Jack Waterford

John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.

Jack's recent articles

JACK WATERFORD. Thin pickings from big bikkies

Britains war on organised crime is failing, and its probably the same here Some fresh and depressing evidence for those who, like me, fear that federal law enforcement is a good deal less effective and efficient than it could be, because of the way its resources are configured, led, and under the close and very unaccountable supervision of ministers and bureaucrats.

JACK WATERFORD. The judiciary is a part of government too (Canberra Times 27-9-19)

Australian politicians given to complaining that unelected judges are usurping the functions of ministers and of parliament would do very well to study this weeks British Supreme Court ruling holding the prorogation of the British Parliament by the Queen at the prime ministers request to be null and void.

JACK WATERFORD. Albaneses race against time (Canberra Times 20-9-19)

On paper, Anthony Albanese has all the time in the world. The electorate is not paying any attention to defeated Labor at the moment, and wont probably for at least another year. Thats time enough for a comprehensive review of how Labor snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in May. Its time enough to plot, develop and project an entirely new image for Labor at the 2022 election. All the more reason for hastening slowly, as he has been explaining patiently to his Caucus.

JACK WATERFORD. Politics and the rustle of folding money (Canberra Times 13-9-19)

I wouldnt hang a dog on the evidence so far assembled in support of the proposition that Gladys Liu, Liberal MP for Chisholm, is an active agent of the Chinese government, engaged in nefarious and illegal activities against Australia. On the other hand, one cannot help cynically feeling that were Ms Liu to be accused, in China with similar evidence to that presented here of being an agent for Australia, she would probably be summarily convicted and shot.

JACK WATERFORD. Bullshit and hypocrisy cannot hide behind a Secret stamp (Canberra Times 6 Sep 2019)

50 years of public disclosure has never harmed the national security interest Brian Toohey is a great Australian journalist who, over 50 years, has mostly rated the publics right to know as being more important than what politicians and public servants have thought the national security interests of the state. He has often embarrassed governments with disclosure about what is being secretly said and done on their behalf.

JACK WATERFORD. Labors turn with the brown paper bag. Integrity bodies should have power to check corruption inside political parties.

NSW Labors little embarrassment in front of its Independent Commission Against Corruption has a bad look, temporarily takes attention away from problems festering the Berejiklian government and had led to the fall of yet another NSW Labor General Secretary in murky circumstances. AS is usual in NSW, whichever party is involved, brown paper bags come into it. Still, all in all, it is almost the scandal one has to have if one is going to have a scandal, because it is very unlikely that the NSW Liberal Party will be very interested in making political capital of it.

High Court should leave Pell alone. Theres no unresolved point of law, and no mere judicial disagreement on facts invites special leave

George Pell will be doing very well if he succeeds in getting the High Court to grant him leave to appeal after the Victorian Court of Appeal threw out his appeal against his conviction for child sex offences. Pell was convicted by a well- instructed jury; neither side had the slightest complaint about the judges instruction to the jury.

Can Knut Morrison hold back the tides?

Weve lost influence over China and the US, and over Hong Kong and Kashmir and the world may be slipping into recession. It is beginning to look as if we are drifting, more or less without a pilot, into the interesting times of the old Chinese curse. As one might expect, given our luck, the damnable thing is that there is almost no way that Australia can now much influence or affect a host of events with the capacity to completely change our fortunes.

Broken government: its the engine as well as the drivers

Ministers and bureaucrats seem only able to manage spot fires, not policy review beyond three-word-slogans. Ken Hayne, the former High Court judge who conducted the banking royal commission is quite right in suggesting that the political and bureaucratic system is broken, and in need of fundamental reconstruction. But some of those wisely nodding their heads, or shaking them, according to their immediate partisan advantage, are missing a part of the point: its the car thats broken; its not the driving he is criticising.

JACK WATERFORD. Half-hearted inquiries into casino crime

Where were the former politicians and apparatchiks who became Packer lobbyists when the spotlight focused on Crown?

JACK WATERFORD. When loyalty and duty are in conflict

How the new AFP chief juggled his role during an investigation that compromised his own superior Reece Kershaw, the new Australian Federal Police Commissioner deserved to get the appointment via an open and independent appeal process. He might well have won it, and, assuming that he did, would be walking into the job in a few months confident that he was not facing the jealousies, innuendo and sabotage from colleagues who believe their merits were not considered, or that the selection was contaminated by politics.

JACK WATERFORD. AFP needs a leader who is a character with character, not a bureaucrat with opinions (Canberra Times 20.7.2019)

The old-fashioned cop type Dutton is said to want are mostly known for preferring their prejudices to the facts.

JACK WATERFORD. Have Australians the heart for the Uluru statement? Losing the referendum would set back indigenous affairs by decades

There are many good reasons to support the latest plans to find a constitutional referendum question to encapsulate the principles of the Uluru statement from the heart. Theres the fact that it represents a good idea and good ideal perhaps one, as some say, that is essential to a mature nationality for Australia and a reconciliation with indigenous Australia, so cruelly displaced, to this day, by white settlement.

JACK WATERFORD. Not quite Custers last stand, yet

Australia must have an independent defence policy as American power in Asia and the Pacific wanes. But theres no reason to think us friendless. Hugh White is travelling the nations highways and byways trying to scare Australians out of their complacency about the nations security -- not least by raising again the prospect of Australias being naked and abandoned, particularly by our once great and once powerful friend, our bones being picked over by China, or perhaps Indonesia.

JACK WATERFORD. Pyne turning public role to private profit (Canberra Times 29.6.2017)

Australia yet again at the bottom of the democracies for standards of public conduct, and the will to enforce them.

JACK WATERFORD. Morrison should move before his enemies organise( Canberra Times 22 June 2019)

Right now Labor is preoccupied with its defeat and is not the major obstacle to coalition survival.

JACK WATERFORD. Morrison faces the climate storm( Canberra Times 15 June 2019)

Climate change is no longer a matter of dry debate: its already a bigger threat to our national security than war and trade tension in our region.

JACK WATERFORD. The leaking tap: cherchez le Pezzullo-haters (7 June 2019)

As usual with a leak inquiry, its not clear that the AFP means to solve the crime. It could be too embarrassing. (This article was posted two weeks ago in the Canberra Times but it is still very relevant. JM)

JACK WATERFORD. Bob Hawke: A larrikin, chairman and nation builder (Canberra Times 17.5.2019)

Bob Hawke's lasting monument is the Australian society of today. A modern open economy, which he skippered out of sheltered waters, for good or ill, mostly good, into the open sea. Reformed national institutions, some now, sadly, in poor shape again.

JACK WATERFORD. Are management and trustworthiness Morrison's strong points? (Canberra Times 13.4.2019)

We do not get muchsense of Morrison himself from what he has said or done, or what he has told us of why heis there. The ambition has been obvious, but for what and why? Nor is his history as aneconomic manager, Treasurer, or promoter of Australian growth so compelling that it makeshis claim to greater competence (than Labor) or to having better small governmentprinciples a compelling one.

JACK WATERFORD. Can Thodey, or Shorten, stop bleeding in the public service? (Canberra Times online 30.3.2019)

It was hard to avoid the feeling this week that Terry Moran has a much better take on the problems of modern government and public administration than the review of the public service commissioned by Malcolm Turnbull last year. And Pearls and Irritations is Australias best website focused on policy issues !

JACK WATERFORD. Prime Minister's ever-diminishing credibility. (Canberra Times 23.3.2019)

How do you know when a politician is lying? the old joke went. You see his lips are moving.

JACK WATERFORD. Murdoch becomes a paper tiger (Canberra Times 2.2.2019)

If Labor wins the next election Bill Shorten may be the first Labor prime minister since Arthur Calwell 55 years ago to act as if he was completely indifferent to the existence, the views or the personality of Rupert Murdoch, or his many media organs, in print or online.

JACK WATERFORD. Soft cops are soft-soaping us (Canberra Times 23.2.2019)

It was another so-so week for police public relations. As usual, it was trying to straitjacket any news into its own public relations construct of itself. But the image is fraying.

JACK WATERFORD. The silence of public service lambs used by a panicking government. (Canberra Times 16.2.2019)

One can take it as read that public servants do not like being used and abused by ministers, and verballed for partisan political purposes. Particularly when an election is due and the indications are that a new lot of ministers will soon be in charge. But public service leaders of gumption and character are supposed to have defences and protections against such ill-use. The failure of some to invoke them invites questions about their fearlessness and their independence.

JACK WATERFORD. Why do crime-busters need ASIO-type powers?

Any political cynic will see excellent reasons for giving the Australian Federal Police a lead role in the crusade against online child pornography, the grooming of children for sexual abuse, and other sexual abuse of children, matters which might ordinarily fall within the province of state police forces.

JACK WATERFORD. Frydenberg will pick up the election bill (Canberra Times 16.11.2018)

If I were a Labor warrior, thinking cautiously ahead about political warfare from mid-2019 after Labor had taken government - I might be judging that no present preparation could repay the investment more than a very strong focus on Josh Frydenberg, Scott Morrisons Treasurer.

JACK WATERFORD. Let's hope independents take lead on corruption. (Canberra Times 10.11.2018)

Perhaps the greatest service the House of Representatives' six independent MPs could do for themselves and the nation over the dying days of this Parliament is to take charge of progress with a federal anti-corruption commission. Good for them indeed, all six have an excellent chance of being re-elected and good for the country. They probably won't have a balance of power over the next government, and anything Labor cooperates in putting on the statute book over the next three months is likely to be stronger than what it would initiate in government.

Time to pull the curtain on memorial industry (Canberra Times 3.11.2018)

A fairly safe rule of public life is that the more flag lapels one wears, and the more one speaks of love of country or national greatness, the less likely the person has served in the nation's armed forces and put himself in harm's way, least of all in a time of national need. Two bellicose recent United States presidents, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, come to mind. In Australia, it's hard to go past John Howard, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and Brendan Nelson, a former defence minister who has perpetually thrust himself to...

JACK WATERFORD. Morrison lacks whatever it takes.

Only about half the present population were around paying any sort of attention to politics when Graham Richardson was a great power in the Labor Party, in the Hawke and Keating governments and in the land. He had power and menace, and openly relished a reputation for ruthlessness, faithlessness and a complete lack of sentimentality in pushing what he would claim to be in the interests of party re-election. Anything policy, platform or principles or anyone as long as it was not him in the way of what he thought best for the party was excess...

JACK WATERFORD. Turnbull's ABC chickens home to roost (Canberra Times 28.9.2018)

Malcolm Turnbull is a gift that keeps giving to the Labor opposition. Scott Morrison'songoing efforts to be all things to all people were again derailed this week by the ABC implosion, which saw the loss of its board chairman and its managing director, and a powerful smoky stench as Coalition jihadists ran for cover.

JACK WATERFORD. Trust Labor on national security? Sure can't. (Canberra Times, 9 June 2018)

The looming five by-elections are giving the government an opportunity to polish and rehearse one of the centrepieces of its re-election strategy for the next election the argument that the alternative government Labor is fundamentally unsound on national security policy, as on borders and boat people and cannot be trusted with the responsibilities of government.

JACK WATERFORD. We need a Catholic Yom Kippur, and a serious sacrifice.

The major intersection between the child abuse royal commission and the Catholic Church went into act four over the past week. The drama, plot and moral of the miracle play would be much enhanced if scene one, rather than scene four, of act five began with the resignations of each of Australia's archbishops, along with that of the nuncio, the archbishop representing the Pope in Australia.

Jack Waterford. It's time: The Dismissal gave us knockout punch politics, now we should get rid of it.

One has to be of a certain (old) age to remember intimately, as I do, the tumultuous events of November 11, 1975. I knew then that I was being a witness to history and, sometimes, metaphorically pinched myself to be sure I remembered. Nearly 40 years on, it remains the most sensational event of Australian politics since federation, but it is now, for three quarters of the population something that happened before they were born or before they had the least interest in Australian politics. Paul Kelly, emeritus editor-at-large of The Australian, has issued or re-issued what must...

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