Common Sense Australia is a serious Australian news and life commentary site. Its one job is to sort what is real from what is crap.
The tagline is simple. Helping you cut through the crap.
The bit they don’t tell you
You already know most of what you are being told does not add up. You can feel it. A claim lands on the news, something in you says hang on, that’s not right, and you move on because there is nothing to say that does not sound mean.
That is the trick. The whole game. Wrap the rubbish up as kindness. Anyone who points at it gets called cruel. So most people say nothing, nod along, and quietly rot.
Sorry if that sounds rude. But that’s what it is.
This site gives you the words. Not rage. Not long essays. Short, clear, matter-of-fact — here is what they said, here is what is actually happening, here is where the two do not match. Then on with your day.
How this site is different
There is a lot of commentary out there. Most of it is rage-farming — both sides, left and right. We are not that. Rage is cheap and it rots the reader. The longer you read it, the dumber you get.
The voice here is the opposite of rage. Quiet, steady, direct. The same tone you’d use to tell a mate the pie he just bought is off. No hysteria. No breathlessness. No spin. Just the plain line, spoken clearly, with the receipts.
What we stand on
A few things are settled here. Not up for debate.
- Honesty. A lie gets called a lie. No “some say.” No “many believe.” If it is wrong, we say so.
- Common sense. Not extreme ideology. Not extreme style. Extreme clarity about what is obvious.
- Moderation. Almost every honest answer is “not zero, not infinite.” Applied to money, to government, to immigration, to appetite, to everything.
- Decency. We do not kick down at broken people. We do not cheer on cruelty. We do not treat human beings as numbers on a spreadsheet.
- Plain English. If a twelve-year-old cannot follow it, it is not worth publishing.
Being kind and calling crap are not opposites
The modern line says that the kind thing to do is agree. Say yes. Smile and nod. Do not make a fuss. That is not kindness. That is going along with a lie to keep your own life easy.
Real kindness is telling the truth. A doctor who tells a patient “everything is fine” when it isn’t is not being kind. A priest who blesses a life heading for a cliff is not being kind. A mate who laughs along at a story he knows is rubbish is not being kind.
Sorry if that sounds rude. But that’s what it is.
The moral anchor
The author thinks with the Ten Commandments and the morals of Jesus in mind. You will not be preached at. You will not get chapter and verse thrown at you. But where the line here is straighter than the mainstream line, that is usually why.
You do not have to share the anchor to nod along with the conclusions. That is the whole point. The old rules — do not steal, do not kill the innocent, do not lie, honour your parents, treat people straight — were human rules long before any one faith got them written down. Decent people of every tradition recognise them. We write like that.
Who this site is for
Australians first. About Australia first. International stories get written up when they touch us directly — when a Federal Reserve call feeds into the RBA, when a UK law is coming next to Canberra, when an experiment overseas is worth knowing about before it arrives here.
Everything here is written for normal Australians. The tradie after work. The nurse on break. The farmer with a cuppa at five in the morning. The mum at the kitchen table after the kids have gone to bed. Written to be understood by them, not by the economists on the telly or the policy people in the grey buildings in Canberra.
What we write about
Eight threads, each taking one slice of modern Australian life and sorting the real from the rubbish.
- Money & Banks — how modern money actually gets made, and what honest money looks like.
- Freedom & Power — when the state is protecting, and when it is forcing.
- Life & Death — what happens when natural is replaced with engineered, at both ends of a life.
- Family & Home — the first line of civilisation, and what is being done to it.
- Truth & Lies — the information war, and how to read without being owned.
- Faith & Meaning — the soul anchor, spoken in plain words.
- Country & Culture — what we owe the dead and the unborn.
- Strength & Character — virtue as a daily practice.
About the writer
The site is run by Tamhas Buchan, an Australian who got fed up enough with the state of the national conversation to build somewhere that sounds like the way normal people actually talk. The site is not a personal blog. It is not a memoir. Nothing on it is about one bloke’s life. It is about what is happening to the country and to the people in it.
What we will never do
- We will not chase the outrage of the day for clicks.
- We will not run ads that rot the reader — no gambling, no predatory loans, no scams.
- We will not pretend to be neutral on clear lies. Neutrality on a lie is a lie.
- We will not hedge to keep people comfortable. If we thought that was the job, we would not have started.
Stay in touch
New posts go up regularly. The best way to make sure you see them is to subscribe — we will email the headline, a one-line summary, and a link. That is it. No spam. No upsells. No selling your address to anyone.
If you want to write in with a tip, a correction, or something you think we should notice — the contact page is the place.