China’s rise demands a more serious Australian debate
Geoff Raby

China’s rise demands a more serious Australian debate

Australia is right to protest China’s missile testing, but moral indignation and selective outrage are no substitute for a serious strategy on China’s growing power.

Future pharmacy should put patients and taxpayers first
Peter Breadon

Future pharmacy should put patients and taxpayers first

A new report from The Grattan Institute recommends that responsibility for setting pharmacy remuneration be shifted to the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority, in order to ensure Australians can safely and easily access essential medicines.

All Australians have the right to be protected against violence
Jack Waterford

All Australians have the right to be protected against violence

The royal commission must confront hatred and violence against Jewish Australians while preserving free speech, political criticism of Israel and equal protection for all communities.


How much wealth is too much?
Scott A. Leckie

How much wealth is too much?

Extreme wealth is concentrating economic, political and technological power in the hands of a tiny few. Healthy democracies cannot ignore the question of limits.

Pandora's box of assassination
Connie Peck

Pandora's box of assassination

Ignoring the taboo on political assassinations could be perilous for Trump in face of the intense Iranian desire for revenge.

Climate change should be depoliticised
Ken Russell

Climate change should be depoliticised

Fossil fuel interests have politicised climate action and slowed the transition. A trusted, science-led expert group could help galvanise public demand for change.

Beware: Meta’s latest AI image generation tool might use your face
Brad Reed

Beware: Meta’s latest AI image generation tool might use your face

Meta’s new AI image tool may allow users to generate images using other people’s public photos, unless account holders find and disable the setting.


John Menadue

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Pearls and Irritations leads the way in raising and analysing vital issues often neglected in mainstream media. Your contribution supports our independence and quality commentary on matters importance to Australia and our region.

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Getting the Labor Government back in line with Labor history
Paul Malone

Getting the Labor Government back in line with Labor history

Labor's great foreign policy leaders put Australian sovereignty first. The ALP National Conference is a chance to revive that tradition and confront AUKUS.

The responsibilities of giving
Komla Tsey

The responsibilities of giving

Helping others begins with respect, recognising what they have already achieved and how to assist them to realise their capabilities.

Complacency enables regime change
Daryl Guppy

Complacency enables regime change

To counter the rise of tyranny, the West must overcome its belief that democracy cannot lead to wrongdoing and instability.

The private school sweetheart deal should end in 2029
Trevor Cobbold

The private school sweetheart deal should end in 2029

Private schools are campaigning to extend a $1.2 billion fund available only to their sector, even as public schools remain below their agreed funding standard.

The power of dreams – thanks to Freud
Nick Haslam

The power of dreams – thanks to Freud

Neuroscience has challenged Freud's ideas about dreams. Nevertheless, Freud was the one who made us realise dreams can be meaningful.

BRICS: the eulogy for western dominance?
Peter Day

BRICS: the eulogy for western dominance?

The world's economic centre of gravity is moving from the Atlantic toward Asia. This reflects the rise of China and India and the dynamism of the BRICS.

Thirty years after Dolly, cloning is not what we expected
Sathana Dushyanthen

Thirty years after Dolly, cloning is not what we expected

Thirty years after Dolly the sheep, cloning has not delivered armies of identical animals or resurrected mammoths – but it has transformed disease research, conservation and our understanding of cells.

The World Cup is showing countries who they really are
Mohamad Elmasry

The World Cup is showing countries who they really are

The composition of teams in the World Cup suggests that modern national identity cannot be easily disentangled from colonialism, empire and migration.

Getting Murdoched: climategate
Andrew Dodd, Matthew Ricketson

Getting Murdoched: climategate

This edited extract of Getting Murdoched: How Murdoch’s Media Wields Power and Punishment Andrew Dodd and Matthew Ricketson examines Murdoch's destructive anti-climate change campaign.

The case for spiritual sociology
Adrian Rosenfeldt

The case for spiritual sociology

Modern society can measure inequality, power and behaviour in extraordinary detail, but struggles to explain despair, loneliness, hope and the human need for meaning.

Environment: UN says 2050 before greenhouse gas emissions fall
Peter Sainsbury

Environment: UN says 2050 before greenhouse gas emissions fall

Despite all the talk, emissions will be almost 50 per cent higher in 2050, speeding up global warming and bringing tipping points closer. The US’s coercive neocolonialism trades medicines for minerals. And Australian mammals’ eyes, ears and noses help them enjoy the night.

Iran conflict frozen between ceasefire and a long war
Jessica Genauer

Iran conflict frozen between ceasefire and a long war

The US has the military strength; Iran the political resolve. This points to more precarious truces and tit-for-tat strikes in coming months.

Scandals and drift are closing in on Thailand’s prime minister
Thitinan Pongsudhirak

Scandals and drift are closing in on Thailand’s prime minister

Thailand’s government commands a comfortable parliamentary majority, but corruption scandals, weak policy direction and a lack of tangible results are rapidly eroding its legitimacy.

Trump's threats are no substitute for diplomacy
Eugene Doyle

Trump's threats are no substitute for diplomacy

Trump has always had poor impulse control but we are moving into a new phase with F-bombs, real bombs and threats to entire civilisations becoming daily occurrences.

When reality catches up with satire – Message from the Editor
Martyn Pearce

When reality catches up with satire – Message from the Editor

The Boys spent years exaggerating the Trump era. By its final season, political reality had become so grotesque that satire was struggling to stay ahead.

The unfairness we've learned to walk past
Fabian Webber

The unfairness we've learned to walk past

Allowing homelessness to continue is a choice. Ending it must become one too.

John Menadue's book on Israel's war against Gaza

Israel's war against Gaza

Media coverage of the war in Gaza since October 2023 has spread a series of lies propagated by Israel and the United States. This publication presents information, analysis, clarification, views and perspectives largely unavailable in mainstream media in Australia and elsewhere.

Download the PDF

Latest letters to the editor

Homelessness – society's great shame

Peter Sainsbury — Darling Point

Thank you, Fabian Webber, for stating the basic truths about homelessness in plain succinct language. The political response to homelessness (from overcrowding and couch-surfing to living on the streets) over the last three or four decades has been absolutely disgraceful. As has the public lack of outrage – contrast it, for instance, with the (unfortunately all-too-often successful) public backlash to various policies that have sought to marginally reduce various private and corporate lurks. One of the most staggering developments is that it is now generally accepted as normal that people don't just sleep in shop doorways, under awnings, in bus...
Human nature still prevails

Bob Pearce — Adelaide SA

The one thing missing from the well made discussion is human nature and nature in general. All sorts of animals have evolved over millions of years, walked out of the sea, remained on land, and stood up and walked on their hind legs – but these changes don't happen over an electoral cycle. I am not a student of history, but I'm seldom surprised by the similarities between the records of history that i am exposed to. The same greed of the time of slavery still manifests itself today, the same tribalism manifests itself today, the same never-ending self-serving wars,...
Compounding greed

Bob Pearce — Adelaide SA

High school was a very long time ago when I was taught about compound interest. But all this talk about productivity sounds very similar and I believe that expecting to compound the increase on your productivity or compound the increase in your profit has some obvious limitations in my opinion and is ridiculous / impossible.
Efficiency over effectiveness

Les Macdonald — Balmain NSW 2041

As Ross points out in our managerialist culture using the singular and obsessive focus of modern economics we have interprted productivity as simply producing more with less. It is a culture that focuses almost wholly around reducing costs for a given level of output. It can be summarised by the word efficiency in the narrow economists use of the word. The problem with that is it has led western economies to their current ability to produce the wrong things as cheaply as possible. To lift our heads above the simplistic goals of Neo-liberal economics we must distinguish between efficiency and...
Submarine penalty

Pinchos Woolstone — Brooklyn, New York

Did the Australian Government pay France a sizeable penalty a number of years for withdrawing from its contract to purchase the French submarines? If the answer is yes, could that money be used as a credit if Australia pulls l out of the US purchase and returns to its original contract with France.
Set student numbers within a population plan

Jenny Goldie — Cooma NSW

Abul Rizvi recommends that we develop a long-term plan for net migration and to clearly explain that plan to the Australian public. Yes, good idea though it needs to go beyond that. The government needs to develop an overall population plan, set net migration within that, and set overseas student numbers within that. And when determining all these things, it must be within the parameter of the ecological carrying capacity of this country, particularly in light of climate change. According to a report last week by the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group, 'the convergence of extreme heat, food system pressures...
Too keen to sell fossil fuels

Lesley Walker — Northcote

Australia might be, as Ross Gittins suggests, at the forefront of that global renewable energy change. And that is wonderful. But Australia ranks fifth of 15 countries responsible for nearly 80 per cent of global oil and gas extraction since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. Since 2017 Japan’s gas use for electricity generation has fallen 37 per cent. Japanese companies are selling LNG they buy from us to the developing parts of Asia. This undermines their shift to renewables. In 2024 WA’s Labor government commissioned a Deloitte report to support the idea that LNG exports helped “reduce emissions”....
Sauce for the goose!

Les Macdonald — Balmain NSW 2041

I imagine the Chinese would be perfectly happy to cease long-range missile testing over the Pacific on one very important condition. The US has been threatening and undermining China on and off since 1949, when according to them they lost China! Not of course that they ever owned it despite sending their military to China prior to World War 2 in an attempt to evict Japan and take over its dominance in China. They provided financial and military support to The vicious Chinese Nationalist regime of Chang Kai Shek. The CCP, subsequent to the war, fought the Nationalists and won...