Writer

Jack Waterford
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
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ADF and government stage-managing release of war crimes report
We need a fair-dinkum inquiry, by properly independent experts, not only of how and why we went to a useless war, but also into serious shortcomings of leadership, both at the top level and in command of troops on the ground. Continue reading »
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Soon we must admit defeat in Afghanistan, and war crimes
I doubt we can fashion much of a narrative of which Australians could be proud when we consider what will be happening soon with Afghanistan. What will probably be good for Afghanistan — a measure of peace — will be a result of our defeat, not our participation. Continue reading »
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ASIO is a Mickey Mouse outfit compromising 50 years of diplomacy with China
When head of the Australian Signals Directorate, Mike Burgess was the main adviser recommending against Huawei being allowed into the 5G network. There is no doubt about his intelligence background, or his technical talents. He has, however, yet to demonstrate in public that he has that first quality of the counter-intelligence officer and adviser — Continue reading »
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Secrecy covers up abuse of power and poor performance by security services
One would have to go back to the 1970s to find the nation so ill-served. All the more so as politicians have politicised national security, and reverted to 1960s games of gathering and using secret information for political purposes. It would not be strictly correct to describe the agencies themselves, or their leaders, as politically Continue reading »
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Federal and State blame game won’t shift the burden of economic revival
Initially, Scott Morrison was imaginative in trying to co-opt the premiers and chief ministers into a united response. However, as the premiers have gone their own way he has become more willing to criticise and more exasperated about their standing in the way of economic revival. Continue reading »
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How governments made economic medicine less potent, more insipid
I expect the premiers will suffer little political pain if recovery doesn’t happen, is patchy or too slow. It will be Morrison and Frydenberg who are blamed. Continue reading »
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Cowardly Labor won’t fight Morrison over China policy
Enemies, foreign and domestic, appear to be preoccupying the minds of our foreign minister, Marise Payne, and our Defence Minister, Linda Reynolds as they maintain their lonely patrols in the diplomatic cocktail circuit and the officers’ messes. Continue reading »
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Who’s repelling boarders at our internal borders?
The emergency border controls are not doing much, if anything, to drive the virus from our shores. Continue reading »
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War defined the scope of emergency powers, but now we may discriminate
Would some of the coercive powers under the pandemic response survive a High Court challenge? Continue reading »
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Bad habits must be unlearned before they bring down governments and society
Morrison has never been one for secrecy, refusal to acknowledge error or bad judgment, and willingness to use his prerogatives to avoid being pinned on detail. Perhaps his impulses on the pandemic or reviving the economy are worthy — methinks they devote too much focus on culture wars. Continue reading »
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Morrison’s government has tried ditch the rules… to no avail
The problem with this government is that it doesn’t seem to learn from its mistakes. Perhaps that is because it fears that any change in approach will be seen as an admission of wrongdoing — even maladministration, as with the sports rorts affair. Continue reading »
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Child sex victims being bent to national security agenda
We are all against cyber-crime – criminal offences done with the aid of a computer – are we not? And cyber-terrorism – bad guys, and not only jihadist terrorists, using the internet to recruit, propagandise, communicate and, probably transfer money to each other? Continue reading »
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Cyber-war: building more empires than it destroys
Cyber disruption is an unpleasant fact, but not the end of the world. But the sort of bad, unexamined and unaccountable thinking our planning involves, presents every risk of making our bullets land in the wrong places, when or if we reach the disaster on which our hawks are so bent. Continue reading »
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The courage deficit: Will Albanese die wondering?
Scott Morrison may have done Anthony Albanese a big favour by taking some time from his paterfamilial labours saving the nation from Coronavirus to engage instead in a little discreet fundraising and rallying of the coalition’s troops. Continue reading »
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Forget the trench battles. There’s a war to be won
Scott Morrison has never been so vulnerable to fundamental attack. It is about time the Albanese army began seriously probe his defences. Continue reading »
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Liberals throw out their Doctrines and Dogma
The Prime Minister, the head of Treasury and the present or former Chief Medical Officer may each be experts within their fields, but none of their guesses about when Coronavirus will loosen its grip on the nation’s economic throat are any better than yours or mine, or the throwing of a dice. Continue reading »
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Corona-crisis calls for imagination, not panic, parsimony and punishment.
Tertiary education, including universities, was badly hit (to complete government indifference, even delight.) The cultural sector was punished — and a good deal more than sport. Lobbyists for pubs and clubs have had a field day with compliant governments. Continue reading »
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Are we but twiddling thumbs while waiting for a vaccine?
Spare a thought for Scott Morrison during these still early days of the struggle to rescue Australia, and Australians, from the effects of Coronavirus. Continue reading »
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Deliberately missing the opportunities
There were – are – people who have seen great social and philosophical opportunities in the disruption caused by the pandemic, quarantine, closures of business, and mass unemployment rendered somewhat less painful by massive government spending and new income maintenance schemes. Continue reading »
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Australia’s courts and senators are not of an accountability mind
What would happen if an Australian senate committee, dominated by Labor and the Greens and an independent, decided by majority to demand the tax return of a coalition minister, perhaps in pursuit of allegations of abuse of power for some personal gain? Continue reading »
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One cannot say that the law is above our politicians
The US Supreme Court has many things in common with the Australian High Court, including some reputation for containing the odd sexual harasser, but most Australians are thankful that they have not come to be regarded as pawns of the president or party which put them on the court for life. Continue reading »
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China won’t care what we think or do about Hong Kong
One can look at the future of the seven million people of Hong Kong only with the deepest foreboding. Continue reading »
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Our lapdogs yap from a safe distance
The western world will probably see the absorption of Hong Kong, or Taiwan, as something that affects its national interests, in a way that the fate of Tibetans and Uighars does not. Continue reading »
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Dirty Dyson demolishes his own reputation
It seems impossible that the reputation of Dyson Heydon, retired High Court judge and one-time royal commissioner, will ever recover from the trashing it got this week. Continue reading »
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Judge Dyson, moving in the lower circles of hell
If Dyson Heydon is guilty of the sexual harassment allegations made against him, most people would agree that he deserves what he gets. Continue reading »
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Law can’t hide hypocrisy, lying and double dealing
Forty years ago, Justice Anthony Mason, later Chief Justice of the High Court, made it clear that mere embarrassment — or the avoidance of being found to be a hypocrite — is not enough to justify the protection of the courts when the government is involved. Continue reading »
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Justice impossible with secret trials
Over in the United States, a former national security adviser to Donald Trump, John Bolton, has a book about to hit the newsstands. It is very critical of, and indiscreet about, his former boss. It shows Trump double dealing with China, approving, not disapproving of its persecution and detention of the Uighars, and seeking China’s Continue reading »
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JACK WATERFORD. Punishing the ‘undeserving’ – the robo-debt fiasco
Heaven knows how the ultimate costs of the robo-debt fiasco will pan out. So far the Commonwealth has announced that it is paying back about three-quarters of a billion to nearly 400,000 people whose rights were trampled upon. Continue reading »
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No public interest, it seems, in watching public money burn
The political cynic could easily imagine a string of reasons for ignoring calls for a royal commission or other inquiry into the robo-debt debacle. Continue reading »
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JACK WATERFORD. Morrison has all of the flexibility in the world
No modern Australian prime minister has faced the political, economic and social challenges of Scott Morrison. But it’s a funny sort of crisis because no prime has ever had such access to the extra resources he can call to bear — if he wants to. Continue reading »