Writer
Jack Waterford
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
-
Voice vote may demand blood in the water
It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the referendum on the Voice will be won not as a virtually unanimous offering to First Nations Australians but narrowly in an ugly, bitter and divisive brawl between older and younger Australians. Even a win will have the capacity to leave divisions in the nation, and Continue reading »
-
Jacinda Ardern, the ultimate accolade, and Jim Molan
The least well-developed political sense is the feel for when it is time to move on. Continue reading »
-
George Pell leaves a diminished church, to successors hardly better
George Pell was, by temperament and personality, about the worst possible choice to be made a bishop, then an archbishop, and ultimately a cardinal — one of the inner circle of the church entrusted with central church administration and the selection of new Popes. Continue reading »
-
MPs shilling for private interests
I have long been a fan of the British parliament’s system of having independent commissioners for standards who review complaints that MPs have breached their Code of Conduct or the Nolan Committee’s set of standards of public life. Continue reading »
-
How 20 ratbag Republicans could Trump 200 party loyalists
The farce occurring in the US House of Representatives, where a small group of far-right Republicans are seeking to veto the overwhelming choice of their colleagues for the party’s congressional leadership, may well be resolved by the weekend in the traditional American parliamentary way, with bribes, deals, committee placements and stiff-arming. Continue reading »
-
Decaying Liberals oblivious to the abyss
The state of decline of the Federal Liberal Party revealed by its 2022 election review is so serious that even people who hope it never achieves power again should ask themselves whether it is in Australia’s interest that it be allowed to continue in its death spiral. Continue reading »
-
Please don’t mention guilt or innocence while asking if there was a case to answer
Strictly speaking the various inquiries into the case against Bruce Lehrmann for the alleged rape of a colleague do not involve a review of his guilt or innocence. Continue reading »
-
Labor lets its moral mandate wither away
A bare six months after being elected, the Albanese government has surrendered almost all of the moral advantage it held over the public administration, and most of the moral advantage it held over the coalition. Continue reading »
-
Alleged police sabotage of the Bruce Lehrmann rape prosecution demands proper investigation
The inquiry into alleged police sabotage of the Bruce Lehrmann rape prosecution has the capacity to bring the Australian Federal Police into the biggest crisis of its 43 years, with impacts spreading beyond the contract arrangements by which it delivers policing services to the ACT. Continue reading »
-
Dutton will find sudden enthusiasm for the NACC when Labor is questioned
Imagine the day when an NACC investigation reaches the point where it becomes known, perhaps from a leak, that a Labor minister and her office are under investigation. Maybe selling access to the minister for clients with interests to press with the minister. Continue reading »
-
Will the Dreyfus-Dutton NACC blow up in Labor’s face?
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus knows he has deliberately put in place a weaker commission than he and Albanese promised at the election. His dirty deal serves Labor’s long-term interests. An ongoing activist commission might prove over-powerful, out of control, and a problem for a Labor administration. Continue reading »
-
Albanese’s China reset leaves national security establishment in the cold
We should all welcome a bilateral decision between Australia and China to tone down the language, lower the temperature and to resume discussions of mutual interests. Continue reading »
-
Why is Albo so set on clipping Teal wings?
As Anthony Albanese might see it, almost all of his political good fortune has come from preferring his own judgment and instinct ahead of the advice and experience of others. He has a very long background in politics. Continue reading »
-
Australia on the losing side again: “We see you as an easy lay”
Sooner or later, probably later, NATO plus Australia will be contemplating the consequences of not having won the war in Ukraine. Continue reading »
-
Voters need collateral on the new Labor social contract
Even those who understand very well the whys and the wherefores of the bargain on offer from Treasurer Jim Chalmers would be wise to demand some collateral before they sign up to the bargain. Continue reading »
-
A plan for Australia worthy of our wartime heroes
In the desperation of WWII, Australia established a department of post-war reconstruction that drove far reaching change in how the country was governed. After the jolt of the pandemic, a similar department could be an engine room of a new type of government. Continue reading »
-
Shergold Review: Opinions of the great and the good have no special weight
The Shergold review of Australia’s pandemic response is infected by the Sydney and Canberra view of putting the economy ahead of individual health. Continue reading »
-
Is Albanese up to the job of public service reform?
I have a terrible foreboding about public service reform under the Albanese government and am beginning to wonder whether it should set itself a simpler task and leave serious improvement to some future government more up to the job. My pick for the simpler tasks would be abolishing 1300 phone lines for Centrelink, all “customer” Continue reading »
-
No place for AFP in anti-corruption teams
The national secretary of the Australian Federal Police Association, Alex Karuana, may have had empires and AFP pay increases in mind when he sounded a caution about the national anti-corruption commission, about which he is generally enthusiastic. Yet there’s the risk, he warns, that staffing the NACC may strip the AFP of critical expertise and Continue reading »
-
Non-believers, the timid and party rorters have got at corruption bill
Citizens who want an effective agency to weed out corruption and maladministration from Australian public life would do well to get involved in the National Anti-Corruption Commission debate. It is never going to be any better than the first model that goes through the parliament over the next few months. If history in state and Continue reading »
-
Time to get fair dinkum, or the Voice proposal will lose momentum and support
Many of the proponents of the Voice referendum already agree that the referendum should go forward only if a Yes vote is a virtual certainty. Some expect that the effect of a rejection of the proposal would be catastrophic for First Nations people. Continue reading »
-
No guts, no glory in deposing the King
Right thinking Australians ought to want their nation to be a republic led by a president rather than by a protestant King or Queen of England. Even the local self-effacing should want it if only for international and national self-respect. Continue reading »
-
Republican Albanese imprisoned by royal protocol
I was arrested at a visit by then Prince Charles to Alice Springs in 1977 for handing out press statements on Aboriginal living standards. I avoided jail, but the less fortunate Albanese government has been imprisoned by royal protocol and constitutional custom. Continue reading »
-
Labor must pro-actively manage potential conflicts of interest
The Liberal Party’s attack on the Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, over an alleged conflict of interest in his share ownership was an unimpressive flop. It did not establish a case that Dreyfus had failed to meet the technical standard of disclosure of interests set by the prime minister – a standard far higher than that set Continue reading »
-
Albanese won’t rescue the Governor General from his impossible position
The Governor-General (GG), David Hurley, is in an increasingly invidious position, and sooner rather than later will feel impelled to resign. He may not yet see it this way and will in any event be preoccupied with the Queen’s funeral and the transition of the King. But the prime minister’s intervention on Wednesday night to Continue reading »
-
Marketing an economic plan must appeal to the heart as much as the head
Waiting until almost the last minute to decide what to do about the tax cuts serves another political purpose. Albanese and Chalmers have done a good job of making each of the present priorities seem part of an integrated economic plan. Continue reading »
-
Albanese can afford to seem firm about tax cuts
Newly elected as prime minister Anthony Albanese promised voters he would not lose a second in getting down to the tasks for which he had been elected. In the period leading up to the election, he had been criticised by followers for having a narrow agenda. But that included some big-ticket items in child-care, NDIS Continue reading »
-
Super Scott and the coup vaccine
The powers vested in prime minister Scott Morrison by the Governor-General David Hurley during the five-ministries affair represented both a sword and a shield against any coup against Morrison himself. They also gave Morrison unparalleled capacity to seize power for himself, casting aside some of his most powerful ministerial colleagues without being held to account Continue reading »
-
The stench of Morrison’s dormant constitutional coup
The great unravelling of Scott Morrison’s pseudo-constitutional coup deserves a comprehensive inquiry. Perhaps a royal commission. It’s a commission that could also embrace other improper, illegal or general style of secretive unaccountable government, and also take in the connivance, or learned ignorance of other ministers and senior bureaucrats. Continue reading »
-
The voice implies a change of heart
The Government’s proposal for a referendum on a Voice is a bold idea whose time has come. But it is being asked to carry a lot of weight – weight that might easily sink it. Continue reading »
