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

JOHN THOMPSON. Privatising Medicare by stealth.

Like the frog in hot water, Medicares privatisation by stealth can only result in an unfortunate end - despite the current governments protestations of innocence.

BOB KINNAIRD. Indian IT professionals on rock bottom 457 wages undermine Turnbulls innovation dream

The Coalitions cheap labour 457 visa wage policy is destroying jobs for young Australians lured into studying IT courses under the Turnbull governments high profile Innovation push... Indian 457 visa IT workers are being approved at much lower rates than experienced Australian IT professionals and even new IT graduates.

DAVID PEETZ. The battle over the Building and Construction Commission isnt finished yet

Now that the ABCC will mostly be a mere shadow of its former self, the Building Code becomes an even more important point of distinction. ... It is the identity and ideology of the Director of the ABCC that matters a lot more than the underpinning legislation.

WALTER HAMILTON. Education as a way of life

The OECD-endorsed rankings of educational proficiency recently released give the lie to those in Australia who attribute outcomes solely to levels of spending. Throwing more money at the Education Establishment will not automatically produce smarter students.

SAM HURLEY. Outsourcing doesn't help our neediest citizens.

Outsourcing of employment services has failed to make significant headway on better outcomes for the most disadvantaged clients.

TRAVERS McLEOD. General Mattis, the new US Defence Secretary - the right choice for an ahistorical President

With General Petraeus, General Mattis changed the mindset of the US military. Let's hope that if duty and ethics call, Mattis can change the President's mind too.

REG LITTLE. Understanding cultural differences between Australia and China.

Australia's most urgent challenge today is overcoming two centuries of 'false education' about China. Western thought culture tends to be characterised by assumptions, abstractions, rationalities, theories and belief. In contrast, Chinese thought culture tends to be holistic, fluid, intuitive, reflective, strategic and practical.

WALTER HAMILTON. When all else fails, try Pearl Harbor

Prime Minister Abe of Japan is running out of tricks, but there is no viable alternative.

HAZEL MOIR. Evergreening of patents and the cost of pharmaceuticals.

A low standard for granting patents can mean lengthy delays generic medicine availability. In one case this is shown to have cost taxpayers almost $A3 billion extra in Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme outlays. A solution is to grant patents only for inventions that embody a significant increase in what is known.

JOHN MENADUE. White mans media

The Australian media behave as if Australia is a large island parked off London or New York. Our media is remarkably derivative as a result of media systems laid down over a century ago. It is very unresponsive to the needs of Australia in the 21st Century in relations with our own region. Our media remains North-Atlantic centric.

JOHN MENADUE. The National Party is silent on rural poverty and poor rural health.

Country electorates have the most disadvantaged people, the poorest health and inferior health services. But the National Party does very little about it.

Aung San Suu Kyi's government appears unable - or unwilling - to halt what some describe as 'ethnic cleansing'.

The Rohingya in Myanmar are facing increasing attacks and harassment. Australia and the region must be prepared to respond.

Castro's legacy. Cuba's achievements in health have been remarkable.

In the article from The Lancet, Arjun Suri points out that despite spending one tenth per capita of what the US spends on health, Cuba's infant mortality rate is better than the US and that the two countries have equivalent life expectancy.

Asia Dialogue on Forced Migration - the desperate situation of Rohingya in Myanmar.

Situation in Rakhine State in Myanmar of grave concern the region must be on high alert. Mass displacement inevitable if violence continues to escalate.

VINCENT MAHON. China ready to step up and lead on climate change.

Vincent Mahon contends that China is poised to promote global leadership on climate change should the US under Trump walk away from its Paris commitments.

GARRY WOODARD. Trump and ANZUS. Quo vadis series.

Quo vadis - Australian foreign policy and ANZUS. Summary.Will Australia allow itself to be drawn into Sino-American tensions in the incorrect belief that it has no choice under ANZUS or 'five eyes'.

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. The Trump Presidency and Australia. Quo vadis series.

Quo vadis - Australian foreign policy and ANZUS Summary.Our relationship with the US is of course very important and substantial. This does not mean that we should be seen as not responding quickly to the greatly changed world of 2016.

JOHN MENADUE. Quo vadis - the future of the US-Australian alliance. Part 3.

Summary. Is war in the American DNA? In his book Dangerous allies, Malcolm Fraser warned us how we can be drawn into US conflicts that are of no immediate concern to us. He warned of dangerous strategic dependence on the US. The US has a long history of involvement in wars. In Washingtonblog.com in May 2014, and which was carried by the SMH, it showed the number of wars that the US had been involved in since its independence in 1776. The data was well documented. According to this report, the US has been at war 93% of...

Quo vadis - the future of the US-Australian alliance. Part 2.

Summary. Malcolm Fraser warned us that we no longer have an independent capacity to stay out of America's wars.

JOHN MENADUE. Quo vadis - the future of the US-Australian alliance.

Next week I will run a series of short articles entitled 'Quo vadis - the future of the US-Australian alliance'. In anticipation of that series, I will be posting three articles this week. Part 1, posted today, is by Michael McKinley concerning our reliance on the US relationship. He argues that whilst US military power remains strong, the US is in decline in many ways. Part 2 will based on comments by the late Malcolm Fraser in which he said We no longer have an independent capacity to stay out of America's wars. I will write the...

LAURENCE TROY. Sydney needs higher affordable housing targets.

The release this week by the Greater Sydney Commission of city-wide draft plansmandating some measure of affordable housing in new developments is a step in the right direction. However, the target of 5-10% on rezoned land is too low to make a serious impact on the citys affordable housing shortage. It must be more ambitious. Research highlights the central importance of affordable, stable housing to economic and social wellbeing. Yet, in Sydney, the lack of affordable housing has reached crisis point. Everyone from community housing providers to Commonwealth Treasury secretary John Fraser is pointing out that rising house prices are...

ANDREW MARKUS. Australians more alarmed about state of politics than impact of migration and minorities.

There is no shortage of expert commentary on current shifts in public opinion, understood as a revolt against political elites. Within Europe and the United States interpretations are supported by the British vote to leave the European Union, the increasing popularity of far-right parties campaigning on anti-immigration and nationalist platforms, and the success of Donald Trump in winning the US presidency. In Australia, commentators point to instability in politics, elections that fail to return clear majorities, the loss of office of first-term governments in Queensland and Victoria, growing minor party representation in the Senate, and public unease at immigration policy...

GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. The travesty of Britains greatest legacy parliamentary government

To my generation which saw the almost bloodless collapse of the Soviet Union, Trumps election is small beer in the scale of improbabilities. But the combination of Trump and Brexit, so improbable scarcely a year ago, raises a more astonishing proposition. It is that so much of our hopes for stability and the success of Western liberalism should now centre so largely on Germany! The question can even be put in the terms Disraeli used in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian war and Bismarcks Proclamation of the German Empire in the Palace of Versailles:Is it to be a European Germany...

CHRISTIAN DOWNIE. Why China and Europe should form the world's most powerful 'climate bloc'.

Filling the void created by Donald Trump! It seems almost certain that US President-elect Donald Trump will walk away from the Paris climate agreement next year. In the absence of US leadership, the question is: who will step up? Sadly this is not a new question, and history offers some important lessons. In 2001 the world faced a similar dilemma. After former vice-president Al Gore lost the 2000 election to George W. Bush, the newly inaugurated president walked away from the Kyoto Protocol, the previous global pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

GEOFFREY HARCOURT. The pluses and minuses of globalisation

Donald Trumps victory in the American Presidential election has brought into prominence greatly divergent views concerning the merits or demerits of globalisation. Here we set out the criteria that need to be met before globalisation can be regarded as a world welfare improving institutional arrangement. First, and absolutely fundamental and necessary, is the need for nation states engaged in trade and international borrowing and lending to implement domestic policies that establish sustained full employment of their work forces and normal capacity working of their existing stocks of capital goods and human capital.

JOHN MENADUE. Peter Dutton has got it wrong in blaming Malcolm Fraser on refugees.

This is a slightly edited text of an interview with Elizabeth Jackson on The Saturday AM program on ABC radio on 19 November 2016-11-19 ELIZABETH JACKSON: The former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and former secretary of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs has hit back at comments from the Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, that Australia is now paying for the mistakes of former prime minister Malcolm Fraser. In a television interview Mr Dutton said Malcolm Fraser made mistakes in bringing some people to Australia the 1970s and he said, We're seeing that...

DAVID PEETZ. An industrial relations furphy.

The media excitement surrounding the theatrics of former Senator Bob Day and current Senator Rod Culleton seemed to obscure the real issues facing the federal governments industrial relations legislation. The government failed to put bills re-establishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), and a new, government-appointed Registered Organisations Commission, onto the notice paper for discussion in the Senate when it was expected to. Most in the media took this to mean that Day and eccentric One Nation Senator Culleton are critical to passage of the bills.

JOHN MENADUE. Donald Trump a false prophet and implications for Australia.

Trump prides himself in being a change-agent, but he really wants to restore the past and protect privilege. He will also do a great deal of social damage. Analysis of the US election tells us that many American working class whites were sick of elites, whether they were in business, the media, Wall St, the banks, political parties, government and Washington with all of its special interests. These Americans in the rust belt states around the Great Lakes felt that the elites were not listening to them and that the political left was more concerned about culture wars and...

What so many people don't get about the US working class.

In this article in the Harvard Business Review, Joan C Williams says: If you want to connect with white working class voters, place economics at the centre. ... Trade deals are far more expensive than we have treated them because job development and training programs need to be counted as part of their cost. ... At a deeper level, both parties need an economic program that can deliver middle class jobs. Republicans have one. Unleash American business. Democrats? They remain obsessed with cultural issues. ... Back when the blue collar voters used to be solidly democratic, good jobs were...

Why Trump should work with China on a massive infrastructure partnership

This is an extract from an interview on CNN on the 10th November 2016 with Kishore Muhbubani, Dean of the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Trump will have to make some painful choices, especially in regard to policy in Asia. His instinct will be to take a hawkish stance against America's No. 1 geopolitical competitor, China, and to look for opportunities to trip China up.For example, he could continue to call out China over the South China Sea issue. He told The New York Times in March that he finds China's building...

JOHN MENADUE. A refugee swap with the US to end the horror of refugees in Manus and Nauru may be on the cards!

I hope that this is so but it may not be straightforward. There is history in such a swap that journalists and others should be aware of. In its last year the Howard Government negotiated with the USA what came to be called the Mutual Assistance Arrangement .It was 1 to 1 resettlement. Australia agreed to resettle Cubans who had been intercepted at sea (that is they had not made landfall on US territory) and transferred to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. In return the US agreed to resettle people found to be refugees who were in Nauru....

Trump and American Decay.

In this article in Foreign Affairs, Francis Fukuyama says: The decayed American political system can be fixed only by a strong external shock that will knock it off its current equilibrium and make possible real policy reform. Trump's victory does indeed constitute such a shock but, unfortunately his only answer is the traditional populist-authorian one, trust me, the charismatic leader to take care of your problems. As in the case of the shock to the Italian political system administered by Silvio Berlusconi, the real tragedy will be the waste of an opportunity for actual reform. Francis Fukuyama is an American...

ANDREW PESCE. The Health Care Home: too important to fail

It has been a long road for peak medical organisations in Australia to publicly recognise and support the concept that Fee for Service payments (where medical services attract a Medicare rebate for attendances and/or procedures) may not always be the most appropriate remuneration methods in primary care. Now, both the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and the AMA acknowledge that alternative payment systems have a place for patients with high healthcare needs because of special circumstances and/or chronic illness. This is a well-established concept, which has shown that primary health care services can establish viable business models based on...

ANDREW JAKUBOWICZ. A Bigots Frenzy: how race, class and gender still matter in the Australian politics of Section 18C.

Australia is a democratic pluralist society and there lies the rub. Democracies privilege freedom, while pluralism requires civility. In the increasing hyperbole surrounding the question of the impact of Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act many are arguing that freedom of speech should trump freedom from hate, and others that the current balance is fine. A sociology of the protagonists suggests that those who are proposing to diminish the protections offered to victims of racial vilification under 18C are predominantly well-off (Christian) Euro-Australian males, who are also the majority of those previously complained against under 18C. Those who...

IAN MARSH. Trumps Victory and Australian Politics

A new anti-globalisation surge. Trumps ascension no doubt creates new agenda challenges for Australia. But his campaign generated so many diverse and inconsistent statements that the policy landscape remains obscure. What is crystal clear is the gulf between elite worldviews and large swathes of public opinion. Remember those panegyrics to economic globalisation: The World is Flat and The Golden Straightjacket? What now of Thomas Friedmans assured analysis? Here is one potted reading of the past half century or so. Start with the mass party world. The parties drew their power and reach from class identity. Here is Ernest...

ROBERT MANNE. Its Time

The Turnbull government has recently introduced new asylum seeker legislation into parliament. It has two parts. The first part aims to prevent any asylum seeker who tried to reach Australia after July 19 2013, including those who have been found to be genuine refugees, from ever being allowed to settle in Australia. The second part aims at banning the adults in this cohort settled in another country from ever visiting Australia even on a tourist or a business visa. The first part of this proposal writes into law what has previously been a bipartisan political agreement. Turning this consensus...

JOHN MENADUE. Donald Trump- the billionaire outsider!

But is there a possible silver lining? I am surprised and horrified by the election of Donald Trump as the Leader of the Free World. He is sexist, racist, xenophobic and a Muslim-basher. He doesnt dog-whistle like our prime ministers, but speaks out bluntly on issues in ways I find offensive. Yet clearly large numbers of Americans like his populist nonsense. It seems that Clinton may have narrowly won the popular vote but Trump has clearly won the numbers in the Electoral College. Perhaps the system was rigged after all - but in Trumps favour! I have...

TONY KEVIN. Trumpageddon? Not quite .... not yet.

Trumps victory speech said all the right things. No talk now of putting Hillary in jail. On the contrary: gracious tribute for her hard-fought campaign. And promises to heal wounds, to be a president for all Americans. And new jobs. And infrastructure. And looking after all citizens, including significantly the veterans (of Americas endless wars of choice). And making America truly great again. A lot of warm fuzzy emotion from an exhausted victorious leader. The relative decline of a great power (relative to other contenders) does not always happen smoothly. There are discontinuities, surprises, sharp inflection points....

SAM HURLEY, TRAVERS McLEOD, JOHN WISEMAN. Company directors can be held legally liable for ignoring the risks from climate change.

Company directors who dont properly consider climate related risks could be liable for breaching their duty of due care and diligence, a new legal opinion has found. Although the alarm for business leaders has been sounding for some time, the release of the opinion by senior barristers and leading solicitors confirms the potential liability for Australian company directors. Australian companies are particularly exposed to the physical, transition and liability risks posed by climate change. The Paris Climate Agreement, which comes into force today, brings the transition risks (and opportunities) forward, given the policy and business changes necessitated by the...

TONY KEVIN. Is Hillary the Russia-hater a safer American choice?

The final days of the US presidential campaign a disgraceful saga at best have been marked by a frantic race to the bottom by both sides. On the Trump side: an anonymous but skilfully made video is doing the social media rounds, alleging improper links between Hillary Clintons long-standing personal assistant and friend Huma Abedin, through her kinship connections to her powerful Saudi Arabian family, to Wahhabi Islamist extremism which supports Al Qaeda, ISIS and so on. The snide innuendo here is that the people who organised the World Trade Centre attacks have planted Abedin at the...

Blowback for American sins in the Philippines - The Boston Globe.

In this article in the Boston Globe on October 15, 2016, Stephen Kinzer points out that President Duterte's grievance 'is rooted in history'. President Duterte asserted that the US had unjustly seized the Philippines in 1899 and waged a horrific military campaign to suppress native resistance. Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, USA. See link to article below. http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/10/15/blowback-for-american-sins-philippines/VNAmdveJWntU7f8FYnGvPL/story.html?s_campaign=8315

PETER CHRISTOFF. The Paris climate deal has come into force - what next for Australia?

The Paris climate agreement comes into legal force today, just 11 months after it was concluded and 30 days after it met its ratification threshold of 55 parties accounting for at least 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions. By contrast, the Kyoto Protocol, which this treaty now replaces, took more than 8 years to come into force, slowed by the United States persistent and erosive opposition. At the time of writing, the Agreement has been ratified by 94 parties, including the worlds four largest emitters: China, the United States, the European Union and India. As Climate Analytics reports, these...

BRUCE ARNOLD. Testing the body politic? Lobbying by the pathology industry.

Pathology testing in Australia is big business, getting bigger as the population ages and we rely on high-tech medicine for intractable ailments. Advocacy by commercial interests and government pathology service providers shapes public policy. It potentially affects elections rather than just the national budget. It matters. It is inadequately recognised and less understood. What we know about lobbying by the pathology industry in the 2016 election is how little we know. Our ignorance matters, because it tells us something about the realities of a liberal democracy in 2016. It also matters because we need an informed public discourse about...

JEFFREY SACHS. The fatal expense of American imperialism.

In this article, Jeffrey D. Sachs says the United States ... is squandering vast sums and undermining national security. ... today the United States has similarly over invested in the military and could follow a path to decline if it continues the wars in the Middle East and invites an arms race with China. See link to full article below. http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/10/30/the-fatal-expense-american-imperialism/teXS2xwA1UJbYd10WJBHHM/story.html Jeffrey Sachs is University Professor and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. This article was first published in the Boston Globe on October 30, 2016.

JOHN MENADUE. White Mans Media A weekly column. This week: The US elections.

In this blog I propose to run a regular Wednesday column White Mans Media focusing on the derivative nature of our media and its failure to reflect our own region .. I have in mind pieces of 100 -400 words. The longer pieces might focus on some of our complacent foreign affairs experts and their faulty analysis. There will also be opportunities to highlight omissions and draw attention to error strewn foreign reports.. Whilst I want to avoid gotcha type pieces some short and pithy pieces like the old SMH Granny would also be useful. Contributions would...

PHIL GLENDENNING. We Need To End Australias Refugee Shame. Now

Human beings are never a means to an end. They are an end in themselves. Emmanuel Kants words in the seventeenth century echo down the centuries in stark contrast to Australias treatment of asylum seekers and refugees on Nauru and Manus Island. The recent Four Corners program, The Forgotten Children gave Australians an all too rare opportunity to hear from the refugee children of Nauru themselves, and to see for ourselves what is being done in our name. Two days ago a young asylum seeker rose early, turned on his computer and read that the Government was preparing to...

JOHN NIEUWENHUYSEN. How Australian Political Leaders Can Abandon and Mistreat Asylum Seekers

Living as a White youth in apartheid South Africa in the 1950s, I often wondered how it was possible for a small minority to dominate and oppress the large majority of the population who were denied the vote because of the colour of their skins. Much of the answer lay, I believed, in the capacity of the apartheid system to separate the lives of the different racial groups and to ensure that when people met, it was always in the context of White master-Non-White servant relationships. Members of the different defined racial groups were thus hardly ever able to...

Royal family are even more secretive than MI5.

Jenny Hocking has been researching and publishing some vital information about the dismissal of the Whitlam Government by Sir John Kerr . In that research, she has been denied access to the papers. She is taking legal action in the Federal Court against the National Archives to release correspondence between Sir John Kerr and the Queen. (See 'The Palace Letters') In The Times, Ben MacIntyre writes about the secretive nature of the British Royal Family. See his article below from The London Times of October 28, 2016. John Menadue.

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. The present threat to global security.

In the second decade of this century we are living in a greatlychanged world, compared with that to which we accustomedourselves, following the defeat of Japan and Germany in WWII in the second half of 1945. The international rules based situation of the late 40s and early mid50s was essentially created by the US with some British and Frenchsupport. It is now completely dated and out for touch with the presentsituation, driven as it is by the rise of China and India,and the rapidgrowth of the domestic economies of Indonesia,Vietnam, Thailand, thePhilippines and Malaysia. The apparent present insistence...

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