Allan Patience
Recent articles by Allan Patience
ALLAN PATIENCE. Its Time for New Politics.- A REPOST from June 12 2017
How do we explain the phenomenon of a Bernie Sanders, who almost certainly would have won the US presidency if hed been the Democrat candidate running against Trump? How do we account for the astounding failure of, first, David Cameron and now Theresa May, to maintain the Conservative Partys dominance of contemporary British politics? How is it that a political maverick like Jeremy Corbyn can drag a recalcitrant British Labour Party kicking and screaming to the brink of government in the UK? These questions point to the failure of old politics and the urgent need to imagine a new politics...
ALLAN PATIENCE. In an untrustworthy world, whom can we trust?
Three political heavy weights loom threateningly over 2018: Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. All three lead dangerous nuclear-armed states. All three have elephantine egos squashing their intellects. As ultimate narcissists, each believes that his nation is embodied in himself (Ltat cest moi!). In this respect they are political dinosaurs because the problems that imperil their countries today and the entire globe require of todays leaders a truly global vision. Their political extinction is much to be desired, but is depressingly unlikely. Whom among this ugly triumvirate can Australia trust as the New Year unfolds?
ALLAN PATIENCE. Melbournes South Sudanese youth problem and the confection of a crime gang crisis.
That there are groups of disaffected and anti-social youths of Sudanese (and other) origin in Melbourne is not in dispute. What is at issue is the way it is being handled by the yellow press and by right wing politicians.
ALLAN PATIENCE. Towards a social democratic future for Australia.
The neoliberal war on western economies is finally collapsing under its own contradictions. In Australia its attacks on public wellbeing have been devastating. Politicians in thrall to the neoliberal ideology have vandalized manufacturing industries. Productivity and wage levels remain static. Inequality has ballooned while CEOs have plundered profits to enrich themselves while depressing workers wages and returns to shareholders. Neoliberalism was the midwife of the Global Financial Crisis and is the ugly sister of alt-right extremism, populism and racism in all the advanced economies witness Trump in the USA and Brexit in the UK. The good news is that...
ALLAN PATIENCE. What is the Australia-America Leadership Dialogue?
Founded in 1992 by former Cocoa-Cola Amatil executive and later Australian consul-general in New York, Phil Scanlon, the Australia America Leadership Dialogue (AALD), in its own words, brings together Australian and American leaders from government, enterprise, media, education and the community to help review and refine the parameters of the Australian-American bilateral relationship. The motivations of those attending these no doubt convivial gathers appear to be taken for granted. Should they?
ALLAN PATIENCE. Confecting a new China hysteria.
Australias diplomacy with its Asian neighbours and contenders has always been awkward. In a similar manner to Britains awkward partnering with Europe, so Australia is Asias awkward partner. In the past we could calm our fears by relying on great and powerful friends. Those days are over. Australia needs urgently to plan for an independent future while integrating itself knowledgeably and sensitively into its region. First and foremost, that means learning how to relate intelligently to China, the emerging regional hegemon.
ALLAN PATIENCE. Its time for a citizens constitutional convention.
Unsurprisingly, very few Australians have any interest in their Constitution. It was designed in the closing stages of the 19th century by mostly older white men (no women were involved) for a horse and buggy era. It is an awfully dull document, originally an Act of the British parliament, intended to persuade a gaggle of recalcitrant colonies to come together into a federal compact. In contemporary Australia there is no serious educating of citizens about the extent of federal powers, the complexities of federal-state relations, whether the Constitution is truly protective of human rights, and just how adaptive it is...
ALLAN PATIENCE. The Coalition government: In thrall to the Nationals.
The National Party receives about 7 % of the vote nation-wide in general elections. This is less than the Greens. Meanwhile over-all support for the Nationals is trending downwards. As a minority rump within the Coalition they nonetheless wield power that is way out of proportion to their representation in parliament. Coalition politics it seems is in thrall to the populist right.
ALLAN PATIENCE. Whose ruled-based international order?
There is much bleating in Australia about the obligation on states to comply with a rules-based international order. The bleating intensifies whenever the Foreign Minister reacts to Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea or in relation to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute between Tokyo and Beijing.
ALLAN PATIENCE. The complacency of the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper.
The 2017 White Paper displays, yet again, Australias foreign policy complacency, its misplaced middle power imagining, and its awkward partnering in its region. It is a failure as a strategic map for advancing Australias security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region and the world.
ALLAN PATIENCE. Is Australia a morally backward society?
Earlier this year a national conference of First Nation Australians at Uluru recommended that a Council representing all Indigenous Australians be enshrined in the Constitution. The purpose of the Council would be to advise governments on policies affecting Indigenous Australians. It would not have legislative powers; it would be a strictly consultative body, advising governments and making recommendations to improve the living conditions of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The decision of the Turnbull government to reject this extremely important recommendation is evidence that Australia is a morally backward society.
ALLAN PATIENCE. Base politics or incredibly clumsy policing?
Police raids on political parties or associated institutions at any time should raise concerns and the hackles - among democratically minded citizens. The recent raids on AWU offices in Sydney and Melbourne, seemingly in search for dirt on Bill Shortens time as head of the Union, should be ringing alarm bells. Are the police acting independently, as our weak Prime Minister claims? Is this an attempt to silence one of the countrys most effective political advocacy groups - to wit, GetUp!? Are the federal police seeking to curry favour with an incumbent government by going after the Leader of...
ALLAN PATIENCE. The failure of Australian conservatism.
Tony Abbott has announced his intention to stay in politics in order to protect and promote what he calls liberal conservative values. He claims his values are at the very heart of Liberal Party philosophy. Meanwhile Cory Bernardi seeks to trump this by asserting that his new party is the one true home of Australian conservatism. What this latest ideological imbroglio points to is the fact that the Australian Liberal Party has always been an unconsummated marriage between liberalism and conservatism. Perhaps Liberal Party supporters need reminding that nearly all unconsummated marriages end up in bitter divorce.
ALLAN PATIENCE. Anyone for disruption?
The ugly chickens of the neoliberal era in Australian public policy are relentlessly coming home to roost: stagnating wages, high unemployment (especially among young people), declining standards in public hospitals, schools, universities, and TAFE institutes, homelessness on the increase, more beggars on the streets, increased social conflict (crime, racist violence, domestic violence, home invasions, road rage, car-jackings, sexual harassment), the death of manufacturing, more and more people experiencing anger, despair, anxiety and depression, unprecedented growth in socio-economic inequality, big corporations bullying governments and the general public (big banks, mining companies, media organisations)
ALLAN PATIENCE. Advance Australia!
Madness in the Coalitions ranks over the Finkel report and sleaziness in ALP ranks over clandestine foreign donations are just the latest evidence that the current pack of parliamentarians is incapable of governing in the interests of all Australians. What this country needs is a strong political enema to clean out the political constipation from which the country is now suffering.
ALLAN PATIENCE. What values are we talking about?
How much longer must we endure the so-called culture wars? How much longer do we have to put up with vacuous phrases like Australian values in our politics? Now, it seems, the Prime Minister has taken to using this disagreeable language.
ALLAN PATIENCE. How much lower are we going to go?
The current Australian values and new immigration visa debates, blusteringly initiated by Malcolm Turnbull and his would-be successor Peter Dutton, represent one of the lowest points in recent Australian political history. Are these panicking populists capable of dragging the country any lower? Very likely they will try, because the politics they have now so fully embraced can take them nowhere else.
Its time for Labor to think big about policy - a people's bank!
Tony Abbott is not the only one anticipating a change of government at the next election. Voters across the board are increasingly fed up with the Coalition and there are even signs that some of its most devoted cheer leaders in the media are beginning to give up on it. Dear old Alan Jones has certainly given up on it. So what does Bill Shorten have in store for us if the ALP wins the next election?
ALLAN PATIENCE. The seduction of pessimism.
It seems that the end is nigh of much of what we know and love about our planet as climate change intensifies across the globe. Climate change science is painting a depressingly pessimistic picture of the future. Is there no hope?
ALLAN PATIENCE. Is it time to resurrect the Albury-Wodonga city plan?
The housing crisis, hitting young Australians in particular, is one of the cruelest consequences of economic rationalist policy making to which both our major political parties remain super-glued. Neither party has a clearly articulated, long-term solution to this ideologically generated and completely unnecessary crisis.
ALLAN PATIENCE. Is globalization ending?
It is the fashion to declare that globalization is coming to an end. Evidence for this includes: nationalism being on the rise; protectionist policies making a come-back; borders being slammed shut; populist politicians multiplying at rabbit-like rates. Trump and Brexit, it is said, are the isolationist tips of two vast metaphorical icebergs that both represent populist hostility directed towards the idea of a world that would be one.
ALLAN PATIENCE. Where do we go from here?
Why do we experience such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society? Why is it beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage? Are we doomed indefinitely to lurch between a dysfunctional free market and the much advertised horrors of socialism? Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land
ALLAN PATIENCE. How Conservative or Populist is the Contemporary Right in Australian Politics?
Conservatism and populism have become two abused concepts in contemporary Australian politics. In fact they are now being used as a camouflage by certain political operatives to conceal a harsh political agenda that bitterly contradicts nearly everything for which traditional conservatism has ever stood while distorting our understandings of the true nature of populism.
ALLAN PATIENCE. The End is Nigh! Anticipating a Post-Capitalist World
Capitalism is in crisis. What Marx referred to as its internal contradictions have begun undermining its very foundations. It is time to ask what a post-capitalist world will be like.
ALLAN PATIENCE. From America into Asia
As Australia necessarily rethinks its alliance with the United States, it must simultaneously educate itself into Asia. There is just no other way.
ALLAN PATIENCE. Whats Next After Neo-Liberalism?
The evidence is now irrefutable that the neo-liberal project that has dominated public policy across the major economies for nearly four decades now has been an unmitigated disaster. If nothing else, those who voted for Donald Trump have made that abundantly clear. In Australia neo-liberal (or economic rationalist) policies have resulted in wages stagnation, widespread job insecurity and declining living standards for the majority of the population. Neo-liberal taxation strategies favouring big corporations and the rich are a major cause of the fiscal crises facing governments at all levels across the country. Gold-plated promises that a deregulated economy, freed-up market,...
ALLAN PATIENCE. The Tragedy of Trump
If nothing else Donald Trumps victory in the 2016 presidential election is compelling evidence that the neo-liberal project has been a catastrophic public policy failure. Blindly believing that he is their saviour, the victims of neo-liberalisms caustic consequences have seized the moment by voting for Donald Trump. They view him as some kind of Old Testament prophet who has come to lead them out of neo-liberal captivity a saviour who will root out the causes of their humiliation, anguish and anger. They are convinced that he is one of them outsiders who are losing in the great game...
ALLAN PATIENCE. Australias American Leadership Distraction
Back in the 1960s, in his book The Lucky Country (a title he meant as irony), Donald Horne noted that Australia was a lucky country despite being run by second-rate people. Considering todays leaders across Australia, we would have to conclude that Hornes judgement is much too generous. The reality is that its mostly third-rate people who are now running the country. And they do so with impunity. The barely concealed contempt the four bank CEOs displayed towards their questioners at the recent parliamentary inquiry is a case in point. It appeared they couldnt have cared less about their institutions...
ALLAN PATIENCE. Why the debates about Islam have gone off the rails
One of the persistent conceits of modern history has been the growing conviction that rational scientific enquiry will completely remove religious thinking from human consciousness for all time. Positivist fundamentalists like Stephen Hawking or so-called New Atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have triumphantly echoed the Nietzschean declaration God is dead without understanding that this was Nietzsches anguished cry in response to modernitys mindless stampede into what he believed was a ghastly post-mythic abyss. A similar despair engulfed one of the very greatest sociological theorists of modernity, Max Weber, who accused its protagonists of disenchanting the human experience by...
ALLAN PATIENCE. Chilcot and Australia.
The Report of the Chilcot Enquiry into the UKs entry to the Iraq War in 2003 is deeply disturbing. It documents a litany of catastrophic intelligence failures and ill-informed and unsubtle decision-making by Tony Blair and his senior advisors and Ministers. Apart from exposing the appallingly weak grounds for entering the war in the first place, it is appropriately critical of the lack of any proper planning for the post-Saddam era, including the fact that British soldiers were inadequately equipped for the conditions in which they had to fight - resulting in what were probably many avoidable deaths. Chilcot and...
Allan Patience. Can We Continue to Afford Australias Federal System?
Australians are facing a gruelling 2016. A growing revenue crisis is placing severe constraints on the budget, meaning the government will probably be contemplating cuts in services and other soft target areas like pensions, child care subsidies and related welfare measures. The neo-liberal vandalizing of the countrys manufacturing sector, and the short-termism that is now a fixed feature of economic policy-making in Australia, mean that employment prospects are bleak, especially for school leavers and recent graduates. The consequences of climate change are becoming more apparent by the day as the country struggles through a summer of heat waves, droughts, floods,...
Allan Patience. Australia and the War in Syria.
Repost from 02/09/2015 Australia and the War in Syria:Perverting a Noble Vision in International Law forIgnoble Domestic Political Purposes In 2005 a summit of world leaders at the United Nations unanimously endorsed the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Along with the establishment of the International Criminal Court, it constitutes one of the most noble contributions to international law, ever. Basically the doctrine declares that where a state is incapable or unwilling to protect its citizens, the international community should come to their aid. Intervention may take one or more of several forms: debt forgiveness, manageable loans,...
Allan Patience. Fighting Holy Wars in the Middle East
How do we deal with Daesh? The Islamic State (ISIS) has proven to be a brutally formidable force in Syria and Iraq. As we saw recently in Paris, it has spread its vicious tentacles into Europe. It is highly probable that well see it erupt in North America and very possibly again here in Australia, quite soon. It is clear that for all the blood and treasure invested in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria heavy bombing raids, military advisors/trainers on the ground, intelligence gathering on an apocalyptic scale, all to the tune of billions of dollars little...
Allan Patience. Now is the Time for All Good Men and Women to Come to the Aid of the Party
Richard Di Natale has called on the Greens to get ready for government. Well and good. The direction in which he is prodding his party is a rare glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak Australian political landscape. Whether in a coalition (likely with Labor), or in its own right (unlikely), what sort of public policy agenda would a Greens government pursue? It is time for it to come up with a broad and innovative policy agenda; otherwise a completely new political party will have to be created. The other major parties, Labor and Liberal, have become ossified...
Allan Patience. Liberty or Narcissism?
On the Need for a Wider Debate about Charlie Hebdo No one can justify the recent brutal murders of the French journalists and police in Paris. However, the belief that this act constitutes an attack on free speech and freedom of the press is in grave danger of being over-stated. What is missing in the debate so far is the understanding that there is a particularly fine line between satirizing peoples beliefs and values and insulting them. When Attorney-General George Brandis asserted that freedom of speech meant people had the right to be bigots, many Australians disagreed with...