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

ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS. Compulsory Third Party insurance in NSW- a Bad System about to Get Worse?

CTP, Compulsory Third Party insurance (Green Slips) in NSW are looking increasingly like a scam. In theory, if you are injured in a motor vehicle accident that is not your fault, all reasonable and necessary treatment is currently paid for by your insurer. People might assume this means good, standard medical practice. This is not so. In principle, patients are entitled to immediate and early treatment but the first problem is that insurers have up to 3 months to decide if they are liable for the accident. Payment can be delayed until the liability is accepted. Sometimes when two...

ROBERT MANNE. How we came to be so cruel to asylum seekers.

This is an edited extract of a talk delivered to the Integrity 20 Conference at Griffith University on October 25, 2016 If you had been told 30 years ago that Australia would create the least asylum seeker friendly institutional arrangements in the world, you would not have been believed. In 1992 we introduced a system of indefinite mandatory detention for asylum seekers who arrive by boat. Since that time, we have accepted the idea that certain categories of refugees and asylum seekers can be imprisoned indefinitely; that those who are intercepted by our navy should be forcibly...

JOHN MENADUE. Our Working Holiday Programs have lost their way.

I have been an advocate of Working Holiday Programs (WHPs) for over 40 years. These programs were an excellent opportunity to foster closer ties and cultural exchanges between Australia and partner countries with particular emphasis on young adults.. The programs were reciprocal. But the nature of WHPs have changed dramatically in recent years. In Australia they have become mainly labor market and cheap labor programs. A recent report of the Fair Work Ombudsman has drawn attention to widespread exploitation and underpayment of working holiday makers.

PAUL DALEY. Why Australia Day and Anzac Day helped create a national 'cult of forgetfulness'.

Australia Day and Anzac Day are months away. But Im getting in early. Its beyond time Australia cast off these sturdy cultural crutches that both, somehow, define national birth, so we can discover who and what we truly are. Australia Day, celebrating British invasion in 1788, and Anzac Day, marking Australias involvement in the failed invasion of the Ottoman empire in 1915, are but relatively recent, fleeting moments of note among innumerable others in our 60,000-year continental human history.

BINOY KAMPMARK. Des Ball: The man who sank the myth of controlled nuclear warfare

The late Professor Des Ball of the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre came as close as any on being a public intellectual on nuclear strategy. While some of his counterparts in the United States felt that using nuclear weapons was feasible and sound, Ball, who died last week, issued his pieces with mighty caveats and sensible qualifications. Controlling the process of deploying weapons of mass extermination in an active theatre, far from being deemed obscene, was lauded by advocates. Human sense will always prevail, somehow.

TONY KEVIN. Clinton-Putin-Trump: foreign policy dimensions of the final debate.

There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton trumped her contender on domestic economic and social policy issues, migration, and proper respect for women. She has neutralised the personal emails and Clinton Foundation questions. Barring the unforeseeable, she will cruise to victory next month. On foreign policy, her words and what she left unsaid left many important questions: and Trump more often found himself on the right side of the foreign policy argument, for those who follow these things. Such debates proceed according to a free flow of their own and important issues easily get submerged and diverted as the...

HAMISH McDONALD. What really happens at Pine Gap.

Hamish McDonald wrote this article in the Saturday Paper on October 1, 2016. The paper was also a tribute to Des Ball who died recently. He was the best informed and independent commentator on Pine Gap. The following is an introduction to Hamish McDonald's article with a full link at the end to the Saturday Paper. John Menadue Its one of two sacred sites to which you can drive from Alice Springs. The other is the red stone monolith of Uluru, said by the Pitjantjara to bring down a curse on anyone who removes a rock. This one,...

JAMES ROSE. From Tampa to now: how reporting on asylum seekers has been a triumph of spin over substance.

Spin designed to dehumanise and demonise asylum seekers. This year marks the 15th anniversary of one of the most divisive national election campaigns in Australias recent history: the Tampa affair. Coming just weeks after the September 11 terror attacks, the pitched battle between John Howard and Kim Beazley drew heavily on fear and panic. The divisions of 2001 are not only still with us, but they are far deeper today. The September 11 terrorist attacks in the US were given a sharp-knife twist here in Australia. The country was still entangled in the issue of the MV Tampa...

NICHOLAS FARRELLY. What is King Bhumibols legacy?

New Mandala co-founder Nicholas Farrelly reflects on a remarkable and contentious reign. The 70-year reign of Thailands King Bhumibol Adulyadej started and ended inauspiciously. It was a family tragedy that unexpectedly brought Bhumibol to the throne. He went on to become the worlds longest serving monarch but, in death, his formidable legacy is deeply tarnished by the ambitions of those who fought hardest to defend him. In 1946, the untimely and mysterious death of his older brother, King Ananda Mahidol, catapulted the young Prince Bhumibol into a role for which he was unprepared. King Ananda died violently in...

DAVID JAMES. It will take more than a royal commission to tame the banks

The recent appearance in parliament of the chief executives of the Big Four banks was notable for its well orchestrated apologies, which were about as convincing as a life insurance ad that promises only to pay out to the immortal.

PETER DAY. Is western civilisation bored?

Religion. The mob. Capitalism. Fundamentalism. Bad parenting. Racism. Materialism. Youth unemployment. Poverty. Thugs. Multiculturalism. Rich vs poor Take your pick; even add to the list, as we collectively grapple to decipher the root causes of the violence and the mental illness that pervades our world be it terrorism, random shootings, war, suicide. Mans inhumanity to man shakes us to the core. We start to question what it means to be human. We apportion blame. We want answers. Gosh, we ask, what just happened?

Catholic Bishops - It Is Time To Bring Them Here

Statement in support of offshore detainees By Archbishop Denis Hart, President, Australian Catholic Bishops Conference One of the greatest crises of our day is the plight of people forced from their own countries by war, persecution or poverty and forced to live without a home, without safety and often separated from their families. Pope Francis has called on Catholics to welcome such vulnerable people as our brothers and sisters. In Australia, we do not have to directly meet the responsibilities that many other nations bear. But we do bear the shame of the expulsion and harsh treatment of the...

JOHN MENADUE. Privatisation and the hobbling of Newcastle Port.

The downsides of privatisation are becoming clearer. A recent example, which has received little publicity in the mainstream media is the hobbling of Newcastle Port for the benefit of Port Botany. In this blog on 5 September 2016 JOHN AUSTEN. How port privatisation will hobble Newcastle John Austen pointed out that in the sales of Port Botany (2013) and Newcastle Port (2014), the NSW Government hobbled the development of Newcastle Port and the Hunter Region.

LYNDSAY CONNORS. Cometh the hour, cometh the man?

Is the Hon. Simon Birmingham, Federal Minister for Education and Training, the man? In his recent appearance on the ABCs Q&A, Senator Birmingham announced that there are private schools that are over-funded. This came as the Turnbull Government is under pressure to commit the Commonwealth to meeting its share of the funding required to achieve the Gonski resource standards. The Coalition Government will have, reluctantly, funded only one-third of the transition towards those standards by 2017. For schools that are yet to reach the appropriate standards under the formula developed by the Gonski Review in 2012 the Commonwealth...

JIM COOMBS. CIRCLE Bail Hostels

One of the common reasons for incarceration of Aboriginal children is failure to appear at court and breach of bail conditions (often a residence condition). One way to overcome this is to establish bail hostels like those in the U.K. Too often ignorance of the need to comply, losing court papers, illiteracy, and homelessness militate against compliance with the requirement to appear at Court on the appointed day. This often leads to an arrest warrant being issued, arrest, incarceration, and often refusal of renewed bail. This is both costly and administratively time consuming, when the infraction that led to it...

ROBERT MANNE. Oh, No Jim, No Jim, No Jim, No

As readers of John Menadues blog might be aware, I believe that Australia ought, on the one hand, to find homes in the next months for the 1,700 or so refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island who we are allowing to be destroyed in body and spirit and, on the other, retain the policy of naval interception and return to point of departure so as to avoid a return to the situation of 2009-2013 when 50,000 asylum seekers reached Australia by boat and 1,000 or 1,200 drowned. Accordingly, my position on the question of how Australia...

PETER YOUNG. Unlike Jim Molan, We must not look away from the harm we are causing.

Mondays Q&A gave a good insight into the philosophy and principles behind Australias Sovereign Borders Policy as described by one of its chief architects Jim Molan. Most telling was his argument that the means of maintaining tight border control and supposedly saving lives at sea justified the ends of indefinite cruelty, suffering and mental harm. He showed no empathy towards the suffering imposed by the policy he authored and did not have the courage to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence of the mental harm it produces resulting in mental illness, self-harm and suicide. It was clear that from the perspective of...

JOHN MENADUE. Cars, submarines costs and jobs and a likely disaster.

Last week we saw the end of car manufacturing in Australia by Ford. It was a sad day for many people. Toyota and General Motors will be gone next year. Joe Hockey goaded our car manufacturers to leave Australia. He obviously thought Australia would be better off without them. Instead this government which claims business and economic expertise has agreed to submarines being built in Australia at horrendous cost, at great risk and with few benefits. The closing of the three car manufacturers and the much hyped submarine building in South Australia, is an example of flawed industrial...

JOHN MENADUE. Preferential treatment for private patients in public hospitals in NSW.

See below a poster from NSW Health which is being displayed in public hospitals in NSW. Readers may be interested to comment. Two things interest me. The first is that the advertisement infers that if you have private health insurance you will get superior service in a public hospital. That surely attacks the principle that in public hospitals patients are to be treated according to their therapeutic needs and not on the basis of income or private insurance. The former CEO of Medibank Pte proposed that PHI members should have priority in Emergency Departments. The second is...

John Menadue. Australia, the White Mans Media and Donald Trump

This article was first posted on 29 January 2016. The situation has worsened since then! I am usually interested in politics but I am already sick and tired of the US elections and Donald Trump. And we have twelve months to go!. Forget about Indonesia, China, Japan and India. Our media does not think them important! They go instead for Donald Trump. Or the latest snow storm in New York.or a bombing at the Boston Marathon. But Donald Trump is easy copy at the moment for our lazy and derivative media.

Gough Whitlam and Blue Poles.

Blue Poles is in the news again. It was purchased for $1.3 million and is now valued at $350 million. The disparaging nature of the campaign against the purchase is reflected in Molnar's cartoon (below) of 5 April 1974. Mungo would be chuffed!

JOHN MENADUE. Dental Care Medicare - Private Health Insurance.

Funding a Medicare dental scheme instead of the subsidy to PHI. The PHI subsidy of over $10 billion p.a. would be much better spent on a Medicare dental scheme. In the following article Jennifer Doggett in Croakey, reports that about one third of Australians put off going to a dentist because of costs.

DAVID CHARLES. Venture Capital and Start Ups Is Berlin an example for Australian capital cities?

During a visit to Berlin in mid September this year I was struck by the way the venture capital and start up scene in Berlin had shifted from being something of an exotic hothouse flower to one of the leading places for new business creation in Germany and indeed Europe. Ernst and Young in its 2015 study Liquidity meets Perspective: Venture Capital and Start Ups in Germany argues that Berlin is the new kid on the block and has already got some impressive milestones behind it. Between 2011 and 2015 17,000 jobs were created. According to Ernst&Young, in terms...

ROBERT MANNE. Rescuing 1700 marooned people.

At present the chief priority of those concerned about the refugee situation in which Australia is directly implicated is to save the lives of the 1500 or so on Manus Island and Nauru and the 250 or so at present in Australia on medical grounds. When this is achieved the next priority will be to struggle to provide the present case-load of around 30,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Australia with full citizen rightsto be treated as refugees brought to Australia have been treatedso they can live decent human lives. What is peculiar about the nature of the...

GRAEME ORR. Party Over? Reforming Australian Political Finance

After decades of halting debate, the momentum for political finance reform has never been greater. At a national level, this comes off a low base. Australia has the laxest political finance system of all our common law cousins: Canada, UK, US, New Zealand. But dont hold your breath. Any systemic reform faces two hurdles: one real, one more imagined. The real hurdle is political will. The perceived hurdle is constitutional. Lets take them in reverse order.

TONY KEVIN. Shipwreck tragedy raises broad issues of duty of care in border protection

Last week saw three days of hearings (reported in The Guardian by Ben Doherty),adjourned on Wednesday 28 September until Tuesday 4 October as plaintiffs await key documents from the 2012 WA Coroners Court inquest into the disaster which drowned 50 people on 21 December 2010, when a SIEV boat crashed in heavy seas into low jagged cliffs at Flying Fish Cove, Christmas Island. Township-dwellers watched horrified from above as Australian Navy and Customs rescue crews in inflatable motor vessels arrived too late to tow the breaking-up boat off the rocks. Despite valiant efforts they were only able to save 39...

JOHN FITZGERALD. Beijing's Guoqing versus Australia's way of life.

Beijing's role in the Chinese community media in Australia is increasingly in conflict with its own demand for respect. Beijing is tired of foreign analysts criticising China simply for being what it is. A former Chinese ambassador to Australia, Fu Ying, made thepoint succinctly in her current role as viceforeign minister: The West is too arrogant and must stop lecturing us and trying to change China. Unless you can accept China as it is, there is no basis for a relationship. But what is China, exactly? Is it getting its message across overseas? In the case of Australia,...

JOHN MENADUE. Cruelty and evil have become banal

Malcolm Turnbull told the UN that our treatment of refugees is worlds best practice. Only a guilty conscience could allow such self deception. In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, published in 1963, Hannah Arendt refers to the banality of evil. Her thesis was that Eichmann was not a fanatic or sociopath, but an extremely stupid person who relied on clich rather than thinking for himself and was motivated by professional promotion rather than ideology. She says The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

NATALIA NIKOLOVA, ROBYN JOHNS, WALTER JARVIS. We need to change more than pay for executives to do better.

The pay of executives of a company, whether in salary, bonuses or other types of remuneration, is usually justified as an incentive to improve the financial performance of a company. This has led to ever more complex performance packages with increasing percentage of variable, performance-based payments. But what is increasingly evident is that this definition of a role of an executive needs to change, as do the incentives, to act not only in the best financial interests of the company but to focus on how it serves the wider community.

JULIE WALKER. Australia should compare CEO and average worker pay like the US and UK.

Australia should follow the lead of the United States in requiring public companies to disclose how much their CEO makes each year directly compared to an average rank and file employee. Ballooning executive pay contributes to income inequality and the CEO pay ratio provides a measure of the extent of the pay gap between the top and bottom income levels in the economy. US companies will be required to disclose from 1 January 2017 the ratio of pay of a CEOs annual total remuneration to the median annual total remuneration of all company employees. UK companies are also subject to...

JOHN MENADUE. Malcolm Turnbull the last straw on climate change and renewables.

Lets be clear. All the experts tell us that the power blackout in SA had nothing to do with the energy mix coal, gas, solar or wind. They all tell us that the blackout was due to the collapse of the key distribution towers and lines. Yesterday, Malcolm Turnbull blamed the blackout on excessive haste with renewables and called for cuts in renewable energy targets. It was part of a continuing war by the coalition against renewable energy with the ABC now joining in. The Victorian Premier called Malcolm Turnbull's comments 'ignorant rubbish'. With his populist nonsense...

DYLAN McCONNELL. Was the SA blackout caused by wind or wind turbines?

It has everything to do with wind - because thats what blew over the transmission lines. But it has nothing to do with South Australias wind turbines. Transmission lines are large power lines that take electricity from generators to the smaller distribution lines that bring power to our homes. South Australias energy generation mix is mixture of wind, gas and some solar, and as of this year, zero coal. The state is connected to the rest of eastern Australias electricity market through two inter-connectors, one of which is down for service.

BOB KINNAIRD. The Coalitions Backpacker tax and work rights package

The Coalitions backpacker policy announcement yesterday focussed on tax rates but also includes a significant expansion of work rights under Australias working holiday maker program (WHM or 417 and 462 visas). .... The Coalitions main aim is to provide an increased supply of cheap and captive foreign labour to the agricultural sector on a long-term basis. But the new policy applies to WHMs in all sectors.

JAMES GERRAND. Cambodia Crackdown. Part 2 of 2.

Part 2 Hun Sens Red Brotherhood Hanoi cannot be seen to be interfering in Cambodian affairs but the Vietnamese military has cemented close ties with the Hun Sen regime - none closer than with the Prime Ministers personal Bodyguard Unit (BHQ), their go-to-man being the Deputy Commander Dieng Sarun. General Saruns shadowy Senaneak Youth League (read pro-CPP thugs) mounted the street protest that led to the brutal beating of two opposition MPs by several of his BHQ soldiers outside the National Assembly in October last year.

JOHN MENADUE. 'Faster economic growth demands better chief executives'.

There was a revealing heading in a recent article by Ross Gittins, the economics editor of the SMH, Faster growth demands better chief executives. He concluded his article by pointing to the need for business leadership to seize the economic opportunities . Our overpaid and underperforming chief executive officers are getting (it) wrong. He says Deloitte Access estimates that if the gap in management quality between Australia and the US were halved today, our productivity would rise to 80% of the US level, up from its present level of 77%. Achieving such an increase today would lead to a...

JAMES GERRAND. Cambodia Crackdown part 1 of 2

Part 1 Kill a Chicken to Scare the Monkeys Around my regular haunts in Phnom Penh are daily reminders of Cambodias enduring capacity for political violence: in Kabko market my favourite street restaurant was the scene where political adviser Om Radsady was shot dead in 2003; in a similarly blatant daylight execution, trade union leader Chea Vichea was gunned down in 2004 among the news stands at the end of my street where I buy the Cambodia Daily each morning; and now whenever my tuktuk driver pulls in to the Caltex station on the corner of Mao Tsetung...

LINDA JAKOBSON. Beware the China alarmists out there

The quandary over what to do about Peoples Republic of China government influence in Australia has burst on to the political scene. For the past months there has been ongoing media commentary about the consequences of political donations by businessmen with Chinese connections; and a piece inThe Australian Financial Reviewclaimed that hundreds, if not thousands, of Chinese citizens in Australia are gathering information for Chinese authorities. These are contentious issues, ones that cause unease within the government, among public servants and citizens at large.

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. Australias Shambolic Policy on Syria - Up Shiite Creek Without a Paddle.

We must get out of Syria. The war in Syria is extraordinarily complex. It really began in 2011 with the failures of theso-called Arab Spring. Now the core conflict is between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and the rebel groups which oppose him. Both sides have split into several militias, which have attracted foreign fighters, including a number of Australians.

GREG DODDS. Australian sacrifice in Vietnam, it's time to rethink the way we memorialise

Mines are terrible weapons. They can still blow the leg off an innocent trespasser years after a conflict has ended. Dan Tehan, the Minister for Veterans Affairs demonstrated that,figuratively speaking,last month when he snarled at the Vietnamese that theircancelling the 50th anniversary service for thebattle of Long Tan was no way to treat mates. The Vietnamese were ruthless, competent and game enemies but we're now all mates?

PETER WHITEFORD. The $4.8 trillion dollar question: will an 'investment approach' to welfare help the most disadvantaged?

Social Services Minister Christian Porter on Tuesday released a report on the lifetime costs of the social security system for the Australian population, putting it at close to A$4.8 trillion. The report was an initiative of the 2015-16 budget, when the government allocated A$33.7 million to establish an Australian Priority Investment Approach to Welfare based on actuarial analysis of social security data.

JOHN NIEUWENHUYSEN. Rising hostility to refugee movement.

The inspiring poem by Emma Lazarus carved on the Statue of Liberty clearly reflects the ethos and caring spirit of a bygone era: Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempus-tost to me

The era of American global dominance is over.

In The World Post of 15 September 2016, Graham E. Fuller spells out 'the declining American influence. He says that the more Washington attempts to contain or throttle Eurasianism as a genuine rising force, the greater will be the determination of states to become part of this rising Eurasian world. ... China is moving in stunningly ambitious directions in creating the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. ... The new Eurasianism is no longer about 19th century land and sea power. It is an acknowledgment that the era of western - and especially US - global dominance is over.' Graham E....

The creeping Americanisation of Australian healthcare.

In this blog, I have repeatedly posted articles about the threat to Medicare in the $11 billion pa. subsidy which the Australian government provides to support private health insurance companies in Australia. We are sleep walking into the destruction of Medicare unless we reverse this trend. The US health system dependent upon private health insurance is the most expensive and inequitable in the world.

RICHARD RIGBY. Japan steps up military activity in the South China Sea.

The announcement in Washington, in the context of last weeks visit by Japanese Defence Minister Tomomi Inada, of stepped up Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force activities in the South China Sea, including exercises with the US Navy, has to be one of the more ill-judged decisions taken regarding this contested area in recent times. It will do nothing to alter Chinas claims or diminish its presence, but will provide oxygen to precisely those forces in China who see it being subjected to a campaign of encirclement and containment. It will further fire nationalist extremism, and not only add to existing tensions...

GRAHAM FREUDENBERG: On the Irish and other undesirables.

Australia sometimes seems to suffer a mysterious case of multiple-amnesia over immigration. We are a nation built on migrants, but we have forgotten that almost every new wave of immigrants has been resented and resisted by those already here, especially those who were migrants themselves. It started around the 1820s when the convicts hated the first free settlers taking our jobs. We have forgotten that, without exception, each wave of immigrants has been successfully absorbed to national and individual benefit. We have forgotten that particular groups aroused special animosity, yet integrated so completely in one generation that it would...

JOHN MENADUE. The US pivot to the Pacific is off balance.

President Obamas rebalance or pivot to the Pacific is struggling. There have been some successes. Ever-loyal Australia signed up to US marines in Darwin and there may be more cooperation to come!. There have been new US military agreements with the Philippines and Vietnam. But there have been some important downsides, particularly as China has responded to what it sees as intrusion in to its historic area of influence. Most significantly, President Obamas proposed twelve-member Trans-Pacific Partnership pact, which deliberately excluded China, is in peril and will probably fail.

Nauru and Manus - the costs of detention.

In this blog, we have drawn attention many times to the inhumanity of our policies towards refugees and asylum seekers in Nauru and Manus. In addition to our immoral conduct, there is also the extraordinary cost of keeping asylum seekers in detention. In the link below, Peter Martin in the SMH yesterday, estimates the cost at $573,000 for each asylum seeker, each year. http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-extraordinary-cost-of-keeping-asylum-seekers-in-detention-over-500000-each-20160914-grftcj.html

JOHN MENADUE. Aunty, with our prospects in life what is the point of being healthy?

The ABC Boyer Lecture series this year is being delivered by Sir Michael Marmot, the World Medical Association President and Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London .The main thrust of his lecture series has been about inequalities, poverty and social conditions the social determinants that have a major impact on health in the community.

China and the South China Sea

Last weekend Geraldine Doogue interviewed Richard Woolcott and Geoff Raby on the recent controversies about Chinese influence in Australia. Richard Woolcott was formerly Head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and President of the UN Security Council. Geoff Raby was formerly Australian Ambassador to China. In this interview, both Richard Woolcott and Geoff Raby pointed to the need for a more balanced consideration of Chinese growing influence in the world. They highlighted that China is reacting to the declared US 'pivot to Asia' and to provocative US naval activities. Sam Dastyari may have been unwise in...

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