Writer
Allan Patience
Dr Allan Patience is an honorary fellow in political science in the University of Melbourne.
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Whose ruled-based international order?
There is much bleating in Australia about the obligation on states to comply with a rules-based international order. The bleating intensifies whenever the Foreign Minister reacts to Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea or in relation to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute between Tokyo and Beijing. Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. The complacency of the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper.
The 2017 White Paper displays, yet again, Australia’s foreign policy complacency, its misplaced middle power imagining, and its awkward partnering in its region. It is a failure as a strategic map for advancing Australia’s security and prosperity in the “Indo-Pacific” region and the world. Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Is Australia a morally backward society?
Earlier this year a national conference of First Nation Australians at Uluru recommended that a Council representing all Indigenous Australians be enshrined in the Constitution. The purpose of the Council would be to advise governments on policies affecting Indigenous Australians. It would not have legislative powers; it would be a strictly consultative body, advising governments Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Base politics or incredibly clumsy policing?
Police raids on political parties or associated institutions at any time should raise concerns – and the hackles – among democratically minded citizens. The recent raids on AWU offices in Sydney and Melbourne, seemingly in search for “dirt” on Bill Shorten’s time as head of the Union, should be ringing alarm bells. Are the police Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. The failure of Australian conservatism.
Tony Abbott has announced his intention to stay in politics in order to protect and promote what he calls “liberal conservative values.” He claims his values are at the very heart of Liberal Party philosophy. Meanwhile Cory Bernardi seeks to trump this by asserting that his new party is the one true home of Australian Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Anyone for disruption?
The ugly chickens of the neoliberal era in Australian public policy are relentlessly coming home to roost: stagnating wages, high unemployment (especially among young people), declining standards in public hospitals, schools, universities, and TAFE institutes, homelessness on the increase, more beggars on the streets, increased social conflict (crime, racist violence, domestic violence, home invasions, road Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Advance Australia!
Madness in the Coalition’s ranks over the Finkel report and sleaziness in ALP ranks over clandestine foreign donations are just the latest evidence that the current pack of parliamentarians is incapable of governing in the interests of all Australians. What this country needs is a strong political enema to clean out the political constipation from Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. What values are we talking about?
How much longer must we endure the so-called culture wars? How much longer do we have to put up with vacuous phrases like “Australian values” in our politics? Now, it seems, the Prime Minister has taken to using this disagreeable language. Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. How much lower are we going to go?
The current Australian values and new immigration visa debates, blusteringly initiated by Malcolm Turnbull and his would-be successor Peter Dutton, represent one of the lowest points in recent Australian political history. Are these panicking populists capable of dragging the country any lower? Very likely they will try, because the politics they have now so fully Continue reading »
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It’s time for Labor to think big about policy – a people’s bank!
Tony Abbott is not the only one anticipating a change of government at the next election. Voters across the board are increasingly fed up with the Coalition and there are even signs that some of its most devoted cheer leaders in the media are beginning to give up on it. Dear old Alan Jones has Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. The seduction of pessimism.
It seems that the end is nigh of much of what we know and love about our planet as climate change intensifies across the globe. Climate change science is painting a depressingly pessimistic picture of the future. Is there no hope? Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Is it time to resurrect the Albury-Wodonga city plan?
The housing crisis, hitting young Australians in particular, is one of the cruelest consequences of economic rationalist policy making to which both our major political parties remain super-glued. Neither party has a clearly articulated, long-term solution to this ideologically generated and completely unnecessary crisis. Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Is globalization ending?
It is the fashion to declare that globalization is coming to an end. Evidence for this includes: nationalism being on the rise; protectionist policies making a come-back; borders being slammed shut; populist politicians multiplying at rabbit-like rates. Trump and Brexit, it is said, are the isolationist tips of two vast metaphorical icebergs that both represent Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Where do we go from here?
“Why do we experience such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society? Why is it beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage? Are we doomed indefinitely to lurch between a dysfunctional ‘free market’ and the much advertised horrors of ‘socialism’?” – Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. How Conservative or Populist is the Contemporary Right in Australian Politics?
Conservatism and populism have become two abused concepts in contemporary Australian politics. In fact they are now being used as a camouflage by certain political operatives to conceal a harsh political agenda that bitterly contradicts nearly everything for which traditional conservatism has ever stood while distorting our understandings of the true nature of populism. Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. The End is Nigh! Anticipating a Post-Capitalist World
Capitalism is in crisis. What Marx referred to as its internal contradictions have begun undermining its very foundations. It is time to ask what a post-capitalist world will be like. Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. From America into Asia
As Australia necessarily rethinks its alliance with the United States, it must simultaneously educate itself into Asia. There is just no other way. Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. What’s Next After Neo-Liberalism?
The evidence is now irrefutable that the neo-liberal project that has dominated public policy across the major economies for nearly four decades now has been an unmitigated disaster. If nothing else, those who voted for Donald Trump have made that abundantly clear. In Australia neo-liberal (or economic rationalist) policies have resulted in wages stagnation, widespread Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. The Tragedy of Trump
If nothing else Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election is compelling evidence that the neo-liberal project has been a catastrophic public policy failure. Blindly believing that he is their saviour, the victims of neo-liberalism’s caustic consequences have seized the moment by voting for Donald Trump. They view him as some kind of Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Australia’s American Leadership Distraction
Back in the 1960s, in his book The Lucky Country (a title he meant as irony), Donald Horne noted that Australia was a lucky country despite being run by second-rate people. Considering today’s leaders across Australia, we would have to conclude that Horne’s judgement is much too generous. The reality is that it’s mostly third-rate Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Why the debates about Islam have gone off the rails
One of the persistent conceits of modern history has been the growing conviction that rational scientific enquiry will completely remove religious thinking from human consciousness for all time. Positivist fundamentalists like Stephen Hawking or so-called “New Atheists” like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have triumphantly echoed the Nietzschean declaration “God is dead” without understanding Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Chilcot and Australia.
The Report of the Chilcot Enquiry into the UK’s entry to the Iraq War in 2003 is deeply disturbing. It documents a litany of catastrophic intelligence failures and ill-informed and unsubtle decision-making by Tony Blair and his senior advisors and Ministers. Apart from exposing the appallingly weak grounds for entering the war in the Continue reading »
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Allan Patience. Can We Continue to Afford Australia’s Federal System?
Australians are facing a gruelling 2016. A growing revenue crisis is placing severe constraints on the budget, meaning the government will probably be contemplating cuts in services and other “soft target” areas like pensions, child care subsidies and related welfare measures. The neo-liberal vandalizing of the country’s manufacturing sector, and the short-termism that is now Continue reading »
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Allan Patience. Australia and the War in Syria.
Repost from 02/09/2015 Australia and the War in Syria: Perverting a Noble Vision in International Law for Ignoble Domestic Political Purposes In 2005 a summit of world leaders at the United Nations unanimously endorsed the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Along with the establishment of the International Criminal Court, it constitutes one of the most Continue reading »
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Allan Patience. Fighting Holy Wars in the Middle East
How do we deal with Daesh? The Islamic State (ISIS) has proven to be a brutally formidable force in Syria and Iraq. As we saw recently in Paris, it has spread its vicious tentacles into Europe. It is highly probable that we’ll see it erupt in North America and very possibly again here in Australia, Continue reading »
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Allan Patience. Now is the Time for All Good Men and Women to Come to the Aid of the Party
Richard Di Natale has called on the Greens to get ready for government. Well and good. The direction in which he is prodding his party is a rare glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak Australian political landscape. Whether in a coalition (likely with Labor), or in its own right (unlikely), what sort of public Continue reading »
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Allan Patience. Liberty or Narcissism?
On the Need for a Wider Debate about Charlie Hebdo No one can justify the recent brutal murders of the French journalists and police in Paris. However, the belief that this act constitutes an attack on free speech and freedom of the press is in grave danger of being over-stated. What is missing in Continue reading »