All Articles
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Courage in public office and Australia’s recognition of Palestine
“No room for robust debate” within ALP caucus. “There is so much courage that Australia could exercise. We could come out and be the real champions of human rights, and human life, that we claim to be – especially within the Labor party.” High profile Senator Fatima Payman and former Labor Senator Margaret Reynolds discuss Continue reading »
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Can Australia and Indonesia provide leadership on climate change?
Almost certainly not, but someone really ought to try while it’s still possible. Continue reading »
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A five-minute scroll
Trump announces the head of NASA and the USA’s future among the stars. Barbara Pocock speaks out on nuclear waste in our own backyard. An Israeli professor speaks out on the genocide, while Israel has continued attacks in Gaza overnight. On the anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s death we are reminded of his views of the Continue reading »
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The Electoral Reform Bill is stalled but the party is far from over
The Australian Uniparty— also known as the cosy ALP/LNP coalition of self-interest—is jockeying for electoral reform. Talks between Labor and the LNP have broken down so those reforms are not coming in any time soon but, as former New South Wales Labor premier Jack Lang was fond of saying, “Always back the horse named ‘self-interest’, Continue reading »
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Misleading reports on antisemitic incidents by ECAJ
It is very unfortunate that the new Executive Council of Australian Jewry Report, Anti-Jewish Incidents in Australia 2024 is marred by fundamental flaws, accidental or otherwise. This problem is in line with other reports emerging from the pro-Israel lobby, reports that get considerable media coverage. Continue reading »
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A call to all Christians in Australia to strive for a just peace in the holy land
In the Name of Christ, Our Peace – The time has come for people of faith to hear the cries of the people of Palestine, Gaza and Lebanon and to do everything in our power towards the ending of the death and destruction they are suffering. Continue reading »
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Decency and dignity generate and earn respect
While Bob Menzies pumped the political scare campaign to the max, to help ensure his newly formed Liberal Party’s ongoing popularity between 1949-66, locals were often more relaxed about sharing community life with those they battled on election day. Continue reading »
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West Papua, an Australian and UN crime scene
I have a friend Julian King, who Duncan Graham reports has been subjected to a stun grenade as our Australian Federal Police burst through his door to seize his PhD research, phone and computers. Reportedly, the AFP are concerned about OPM (Organisasi Papua Merdeka _Free Papua Organisation), the indigenous independence movement in West Papua. Continue reading »
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Google faces verdicts from anti-trust trials as Trump term approaches
Search behemoth Google is under pressure in the US after three anti-trust trials concluded, with one of the remedies proposed being a call for it to be forced to sell off its web browser, Chrome, an app that dominates the browser space. Continue reading »
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Western democracy now finds itself in a parlous state
In 1947, former British prime minister Winston Churchill famously observed that: “Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms Continue reading »
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A five-minute scroll
Bob Carr reminds the Israel lobby that Australia has voted in the UN alongside our partners. In Gaza, realities of bombings in displacement camps, the challenges of winter and fleeing attacks. Ben Gvir has banned the call to prayer (not the first time). In London, a “Yes it is genocide” flag is rolled out in Continue reading »
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Can Australian political leaders enjoy their holiday season while Palestinians starve?
How much longer can the Australian Government hide from the horrific atrocities that continue in Gaza? Continue reading »
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Survival of a people: Threats to Palestine’s existence as Israel kills 45,000
Israeli leaders insist that all the people of Gaza are Hamas. In the same breath, Prime Minister Netanyahu boasts that victory in his war depends on the complete annihilation of Hamas, by which he presumably means a whole people? Continue reading »
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If you want peace, don’t prepare for war
In a series of baby but not blindfolded steps, our Government is making Australia ready for war. The latest of these appeared in the small print of a memorandum on 27 November. Continue reading »
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Why the Productivity Commission is kidding itself on childcare
A more robust analysis by the commission might have yielded different priorities or recommendations for childcare. Continue reading »
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“The elephant in the room”: the refugee status determination process
Having befriended and worked closely with many Asylum Seekers for the pasts 14 years I have no hesitation in highlighting a key problem with the recent Migration Bill changes. It is the uncritical assumption that the refugee status determination process is professional and fair and sensitive to changing realities. That assumption is simply not true. Continue reading »
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Who wants a hung parliament?
Come the election (whenever) the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition will unite in warning voters against the perils of a hung parliament. Only Labor or the Coalition can form government, we will be told. We should choose one or the other. Continue reading »
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The continuing ‘struggle for Syria’
The dramatic ‘rebel’ advance into Aleppo dominates the headlines. In history rather than headlines, however, the importance of current events shrinks into relativity, as the ‘West’ and its regional allies have been tearing apart, or trying to tear apart, Syria for more than a century. This is what the journalist and historian Patrick Seale called Continue reading »
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For whom the bell tolls: The rise and fall of the US empire
“No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thine own Or of thine friend’s were. Each Continue reading »
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Martial Law: US backed Yoon pledges to “eliminate anti-state elements”, Koreans rise up in resistance
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared Martial Law for the first time in 45 years, suspended the South Korean legislature, and banned elected representatives from accessing the National Assembly building with massive police mobilisation. Continue reading »
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Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s Isi Leibler was a “covert agent of Israeli intelligence”
When I began editing Quadrant with Peter Coleman in 1989, my co-editorship was soon overwhelmed by the most unpleasant controversy of my life, at least thus far. Continue reading »
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Absent justice: Australia’s Afghanistan war crimes investigations thin out
Small to middle-sized states often crow at undertaking what are vulgarly described as “world firsts”. Australia is certainly one of them, with governments and news outlets keen to announce on a weekly basis that something never previously done has been initiated, implemented, or discovered. A closer inspection shows such declarations to be premature. Continue reading »
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A five-minute scroll
Australia will pay an increasingly heavy price for its belief in US propaganda, writes Scott Burchill. IDF film shows soldiers damaging humanitarian aid, while the plight of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails is brought to light. CCTV footage shows the moment a bomb explodes in a University hospital in Idlib, Syria. In Asia, South Korea’s Continue reading »
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Strategic space in a bounded global order: China, Russia and America
Geoff Raby AO, former Australian ambassador to China, discusses with Michael Lester the remaking of the global order in his book Great Game On: The Contest for Central Asia and Global Supremacy (Melbourne University Press, 2024). Continue reading »
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When media and the state collude
It was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, a day meant to mark the start of a 16-day global campaign to end the scourge of gender-based violence against women. Yet, on this day of reflection and action, The Australian chose to publish a follow-up story to its sensationalised splash just two Continue reading »
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Politicking wins, vulnerable people lose out
Isn’t it better to hold on to integrity, uplift the lives of the most vulnerable in our society and risk losing an election, rather than win an election through the brutal treatment of society’s most vulnerable people? Continue reading »
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Dógè Vu: Deregulation on a massive scale. What could go wrong?
The selection of Elon Musk as a government efficiency bureaucrat (in DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency) is heralded as an innovative disruption to improve public service. Continue reading »
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Biden Pardons his son: The US “rules based order” in action
When I’m asked what I think of Biden granting a pardon to his son for offences, which Biden himself has spoken openly about as deserving of prison, I don’t have much to say. On the same day, I see criticism of China because a senior military official has been removed from his post and is Continue reading »
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A five-minute scroll
Trump seeks a currency commitment from BRICS or 100 percent tariffs will apply. The man feeding up to 3,000 Gazans daily has been targeted and killed, while Al Jazeera investigates IDF use of quadcopters with sounds of babies crying luring Gazans from their homes. A soldier tells Hareetz that what he has seen in Gaza Continue reading »
