All Articles
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DAMIEN CAVE. She’s 83 and a Famous Nun. Australia’s Catholic Leaders Want Her to Stay Away
Sister Joan Chittister, a well-known American nun, feminist and scholar, was looking forward to speaking at a Catholic education conference in Australia next year, figuring there would be plenty to discuss in a country where Catholic schools educate roughly one in five children. Continue reading »
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We must not join Trump’s cold war (AFR 25.6.2019)
Scott Morrison should spell out Australia’s opposition to Washington’s futile attempts to contain China. Continue reading »
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ANDREW BACEVICH. Bret Stephens, Warmonger (The American Conservative)
In fact, some people do want war, including a certain New York Times columnist. Continue reading »
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GEORGE GRUNDY. Greed in the game made in heaven.
I couldn’t sleep last night. All the bigotry, hatred and stupidity in the news gets to me sometimes. For some reason, Israel Folau’s story has really bothered me. It’s not just that old Izzy likes to stand at a pulpit and tell people they’re going to hell, it’s that when called out for it he’s Continue reading »
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. The Peak Crazy of Morrison and Dutton.
It took just a month after the election for the miraculous Morrison mob to dial back up to peak crazy. Continue reading »
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JOHN WILLOUGHBY. Reflections on the average health of average people
I’m writing this, in the concluding years of a career in neurology and neuroscience, concerned for humanity. What do I conclude about the human condition at this time? In a nutshell: we are what we are: overbreeding mammals headed for a population crash as we over-consume the world we live in. Continue reading »
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JACK WATERFORD. Morrison should move before his enemies organise( Canberra Times 22 June 2019)
Right now Labor is preoccupied with its defeat and is not the major obstacle to coalition survival. Continue reading »
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KELSEY CHALMERS and LESLEY RUSSELL. The National Strategy to Reduce OOP costs: will price transparency work?
Reducing patients’ out of pocket (OOP) costs is a major issue for the health policy agenda. But what are the chances that solutions to provide real relief for patients will emerge? Continue reading »
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MICHAEL LIFFMAN: do our universities need more clear thinking?
The election result and the increasingly intolerant divisions in public discussion over recent years have led to the overdue recognition that Australia is indeed seeing a growing polarization in debate and policy development, and a disturbing tendency for people to think within their own ‘bubble’ and to fail to respect or even seek to Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. War with Iran could break the American alliance and force Australia to become independent (The New Daily, 23 June 2019)
I’m writing this at 10,000 metres, a dangerous place to write. There’s something about thin air on a plane and a couple of glasses of wine that moves the bladder closer to the eye. Continue reading »
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MAX HASTINGS. Boris Johnson: brilliant, warm, funny – and totally unfit to be PM (Daily Mail 11.10.2012)
For 20 years I have known London’s mayor as a god-medal egomaniac. If he gets into No. 10, I’m on the first plane out. Continue reading »
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JO KHAN. We still have time to act on climate change — but records will tumble for next 20 years regardless of emissions: study (ABC News)
Our last summer was the hottest on record in Australia, and we can expect the record breaking weather to continue for at least the next 20 years, new climate change research has found. Continue reading »
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BHIM BHURTEL. The threat to Christianity is from within. (Asia Times 21.6.2019)
Christianity is an indispensable cog in the idea of “Western civilization” along with other core values of “the West” supposedly based on the moral and ethical foundations of Christianity. Perhaps no one can imagine “Western civilization” secluding Christianity as depicted by Samuel P Huntington in his famous 1993 Foreign Affairs essay, “The Clash of Civilizations.” Continue reading »
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MICHAEL KEATING. Lies, Damned Lies and [tax] statistics.
Last Saturday the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) published an article, which purported to show that “Middle and high-income earners will face some of the highest tax rates in the English-speaking developed world unless the Morrison government’s $158 billion tax plan is passed in full when the Parliament returns next month”. Unfortunately, I consider this article Continue reading »
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RICHARD WOOLCOTT. If the US treats China like an enemy, then it will become one.
It is time for Australia to accept the reality of the rise of China and a resurgence of Russia. Continue reading »
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Flat earthers and ‘The Australian’.
About sixty years ago, as an undergraduate of Sydney University, I met a flat earther on the campus. Continue reading »
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PAUL COLLINS. A badly governed Church needs a new model. Catholicism continues to wrestle with the unrealized vision of the Second Vatican Council.
It is an understatement to say that Catholicism is in deep trouble. The sexual abuse tragedy and the secrecy and denial surrounding are obvious symptoms. A key element in the broader Church crisis is governance. Continue reading »
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JACK WATERFORD. Morrison faces the climate storm( Canberra Times 15 June 2019)
Climate change is no longer a matter of dry debate: it’s already a bigger threat to our national security than war and trade tension in our region. Continue reading »
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DUNCAN GRAHAM Roaming for relevance
Politicians hunting the grey vote stalk retirement villages and pensioner clubs. Handy because electors mustered in dining rooms and community halls lean to groupthink. Dissidents don’t do well in confined spaces where they’re condemned to stay mum or risk exclusion. Wrong spots. Hucksters should stake out the hills and river banks where independent thinkers and determined doers Continue reading »
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LISA MARTIN. Tampa refugee taken in by New Zealand wins Fulbright scholarship (The Guardian)
‘Given the chance at a new life, we have grabbed it with both hands,’ Abbas Nazari says. Continue reading »
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The Facts About School Funding in Australia
Australia has an inequitable school funding system that continues to discriminate against public schools and disadvantaged students. Government funding has been badly mis-directed over many years with massive increases for the more privileged, better-off school sectors and students and far less for public schools. Continue reading »
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PETER SAINSBURY. Sunday environmental round up, 23 June 2019
Poor planning seems to be endemic in the gas industry. Despite clear evidence that gas is not low in emissions, not needed for grid reliability, not a viable transition fuel and not cheap, governments and gas producers continue to peddle the myths and develop more gas production facilities. Michael Mann argues that system-wide changes, not Continue reading »
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SATURDAY’s GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND
A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts in other media Continue reading »
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MARK BEESON. The US Lobby and Australian Defence Policy, Vince Scappatura, Monash Publishing (a review)
One of the most enduring features of Australia’s foreign and strategic policies is the close relationship between this country and the United States. A number of other countries such as Britain and Japan also claim to have a ‘special relationship’ with the US, but no country has worked more assiduously to turn that rhetoric into Continue reading »
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JACK WATERFORD. The leaking tap: cherchez le Pezzullo-haters (7 June 2019)
As usual with a leak inquiry, it’s not clear that the AFP means to solve the crime. It could be too embarrassing. (This article was posted two weeks ago in the Canberra Times but it is still very relevant. JM) Continue reading »
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CAMERON LECKIE. Here we go again! Yet another false flag incident?
Sun Tzu in the Art of War stated that ‘All war is based on deception.’ We should keep this in mind whenever a major international incident occurs. The application of Occam’s Razor, keeping an open mind and considering a range of possibilities suggests that many of these incidents may have been false flag operations, including Continue reading »
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GAY ALCORN. Call to arms: how can Australia avoid a slow and painful decline? (The Guardian)
Australia has been warned it risks ‘drifting into the future’ if it fails to respond to challenges in a fast-changing world Continue reading »
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DENNIS ARGALL. Absenting Ourselves From the World.
This is mainly about China, but more. We have excluded ourselves in many ways from the engines of modernity in Asia and more widely by our recalcitrance on so many issues and our unwillingness to engage with the new. We are not of such weight for others to care. We demonstrate an incapacity to maintain Continue reading »
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J. BRADFORD DELONG. What to do about China? (Project Syndicate 5.6.2019)
By attempting to “get tough” with China, US President Donald Trump’s administration is highlighting the extent to which America’s star has fallen this century. If the US ever wants to reclaim the standing it once had in the world, it must become the country it would have been if Al Gore had won the 2000 Continue reading »
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ELENA COLLINSON. Anthony Albanese and the People’s Republic of China: an overview (Australia-China Relati ons Institute, UTS)
Following the Australian Labor Party’s (ALP) federal election defeat on May 18 2019, Bill Shorten stepped down as leader of the party. Anthony Albanese, a long-term ALP frontbencher, became the ALP’s leader-elect on May 27 after an uncontested leadership ballot, and was formally endorsed as Opposition Leader on May 30. Continue reading »