisms is the media. In Australia, News Corp serves as the strongest weapon in the creation of their desired world.
12 January 2023
Blaming Morrison for Liberals disastrous collapse is a facile critique
We see a tendency to blame individuals for the crisis in our politics across the AUKUS nations. This is facile. Donald Trump did not create the farce of a Republican party seen in the vote for the Speaker in early January. Boris Johnson did not create the catastrophe that is the British Conservative party displayed over the Liz Truss moment. Blaming Scott Morrison for the Liberal Partys disastrous collapse is another shallow critique.
15 December 2022
Defending ourselves from infiltration
The Age last year revealed that special forces veteran Ben Roberts-Smith wore the provocative symbol of a crusader cross on his breast over his uniform while on duty in Afghanistan. Apparently quite a few others wore it.
14 December 2022
Fighting paranoid nostalgia, EU puts financial screws on Orbn
Around the west, authoritarian right wing parties are fighting the changes to the world that scare them. Protecting western liberalism is a challenge proponents of the democratic project are only just beginning to address.
29 November 2022
The right is now lies and bigotry: what next for conservatives?
Those of us who hope for a future for our children cannot vote for the current right, infected by international strains of bigotry and deceptive authoritarianism as it stands. The centre right must evaluate what it has to offer, rather than cowering under the threatening might of its extreme partners.
22 November 2022
Victorian Elections: Liberals under siege from extremist religious groups
The Victorian election is a mess. This is the product of the destruction of our conservative forces by international right wing radicalism; for people in that sphere discrediting democracy is the desirable first step in dismantling the status quo. For the rest of us, it is a threat.
21 November 2022
Greed and a spoiled society: workers are not the problem
Of course The Australian republished Andy Kesslers ridiculous Wall Street Journal column, The decline of work in a spoiled society. Those News Corp bedfellows continue to miss that they are at the core of the problem.
17 November 2022
Our media is failing us
At a moment, when one side of politics has abandoned the bases of democracy as an impediment to their grasp on power, we need journalists holding them to account rather than gaslighting the public, normalising the rot.
9 November 2022
Covid Hindsight: Victoria acted on nightmare potential for system collapse
The press has been spattered in recent weeks with hindsight wisdom about Australias - and particularly Victorias - handling of the pre-vaccine pandemic. The relatively easy time we are having with COVID now and the low numbers of people being hospitalised with COVID are being used to argue that earlier restrictions were unnecessary but it is crucial to remember what the world looked like when those decisions were made.
31 October 2022
The Storm is Here: can Australia prevent the conspiracy sphere metastasising into fatal disease?
Sometimes it takes a war correspondent to cast light on what is happening at home.
27 October 2022
The IPA launches campaign to harass teachers. Why???
The IPA has become a culture war factory with barely any research to justify the label think tank and the tax perks it claims. Their campaign to harass teachers, however, is utterly self-defeating.
22 October 2022
News Corp is normalising fascistic politics
The radical right, and in particular, Murdochs News Corp, are laundering the dirty ideas of the people deploying fascistic politics to make them seem normal conservative thought.
14 October 2022
Alex Jones $1.5 billion loss reignites free speech debate
The AU$1.5 billion dollar payout that conspiracy-monger Alex Jones is being forced to pay to the families devastated by the Sandy Hook massacre is the check on free speech that we all need to discuss.
7 October 2022
News Corp tied into extreme right wing CPAC
Last week a group of Neo Nazis performed their salute while protesting a youth Queer event in Melbournes Moonee Ponds. The police stood by, allowing the intimidation as an exercise in free speech, despite the fact that Victoria has made displaying the swastika illegal.
6 October 2022
Liberal candidate supports US-style abortion ban ahead of state poll
The parties of the right in Australia are changing faster than their voters might recognise. It is increasingly the case that a vote for the conservatives is a vote for the radical or religious right.
3 October 2022
Integrity commission: Will Australia avoid US, UK drift to illiberalism?
The UK and the US stand on the brink of something unthinkable a decade ago. Australians must fight to ensure that the proposed National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) resists the radicalised right and protects democracy against Competitive Authoritarianism.
22 September 2022
Morrison joins hard right IDUs embrace of Viktor Orban
Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison has joined the advisory board of the International Democrat Union. It is an organisation that is much more radical than its self-declared defence of the centre right spin suggests.
15 September 2022
Murdoch, the Prince/King and conspiracy theories
There is set to be some anxiety in monarchist groups in the community as they reconcile the ascent of King Charles III to the throne with their fear. Even in educated hard right circles like The Spectator Australias readership, conspiracy theories about him are evident.
4 September 2022
Asylum seekers languish through the job summit
In the week of the Albanese governments job summit, the immigration department again sent out a raft of letters to bridging visa holders in Queensland advising them it was time to reapply to rollover their permission to stay in Australia. While politicians and sector representatives debated whether we needed skilled and unskilled migrants to tackle the workforce shortfall, a substantial group remain in the country in limbo and barely tapped.
28 August 2022
CPAC Australia and Murdoch
One of the most unsavoury events on the Trumpist right is CPAC. This is an organisation that stages Conservative Political Action Conferences in America, as well as internationally. CPAC Australia has been operating since 2019 and the 2022 event is due to take place in Sydney this October.
21 July 2022
Orban's Australian sycophants
Australians welcoming the defeat of our nascent religious right in the May election need to pay attention to the echoes of the American right wing strategies looming ahead of their 2024 election, and the faction in Australia that shares those goals.
10 June 2022
What is the "mad left"?
Even before the Albanese government was certain that it would have a clear majority, the Sky News chorus had begun baying about the mad left taking power. What the madness constitutes is never quite made clear. It is vibe rather than diagnosis.
6 June 2022
Dutton and Trump politics
The mainstream media in Australia is currently whitewashing fascist politics. It is not just sycophantic, or lazy, journalism. It is dangerous.
25 May 2022
Clive and the global right
It is easy to laugh at Clive Palmers stunts. Whether hes talking about creating a Jurassic Park or sending texts before an election claiming that Australia is giving control of all healthcare to the WHO, the temptation is to roll our eyes.
22 May 2022
The Teal tsunami and the entitled princelings
The teal tsunami has marked a fascinating moment in Australian politics. Not only has it put integrity and real climate action at the forefront of our civic conversation, it has sent a collection of strong and accomplished women into federal parliament.
12 May 2022
The destructive Rupert Murdoch
The grim news is that Rupert's heir, Lachlan, is a less intelligent and harder right force in News Corp. The death of the old man cant save us.
8 May 2022
Gender anxiety on The Right
The furore within the Liberal Party about Katherine Deves. Fox star Tucker Carlsons accidentally homoerotic trailer for his new documentary, The End of Men. Even, partially, Putins invasion of Ukraine. All share the hard rights obsession with strong men and imposing order.
7 April 2022
Scott Morrisons constant disingenuous role play as tradesman and labourer
The recent budget has underscored that the Coalition government has abandoned the needy, and the nations future. Whether an Australian is hunting for a job or displaced from disaster-wrecked town, they should expect almost nothing from our leaders.
13 March 2022
Don't expect much - with climate disasters you will largely be on your own
When Scott Morrison chides inundated Australians about expecting too much from the government or the ADF during a crisis, he is not just speaking about the nightmare scale of these catastrophic floods. He is setting expectations for the climate emergencys cascading disasters. Youre on your own.
8 March 2022
Oligarchs in Russia and elsewhere. Rule by the powerful and the wealthy few
Australia has its own oligarchs in mining, property, finance, gambling and of course in the media.
24 February 2022
Dog whistles to create a straw man argument
The dogwhistle to the frightened right falls in the tradition started by John Howard.
27 January 2022
Lies, lies, lies and the lying liars who tell them
Politicians, predominantly on the right, have repeatedly been caught lying in direct contravention of video evidence. The falsifications arent minor.
2 January 2022
Liberals now a pitiful shadow of the party founded by Menzies
The threat to Australia's democracy from a damaged right is growing with the Coalition government mired in deceit, corruption and ideological extremism.
26 December 2021
Democracy in decline: Australia's slide into 'competitive authoritarianism'
Australia is at a critical point. A government that would cling to power to impose unpopular policy threatens the very nature of our democracy.
18 December 2021
Australia is at risk of letting its democracy decay beyond retrieval
Having adopted a banal imitation of American exceptionalism, Australia is at risk of following the US into decline.
11 December 2021
Depressed by the press: journalism bows to the authoritarians
Weakened by commercial and political pressures, legacy media are struggling to counter the antagonism of vested interests, writes Lucy Hamilton.
2 December 2021
Charities muzzled when climate action advocacy is most needed
Blocking charities from lobbying on political issues such as climate change is a blow to a liberal democracy and to our children's futures.
22 November 2021
Culture war over religious freedom normalises fascist politics
Australian conservatives' obsession with religious freedom is just another US import, and part of a worldwide surge in fascist identity politics.
18 November 2021
Speak without fear, as long as you're a white, male, Christian conservative
Who can and cannot express their truth is defined by the people who have always held power, and patrolled in the digital age by online shock troops.
12 November 2021
Think tanks' call for 'freedom' really promises authoritarianism
Ideological think tanks campaigning for 'freedom' are really pushing us further into a competitive authoritarianism regime.
15 October 2021
Australia must beware racist dog whistling in next election
A number of columns in these pages have observed that the AUKUS agreement seems a timely gambit to create a khaki election campaign for a floundering Coalition government. It is also potentially a dog whistle effort to deploy racism to maintain power.
7 October 2021
How the conservatives grew to reject experts and science
Anti-vaccine rioters on Melbournes streets were part of QAnon's radicalisation of ordinary citizens around the world in this Covid era. They are the local eruption of an aggrieved demographic which resents a system it struggles to comprehend.
6 October 2021
Australia has proved fertile ground for US anti-intellectual propaganda
Cynical conservative strategies in US politics have well and truly made their way into Australian discourse just look at the demands of the rioters in Melbourne for Ivermectin.