All Articles
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ELAINE PEARSON. What Next for Australian ISIS Suspects? Government Should Pursue Full Investigations, Fair Trials (Human Rights Watch)
The Australian government is taking an important step by helping eight Australian children of suspects of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) return home from northeast Syria. The children were held for months without charge under horrific conditions in Syria’s al-Hol Camp. The youngest is two years old. Continue reading »
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PATRICK BUCHANAN. Memo to Trump: Trade Bolton for Tulsi (The American Conservative)
“For too long our leaders have failed us, taking us into one regime change war after the next, leading us into a new Cold War and arms race, costing us trillions of our hard-earned tax payer dollars and countless lives. This insanity must end.” Donald Trump, circa 2016? Continue reading »
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MACK WILLIAMS. Iran : Coalition of the less than willing !
The spectacle of Prime Minister facing the “full court press” from President Trump and his team across the dinner table in Osaka starkly demonstrated how G20 Osaka was to be Morrison’s real initiation to the global arena. As the Iran crisis threatened to intensify it was little surprise that this became a prime focus of Continue reading »
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JACK WATERFORD. Pyne turning public role to private profit (Canberra Times 29.6.2017)
Australia yet again at the bottom of the democracies for standards of public conduct, and the will to enforce them. Continue reading »
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. The exhumations have resumed.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the graveyard, the exhumations have resumed. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL KEATING. Urban and Regional Policy
Spatial inequality has risen dramatically over Australia in the last forty years, and our cities are in many ways becoming less liveable. This article draws on the recent CSIRO report on the Australian National Outlook to summarise the major policy shift that is required affecting urban development to enable well-connected, affordable cities that offer more Continue reading »
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PAUL BARRATT. Australia should not participate in conflict with Iran.
Australia should not participate in any military action against Iran. The current tensions have been created by the Trump Administration, and the ANZUS Alliance creates no obligation for us to assist. President Trump may think that a war against Iran “would not last very long”, but any significant military action really would set the Middle Continue reading »
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JOHN KERIN. Trump’s latest Farm Bill and Implications for Australia’s Farm Exports.
Trump’s trade policies and reaction to the rebound of them has resulted in another increase of $23b subsidisation on top of the $12b supposedly one-off package last year for US farmers who are ‘collateral damage, as a result of his policies. Put together, this represents two thirds of Australia’s total agricultural output.Do good allies damage Continue reading »
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The Facts About School Funding in NSW
The reputation of the NSW Government for fully implementing the Gonski funding model is totally unwarranted. The NSW Government took the opportunity of increased Commonwealth funding for public schools during 2013-2017 to cut its own inflation adjusted funding of public schools while maintaining funding for private schools. This continued the trend from earlier years. Continue reading »
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Folau saga: when employers and sponsors become the thought police
Like Paul Collins, I am destined for Israel Folau’s version of hell on multiple counts of sin. Indeed I will be even deeper in it since I have repeatedly, over several decades, refused to embrace the love and salvation offered by Jesus Christ despite countless missionaries and proselytisers pleading with me to do so and Continue reading »
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NOEL TURNBULL. A slight yearning for the ‘mother country’
UK Tory Government climate policy is enough to create a slight yearning for the days when Australian conservatives looked to the so-called Mother Country for guidance. Continue reading »
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DAVID TIMBS. Australia’s bishops are presently visiting the Pope. . What are they telling him and will Aus tralia’s ordinary Catholics ever find out?
Australia’s bishops are currently in Rome for their regular ‘ad limina’ visit to the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul . Their last visit was in 2011. While there they will meet Pope Francis, have meetings with many of the Vatican dicasteries (government departments), be briefed on Vatican policy, and in turn will background the Continue reading »
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PETER SAINSBURY. Sunday environmental round up, 30 June 2019
In the USA young people are trying to lodge a legal case against the federal government for failing to protect their constitutional rights, and health professionals are supporting them strongly. Indeed, frustrated at government inaction, health people are getting increasingly active on climate change worldwide. The inaction is well exemplified at current inter-governmental meetings in 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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RICHARD BUTLER Australia can expect to be asked to take part in an attack on Iran: unless Putin saves us.
US hostility towards Iran has reached a threatening level. Disarray in policy making, lies and, the absence of any clear strategy is involved. War is now at hand and may even seem easier for the US. Australia must think through its interests and principles on this and, ask the US substantive questions. Our participation in Continue reading »
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PAUL COLLINS. Give me a break!
Please, please, give me a break from Israel Folau! We’ve all heard more than enough about who’s going to hell. He can believe whatever he wants and he can blow his bags ad nauseam to his Pentecostal mates. But we don’t have to take it seriously. He’s a rugby footballer, for goodness sake, not a Continue reading »
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JOCELYN CHEY. “A Solution of Sorts”
Public trust in China as a responsible international player has declined dramatically according to the Lowy Institute’s annual poll released this week. The reasons for this are not hard to find since there has been ongoing anti-China propaganda in the media over the last year. Just as the orators in C.P. Cavafy’s 1904 poem “Waiting Continue reading »
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Monthly digest on housing affordability and homelessness – May/June 2019
This is a monthly digest of interesting articles, research reports, policy announcements and other material relevant to housing stress/affordability and homelessness – with hypertext links to the relevant source. Continue reading »
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FRANK BRENNAN. Our Church or Our Museum? Contributing to a confident, humble, listening, and questioning Church.
Even with changes to governance and participation, the Catholic Church remains at a cross roads between life and death, between relevance and irrelevance, between a Church and a museum in our post-modern world. Continue reading »
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MAUREEN DOWD. Trump holds off his hawks — for now (New York Times, 26 June 2019)
As shocking as it is to write this sentence, it must be said: Donald Trump did something right.He finally noticed the abyss once he was right on top of it, calling off a retaliatory strike on Iran after belatedly learning, he said, that 150 people could die. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL THORN. Dry July Sobriety Stunt is Unethical
There are many dimensions to the controversy around the shocking decision by cancer charity and fundraiser Dry July to partner with Australia’s biggest alcohol retailer Woolworths, but fundamentally it is unethical. Continue reading »
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ANDREW PODGER. Politics and Administration under the Second Morrison Government: Making the Partnership Work.
The relationship between politics and administration has been likened to the Chinese Yin and Yang: a dichotomy of almost opposites but simultaneously a complementary partnership in which neither can survive without the other. That is the challenge the new Morrison Government needs to understand as it sets out what it expects from the Australian Public Continue reading »
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BRIAN LAWRENCE. The Government’s tax package and Labor’s response: the perspective of a cleaner
The Government’s tax package is unfair to low paid workers. In response, the Labor Opposition has just announced that it will support Stage 1 of the package, within which is embeded much of that unfairness. How might we reduce the unfairness? Continue reading »
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JOHN TULLOH. Time for reflection for Turkey’s humiliated Erdogan
The electoral invincibility of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is officially no longer. When his party’s candidate lost the Istanbul mayoral race in March, he cried foul. After all, Istanbul was Turkey’s biggest city and the mayoralty was once the job which propelled Erdogan himself to political power. He demanded a recount, hoping the original Continue reading »
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Beyond climate tipping points: greenhouse gas levels exceed the stability limit of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets
The pace of global warming has been grossly underestimated. As the world keeps increasing its carbon emissions, rising in 2018 to a record 33.1 billion ton CO2 per year, the atmospheric greenhouse gas level has now exceeded 560 ppm (parts per million) CO2–equivalent, namely when methane and nitric oxide are included. This level surpasses the Continue reading »
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BOB DOUGLAS, Australia Should be Leading The Extinction Rebellion
Prime Minister Morrison is now in a very strong position to lead the way on radical policy reform. I am arguing here that we should help him to develop and promote a strategy for human survival in the face of the ten interacting, mega-threats that seriously threaten the extinction of humanity in the lifetime of Continue reading »
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MARK BUCKLEY. Peter Dutton Brings Us All Down (To His Level)
Just when you thought that Tony Abbott’s being dumped from the nation’s parliament was going to necessarily lift standards, Peter Dutton picked up his baton and ran with it. Continue reading »
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WILLIAM GRIMM MM. What’s under the miter? Legal systems and media exposure are the chief tools to deal with corruption among church leaders
When I was a boy, I watched a narrow clamshell bucket dipping into a sewer up the street from our home to clear muck. I was still too young and too inexperienced in the ways of the Church to be aware of the irony of it, but I found it amusing that the muck-filled bucket Continue reading »
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MARY-LOUISE O’CALLAGHAN. Stepping out – and up – in the hot mess of the Pacific (Lowy Institute)
Personal connections matter, and Scott Morrison’s ties to the Pacific run deeper than many realise. Continue reading »
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GEORGE BROWNING Former Middle East diplomats urge PM to reject Trump Middle East plan.
In response to the Kushner announcement about an economic plan for Palestine, 18 former Australian diplomats have written to Prime Minister Scott Morrison calling on him not to support the plan. The signatories include two former Australian Ambassadors to Israel and many Ambassadors to other Middle Eastern countries. Continue reading »