Writer
Jack Waterford
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
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Nuclear vibrations pose more threat to Albo than Dutton
If Labor permits the next election to be a referendum about nuclear power, there’s a very good chance that Peter Dutton would win handsomely. For one thing it will be on ground of the Opposition’s choosing. For another, it would not be a poll about nuclear power for very long, but an open-ended referendum about Continue reading »
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Only shame can make integrity guardians do their duty
A predisposition to secrecy still handicaps integrity in Australian government. Continue reading »
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Corruption commission has yet to prove its worth
It hasn’t even finished its first year of operations, but those who were hoping for big things from the National Anti-Corruption Commission and its chair, Justice Paul Brereton would be wise to temper mightily their hopes and expectations of what it might achieve. Continue reading »
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Canberra bureaucrats commissioning NT houses unfit for purpose
Labor’s $4 billion for Indigenous housing in the Northern Territory is set for failure unless it incorporates Aboriginal expertise. Continue reading »
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Our quality of life under threat from the meanness of politicians
Why do politicians and businesspeople of this nation continually pretend that the nation is on the ropes? The average income of most citizens and the average wealth has, in real terms, never been higher. Yet this is a nation which has heavily cut back on foreign aid and has been disinvesting in real terms in Continue reading »
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Courts protect crimes by agents of the state, punish whistleblowers
David McBride, for all his flaws, is a better, a more decent and honourable person than any of those he has discomforted or outraged. Continue reading »
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To his adversaries, Albo is a pushover
The way that the government has permitted the opposition and the Murdoch media (and even the ABC and Fairfax media) to push it around on issues such as climate and immigration policy raises the question: Does modern Labor have any moral bottom at all? Continue reading »
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The hospital at the bottom of the DV cliff
A sense of crisis now pervades discussion of what to do about violence against women, made obvious by recent marches demanding action, statistics suggesting that the rate of fatal attacks is increasing, and general unease after several knife attacks in Sydney, in one of which women represented five of the six victims. Continue reading »
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Is Albo’s big new idea too late?
Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers have put their future in the Labor pantheon at high risk with their new protectionism. Sooner or later, a real Labor leader will emerge, and one of her first serious acts will be to turn the nation back towards its natural advantage in free trade. It will be harder for Continue reading »
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The Anti-China War Book: Pezzullo hears the call again
It is extremely hard to kill off a public figure of the calibre of Mike Pezzullo. As with a person of similar personality, Tony Abbott, one can be sure they are out of the play for good only when their bodies lie at a crossroads at midnight, with a wooden stake through their hearts. Before Continue reading »
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Over Dutton now looms the spectre of a quick trip to Government House
By mid-May, Budget time, the Albanese government will be a week short of two years in power. Albanese is moving into the zone where he could confidently approach the Governor-General, new or old, for an early election, perhaps as early as July, unexceptionably in October or November. Continue reading »
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Crossbench is Labor’s real opposition
Albanese’s practice of preferring to govern and legislate through deals with the coalition rather than with Greens and Independents is plainly because of a theory or strategy of what is in Labor’s long-term interests. It presumably includes the fear that Labor itself could atomise, as the coalition has done, if the influence and power of Continue reading »
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Clare O’Neil dances to Dutton’s tune
Clare O’Neil, minister for Home Affairs, was this week plaintively criticising the Greens for playing “politics” over draconian and ill-thought-out legislation designed by the government to anticipate its next refugee crisis. She was quite wrong. However inconvenient for her, the Greens have long had a consistent (and principled) policy on refugee matters, one that does Continue reading »
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We now need, it seems, a Voice for bigots
The best argument against having an explicit legislated or constitutional right of freedom of religion in Australia comes right out of the playbook of the No campaign during the referendum on a constitutional Voice for Indigenous Australians. There’s no particular problem of giving expression to one’s beliefs in this country, and almost any attempt to Continue reading »
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How our tax system is making the rich richer. And the poor poorer
Australians frozen out of the housing market cannot expect that government is going to do anything that effectively closes the gap between current house prices and what most of the unhoused could afford as a deposit. Modern politicians of all stripes are all agreed that their political survival depends on doing the maximum to sustain Continue reading »
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No slowing the ACT rape merry-go-round
Litigation about the alleged rape in a minister’s office at Parliament House in 2019 – more than five years ago – seems to continue to multiply, if with ever decreasing prospects of ever resolving any issues at the heart of the matter. This is something that is now, at law, unknowable in any sort of Continue reading »
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ASIO needs a boss who can stand above the tumult
At the height of the argument about western conviction that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in 2002, Tony Blair’s minder, Alastair Campbell was accused of asking intelligence agencies to “sex up” what passed for evidence. The satirical magazine Private Eye published a cover with Alastair Campbell’s child asking, “What did you do in Continue reading »
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Australia’s First Nations still looking over the 1788 chasm
More than four months after a crushing defeat in the Voice referendum, and soon after the Closing the Gap report confirmed that there was almost no progress in improving Aboriginal lives last year, Aboriginal players in the yes case are moving towards an inquest into how their case went so terribly wrong. Continue reading »
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Israel’s propaganda has ceased to convince or persuade even its friends
Israel’s citizens seem either blithely unaware of the world’s horror at the terror raining down on Gaza, or do not care. Whichever, the barbarity has stripped it of the significant moral advantage given by the Hamas atrocities of October 7, and have caused fundamental reappraisal of Israel’s standing among people once disposed to be sympathetic Continue reading »
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When open justice is an optional ingredient
I had been assuming that Julian Assange, whose case comes up for adjudication in the British Courts soon, was a shoo-in for being Australia’s prisoner of conscience of the decade, but a late entry into the competition is Michael Pezzullo, who appears to have been condemned by an Australian Star Chamber convening in secret, without Continue reading »
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Opportunity for real tax reform goes wanting
I very much doubt that Anthony Albanese will be losing much sleep from opposition claims that he is a liar, or not to be trusted on anything after his volte face on tax cuts focused at higher income earners. That’s even if you regard as a lie an election promise which is subsequently not followed Continue reading »
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Australia’s biggest handicap: believing our own bullshit about our military
One of the many things Australians should consider as they contemplate our nationhood on the day set aside for this purpose is our glorious tradition of being not very good at fighting wars. We boast of our military traditions, our baptisms of fire and of our long traditions of unquestioning obedience and eager anticipation of Continue reading »
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Tide turning on boat people bastardry
A day I have long prophesied, and for which I have been yearning may be at hand. It’s a pity that the Albanese government does not really deserve a place at any celebrations, and may indeed, try to frustrate them. Continue reading »
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Oppressive secrecy needs more dashes of cold water yet
We can all be glad that judges constituting the ACT Court of Appeal in the Bernard Collaery case had a more liberal view of the need for open justice than the judge who had been set to hear the case. This was before the Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, stepped in to drop the prosecution altogether. But Continue reading »
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Release the full report on Mike Pezzullo’s misdeeds
It is time for Albanese to take the public into his confidence. He has an instinct for secretiveness that almost matches that of Scott Morrison. Continue reading »
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Plodding Labor will rue its missed opportunities
Labor will have – already has – squandered its time and its opportunities. It needs leadership of guts and vision, not timidity, caution and mortal terror of offending anyone. Continue reading »
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Holding Justice in contempt: Janet Albrechtsen and a new weapon for rape defendants
The contempts highlighted by Justice Michael Lee in the recent defamation case between Bruce Lehrmann and Channel 10 are minor compared with the blatant leaking of phone transcripts. During the Lehrmann case, police handed to Lehrmann’s solicitors thousands of pages of texts and emails between the alleged victim and others, from nearly a year before Continue reading »
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Biden unable to slow the Israeli slaughter
Israel is a nation not greatly given to following advice, even from its great and powerful friends and guarantors, unless and to the extent it accords with its own judgment of where its national interest lies. That’s partly because it sees itself as being surrounded by enemies, ever in a desperate position, and bound to Continue reading »
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Shiver runs up and breaks the Labor spine
There is never a bottom to Labor ministerial cowardice and incompetence when manipulated mob fury is at its height. On immigration policy, Labor has surrendered, and is dancing to Dutton’s tune. Continue reading »
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Was Pezzullo recording leak from a federal agency monitoring his communications?
The sacking of Mike Pezzullo was inevitable once Nine media published his email correspondence with a Liberal party lobbyist and powerbroker. So far, however, the Public Service Commission and the government is doing altogether too much to avoid detailing the circumstances that provide chapter and verse of the numerous improprieties that covered the correspondence, or Continue reading »
