The Point is a weekly magazine for Sydney's eastern suburbs – Elizabeth Bay to Clovelly. One issue, every Saturday morning. Free. No advertising. No paywall. Published from North Bondi by James Kell.
The aim is plain: write what we would want to read about the country we live in, from someone who loves it.
We are libertarian by instinct and small-government by argument. Milton Friedman drew the line as well as anyone: government should protect us from foreign enemies, protect us from each other, set and enforce the rules of the game, and adjudicate disputes. Everything beyond that ought to fight for funding before it gets it.
Australia is a unique inheritance. A liberal democracy with deep institutions. A serious military tradition. A fair-go ethos earned over generations. And an unfair advantage in attracting world-class talent who could choose anywhere and choose here.
We want immigration that selects for values and capability. Argentina, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Ireland – the accident of birthplace matters less than what someone brings, and what they would defend.
The state should not be the first answer to every problem. It should not be the last either. Norway's sovereign wealth model and Scandinavia's serious investment in education show that the state, done well, delivers enormous good. Dogmatism in either direction loses to evidence.
We believe in free speech as foundational, including speech that offends. The line is incitement to violence, which is objective and must be policed. Hate-speech regimes that police what feelings a sentence might cause end where Solzhenitsyn documented they end.
We take security seriously. Australia sits in a region where energy chokepoints are leverage and great-power competition is no longer hypothetical. Sovereignty over energy, supply chains, and critical infrastructure is national security policy before it is anything else. Twenty years of governments treating it otherwise is enough.
We credit good decisions when governments make them. We name bad ones plainly. The instinct of the publication is steel-man-then-rebut: before any critical point, the strongest version of the opposing case gets a fair hearing. Confidence comes through argument, not volume.
James Kell lives in North Bondi. He is a Bondi Surf Life Saving Club member and a first responder at the 14 December 2025 Bondi attack. He is an ANU National Security College graduate, a former commando trainee, a Mandarin speaker after five years living and working in China, and the founder of two operating businesses – Sailing Virgins and Scratchie.
Write to hello@jameskell.au. Every reply is read. Corrections are issued in the next edition.