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

NIALL McLAREN. The Dangerous Folly of the "War with China" Scenario.

Nick Deane reflected on the troubled waters of the South China Sea, concluding that we need to pay close attention to what our military alliance with the US may drag us into. War between the US and China would necessarily involve us, but not necessarily to our advantage. While for ordinary citizens, such an eventuality would be horror beyond comprehension, it doesn't seem to trouble some of our leaders intent on spending a fortune on a dozen submarines with the capacity to interdict shipping in China's near-coastal waters. The advantages of such projection of military power are not immediately clear...

PETER WHITEFORD & DANIEL NETHERY. Where to for welfare?

The Coalitions proposed budget cuts would have a disproportionate impact on low-income groups, write Peter Whiteford and Daniel Nethery in this detailed analysis for Inside Story.

ADELE WEBB. He may have insulted Obama, but Duterte held up a long-hidden looking glass to the US.

This article is part of the Democracy Futures series, a joint global initiative with the Sydney Democracy Network. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has taken his bad manners having gained global notoriety with his election campaign insults earlier this year to a new level. At a press conference at Davao International Airport on Monday, on his way to meet US President Barack Obama and other leaders attending the ASEAN summit, Duterte muttered a few short words in tagalog...

PATRICK McGORRY. We must settle the refugees before it is too late.

In this article in the SMH, Patrick McGorry, the President of the Society for Mental Health Research, says; The time has come, before it is too late, to re-settle these fellow human beings and not just the children, but all of those who qualify as genuine refugees and who deserve a second chance for life. See link to article below: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/we-must-resettle-the-refugees-before-it-is-too-late-20160907-grav05.html

EVAN WILLIAMS. How to fix the Senate.

Among the many self-inflicted wounds Malcolm Turnbull has sustained since the knifing of Tony Abbott, his biggest problem remains an unworkable and unpredictable Senate. The election result has raised once again a perennial question in Australian politics how best to define the powers and proper role of the upper house. With sophisticated preference deals and refined techniques of voter manipulation now the norm, the Senate has become a minefield , not only for Turnbull but for both sides of politics a rabble of conflicting interests and an obstruction to effective government. Can anything be done to reform it?

TONY KEVIN. 'Putin meets Turnbull': an interesting encounter at Hangzhou.

Chris Ullmanns ABC News report on main outcomes for Australia of the Hangzhou G20 Summit led with an account of an impromptu encounter between Malcolm Turnbull and Vladimir Putin. Maybe they bumped into one another in the hotel lift or corridors? We dont know which side initiated this conversation, but it could be a positive step towards normalising Australian-Russian relations.**

JOHN MENADUE. The new compradors in the China Australia relationship.

In this blog on 14 October last year I wrote. Compradors are sometimes described as those who help a foreign country exploit their own. I was reminded of this when I read that the ALP Caucus had compromised its concerns over jobs for Australians and was prepared to waive the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement through the parliament with only a diluted list of demands as the AFR put it. If this agreement proceeds, Australian workers are likely to be much more vulnerable. Not surprisingly the President of the ACTU, Ged Kearney said that this is about Australian jobs so we...

MARIAN SAWER. Democracy for sale?

Since the 1980s Australia has become known for its laissez-faire or lackadaisical attitude to the role of money in politics. At the federal level Australia introduced public funding for political parties to reduce reliance on private donations, but corporate donations have continued to grow reaching $202 million in 201314. Disclosure to the Australian Electoral Commission is required for donations of over $13,200 but there are no source restrictions or limits for donations.

NICK DEANE. Reflecting on Troubled Waters. South China Sea

The dispute in the South China Sea should not, legitimately, involve Australia. We are only involved because we have such close military ties with the United States. War between the US and China is not inevitable, but dangerous, military escalation is taking place. If hostilities break out, the war will be on our doorstep.

PARIS ARISTOTLE. Rescuing people on Nauru and Manus Island.

Statement from the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture, regarding people transferred by Australia to the refugee processing centres of Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

WALTER HAMILTON. Whats in it for Putin?

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pursuing a fresh approach with Russias Vladimir Putin for resolving the territorial dispute that has prevented the two countries signing a peace treaty since World War Two. It is easy to see what Abe might hope to gain from a settlement, but no breakthrough can be expected unless it fits in with Putins own calculations.

JOHN MENADUE. Medicare, Private Health Insurance and the ALP

In my article, 'Down a different path in Melbourne: how Medibank was conceived' written in 2000 for the Medical Journal of Australia (see link below), I described the history from 1967 to 1975 which led to Medibank/Medicare. In that article, I highlighted one issue that drove Gough Whitlam's determination to establish Medibank/Medicare. His concern was that The Liberal and Country party Coalition's voluntary health insurance scheme, supported by taxpayer deductions was wasteful and inequitable. The package of measures that introduced Medibank/Medicare abolished the taxpayer subsidy for private health insurance. When the Hawke government introduced a revised Medicare in 1983...

GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. On race discrimination.

Assent by silence made Hitlers crimes possible. As Pastor Martin Niemoller wrote: First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no-one left to speak for me. The warning is as relevant as ever. The more we study...

JULIA BAIRD. Australia's Gulag Archipelago.

In Dantes view, the unfortunate souls who dwell in purgatory may suffer excruciating pain, but the promise of their final destination is clear: paradise. Those who languish on the remote, tiny islands Manus and Nauru that host Australias offshore immigration detention centers are not so lucky.

EVAN WILLIAMS. Film review: Truman

Directed by Cesc Gay, Truman is a wonderful Spanish film about a couple of old buddies saying goodbye for the last time. One of them is dying of lung cancer, and the film traces their last four days together in Madrid. The good news is that Truman isnt nearly as miserable as it sounds. In some reviews and in the ads Ive seen it described as a comedy-drama, though the comic elements are often hard to discern.

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. Do we need a White Paper on Australia's foreign policy?

A White Paper could be useful if it is agreed to by the key ministers of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Defence, and Immigration and Border Protection ;and consistently applied by the Cabinet. A major problem which I see is that we seem to be in a period of fairly intense political and bureaucratic infighting over Chinese activity, especially on the South China Sea. My concernis that there are serious divisions within the Coalition and also divisions within the ALP.

ROSS BURNS. Looking for an end-game in Syria.

Newspaper commentary on the Syria conflict has long struggled to provide new insights into the conflict. However, in an analysis published over the weekend in the New York Times, Max Fisher, adopted the novel approach of asking academic experts to comment on how other civil wars came to an end to see if any served as a precedent for Syria.

MEREDITH BURGMANN. ASIO and dirty secrets.

In commenting this week, Meredith Burgmann said that 'my view is that the stories in my book (Dirty Secrets: Our ASIO Files. New South Wales Publishing, Sydney 2014) collectively represent ASIO as being improper, incompetent, irrelevant, inappropriate and intrusive.' The following are extracts from her book.

Anti-global backlash is realigning politics across the West.

In the WorldPost, Nouriel Roubini writes Across the West establishment parties of the Right and the Left are being disrupted - if not destroyed from the inside. Within such parties, the losers from globalisation are finding champions of anti-globalisation that are challenging the formal mainstream orthodoxy.

WALTER HAMILTON. Minamata Remembered

This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the methyl mercury poisoning in Japan that caused Minamata Disease. Shocking images of victims captured by the American photographer W. Eugene Smith (his Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath perhaps the best known) have served ever since as a warning to the world of the threat from industrial pollution. Documents recently obtained by NHK televisions Close-Up Gendai current affairs program have revealed how politicians and bureaucrats colluded with the firm responsible for the pollution scandal, Chisso Corporation, to keep it afloat using public money while restricting compensation payments to victims.

MILTON MOON. Waiting for Godness -a narrative poem

by Milton Moon. Im due to die sooner rather than later. My wife of sixty-seven years has already gone, her mortal remains, in ashes waiting for mine. Together theyll go, somewhere as part of the seasons or the tides ebb or flow. She is still with me, I talk to her often, burning incense twice a day and telling her incense is dispersed for the soul of the young girl.

TONY KEVIN. A successful reawakening of serious Russian studies in Australia ?

Doctor Dorothy Horsfield of Australian National University is to be congratulated for her vision and hard work in mounting the first serious academic Russian studies conference in Australia for many years, Putins Russia in the Wake of the Cold War, on 24-26 August, under the auspices of the Australian National Universitys Humanities Research Centre in Canberra.

JOHN MENADUE. Medicare the Labor Party does not understand its own creation.

It is claimed that at the last Federal election, the Coalition lost support because it was going to undermine Medicare. In fact, at the last election, the ALP was proposing to do more to undermine Medicare than the Coalition. Let me explain.

ROBERT REICH: Why a Single-Payer Healthcare System is Inevitable

Private markets for health insurance pose a structural problem, and Obamacare cant fix it.

WALTER HAMILTON. Stand off in the East China Sea

About eighteen months ago, while talking with a policy analyst at Japans Defense Ministry in Tokyo, I asked how the confrontation with China over the disputed Senkaku (or Daioyu) Islands in the East China Sea was affecting morale in the Self-Defense Forces. I recently visited Sasebo, he replied, referring to the southern base of the SDF units designated to repel any Chinese attempt to occupy the islands. The expression on the faces of the men was very different from what Im used to seeing at Ichigaya, the district of Tokyo where the Defense Ministry is located. In the Ichigaya...

ANDREW MACK. National security and the Ausgrid bid

On 19th August Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison confirmed his earlier decision to block the NSW government's planned lease of 50.4 per cent of the New South Wales Ausgrid electricity distribution network to two Chinese companies: the Chinese government-owned State Grid Corporation of China and Hong Kong listed Cheung Kong International (CKI). Morrison based his decision on the Foreign Investment Review Boards advice that these companies represented a threat to the national intereston the grounds of national security. When asked at a press conference what specific security threat was posed by the Chinese bidders Morrison replied: The only person who's...

'Racists aren't welcome here: how we kicked a racist passenger off the bus.

A nice story from The Guardian 'Our better angels' . See link below. John Menadue http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/19/racists-arent-welcome-here-how-we-kicked-a-racist-passenger-off-the-bus?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

DEE JARRAK. Is there a middle path to addressing Australia's asylum seeker dilemma?

Perhaps we could try to combine humanitarian principles with political pragmatism to find an acceptable solution to Australias treatment of asylum seekers. Offshore detention policies are falling apart, and a new documentary film, Chasing Asylum, is again arousing shame and anger at the appalling psychological and physical damage we inflict on people who have attempted to seek asylum in Australia. But then theres a lot of righteous emotion on all sides of the asylum seeker debate.

EMMA CAMPBELL. Is South Korea still interested in unification?

It is not easy being a young person in globalised South Korea. The intense competition that defines South Koreas education system and the irregular employment market that awaits graduates has led to rising inequality, falling birth rates, insecure employment and high numbers of youth suicide.Beyond South Koreas domestic wellbeing, globalisation and its accompanying economic insecurity also have implications for foreign affairs, particularly attitudes towards North Korea.

PETER GIBILISCO. Some key ideas for the next generation of disability activists.

1. Meritocracy Meritocracy is a belief that seems to me to still be alive and well in the senior management of disability support. It also seems to drive many aspects of public policy, particularly when appeals are made to equal opportunity. Advocates of a meritocratic approach to disability policy are still assuming that the base-line principle should be that people get out of the system what they put into it. That is why they seek to remove any barriers to people with disabilities putting in. It is a political vision often articulated in terms of free market principles...

JOHN MENADUE. On Nauru and Manus, we need leaders who will appeal to the better angels of our nature.

I was interviewed on 17 August by Andrew West, the presenter of the Religion & Ethics Report, Radio National, ABC. One thing I emphasised was the importance of leadership. If only Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten would shake hands on a deal to maintain and if necessary strengthen turnbacks and bring all the wounded souls in Nauru and Manus to Australia. That is the type of leadership and bipartisanship that we desperately need. They would be applauded for their wisdom and courage in breaking out of the cycle of fear and violence which accompanies our refugee policies. See link...

JULIANNE SCHULTZ. You'll miss it when it's gone: why public broadcasting is worth saving.

In an age of global media abundance, the notion that public broadcasting is a mechanism to address market failure is beguiling. It is also fundamentally wrong. Public broadcasters have a unique national responsibility to provide a public good to citizens, rather than the more narrowly defined and easily measured mission of commercial broadcasters, to engage consumers and maximise the return to shareholders. Public broadcasters provide a return that is more complex to measure, but with the increasing sophistication of impact measurement, not impossible. The exact nature of the outputs and outcomes varies from one country to another, but includes providing...

Migration experts say it is unlikely closing camps on Manus and Nauru islands would re-start boats. We are beyond that point.

See link below - article by Ben Doherty in The Guardian, 16 August 2016. It includes an interview with me, Peter Hughes and others, on the need to act quickly to process in Australia, the detainees presently held in Manus and Nauru.   https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/16/after-the-nauru-files-how-can-australia-go-about-ending-offshore-detention

JOHN MENADUE. Tony Abbott now admits that he was wrong in opposing the Malaysian Arrangement.

If only the Greens and many refugee advocates would also admit that they got it wrong. They allowed the perfect to become the enemy of the good. My strong conviction for several years is that the Malaysian Arrangement it was not a Malaysian Solution would have been an important building block in regional cooperation to manage the movement of displaced people. It would also have avoided the tragedy that is unfolding in Manus and Nauru. That tragedy will be on Australias conscience for ever.

GRAHAM FREUDENBERG on Brexit. They are not laughing now.

They are not laughing now. So the UKIP leader Nigel Farage gloated in the European Parliament in July 2016. It was not the first time these exact words have been uttered, in the same spirit of vengeful vindication in a European parliament.

GEOFF HISCOCK. Long-awaited tax change raises tantalising prospect for Indian economy

The tantalising prospect of a 10% growth rate is on Indias economic horizon in the next few years, now that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won legislative backing for the long-awaited goods and services tax. On August 3, Indias upper house approved a bill to bring in a nationwide GST, creating a much simpler tax regime that will help create a unified market of 1.3 billion consumers. In theory, interstate trade barriers will come down, enabling the faster and cheaper delivery of goods across the country. But and it is a massive but there are numerous...

JEFF WATERS. ABC journalists and business.

Yeah, sure, let's 'embed' ABC journalists in businesses, but don't forget the unions, or Nauru. The recent review of ABC business coverage may have come down in favour of the National Broadcaster, but, as has been suggested in the media, any move to job swap or embed ABC journalists within private corporations is nonsensical.

ARJA KESKI-NUMMI. Our Devils Island

The Guardian recently ran a story regarding its Freedom Of Information request on boat turn backs, the subsequent denial of material, and its appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) to review the FOI decision. At some point during the AAT hearing the Guardian found itself locked out of part of the hearing on putative national security grounds. This week the Guardian reported on some 200 incident reports from the Nauru offshore processing centre, many regarding the 49 children and the abuse of them by those who are supposed to be their protectors.

MARIE SEGRAVE. Exploitation of foreign workers.

On Tuesday night, SBS Insight program aired concerns about temporary migrant labour exploitation. These issues tend to come to national attention when a particular case is exposed, but mostly they are not seen as national priorities and, as such, the response is generally reactive rather than proactive. The exploitation to have attracted attention most recently often involves student-visa holders, working-holiday-visa holders and 457-visa holders. Just a little under ten years ago, many of these situations would more immediately have been framed as issues of labour trafficking. But, since then, there has been a shift away from identifying...

JEFF KEHOE. Can capitalism be redeemed?

In this article in the Harvard Business Review, Jeff Kehoe poses the future of capitalism. He says Although it may be necessary to treat inequality as an economic problem, it is not sufficient. The US as a country needs to ask and answer some basic questions. Who gets to set the rules? What value should they reflect? What's fair? What do we owe to one another? See link for full article:https://hbr.org/2016/07/can-capitalism-be-redeemed

TONY KEVIN. Kevin Rudd and the UN

An exceptionally difficult UN Secretary-General selection process is set to continue On 29 July, Malcolm Turnbull controversially announced that the Australian Government will not nominate Kevin Rudd for the UN Secretary-General position. Here in Australia, the focus of discussion on the Rudd candidacy has been on domestic political issues of precedent and loyalty to Team Australia. Only Carl Ungerer and Geoff Raby, both strong Rudd supporters (see Farmer and Ungerer references below), touch on more basic questions of what outcome might now be best for the UN system, in an increasingly multipolar world that is impatient to...

CIA Briefing for Donald Trump

In the New York Times of 4 August, 2016, Nicholas Kristof gives a make-believe account of a security briefing of Donald Trump by a CIA officer. It is quite funny - but at the same time, quite worrying. John Menadue http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/opinion/donald-trump-and-a-cia-officer-walk-into-a-room.html?ref=international&_r=0

MERVYN KING. Which Europe Now?

In this article 'Which Europe now?' in the New York Review of Books, Mervyn King says Our political class would do well to recall the words of Confucius: Three things are necessary for government: weapons, food and trust. If a ruler cannot hold on to all three, he should give up weapons first and food next. Trust should be guarded to the end: without trust we cannot stand. Not just in Britain, but around the industrialized world, the divide between the political class and a large number of disillusioned and disaffected voters threatens trust. At times it seems that the...

WALTER HAMILTON. Japans Diminishing Returns.

Japan, in my nearly forty years of observing and reporting on that country, has never been so delicately and dangerously poised. Australians, who have long relied on it as an economic powerhouse and common interest partner, need to be paying close attention.

JOHN MENADUE. Democratic renewal.

Vested interests and the subversion of the public interest. There are many key public issues that we must address such as climate change, growing inequality, tax avoidance, budget repair, an ageing population, lifting our productivity and our treatment of asylum seekers. But our capacity to address these and other important issues is becoming very difficult because of the power of vested interests with their lobbying power to influence governments in a quite disproportionate way.

JOHN MENADUE. Democratic Renewal.

Our loss of trust in institutions. We speak often about the need for new ideas and policies to fill the void in the public debate. We will be examining these issues in this series Fairness, Opportunity and Security. But I think there is a prior problem. We need political reform to restore trust in our political system and our polity.

WALTER HAMILTON. Corruption by Prediction

It is a modern-day impatience: we want to eat dessert first. In election campaigns, therefore, we seek to taste the result through opinion polls, vox pops, electoral maps (with winners already allocated), predictive analogies or psephological cephalopods. So it was during the recent Australian elections; so it is again as Americans wait (redundantly?) for the real polls to open in November.

WALTER HAMILTON. Tokyos First Female Governor, and the disturbing state of Japanese politics.

The victory of 64-year-old Yuriko Koike in last weekends Tokyo gubernatorial election tells us a lot about the disturbing state of Japanese politics. Hailing from the right wing of Japans ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Koike holds views on constitutional change, school textbook revision and other contentious issues that line up with those of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. How, then, did she manage to present herself to the electorate as a maverick, non-mainstream candidate and, despite claiming to be fighting alone, run the slickest campaign of all? Seeking an answer, we need to recap events of recent years.

JOHN MENADUE. Democratic Renewal.

In the series, Fairness, Opportunity and Security that Michael Keating and I edited there were several articles that are still particularly relevant. Several of them deal with the disappointment many of us feel about our institutions and the lack of trust in parliament and politicians. I will be reposting some of these articles over the next week. I still believe that democratic renewal is essential in Australia today. John Menadue Role of government. The importance of values. (Repost) Good government must be based on some broadly shared values that inspire and enthuse us. We can accept that...

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