The Queensland State Government’s push to depopulate the regions has taken another turn for the worse as farmers in the Paradise Dam irrigation area in the South Burnett face irrigation allocations of just 14 per cent, down from a usual 80 per cent. Because of a farcical lowering of the dam wall by the state government owned entity Sunwater, allegedly due to engineering faults, farmers will suffer. Irrigators say it will be the end of the line for many of them. [Full article]

Broadcaster Claire Fox, director of the Academy of Ideas, is one of James’s doughtiest comrades in the Culture Wars. Oddly, she’s also a self-confessed leftist – formerly of the Marxist Revolutionary Party. But on free speech they are in total agreement.