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

JAMES FERNYHOUGH. Revealed: Australias richest professionals and the suburbs they live in

If youre a surgeon living in one of the opulent suburbs on the southern shore of Sydney Harbour, then congratulations: you are a member of the highest paid group in Australia.

ANNE HURLEY. auDA has great opportunity to reinforce its role in our digitally-enabled future, but needs to understand that disunity is death.

Having watched with interest the unfolding debate over the future of auDA the organisation charged with managing the Internet domain name space here on behalf of the federal government I was delighted to recently be invited to join its new Consultation Model Working Group. auDA has drawn together a group of 16 members, which includes a broad range of people with knowledge and expertise in the running of the Internet in this country over many years.

VIC ROWLANDS. Gonski and better learning.

The Holy Grail of teaching is not how children learn so much as when and why they learn, why they learn differently with the same teacher, or differently within the same class.The Age (26/5) reported: Schools have largely ignored data on their students published on the government's MySchool website, and one in four principals say the initiative has harmed their school. (Two thirds said the effect was neutral.)

LEO PATTERSON ROSS. Renters still face unacceptably poor conditions.

Governments at both federal and state levels continue to rely on the supply of bricks and mortar to solve Australias housing issues. We should be focusing not only on how many buildings are supplied, but what those buildings contain - people, trying to make a home.

NED CUTCHER. House prices off the boil in some cities, but its still grim for renters.

2017 was hoped to have been the year of the renter. As Federal Budget 2018 ticks by, the picture remains grim for low-income renters, despite property prices having come off the boil (for now) in some capital cities.

JACK DE GROOT. A home is much more than a roof over your head

This years Federal Budget delivered no vision, plan or commitment for addressing the growing housing affordability crisis, yet again failing to recognise how fundamental it is to our nations wellbeing to prioritise solving this problem.

GRAEME WORBOYS. Save Kosciuszko.

Australians need to save Kosciuszko from legislative action that will lead to the decline of one of Australias most beautiful areas, its mountain water catchments and unique alpine native animals and plants.

DAVID JAMES. Japan could lead the way in forgiving debt

As the world economy groans under soaring levels of debt, the place to look is Japan, whose current government debt-to-GDP ratio is an eye watering 253 per cent. It is Japan, which led the developed world into its current mess, that is likely to lead the world out ofit by cancelling debt. The consequences of such a move, if it happens, would be far reaching.

URI AVNERY. The Day of Shame

ON BLOODY MONDAY this past week, when the number of Palestinian killed and wounded was rising by the hour, I asked myself: what would I have done if I had been a youngster of 15 in the Gaza Strip?

WENDY HAYHURST. Budget 2018: What happened to affordable housing?

No joy from Budget 2018. Governments do have the resources to tackle affordable housing shortfalls. They just dont have the will to accord it the requisite priority. In so failing, they ignore not only the deep and lasting social costs of such neglect, but also the strong economic case for addressing housing affordability.

PETER PHIBBS. Australian housing policy going around in circles

The housing affordability report card for the last 12 months is a mixed one. A welcome reduction in price and rental pressures in some capital cities is offset by rising homelessness and ongoing housing stress for those on lower incomes, for whom more direct help is needed. Policy debate is often still very confused, even amongst some of our most revered institutions, including the RBA.

DMITRI TRENIN. Russia and Ukraine: From Brothers to Neighbours.

Russia is parting ways with both Ukraine and Belarus. This did not have to be a tragedy with Ukraine, and can still be handled amicably with Belarus. Moreover, an independent Ukrainian state and a Ukrainian political nation ease Russias transition from its post-imperial condition and facilitate the formation of a Russian political nation.

PETER DAY. An Open Letter to Pope Francis

Dear Papa Francesco, The Australian Catholic Church is in deep crisis and is in urgent need of your pastoral presence and leadership. Today, the former President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, archbishop Phillip Wilson, was formally charged with covering-up child sexual abuse; while Cardinal George Pell has himself be charged with sexual abuse and will face trial later this year.

JOHN DALEY AND BRENDAN COATES. We cant begin to fix our housing crisis until our leaders start levelling with the public

Governments at both Federal and State level are still avoiding the politically difficult changes that would make a real difference to housing affordability. But we wont make progress unless our leaders eschew the popular but ineffective options in favour of planning and tax reforms that could actually improve affordability.

CHRIS MARTIN AND HAL PAWSON. Last years affordable housing green shoots have withered

Budget 2018 fails the 1.5 million Australian households living in unaffordable rental housing or officially homeless, despite the urgent need for Commonwealth leadership on affordable housing policy.

HENRY SIEGMAN. The two-State solution: an autopsy

During the latest outbreak of violence in Gaza, Israeli security forces, using high-powered rifles and live ammunition, have killed forty Palestinians (and counting), and wounded more than five thousand. BTselem, a leading Israeli human rights group, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders have all accused Israels government and its minister of defence, Avigdor Lieberman, of targeting reporters and mostly unarmed civilians. Lieberman replied that there are no innocent people in Hamas-run Gaza.

SAUL ESLAKE. What has changed in the housing market over the past year?

Property prices have moderated in our largest cities over the past year, thanks in part to tightening of lending by APRA, and on inflows of foreign capital. There is some respite for first-time buyers, but the picture for renters is mixed. This years Budget had nothing significant for housing and those on lower incomes have little to celebrate in terms of housing reform.

TAREQ BACONI. What the Gaza Protests Portend

The battle against infiltration in the border areas at all times of day and night will be carried out mainly by opening fire, without giving warning, on any individual or group that cannot be identified from afar by our troops as Israeli citizens and who are, at the moment they are spotted, [infiltrating] into Israeli territory.

DAVID SPRATT. Senate report recognises climate change as existential risk, but fails to draw the obvious conclusions.

Climate change is a current and existential national security risk, according to an Australian Senate report released on Thursday 17 May. It says an existential risk is one that threatens the premature extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development. These are strong words.

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND ...

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive. But to be young was very heaven -- thats how many older Australians, with the distorted hindsight of nostalgia, look back on the turmoil of 1968. ABC Radio National has devoted a series of its regular programs to the events around 1968. The most concise is a short discussion May 1968 revisited on Geraldine Doogues Saturday Extra. Understandably most are retrospective, but there is also a program about lessons for today for those who seek social change the Gohn Day Memorial Lecture by Mary Frances Berry Lessons from past resistance...

PETER DAWSON. Review of Sunburnt Country.

Peter Dawson reviews Sunburnt Country - Dr Joelle Gergis new book on Climate Change Climate Scientist, Dr.Joelle Gergiss book pulls together from wide-ranging sources the story of the Australian climate since white settlement, but also reaches back 1000 years and more. She seeks to convince us that the climate change challenge we face is, by every measure, real, menacing and urgent. It is both a comprehensive and a compelling answer to the climate sceptics.

TSEEN KHOO. What Anzac Day meant for Asian Australians.

This year, just before ANZAC Day, I read a poignant, insightful piece by Nadine Chemali about what new migrants to Australia really thought about Anzac Day.

MICHAEL O'KEEFE. Why Chinas debt-book diplomacy in the Pacific shouldnt ring alarm bells just yet

Talk of Chinese debt trap diplomacy is nothing new, but a recent report by Harvard University researchers has resurrected long-held fears that Chinas debt diplomacy poses a threat to Australian interests in the Pacific.

The Vicar of Bray

The Vicar of Bray has become a cultural byword for political expediency, hypocrisy, and insincerity. He changed his allegiances time and time again.Can you think of an Australian Minister who reminds you of the Vicar of Bray?

STUART KENNEDY. Gloves are off: R&D tax debate

Australias science and innovation community has been dudded by the Coalitions 2018 budget reform of the R&D Tax Incentive scheme, with much less direct, targeted funding going back in than was pulled out of the tax incentive.

VIC ROWLANDS. Education, which way forward.

Gonski's Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools is timely but one would hope it will be supplemented by a closer look at the needs of lower achieving students for whom prospects in the next age, with the gap between rich and poor, becomes even more pronounced, are not encouraging. Gonski says:The basics must be in place by the time you're eight, but there is more to this than a change of methodology.

RICHARD TANTER. Tightly Bound: Australia's Alliance-Dependent Militarisation.

Australias unique military and intelligence relationship with the United States, combined with the country being geographically a part of Asia but historically, culturally and intellectually identified with the Anglo-Saxon world, have significant implications for Canberras current military modernisation. Richard Tanter examines how the countrys dependence on its alliance relationships helps determine the direction of that modernisation.

JOHN MENADUE. The scourge of lobbyists.

There are many key public issues that we must address such as climate change, growing inequality, tax avoidance, budget repair, an ageing population, lifting our productivity and our treatment of asylum seekers.But our capacity to address these and other important issues is becoming very difficult because of vested interests with their lobbying power to influence governments in a quite disproportionate way. We are rightly concerned and distrustful of governments and politicians. We need better political leadership but lobbyists are a major contributor to the awful political malaise. The corrupting power of lobbyists must be drastically curbed. The swamp must be...

DAVID COWARD. The man who did for Mao - a review of a biography of Simon Leys by Philippe Paquet

In 1932, Malcolm Muggeridge, then based in Moscow for the Manchester Guardian, filed reports of what he had found out about Soviet Russia, from the food shortages and forced labour to the deaths of 3 million people following the collectivization of agriculture in the Ukraine. His copy was censored and he was ridiculed by the liberal establishment, which preferred the Webbs rosier view of the New Civilization in the East. Muggeridge concluded that people believe lies not because they are plausible but because they want to believe them.

JOHN MENADUE. Are pharmacists professionals or shop keepers?

Pharmacists are the most under-utilised health professionals in the country. The Australian Pharmacy Guild is happy to keep it that way.

TIM COSTELLO. The Budget and aid.

The Coalition Governments fifth budget last week was carefully calibrated to offer just enough to a discontented electorate to restart the political contest ahead of the poll expected early next year. Yet again Australias battered aid program took a hit, this time in the form of a multi-year cut, combined with an extended freeze on indexation to inflation a cut by attrition. This is the same technique being applied to the ABC. But while attacking the national broadcaster is long-running pet project for the Governments culture warriors and their commercial media cheer squad, the assault on aid is more...

ROBIN DERRICOURT. Inside the belly of the monster (and a Cold War mind).

A 1960s British student leftist did not expect to find himself on a tour inside the Pentagon, or briefed by a US Army Colonel on his role there, tracking US radicals, with a distorted Cold War model of who they were but, well, it happened.

GREG HAMILTON. No stomach or mind for democracy.

Australians have a flaw in their character that shows up in their acceptance of a defective political system no decent reform can come close to changing. When their democratic system is attacked by minority anti-democratic forces, theyll back the attackers, not their system. And, having done so, they choose to believe their system is still democratic. Theres no helping a fickle electorate.

Classes & politics.

The return of the concept of class to mainstream public debate is an unanticipated feature of the second decade of the new century. Whether defined by peoples relationship to production or distribution, or as a hybrid of economic and cultural identities, a consciousness of class is crystallising once again within democratic countries, and notably in the United States. Some reasons are obvious.

MANDY FREUND, BEN HENLEY, KATHRYN ALLEN, PATRICK BAKER. Recent Australian droughts may be the worst in 800 years.

Australia is a continent defined by extremes, and recent decades have seen some extraordinary climate events. But droughts, floods, heatwaves, and fires have battered Australia for millennia. Are recent extreme events really worse than those in the past? In a recent paper, we reconstructed 800 years of seasonal rainfall patterns across the Australian continent. Our new records show that parts of Northern Australia are wetter than ever before, and that major droughts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries in southern Australia are likely without precedent over the past 400 years.

MICHAEL LESTER. Political Culture and the Limits of the APS Independent Inquiry.

There is an old saw that cautions politicians never to establish an enquiry unless they know the outcome beforehand. The Prime Minister appears to have learnt that lesson from the can of worms' exposed in his Royal Commission on Banking. Turnbull has announced an independent inquiry into the future of the Australian Public Service (APS). An independent inquiry is not a Royal Commission and its terms of reference and membership are presumably designed to keep it focused on his own political agenda.

GLEN SEARLE, CRYSTAL LEGACY. A closer look at business cases raises questions about priority national infrastructure projects.

Infrastructure Australias latest infrastructure priority list has been criticised for being too Sydney-centric and for giving Melbournes East West Link, cancelled in 2014, high priority status. The cancelled Roe 8project in Perth was removed from the list. So how does a project get onto Infrastructure Australias list? This requires submission of a full business case, which then needs to be positively assessed to be given priority status.

JOHN MENADUE. How and why corporate regulators have failed us.

The failure of corporate regulation and regulators is in plain sight for all to see. And it is not just in banking. Political ideology and corporate conceit has enabled the powerful to tilt the market in their favour at the expense of the less privileged. The result is growing inequality and insecurity. The Liberal Party branch offices,the BCA,News Corp and the Australian Financial Review also failed to uncover corporate failure and malfeasance on a grand scale.Was this deliberate or were they just asleep? It is unlikely that the regulars were wilful .. It is more likely that they...

PETER SMALL. Defending the indefensible.

Yet again Australian farmers and their organisation are caught on the back foot defending the indefensible, -the live sheep trade to the Middle East.

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND ...

A sense of complacency, a lack of intellectual curiosity, a failure to think about the bigger picture, a pursuit of consensus lessening constructive criticism. These are some of the findings in the Australian Prudential Regulatory Agency report into the Commonwealth Bank. It concludes that CBAs continued financial success dulled the senses of the institution. Its management understood the financial risks, but not the non-financial risks, facing the company. While were on the subject of finance the budget has attracted a wealth of commentary on Pearls and Irritations. John Falzon, Michael Keating, Giles Parkinson, Ranald MacDonald, Michael Pascoe, Ross Gittins,...

CAMERON HILL. Chinas policing assistance in the Pacific: a new era?

While there has been renewed discussion and debate surrounding Chinas infrastructure assistance to Pacific nations over the last several months, less attention has been paid to Chinas growing policing and law enforcement presence in the region. While still in its early stages, this presence spans several of the Pacific Island countries which recognise the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and, in some cases, has expanded beyond the provision of facilities and equipment to include training, secondments and joint operations.

RICHARD ACKLAND. Peter Duttons power grabs may yet be his undoing

The fate of Amber Rudd offers some hope to Australians who disapprove of Dutton and his methods.

PHILLIP BAKER, MARK LAWRENCE. Sweet power: the politics of sugar, sugary drinks and poor nutrition in Australia.

Unhealthy diets and poor nutrition are leading contributors to Australias burden of disease and burgeoning health-care costs. In 1980, just 10% of Australian adults were obese, today that figure is 28% among the highest in the world. And yet, as shown on Monday nights Four Corners episode which was a stunning expose of food, nutrition and health politics in Australia successive governments have done little to address it.

JOHN FALZON. Budget 2018: Noodle Nation?

Budgets should be a time when governments outline a practical vision of the future in which we share our commonwealth for a just, prosperous and equitable future. In a wealthy country such as ours, it should be a time of hope.

BRENDAN BYRNE. History taints Turnbull's fight against corruption

While it is a matter of public record that the Turnbull government blocked attempts to establish a royal commission into the financial services sector on multiple occasions, the question as to why the government has been so recalcitrant on this issue especially when it expeditiously facilitated a similar inquiry into corruption within the union movement is of more than academic interest.

HENRY SHERRELL. A snapshot of temporary migrants in Australia

A budding public conversation is underway about Australias population. Perhaps to help inform this conversation, the Department of Home Affairs has released a new data product documenting the number of migrants in Australia who hold a temporary visa.

MARTIN WOLF. How the Beijing elite sees the world

How does the Chinese ruling elite view the world? Over the weekend, I participated in a dialogue between a handful of foreign scholars and journalists and top Chinese officials, academics and business people, organised by the Tsinghua University Academic Centre for Chinese Economic Practice and Thinking. The discussion was franker than any I have participated in during the 25 years I have been visiting China. Here are seven propositions our interlocutors made to us.

TOM ENGELHARDT. The Caliphate of Trump, and a Planet in Ruins

Here is my six-category rundown of what I would call American extremity on a global scale: There is US violence at home and abroad.

CHAS FREEMAN. On the Souring of Sino-American Relations

(Remarks to the Committee of 100) I am honored to stand before you this morning to discuss US-China relations. Its a challenge to speak on a subject so many here know so much about, and to do so at a moment of such radical inflection in the relationship. But Sino-American relations are a matter of great importance to all in our country, and especially to Americans of Chinese heritage. A candid discussion of the deterioration of those relations and its implications could hardly be more timely.

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