Writer

Jack Waterford
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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Does the US know what it is doing, and mean what it says, over Taiwan?
The Chairman of the US Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, seemed quietly confident this week that Australia would be standing side-by-side with the US and Taiwan if China attempted to retrieve its errant and rebellious province by force of arms. Perhaps he knows something I don’t. Continue reading »
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Wardens of secrecy discredit their own system
Retired ACT Supreme Court Justice John Burns has copped a severe caning from the independent National Security legislation monitor this week. It’s over his handling of a case in which a man we cannot name was secretly charged with serious criminal offences, which cannot really be itemised other than in the most general way, who Continue reading »
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It’s the teals who are the most representative on integrity issues
Although the activities of politicians from minor parties and independents should fall under integrity legislation, we should mostly be grateful that they contain more enthusiasts for a tough and expansive system than within the government. Continue reading »
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Abbott chickens come home to roost
Tony Abbott, as prime minister nearly a decade ago, had more than a few bees under his bonnet. He thought his election had redeemed the nation from an intolerable scourge of a government of criminals. Other opposition leaders have engaged in this sort of hyperbole, but scarcely ever with the zeal and lack of restraint, Continue reading »
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The unlimited, and unaccountable powers we’ve given police
The US Supreme Court’s decision to overrule the Roe v Wade principle that the right to an abortion is a privacy right guaranteed by the American constitution has magnified the fears of pro-choice citizens. They are worried that in the red states that have already criminalised abortion, right-to-life zealots, including those in law enforcement, will Continue reading »
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Governments losing their way
Professor Peter Coaldrake’s review of a Queensland public administration which has been losing its way since the Fitzgerald reforms of thirty years ago should be compulsory reading for politicians, for public servants, particularly senior executives, and for citizens sick of the way that modern government has let accountability and integrity slip by the wayside. Continue reading »
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Liberals have ICAC on their conscience
NSW Liberals have a bit of a thing about ICAC. It was, more or less, a Liberal Party brainchild – seen as a counter to seemingly obvious corruption in the Labor government of the day, three decades ago. Perversely, some thought, incoming Liberal Premier, Nick Greiner, popularly regarded as a cleanskin was its first victim. Continue reading »
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Public servants judge and jury over next-up political bosses
Spare a thought for Michael Coutts-Trotter, the Secretary of the NSW Premiers Department. He has been asked, in effect, to decide which of several versions of how John Barilaro was appointed “on merit” to a cushy $500,000 trade commissioner job in New York most closely approximates the truth. Continue reading »
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Attorney-General’s has not been a recent friend of real law reform
Those in favour of a strong and effective integrity commission, including the retired judges who have done so much to outline the need, should be very suspicious of the central role being accorded the Attorney-General’s department. Continue reading »