John Menadue

John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.

John's recent articles

CHRIS MCDONNEL. A cry from the depths

It is often said that the darkest night comes in the hour before dawn. Recently the Church has passed, and is still passing through, a night time experience. We await the dawn hour.

CAI FANG. A trade war will only hasten Chinas structural reforms (East Asia Forum)

On 22 March 2018, the United States, invoking Section 301 of the Trade Act, increased tariffs on imported goods from China. Since then, the trade war has severely harmed both the Chinese and US economies. Yet despite 11 rounds of high-level negotiations between the two sides, the Trump administration has continued to escalate the trade conflict. The result has been an increase in tariffs on Chinese imports from 10 per cent to 25 per cent on 10 May 2019. China certainly did not want a trade war, it was launched unilaterally by the United States. But China was prepared for...

GEETA PANDEY. Indian MP Mahua Moitra's 'rising fascism' speech wins plaudits (BBC News)

A spirited turn at the mic by a first-time female MP in India's parliament, in which she listed the signs of early fascism, has been hailed as the speech of the year on social media.

TOM ENGLELHARDT. Were Not the Good Guys Why Is American Aggression Missing in Action?(TomDispatch.com 2.7.2019)

Headlined U.S. Seeks Other Ways to Stop Iran Shy of War, the article wastucked awayon page A9 of a recentNew York Times. Still, it caught my attention. Here's the first paragraph: American intelligence and military officers are working on additional clandestine plans to counter Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, pushed by the White House to develop new options that could help deter Tehran without escalating tensions into a full-out conventional war, according to current and former officials.

China is not an enemy (Washington Post letter, 3 July 2019)

Dear President Trump and members of Congress: We are members of the scholarly, foreign policy, military and business communities, overwhelmingly from the United States, including many who have focused on Asia throughout our professional careers. We are deeply concerned about the growing deterioration in U.S. relations with China, which we believe does not serve American or global interests. Although we are very troubled by Beijings recent behavior, which requires a strong response, we also believe that many U.S. actions are contributing directly to the downward spiral in relations.

TREVOR WATSON. Crossing a line in the Korean sand; Trump goes where others have been before

Donald Trumps crossing of the 38th Parallel into North Korea was a ten out of ten for symbolism. It was wonderful television and an outstanding PR move by the US President and the North Korean Leader, Kim Jun Un. The event took me back almost 30 years to my own crossing of the famous ceasefire line which also generated little of substance.

KEVIN PEOPLES. Is the Male Clerical Church Irrelevant?

I first met the clerical God in 1964. I was 27. This was at Springwood, in the Blue Mountains. I met him while hiding away at St. Columbas seminary. He was not to my liking and we parted in just under three years. Unlike my God, this distant and patrichal God lived somewhere outside his created world.

ROB MAINWARING. Centre-left politics: dead, in crisis, or intransition? (The Conversation, 24 June 2019)

The ALPs defeat at the 2019 federal election was a surprise. Shortens Labor fell short, against both wider commentariat predictions and unrepresentative polls. Yet, if we take a step back, the result is less surprising if we locate Labors defeat in the wider crisis of social democracy.

MONIQUE ROSS. Why the Pharmacy Guild is the most powerful lobby group you've never heard of (ABC News)

It's been called the most influential lobby group in Australia, and some believe it has the power to bring down a government if it really flexed its muscle.

PETER RODGERS: Israel-Palestine and the Bahrain conference Jared in wonderland

Whatever happens with Donald Trumps presidency, the future of his son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, is assured. A career as writer of romantic fiction is his for the asking.

MIKE BRUCE. No jobs here: Penalty rate cuts fail to fire up employment growth (New Daily)

Jobs growth in the retail and hospitality sectors has more than halved since the introduction of Sunday penalty rates, a new study has revealed.

NARGES BAJOGHLI. Trumps Iran strategy will fail (New York Times, 2 July 2019).

As tensions with Tehran escalate, Washington has been struggling to understand the internal thinking of the Iranian government, and especially that of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The organization, which functions as an elite military branch and a bulwark of the countrys revolution, is today the most powerful force within Irans complicated political structure. Understand the Revolutionary Guards, and you understand a good part of what makes modern Iranian politics tick.

DONALD COZZENS. How much corruption can we tolerate in the church before we leave?

After reading James Carrolls lengthy lament in The Atlantic on the corruption in the Catholic Church and its priestly caste, I remembered reading an article in America magazine by the late Jesuit theologian Walter Burghardt. In the course of half a century, the weathered scholar wrote in Tell the Next Generation, I have seen more Catholic corruption than you have read of. I have tasted it. I have been reasonably corrupt myself. And yet I joy in this Church this living, pulsing, sinning people of God.

NIALL McLAREN Times change. Fools never.

Times change, and people who refuse to change with them will be left behind.

TONY WALKER. Acting on Iran has painful shades of joining the US in Iraq. (SMH 1.7.2019)

Heres a word of advice to Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Unless he wants to risk a smudge on his reputation of the sort that accompanies John Howard to this day: dont get involved in conflict with Iran beyond limited naval engagement in a Gulf peace-keeping role.

STEPHEN KINZER. In an astonishing turn, George Soros and Charles Koch team up to end US forever war policy (Boston Globe, 30 June 2019)

BESIDES BEING BILLIONAIRES and spending much of their fortunes to promote pet causes, the leftist financier George Soros and the right-wing Koch brothers have little in common. They could be seen as polar opposites. Soros is an old-fashioned New Deal liberal. The Koch brothers are fire-breathing right-wingers who dream of cutting taxes and dismantling government. Now they have found something to agree on: the United States must end its forever war and adopt an entirely new foreign policy.

JOHN CARMODY. The enduring farce of British politics

To Australian eyes, British politics appear relentlessly chaotic, even anti-social. The solutions seem impossible to find, forever out of sight, let alone reach and as in true tragedy entirely self-inflicted.

BERNARD MOYLAN. Homily on Israel Folau

I intended to speak today about the hyperbolic language Jesus used in order to get a point across. The point in todays gospel is that life is more than rigid responsibilities and that our following him should be unencumbered. He is also reported as saying that if your eye offend you, pluck it out; if your hand offend you, cut if off. We are not meant to take these statements literally.[more]

RORY MCGUIRE. Middle East: Comedy or Tragedy?

It is increasingly difficult to decide whether the ongoing drama in the Middle East is a comedy or a tragedy. The actors are performing roles written for comedians but the consequences of their actions are tragic too often.

PATRICK BUCHANAN. Memo to Trump: Trade Bolton for Tulsi (The American Conservative)

For too long our leaders have failed us, taking us into one regime change war after the next, leading us into a new Cold War and arms race, costing us trillions of our hard-earned tax payer dollars and countless lives. This insanity must end. Donald Trump, circa 2016?

JOHN MENADUE. Ensuring the Future of Pearls and Irritations

Thanks to the many subscribers who have offered financial support to P & I in the future. I need to secure financial underwriting and arrange 'back office' support before we embark on fundraising. Thanks for your early response to this post. We will be in touch. John Menadue. Susie and I are looking for organisational and financial support to ensure the future of P & I in ways that are consistent with the values and direction that we have pursued. Editorial independence is essential.

MAUREEN DOWD. Trump holds off his hawks for now (New York Times, 26 June 2019)

As shocking as it is to write this sentence, it must be said: Donald Trump did something right.He finally noticed the abyss once he was right on top of it, calling off a retaliatory strike on Iran after belatedly learning, he said, that 150 people could die.

BRIAN LAWRENCE. The Government's tax package and Labor's response: the perspective of a cleaner

The Government's tax package is unfair to low paid workers. In response, the Labor Opposition has just announced that it will support Stage 1 of the package, within which is embeded much of that unfairness. How might we reduce the unfairness?

WILLIAM GRIMM MM. What's under the miter? Legal systems and media exposure are the chief tools to deal with corruption among church leaders

When I was a boy, I watched a narrow clamshell bucket dipping into a sewer up the street from our home to clear muck. I was still too young and too inexperienced in the ways of the Church to be aware of the irony of it, but I found it amusing that the muck-filled bucket looked vaguely like an upside-down version of the hat I had recently seen filled by the head of a bishop who came to our parish for Confirmations.

MARY-LOUISE O'CALLAGHAN. Stepping out and up in the hot mess of the Pacific (Lowy Institute)

Personal connections matter, and Scott Morrisons ties to the Pacific run deeper than many realise.

SHIRO ARMSTRONG. The PM must step up if WTO is to return from the brink (Financial Review)

The G20 will meet in Osaka with world trade in crisis. The time has come to chose between our volatile ally and the multilateral trading system.

DAMIEN CAVE. She's 83 and a Famous Nun. Australia's Catholic Leaders Want Her to Stay Away

Sister Joan Chittister, a well-known American nun, feminist and scholar, was looking forward to speaking at a Catholic education conference in Australia next year, figuring there would be plenty to discuss in a country where Catholic schools educate roughly one in five children.

ANDREW BACEVICH. Bret Stephens, Warmonger (The American Conservative)

In fact, some people do want war, including a certain New York Times columnist.

GEORGE GRUNDY. Greed in the game made in heaven.

I couldnt sleep last night. All the bigotry, hatred and stupidity in the news gets to me sometimes. For some reason, Israel Folaus story has really bothered me. Its not just that old Izzy likes to stand at a pulpit and tell people theyre going to hell, its that when called out for it hes gone straight for the Im being victimised for my beliefs trope. You know, the one people use when they want the right to say something indefensible and not be criticised for it.

JOHN WILLOUGHBY. Reflections on the average health of average people

Im writing this, in the concluding years of a career in neurology and neuroscience, concerned for humanity. What do I conclude about the human condition at this time? In a nutshell: we are what we are: overbreeding mammals headed for a population crash as we over-consume the world we live in.

MICHAEL LIFFMAN: do our universities need more clear thinking?

The election result and the increasingly intolerant divisions in public discussion over recent years have led to the overdue recognition that Australia is indeed seeing a growing polarization in debate and policy development, and a disturbing tendency for people to think within their own 'bubble' and to fail to respect or even seek to understand the views of others.

MAX HASTINGS. Boris Johnson: brilliant, warm, funny and totally unfit to be PM (Daily Mail 11.10.2012)

For 20 years I have known London's mayor as a god-medal egomaniac. If he gets into No. 10, I'm on the first plane out.

JO KHAN. We still have time to act on climate change but records will tumble for next 20 years regardless of emissions: study (ABC News)

Our last summer was the hottest on record in Australia, and we can expect the record breaking weather to continue for at least the next 20 years, new climate change research has found.

BHIM BHURTEL. The threat to Christianity is from within. (Asia Times 21.6.2019)

Christianity is an indispensable cog in the idea of Western civilization along with other core values of the West supposedly based on the moral and ethical foundations of Christianity. Perhaps no one can imagine Western civilization secluding Christianity as depicted by Samuel P Huntington in his famous 1993 Foreign Affairs essay, The Clash of Civilizations. He says, Religion is a central defining characteristic of civilization, referring to Christopher Dawsons supposition that the great religions are the foundations on which the great civilizations rest. Western civilization embraces many elements, but among them are the moral, ethical, and legal systems that evolved...

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. If the US treats China like an enemy, then it will become one.

It is time for Australia to accept the reality of the rise of China and a resurgence of Russia.

LISA MARTIN. Tampa refugee taken in by New Zealand wins Fulbright scholarship (The Guardian)

Given the chance at a new life, we have grabbed it with both hands, Abbas Nazari says.

GAY ALCORN. Call to arms: how can Australia avoid a slow and painful decline? (The Guardian)

Australia has been warned it risks drifting into the future if it fails to respond to challenges in a fast-changing world

J. BRADFORD DELONG. What to do about China? (Project Syndicate 5.6.2019)

By attempting to get tough with China, US President Donald Trump's administration is highlighting the extent to which America's star has fallen this century. If the US ever wants to reclaim the standing it once had in the world, it must become the country it would have been if Al Gore had won the 2000 presidential election.

ELENA COLLINSON. Anthony Albanese and the Peoples Republic of China: an overview (Australia-China Relati ons Institute, UTS)

Following the Australian Labor Partys (ALP) federal election defeat on May 18 2019, Bill Shorten stepped down as leader of the party. Anthony Albanese, a long-term ALP frontbencher, became the ALPs leader-elect on May 27 after an uncontested leadership ballot, and was formally endorsed as Opposition Leader on May 30.

PATRICK WINTOUR. US joins four rogue countries seen as likely forces for bad, poll finds (Guardian, 20 June 2019)

The United States has joined Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iran in a rogues gallery of countries perceived as likely to use their influence for bad. All five countries are also seen as less likely to use their influence for good than they were 10 years ago.

ROBERT FISK. Trump's evidence about Iran is 'dodgy' at best. (Counterpunch 18.6.2019)

The crackpot president of theUnited States of America has so snarled up the gangplank to truth these past 29 months that no matter how much evidence he and his crew produce to prove that the Iranians have been trying to blow up oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman or not quite blow them up the pictures have a kind of mesmeric quality about them.

TONY BROE. What do Aboriginal Australians want from their aged care system? Community connection is numberone (The Conversation, 19 June 2019)

The Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population is ageing at a much faster rate than the non-Indigenous population. Aboriginal Australians record high mid-life rates of multiple chronic diseases including heart disease and stroke, lung disease, and type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes, for example, is more than twice as common in the Indigenous population than the non-Indigenous population.

CHAS FREEMAN. The Sino-American Split and its Consequences

To be able to compete effectively with rising powers like China and resurgent nations like Russia; to be able to do so with the confident optimism our country has always embodied, we must fix not only our diplomacy but the domestic policies and practices that now divide and weaken us. We have a constitutional democracy that history has shown can facilitate orderly change. To bring the immense talents and energies of the American people to bear on the unprecedented challenges our country now faces, we must adapt to new domestic as well as foreign realities. We Americans have done this...

CAROL GIACOMO. A New Trump Battleground: Defining Human Rights (The New York Times)

After the horrors of World War II, the United States led in adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, recognizing the inherent dignity and equal and inalienable rights of all people to life and liberty. For three-quarters of a century it has stood for the protection of human rights by the rule of law. Now, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is establishing a Commission on Unalienable Rights to provide fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nations founding principles of natural law and natural rights, according to a notice in the Federal...

CRISPIN HULL. Transport policy takes us on Argentine road (Canberra Times 7 June 2019)

Transport should not be a hostage to politics and ideology, but in Australia it has been since before the rival colonies of NSW and Victoria decided to have different railway gauges in the 19 th century and it is likely to continue and get worse with the re-election of the Coalition Government.

PETER STANLEY. Reading the Act: what is the Australian War Memorial for?

Dr Brendan Nelsons pitch for the Australian War Memorials half-a-billion-dollar expansion is that the institution helps to heal traumatised war veterans. But is healing veterans even the Memorials responsibility? To answer that question we need to read the Memorials Act.

JOHN HUDSON. Pompeo pledges not to wait for Britains elections to push back against Corbyn and anti-Semitism (Washington Post 8.6.2019)

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo weighed in on British politics during a closed-door meeting with Jewish leaders, saying he would not wait for Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to become prime minister of Britain to push back against him or any future actions he might take against Britains Jews.

CONOR FOWLER. Singapore and China Move to Enhance Defence Relations (Future Directions)

On 29 May, Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe met with his Singaporean counterpart, Ng Eng Hen, and announced the revision of the Agreement on Defence Exchanges and Security Co-operation (ADESC), which was first signed in 2008. The revision is designed to deepen military ties between the two countries. The two ministers met in Singapore ahead of the upcoming Shangri-La Dialogue defence summit. It will be the first time since 2011 that such a high-ranking Chinese government official has attended the annual event. There are several implications for the region arising from this agreement, as well as for other interested parties,...

PAUL KRUGMAN. Mar-a-Lago comes for the N.H.S. (New York Times 8.6.2109)

Probably everyone who followed Donald Trumps visit to Britain has a favorite scene of diplomatic debacle. But the moment that probably did the most to poison relations with our oldest ally and undermine whatever chance there was for the phenomenal trade deal Trump claimed to be offering was Trumps apparent suggestion that such a deal would involve opening up Britains National Health Service to U.S. private companies.

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