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P&I Guest Writers
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ERNST WILLHEIM. Secret Trials: The illegal bugging of the Timor Leste Cabinet and the extraordinary prosecution of Bernard Collaery and Witness K
Australians reading about secret trials in foreign countries tend to content themselves in the belief that in Australia we have an open court system and an independent judiciary. After all, freedom of speech, the rule of law and an open and independent court system are basic bulwarks of our democracy. Aren’t they? This brief paper Continue reading »
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RICHARD DENNISS. Our regulators fail to protect the vulnerable from the greedy. Let’s find out why. ( A repost from 19 September 2018)
Neoliberalism’s best trick was convincing us that ‘empowering’ citizens to shop around would deliver better services at a lower cost. Continue reading »
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HARI KUNZRU. Fool Britannia (The New York Review of Books).
From the ill-conceived Brexit referendum onward, Britain’s governing class has embarrassed itself. The Remain campaign was complacent, the Leave campaign brazenly mendacious, and as soon as the result was known, most of the loudest advocates for severing ties with the European Union ran away like naughty schoolboys whose cricket ball had smashed a greenhouse window. Continue reading »
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MARJORIE COHN. The US Is Orchestrating a Coup in Venezuela (Truthout).
As Venezuela’s second president, Simon Bolivar, noted in the 19th century, the US government continues to “plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.” Continue reading »
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RICHARD FLANAGAN. Tasmania is burning. The climate disaster future has arrived while those in power laugh at us. (The Guardian 4.2.2019)
Scott Morrison is trying to scare people about economic policy but seems blithely unaware people are already scared – about climate change. Continue reading »
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STEPHEN LONG. Hayne’s findings shouldn’t be a shock; the banking scandals were decades in the making (ABC News 4 Feb.2019).
How did it come to this? How did we arrive at a situation where banks and financial houses slugged dead people with fees? Continue reading »
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ADELE FERGUSON. The regulators failed bank customers but they are now being trusted to fix this mess. (SMH 5.2.2019)
After a year of shame and grovelling apologies, the day of reckoning finally arrived. For those Australians hoping for structural separation of the banks, an overhaul of the regulators or heads on sticks, royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne’s verdict would have been disappointing. Continue reading »
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KAREN COX. Now Hayne has reported, the lobbyists will get to work (SMH 5.2.2019)
After a year of front pages filled with the evidence of scandalous wrong doing, rip-offs and greed in our banking and financial services institutions, we finally have a roadmap from Commissioner Kenneth Hayne on how to solve the finance sector’s ills. His report is bold, full of commonsense and clear solutions. Continue reading »
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ANDREW LINDEN, WARREN STAPLES. Hayne’s failure to tackle bank structure. (The Conversation 5.2.2019)
Hayne’s failure to tackle bank structure means that in a decade or so another treasurer will have to call another royal commission. Every 10 to 15 years it’s the same. Ever since financial deregulation in the 1980s we’ve had a finance industry scandal followed by an inquiry, a quick fix, and a declaration that it shouldn’t happen again. Continue reading »
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STEPHEN LONG. This letter from the big banks helped shape the royal commission. ABC News 5 February 2019
It is a revelation that underscores the close relationship between the major banks and the Government. Continue reading »
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JAMES MASSOLA. The Australian priest helping trapped refugees the world ignores. (SMH 3/2/2019)
Mick Kelly remembers the phone call from his friend in Pakistan as if it was yesterday. “He asked me to help out this one guy who was fleeing Pakistan, and on his way to Bangkok. That was more than five years ago,” Kelly recalls. That friend – like Mick, a Jesuit priest – was asking Continue reading »
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ELENA COLLINSON. What A Labor Victory Might Mean For Australian Foreign Policy (Council on Foreign Relations).
A federal election is due this year in Australia. While the Liberal-National Coalition government has yet to formally announce a polling day, the stage has effectively been set for a May election. According to Australian law, May 18 is the latest possible date a federal election could be called. The opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) Continue reading »
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DANIELLE WOOD, CARMELA CHIVERS AND KATE GRIFFITHS. Tasmania’s gambling election shows Australia needs tougher rules on money in politics.
Today’s Commonwealth donations data release is a stark reminder of the deep flaws in our political donations system. Contributions to political parties are revealed up to 19 months after the event, and sometimes not at all. With most states now operating far more transparent regimes, the only conceivable explanation for the current Commonwealth system is that our political leaders Continue reading »
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DAVID JAMES. Venezuela beset by American dirty tricks (Eureka Street, 30 January 2019)
For those wishing to peer into the heart of darkness, the nexus between big oil and big money is a good place to start. Those who control the energy market and the financial markets control the world. Continue reading »
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RICHARD KINGSFORD. The successive government failures behind the fish kills. (SMH 31.1.2018)
With the NSW election looming, it’s time to make sure the next state government has environmental policy front and centre at the big table of decision making. On nearly every major measure for the environment – numbers of threatened species, pollution, state of ecosystems and burgeoning threats – we’re going backwards. Continue reading »
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MARTIN WOLF. China’s challenge of one world, two systems. (AFR 31.1.2018)
The accelerating breakdown in relations between China and the US is the most significant current event. How is this to be managed, given today’s global interdependence? Continue reading »
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JOSH GORDON. Will Labor’s dividend imputation policy overwhelmingly affect the low paid? (ABC News)
For months the Morrison Government has argued Labor’s controversial plan to raise more than $5 billion a year by scrapping refundable franking credits on dividends from shares is “not fair”. Continue reading »
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CJ Polychroniou. Noam Chomsky: Ocasio-Cortez and Other Newcomers Are Rousing the Multitudes (Truthout, 30 January 2019)
A quick glance around the world today reveals that politics almost everywhere — from the federal government shutdown in the US to the power struggle in Venezuela and from Macron’s crisis in France and UK’s Brexit nightmare to the Israeli-Iranian rivalry – are engulfed in a state of uncertainty and turmoil. Meanwhile, oligarchy is replacing Continue reading »
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ISHAAN THAROOR. The lesson of Davos: – China has arrived (Washington Post 25 January 2019).
“Can we live in a world where America is still a strong power but doesn’t have the kind of primacy it had in the past?” asked Mahbubani. That’s a reality an “America First” administration is staunchly trying to resist. In Davos, though, it is a fait accompli. Continue reading »
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IAN ROBINSON. The Myth of the Mandate.
If they win the next election, “Labor will have a mandate to push through tax changes,” claims Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen (The Age 23/01 p. 1). Continue reading »
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MARK PROOST. Millions of Americans flood into Mexico for health care – the human caravan you haven’t heard about. (Truthout 23.1.2019)
The Trump administration is trying to convey panic that there’s an immediate crisis on the southern border, pointing to caravans of desperate people who have traveled thousands of miles. It’s true that Latin and Central Americans are coming to the US fleeing violence and poverty, much of it caused by destructive US trade policy over Continue reading »
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JACKSON LEARS. Imperial Exceptionalism -(The New York Review of Books February 7, 2019).
It is hard to give up something you claim you never had. That is the difficulty Americans face with respect to their country’s empire. Continue reading »
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IAN ROBINSON. What has Captain Cook ever done for us?
The Prime Minister is intent on making a big fuss about James Cook. He is even promoting, at great expense, a circumnavigation of the continent by a replica of Cook’s ship Endeavour. This is an insult to Matthew Flinders who actually did circumnavigate the continent, who made a much greater contribution to our nation than Continue reading »
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KISHORE MAHBUBANI. What China Threat? How the United States and China can avoid war. Harper Magazine 22 January 2019
Within about fifteen years, China’s economy will surpass America’s and become the largest in the world. As this moment approaches, meanwhile, a consensus has formed in Washington that China poses a significant threat to American interests and well-being. General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), has said that “China probably Continue reading »
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MATTHEW O’NEILL. How the media’s fixation with Trump was exported. (The Interpreter 23.1.2019)
The Trump administration has hurtled into its third year and the media circus that’s trailed the 45th president continues apace. Australians who didn’t tune out of the news over the summer holidays were fed a diet of chaos and controversy out of Washington, with the ongoing partial government shutdown featured prominently in bulletins nationwide. Continue reading »
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CRISPIN HULL. Solution to ABC budget cuts. (Canberra Times 19.1.2019)
Here is an idea for how the ABC might deal with the inevitable round of cuts next Budget. Clever bureaucrats when faced with funding cuts go for the jugular. They attack some popular vote-sensitive function and announce it will be cut. The backlash often results in a funding rethink. Continue reading »
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JOHN FALZON. We need to redefine exclusion (Eureka Street).
Inequality is not an aberration that comes with neoliberalism. It is the foundation of neoliberalism, along with its partners in social crime: patriarchy and colonisation. As Sharan Burrow, the Australian General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), puts it so poignantly: ‘We live in a fragmented world.’ The excluded form the majority across Continue reading »
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TIM LINDSEY. Ba’asyir’s bizarre on/off release disrupts Jokowi’s campaign.
Indonesia’s announcement that it would release 80-year old Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, the spiritual leader of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), after serving two-thirds of his 15-year sentence for supporting a terrorist training camp in Aceh, took many by surprise. Australians were shocked that Indonesia showed so little concern for Australian feelings about JI’s 2002 Continue reading »
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MARILYN LAKE. Change the date to 1 January
I’m with Jeff Kennett. I never thought I could say that, but I agree with him that Australia Day should be moved to 1 January – to commemorate the beginning of the Commonwealth of Australia, a new progressive nation, whose very name signified the ideals of collective commitment and communal wealth and a repudiation of Continue reading »
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JOHN CARMODY. Rethinking the basis for the Australia Day holiday.
January 26 continues to be a nettlesome date for the official celebration of the Australian nation and as a commemoration of our colonial foundation. Apart from the significant nuisance that it falls so close to the end of the holiday season, when our minds and emotions are trying to deal with seemingly more pressing Continue reading »