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

RICHARD TANTER. Fifty years on, Pine Gap should reform to better serve Australia.

Pine Gap has capabilities that could genuinely contribute to the defence of Australia. This would depend on the will and resolution of an Australian government capable of identifying these.

PETER DAY. Homelessness v houselessness

We need to change the way we do charity and welfare; were out of kilter: lots of giving and receiving of things, but too little giving of ourselves we just dont have the time. It hardly needs saying, People need people.

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. Australian governments have made us more at risk from terrorism.

We should not refer to ISIS as a state. It Is not a state. It has noAir Force or navy. It has no fixed boundaries. It is really a series ofmilitant groups.It behaves in a ruthless manner, as does Saudi Arabia and its agentsin Yemen.

WALTER HAMILTON. An Emperor Asks to Step Down

In August 2016, Japan's Emperor Akihito took the highly unusual step of asking publically to be relieved of his duties - to be able to abdicate. The government is still mulling over its response many months later. The article below is a repost from August 9, 2016.

Chomsky interview on the ravages of neoliberalism.

In this interview, reported in The Wire on 31 January 2016, Noam Chomsky talks about the ravages of neoliberalism. this is a repost from 21 February 2016.

CHRISTINA HO. Hothoused and hyper-racialised ethnic imbalance in our selective schools.

This is a repost from November 3, 2016. Across Sydney students from a language background other than English (LBOTE) regularly make up 80% or 90% of enrolments in selective schools. As families increasingly turn away from their local public schools, our kids are less likely to experience the full range of our diverse society.

DAVID MENERE. How the mainstream media mislead the public on Syria

The bias in the treatment of the Syrian conflict by the mainstream media is not accidental or due to laxity on the part of the media. Rather, it is the result of the opposition groups exclusion of independent reporting, coupled with western governments financial assistance to the opposition for media production.

WALTER HAMILTON. The Sideline is Out of Play

Taking sides is a schoolyard conception of how a nations strategic interest is to be calculated and diplomacy shaped. Standing on the sidelines of a fight, pointing an accusing finger at other barracking spectators and crying youre taking sides is merely a way of avoiding the more challenging task of assessing the rights and wrongs of an issue and how it might, sooner or later, directly involve others. This is a repost from 20 September 2016.

I am ashamed to be Australian.

I decided to become a photojournalist to help refugees tell their stories, and to show their plight. I was stunned by the lack of compassion and the outright racism I saw in my countrymen. I was angry as only a teenager can be with the politicians who fanned the flames of xenophobia.

TIM COSTELLO. Abandoning generosity in Overseas Development Assistance.

Yet we are set to see our aid commitment as a percentage of national income drop to a record low level. Already since 2012 it has slumped from 0.36% of national income to 0.23%. This relegates us to the lower half of OECD countries in terms of generosity despite being near the top for economic capacity. In fact we were roughly three times as generous in the 1960s, even though today we are roughly three times as wealthy.

TONY KEVIN. Henry Kissinger's last hurrah!

Henry Kissingers renascent role in US-Russian diplomacy Remarkably, 93-year old Henry Kissinger is still making judicious and fruitful public and private interventions in Russia-US relations. It seems his moment may have come again to make a difference as an East-West peace-broker, as he did in the Nixon-Brezhnev years ( for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1973).

Australias Death by Numbers

The dead refugee had a name. But even in death Australia did not want to humanize him. For years now he had been no more than a registration number BRF063 under the countrys cruel refugee deterrence system known as offshore processing.

WALTER HAMILTON. Japans New Blood

The Australian servicemen who left behind mixed-race children during the postwar Occupation of Japan set in motion changes that are chipping away at a nations stubborn myth of racial homogeneity.

WALTER HAMILTON. Fighting Monsters

Australians, Americans and Japanese have been fighting monstersthe monsters of war remembrancesince 1945. A high-profile visit to Pearl Harbor during the week seemed to suggest another monster was being laid to rest. But while that piece of theatre left much to be desired, especially in its aftermath, another recent attempt, away from the spotlight, gives us reason to hope.

From the American Challenge to the Chinese Challenge?

The unfolding Western effort to preach to the Chinese and paint a picture of a shining and benign America and contrasting that with a threatening and malign picture of China is, among other things, a complete distortion of the historical truth.

WAYNE SWAN. The blindness of affluence and the need for a more inclusive form of prosperity.

This is a repost from 15 November 2016. Just over two years ago I was in New York working with Larry Summers and Ed Balls to prepare a report for the Center for American Progress on inclusive prosperity. One morning I had the opportunity to walk the High Line and on the side of an old brick building was a large advertisement which read the French aristocracy never saw it coming either. It was yet another reminder of the ground swell of support sweeping around the world for a more inclusive form of prosperity and its been an...

How inefficient private health insurance, drug manufacturers and distributors drive up costs.

In parliament, forty years ago on 27 September 1967, Gough Whitlam described the factors driving up the high cost of healthcare in Australia. The same vested interests drive up costs in Australia at the expense of the taxpayer and the community. John Menadue.

JOHN MENADUE. Who said this and when.

Private health insurance is unfair and inefficient. It was because of this that the Whitlam Government established Medibank/Medicare.

End of an era in US-Thai relations!

In this article in the Bangkok Post, journalist Alan Dawson writes of a trend by the Thai government to improve relations with China at the expense of the US. Obama's 'pivot to Asia' is having difficulties in the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. See link below to Bangkok Post article. http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/1167845/end-of-an-era-

DANI RODRIK. Put globalisation to work for democracies.

A repost from the New York Times, Sunday Review, 17 September 2016. A Chinese student once described his countrys globalization strategy to me. China, he said, opened a window to the world economy, but placed a screen on it. The country got the fresh air it needed nearly 700 million people have been lifted from extreme poverty since the early 1980s but kept mosquitoes out.

Broken men in paradise.

'The world's refugee crisis knows no more sinister exercise in cruelty than Australia's island prisons.' In this long, searing account in the New York Times, Op-ed columnist, Roger Cohen, describes what he found on a recent visit to Manus Island.

JOHN MENADUE. Cricket alcohol and junk food.

Cricket has a dangerous relationship with alcohol and junk food.

WILLY BACH. Australias Collaboration in the CIAs Secret War in Laos

US forces left Thailand in 1975-76 at the request of Thai authorities. SEATO was disbanded in 1977. Australias forward defence doctrine was quietly forgotten.

The media are misleading the public on Syria.

This article by Stephen Kinzer in the Boston Globe in February 2016 revealed how the media in the US misled the public about Syria. It is also true of Australia. We mindlessly follow the Washington media with its consensus and group-think, including a range of media outlets and so-called think tanks. Kinzer describes the coverage of the Syrian War as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press. That shameless coverage continued all through the Syrian War. . It is another illustration of how our White Man's Media recycles news and views from the US....

TILLY GUNNING. Gertrude Menear My Great, Great Aunt-an early suffragette

A woman ahead of her time.

ANDREW AILES. Peace on earth - the children of Aleppo.

Peace on Earth Peace on earth. Goodwill to men, Echoes like Sullivans Great Amen: The chord he lost when sitting by, His brother as he watched him die.

JOHN MENADUE. Seasonal favourites.

I would like to share with you some of my favourites at Christmas, a time of hope.

PETER DAY. Grandpas favourite Shepherd

This Christmas child won't give you discounted goods ... rather he'll invite you to be humble, other-centred.

GERALDINE DOOGUE. Connections in our lives.

Underneath the jollity and frantic end-of-year scurrying, I detect a wistfulness about the lack ofcertainty of connections in peoples lives these days.

ROBERT MANNE. Yes Virginia, there is a solution to Australia's asylum-seeker problem.

A new chapter of humanly decent policy with regard to asylum seekers, more reflective of the many fine and generous impulses in our history of welcoming refugees, can at long last be opened. For pity's sake, let it be.

HENRY SHERRELL, PETER MARES & ANNA BOUCHER. Another obstacle on the road to citizenship?

Making migrants 'provisional' risks Australia's multicultural success.

JOHN MENADUE. White man's media - Rupert Murdoch's faulty memory.

Rupert Murdoch has asserted again that he has never asked anything from any Prime Minister.

Shakespeare on refugees, strangers and inhumanity.

In a series of speeches written by Shakespeare, Thomas More makes the argument for the humane treatment of those forced to seek asylum after being expelled from their homeland. This is a repost from August 23, 2016.

JOHN MENADUE. Series: We can say 'no' to the Americans. How the Fraser Government said 'no' on Chile and El Salvador.

In 1982, when I was Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, the Fraser Government ignored the pressure from the US that we should not help people in South America suffering at the hands of US-supported military governments.

JOANNE WALLIS. Hollow hegemon: Australias declining influence in the Pacific

Australia has vital strategic interests in the Pacific but comparatively less influence with which to pursue them. Pacific states are largely unwilling to accept Australian leadership.

ROSS BURNS. After Aleppo.

The international community remains hopelessly divided and in many cases incapable of assessing the real dynamics of the conflict in the face of its gut-wrenching humanitarian dimensions.

Putin interferes in US election. In the past the CIA interfered in Japan.

The following is a New York Times Report of October 9, 1994. In a major covert operation of the cold war, the Central Intelligence Agency spent millions of dollars to support the conservative party that dominated Japan's politics for a generation.

ROBERT MANNE. The Australian's attacks on Gillian Triggs.

The attack launched by the Australian on Gillian Triggs and the Human Rights Commission has been obsessive, petty, relentless, remorseless and ruthless.

DAVID CHARLES. The Re-emergence of Industrial Policy - Theresa May and Donald Trump Style

One of the consequences of the UK Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump as the next US President is the association with the re-emergence of industrial policy in both countries which are important for the development of policy thinking in Australia. This comes at a time when Australia is dealing with the economic transition associated with the end of the mining boom.

BRIAN McNAIR. The empire strikes back.

Just five short years after (literally) eating humble pie live on national TV for presiding over the most corrupt, criminally minded, bin-raking, sleaze-mongering crowd of press hacks ever to spread their poison in the English-speaking world, Rupert Murdoch is back at the door of Sky in the UK, huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf of yore.

STEPHEN GRENVILLE. Australias AAA credit rating under threat, but who cares?

Australia needs to live within its means,but we can do this without the constant hectoring from agencies whose egregious misjudgements are still fresh in our memories. It's time to stop genuflecting at the ratings' altar. Five year ago the Financial Crisis Enquiry Commission, set up by the US Congress following the Global Financial Crisis, described the rating agencies as 'essential companies in the wheel of financial destruction' and 'key enablers of the financial meltdown'. Closer to home, Stephen Grenville, a former Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia,expressed similar reservationsin this blog (see repost) John Menadue

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. Julie Bishop - supporting bad policies.

The Foreign Minister's outrage was highly selective ... her speech was indeed strong on talk, but weak on effective action.

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. A declining Australia.

With dropping levels in education and a fadingeconomy Australia is in a decline. What we need is a clear focus on our own area, Asia and the South West Pacific.

KELLIE TRANTER. FOI documents expose Australia's unlawful invasion of Syria.

'Make no mistake: we unlawfully invaded a sovereign state.'~ Kellie Tranter Not one journalist in the country - although I am happy to stand corrected - asked either the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Attorney General or the Defence Minister to explain how the Government of Syria was 'unwilling or unable' to prevent attacks.

GARRY WOODARD. New series. We can say 'no' to the Americans.

We have said No to the Americans: Robert Menzies Saying No to America was not an upfront characteristic of Menzies foreign policy, based as it was on supporting and attracting the support of great and powerful friends. Supplementing that was his politically profitable propaganda about threats from Asia.

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. New series. We can say 'no' to the Americans.

The present situation offers the Turnbull Government - or its successor -an opportunity to move beyond policies towards Asia based on fear of China and on compliance with United States wishes.

FRANK JOTZO. Trump and Climate - but new opportunities for China.

The Trump Presidency is a fork in the road for climate action. While it may set back global climate efforts, an inward-looking US government that ignores climate change provides new opportunities for leadership elsewhere, Frank Jotzo writes.

BRUCE ARNOLD. Open Government, Open to interpretation

If we are indeed open to Open Government a salient demonstration would be facilitating Australian Human Rights Commission access to what is happening on Australias behalf in offshore detention centres. That would be a fine national Christmas present from Turnbull, Dutton and Brandis, with or without tinsel.

We need a transformational foreign policy.

The following submission to the Hon. Julie Bishop for the White Paper on Foreign Affairs and Trade has also been sent to the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and Senator Wong, as well as selected MPs and Senators.

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