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

SAMANTHA HEPBURN. Why arent Australias environment laws preventing widespread landclearing?

Australia has national environment laws the Environment Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act). Yet given the staggering rates of land clearing taking place, resulting in the extinction and endangerment of plants and animals in Australia, these laws are clearly not working.

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND

On Eureka Street Fatima Measham interviews Clare ONeil, Federal Member for Hotham and Labor Shadow Minister for Justice. ONeil explains how our economy is failing most people: the benefits of economic growth are not being shared. She explains the idea of inclusive growth, (Audio 27 minutes) Writing in the Fairfax Press, Jessica Irvine outlines the findings of a survey on younger (aged 16 to 40) womens attitudes to work a survey released in time for International Womens Day. Being treated with respect, job security, good pay and interesting and socially useful work are all ranked highly. The full...

How and why New Zealand withdrew or was forced from ANZUS in 1985.

In Foreign Policy Analysis in 2010, Amy L. Catalinac reviewed the events that led to New Zealand withdrawal from ANZUS and the reasons for it. She said: In 1985, a dispute over nuclear ship visits led the United States to formally suspend its security guarantee to New Zealand under the trilateral ANZUS Treaty. In this article, I conceptualize this dispute as a case of intra-alliance opposition by a small state toward its stronger ally. I generate four hypotheses from the literature on alliances in international relations to explain why New Zealand chose to oppose its ally on the nuclear ships...

GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. American Malaise and Malice.

The key to the Trump presidency is its malice. Trump daily mocks Lincolns noble intent: with malice toward none.There is now not a country or region in the world untouched by Trumpite malice, defined as the irrational desire to do harm or mischief, fuelled by a sense of imaginary grievances.Australia cannot expect to be exempt.

SCOTT BURCHILL. What is going wrong and how did we get here?

Despite the temptations of presentism and intemperate thinking, the forces which have brought us to the current political malaise have been around for some time. The ideological convergence of the major parties in our two party system has been underway for over four decades. Its most unfortunate consequence is that voters are robbed of meaningful policy choices in key areas which concern them: the threat of terrorism, national security and defence, surveillance laws, foreign policy, immigration and asylum seekers. This is the serious negative effect of bipartisanship.

ROB STEWART. Mal and Scottys Excellent Company Tax Cut Adventure.

The Governments full proposed company tax cuts package may eventually pass the Senate. If it does this will not be due to any inevitability or natural law of diminishing company tax revenue. And the tax cuts will not result in a win for average hard working Australians. Income and wealth inequality will continue to rise.

BILL ROWLINGS. Pilgrim passages, tatters returns.

Open and transparent could scarcely be claimed as the style of Australian executive and bureaucratic rule. But even by our poor standards, the saga of the Office of the Information Commissioner has been a disaster of huge proportions.

JOHN MENADUE. Afghanistan the graveyard of empires and the opium poppy.

They have all failed to conquer Afghanistan the Greeks, Indians and more recently, the British in the mid 19th Century and the Soviets in the late 20th Century. And now the US empire is failing to subdue the tribes of Afghanistan despite enormous cost of people and treasure. What has not received much attention is that the Taliban depends very heavily on the opium trade which finds its market in the US and other developed countries. That opium trade determines what happens in Afghanistan and not military intervention.

JOHN MENADUE The impotent and the pure!

In the Batman bi election the Greens have correctly directed criticism at the cruel policies of the ALP and the Coalition on refugees in Manus and Nauru.But the Greens do not have clean hands either.

NIALL McLAREN. ECT (electroconvulsive treatment) as high cost medicine in Australia.

Recent articles by John Menadue on health costs in Australia have emphasised the high fees charged by private procedural medical specialists. In a paper to be published next month (McLaren, N., ECT in Context, Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, April 2018), I examine costs associated with the use of ECT (electroconvulsive treatment) in psychiatry. This is a short version of that paper.

How liberals can reclaim nationalism.

In this article in the New York Times International Edition of 5 March 2018 Yascha Mounk argues that instead of exhorting their fellow citizens to live out their nations highest ideals, many activists seem content with denouncing past and present injustices.. This has enabled the bigots and racists to bend the meaning of the nation to their own sinister ends.

HYLDA ROLFE. Summer of our disconnect .

Hurrah-words dont disguise the reality of the steady creep of business into our National Parks. When a world-status Park is involved, all sorts of phoney justifications for commercial incursions are trotted out. The pity of it is that so many of them emanate from within the Gamekeepers compound. But repetition does not generate conviction, and the natives are becoming restless.

MICHAEL LAMBERT. Revisiting the South Australian Electricity Market.

In the context of the current South Australian election campaign, it is opportune to revisit the state of play with the South Australian electricity market which in 2016 and 2017 was used at the national level as an ill-informed or, perhaps more accurately, a misinformed argument about renewable energy and climate change policy.

ADAM LUCAS. Revealed: the extent of job-swapping between public servants and fossil fuel lobbyists.

Last month Australia slipped further down the rankings in the international corruption index. Among a wide range of factors cited by Transparency International was Australias inappropriate industry lobbying in large-scale projects such as mining, as well as revolving doors and a culture of mateship.

Michael Lambert: Trumps Steel and Aluminium Tariffs

President Trump has foreshadowed tariffs of 25% on all imported steel and 10% on all imported aluminium, reversing Americas historic commitment to free trade and proper governance in trade policy. It is also repeating an action taken by George W Bush in 2002 which completely failed and was reversed in 2003.

CATHERINE KING AND ANDREW LEIGH. It's no wonder we're questioning the value of private health care.

Australians are questioning the cost and value of private health more than ever.

DAVID ZYNGIER. Spending more on private schools doesn't guarantee success!

It is often claimed as fact that private schools outperform public schools. New analysis of MySchool data and 2017 Victorian Certificate of Education year 12 results shows that public schools with similar Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) rankings or Socio-Economic Status have very similar or even better VCE results than private schools. However, these public schools achieve these results with far less funding per student.

SCOTT BURCHILL. Class power in the US.

All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind (Adam Smith). Class is a Communist concept. It groups people together and sets them against each other (Margaret Thatcher). [Current opposition to free trade in the United States is] heavily influenced by perceptions that voters themselves now view trade issues in terms of a domestic class struggle, not as promoting exports and global integration (David Hale, economist).

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND ...

In the Fairfax press Martin Myer of the Myer Foundation has an article Rules around foreign donations threaten to cripple thousands of charities. Its about legislation currently in Parliament, which ostensibly is designed to track foreign political donations, but which would actually place huge administrative burdens on organisations involved in policy advocacy and on their donors. The principles of taxation are complex: in 2009 it took five volumes of the Henry Review to explain tax reform. But on ABC Radio National The Economists website is a lively 28 minute discussion The joy of tax between three experts, telling you...

JOHN MENADUE. The AMA did its best to scuttle Medicare over 40 years ago.

This week I posted an article Health Ministers may be in office but they are seldom in power I pointed out how doggedly and often quite selfishly the provider institution- mainly the AMA, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, Medicines Australia and the parasitical Private Health Insurance funds-resist almost all health reform unless it benefits provider interests. The public, patients and the community run a poor last.

JEFFREY A. BADER. Seven things you need to know about lifting term limits for Xi Jinping

At its annual meeting beginning on March 5, the Chinese National Peoples Congress appears poised to adopt a recommendation by the Communist Party that the two-term limit for president and vice president be eliminated. The change is of course not an expression of a preferred governance norm for longer terms, but rather a dramatic shift designed to permit President Xi Jinping to stay in power after his second presidential term expires in 2023.

DAVID MACILWAIN. Standing up Against America.

Arguing that Australia should cut all support for US forces in Syria, and support the Syrian government and its allies in the fight against the terrorist insurgency. This starts with a recognition that the White Helmets are allies of Al Qaeda, supported by the US and UK.

Australians prefer government funding for dental care rather than private health insurance

Polling released by Essential Report on February 27 2018 revealed that 48% of Australians favoured abolishing the taxpayer subsidy to Private Health Insurance (PHI) and using the savings to establish a Medicare Dental Scheme. 32% opposed such a change and 20 % did not have a view.

RICHARD TANTER. Bad, bad BADA (aka Bipartisan Australian Defence Agreement)

One explanation popular in some thinktank and corporate circles for incoherence in Australian defence policy and inefficiencies in defence procurement attributes these problems to the influence of politicians and elections. If only politics could be got out of the way, so the argument goes, we could have an effective policy process and an efficient defence procurement process.

ANNE HURLEY. Questions should be asked about the Coalition Agreement and its potential impact on the NBN rollout in rural Australia?

Over the last few weeks we have been inundated with reports of the Barnaby Joyce saga. One aspect of the saga has involved a call for transparency in the provisions of the agreement between the Liberal Party and Nationals the Coalition Agreement pursuant to which they operate as the Government for all Australians.

MARC HUDSON. The Nationals have changed their leader but kept the same climate story

After Barnaby Joyces demise as Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader, and his replacement by Michael McCormack, we might wonder what the junior Coalition partners leadership change means for Australias climate policy.

GORDON DE BROUWER. Achieving balance in Australias strategic thinking

A lot has been said about the challenge that Australia and other countries in Asia and the Pacific face in balancing their security interests with the United States and economic interests with China. The need to deal systematically with this challenge is sharpening as Beijing and Washington shift their conventional approaches to international relations. China has been more assertive in its foreign policy, especially in the South China Sea and in cyberspace. Meanwhile, there is concern that the United States under President Trump is abandoning its support for a rules-based and market-oriented global order and is championing an order that...

JOHN MENADUE. Health Ministers may be in office but they are seldom in power

The major barrier to health reform is the power of providers. A succession of Australian health ministers Liberal and Labor for three decades have failed in any serious health reform. It is a very sorry story. Any Minister, Liberal or Labor who wants to reform health must be prepared to take on the providers. Otherwise, we can forget serious health reform.

RICHARD TANTER. Joined at the hip with Donald Trump and implications for Pine Gap and Australian sovereignty.

In the repost below from 18 December 2017, Richard Tanter pointed out Apart from the multiple USSoviet nuclear crises of 1983, there has probably never been a more important time for Australians to consider the immediate implications of hosting Pine Gap. In the event of war on the Korean peninsula, Pine Gap hardwires Australia into US military operations, whether Canberra likes it or not. Pine Gap today is a US battlefield asset, and if President Trumps threat to totally destroy North Korea shifts from rhetoric to policy, Australia will automatically be involved in the second Korean War,...

MATTHEW RICKETSON & RODNEY TIFFEN. The chronicler we deserve?

Michael Wolffs book owes a large debt to the ethically grounded work of the journalists he professes to disdain.

NICHOLAS GRUEN. Now is the time for complacency: Banking and Australian Policy Makers

To quote Bank of England Governor, Melvin King in 2010 of all the many ways of organising banking, the worst is the one we have today. The Bank of England continues as a thoughtful critic to this day. As well see below, our own central bank the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) not so much. The fatal flaw in banking is that, although money is a classic public good, like the air we breathe or the radio spectrum, its privately created. Commercial banks like NAB or Westpac create money whenever they advance a loan. This private licence...

HYLDA ROLFE. Summer of our disconnect. (Part 1 of 2)

Some National Parks in New South Wales are taking a beating. On occasion, its difficult to distinguish the businesses that are officially sanctioned in them from the activities usually undertaken in normal commercial venues. Should they be there at all? It is time to sort things out.

GARRY WOODARD. The role of strategic ambiguity in Australia's China Policy

For half a century, strategic ambiguity about the application of ANZUS to Taiwan served Australia well. Is it time to apply this policy more broadly?

DAVID NICHOLLS. We are the lobster

An increasing feeling of unreality is pervading the social environment. It has an almost dreamlike feel to it. Or perhaps one should say should say, nightmare-like.

PATTY FAWKNER. Calls for change within the Church will be its salvation.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, MissouriandThe Posthave something important to say about the what and the how of the Churchs mission.

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND ...

On Phillip Adams Late Night Live Tony Moore of the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash explains the Centres recovering the Australian working class project. In arguing for a strong social wage he points out how means-tested benefits have contributed to downward envy. Australias working class is not necessarily poor, but it is disadvantaged in areas such as health and education. Transparency International has released its Corruption Perception Index 2017. New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the Nordic countries retain their lead rankings. Australia, which held 8th place behind these countries in 2012, has slipped to 13th place. Even...

JOHN MENADUE. When will we wake up to the risks as well as the benefits of the US alliance (A REPOST)

We are a nation in denial that we are joined at the hip to a dangerous ally. Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war; wars that we have often foolishly been drawn into. The US has subverted and overthrown numerous governments over two centuries. It has a military and business complex, almost a hidden state, that depends on war for influence and enrichment. It believes in its manifest destiny which brings with it an assumed moral superiority which it denies to others. As the US goes into relative economic decline, it will be asking...

QUENTIN GRAFTON and JOHN WILLIAMS. States dummy-spit over the Murray-Darling Basin Plan clouds the real facts

Given the outraged reaction from some state water ministers to the disallowance of an amendment to the Murray Darling Basin Plan, you would be forgiven for thinking that a heinous crime had been committed against farmers in upstream states.

GARY JOHNSTON. The Future Submarine: a technical problem

It is nearly two years since the government announced that the Shortfin Barracuda, to be designed and built by the French company, Naval Group, would be Australias future submarine (FSM). The proposed acquisition remains controversial. As an Australian citizen who has observed over many years the ongoing waste and incompetence exhibited in many Defence acquisitions, I have been concerned since the outset at the huge cost and immense risks around the FSM project. In this article, I describe what may be a major technical error on the part of the Defence department, with potentially far reaching consequences.

SAUL ESLAKE. The quest for 'security' - is it rational, has it made us safer, and at what cost?

In November last year, I gave an address to the Royal Society of Tasmania the oldest such society dedicated to the advancement of knowledge outside of the United Kingdom at an event hosted by the Governor of Tasmania, Her Excellency Professor Kate Warner AC, at her official residence in Hobart. In this address I posed, and sought to answer, three questions: How significant a risk is the threat of terrorism in Australia, both in absolute terms and relative to some of the other risks and threats on our horizon? How effective in reducing that risk...

PAUL FRIJTERS. Our Countries Need Us

Humanity is at a high point. What our ancestors dreamed of is slowly becoming a reality: a world without hunger in which the vast majority of mankind live peaceful and long lives. We are not there yet, but in Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and even in Africa (our cradle), mankind is emerging from dark times. People live longer, healthier, happier, and more educated lives. Paid for and organised by countries, helped by international flows of people and information. And yet, our countries are under threat from a disconnect between the elites and the population of individual countries.

JOAN STAPLES. Bill weak on stopping foreign donations, but strong on silencing NGOs.

The current Bill before parliament to reform electoral donations is the most comprehensive attempt I have seen at silencing public advocacy in 30 years. It does not succeed in its supposed aim to restrict foreign donations - an aim that is supported by NGOs. Instead, it is a convoluted, excruciatingly complicated maze that will undoubtedly silence a wide range of charities, NGOs and public interest institutions.

ELIZABETH EVATT. Democracy under challenge.

In their recent book, How Democracies Die, discussed this week on Late Night Live, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt,outlined how democracies can be undermined and ultimately destroyed without the violent coup of Pinochet, but by abuse of the system itself. They address the problems of the United States. But we have to be on guard because some of the symptoms are starting to infect our own democracy in Australia.

The Liberals and the Nationals Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce

Only weak and compromised Liberal Party leadership would put up with the behaviour of Barnaby Joyce and the Nationals who have influence way out of proportion to their numbers and on policy issues, are a blank page or even worse. As Ian McAuley said yesterday Barnaby Joyce is an albatross around Malcolm Turnbull's neck. It is getting worse every day.

GREGORY MCCARTHY. Australias iron(ic) curtain hurting China ties

2017 was earmarked to celebrate 45 years of AustralianChinese diplomatic relations. Instead, Australia alleged that China interfered in its national affairs and the China Daily reported that an on-line poll had voted Australia as the least friendly nation to China in 2017. Likewise, a Global Times editorial accused Australia of McCarthyism and said that Australia had gone insane regarding the issue of China.

RANALD MACDONALD. Stop the presses.

Well, they have almost stopped running around this country with so few papers being sold nowadays, but let us stop them anyway.

COLIN STEELE. Who Owns Australian Research?

Who owns the results of Australian research? Certainly, notAustralian researchers, as they, and their institutions, continue togive away publicly funded research to multinational publishers. As aresult, Australian research is largely locked up behind expensivemultinational publishing firewalls, constituting a form of informationfeudalism.

BERNARD KEANE. Amid denialism on company tax cuts, the ABC lets us down.

The ABCs censorship of Emma Alberici in response to pressure from Malcolm Turnbull comes at a time when the national broadcasters mainstream media competitors are also increasingly failing to properly inform Australians.

Joined at the hip Mr Turnbull goes to Washington this week.. Part 1 of 2 Repost

We are a nation in denial that we are joined at the hip to a dangerous ally. Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war; wars that we have often foolishly been drawn into. The US has subverted and overthrown numerous governments over two centuries. It has a military and business complex, almost a hidden state, that depends on war for influence and enrichment. It believes in its manifest destiny which brings with it an assumed moral superiority which it denies to others. As the US goes into relative economic decline, it will be asking...

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