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

Pope Francis sharply criticises Vatican bureaucracy.

In his pre-Christmas address to Cardinals, Pope Francis referred to a Curia that is outdated, sclerotic or indifferent to others. He said that the Curia, the administrative pinnacle of the Roman Catholic Church was suffering from fifteen ailments which he wanted cured in the new year. See link below for Pope Francis' comments to the Curia. John Menadue. http://www.news.va/en/news/francis-a-curia-that-is-outdated-sclerotic-or-indi

John Menadue. The accident prone Julie Bishop.

I have written before about Julie Bishops mistakes as Foreign Minister despite the media spin that she has successfully generated. Those articles were: Julie Bishop Substance and Style on the 18th November; and Julie Bishop -Undiplomatic, politically partisan and wrong on 22 November. Just recall her foolish attack on President Obama over the Great Barrier Reef. Since then Julie Bishop has continued on her merry way with a pliant media. In the recent budget cuts Julie Bishop volunteered a further cut in her foreign aid allocation of $3.7 billion. Together with the May budget cuts that she...

Caroline Coggins, Pausing in Advent.

I was on retreat recently in Hong Kong and there was a very small pool with eight turtles in it. It took me some days to notice; you have to slow down to see them. Their water was muddy, there was certainly no vista here, just the close company they kept with each other, and the bonus of the big shell that they could pull their heads in and out of. I liked the turtles, I watched them lean on each other to get up, rest on top of each other, they had that shell, but mostly their heads were...

John Menadue. What does it mean?

We have all been moved by the outpouring of grief and emotion by the deaths in Martin Place, the school children killed in Peshawar and eight children murdered in Cairns. The flood of floral tributes has been remarkable. We saw it only a few days earlier with the untimely death of Phillip Hughes. There was an even more remarkable outpouring with the death of Princess Di in 1997. But what does our response mean? How do we interpret these events? Let me try. We all have brokenness, loss and grief in our lives that so often we...

Is religion the cause of war and violence in the Middle East and elsewhere?

We are consistently seeing the ghastly side of Islam with public beheadings but we also need to keep in mind the ghastly side of Christianity which was so evidence during the Crusades. Many conclude that religion, now and in the past, is the cause of so much violence. Karen Armstrong has just written 'Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence'. This book has been reviewed by David Shariatmadari in The Guardian. He says 'We know that the slaughter of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, the Opium Wars, the First World War, the...

Brian Johnstone. How to Respond to Terrorism?

How can we make sense of the contemporary situation of increasing violence? Some groups engage in terrorism against other groups and these engage in torture as a means of defeating the terrorism of the others? In liberal states torture is condemned as immoral; some seek to prohibit it by law, others defend it as a necessary and effective means to defend freedom. Historical experience suggests that torture will continue. Paul W. Kahn, in Sacred Violence: Torture, Terror and Sovereignty, (Ann Arbor, 2011) argues that secular, liberal philosophy and the theories of rights that it has developed, cannot deal with...

Kerry Murphy. Intra-religious conflict.

Most violent deaths of Muslims in the world are due to others claiming to be Muslims. The conflicts in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are all predominantly conflicts within the Islamic community. This is strongly felt within the communities but not usually reported in the mainstream media. This week in Peshawar in north western Pakistan, more than 140 mainly Muslim children are killed by men who claim to follow a version of Islam that requires them to chant God is Great whilst they execute unarmed school children. They claim this is because the military in the Islamic Republic of...

John Menadue. Normalising Crime.

I was astounded when I read what Archbishop Antony Fisher told The Australian last week. The report said Australias most senior Catholic cleric has proclaimed that families are more likely than priests to abuse children and rejected a church report that linked celibacy to sexual abuse. Archbishop of Sydney Antony Fisher said that celibacy could not be to blame for abuse, which occurred in every church, regardless of whether it was celibate. The thing about child abuse is most of it happens in families. It is an awful thing we hate to even touch on it, but it cant be...

Luigi Palombi. It's time to fix the free trade bungle on the cost of medicines.

Ten years on from the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, Australia is entering another round of negotiations towards the new and controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership. In this Free Trade Scorecard series, we review Australian trade policy over the years and where we stand today on the brink of a number of significant new trade deals. Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership present an opportunity to correct a mistake made a decade in the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, which led to Australia paying higher prices for pharmaceuticals. In July 2004, Tony Abbott, then health minister in the Howard government, issued...

Truth, Justice and Healing Council's challenge of celibacy falls on deaf ears.

In an article on December 16 in the SMH online, former NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally said that the report of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council offered Catholics a wake-up call. She said that many in the Vatican are still asleep. She added 'I can't decide whether to scream or cry when I hear a bishop or cardinal deny that the Catholic Church has a particular and serious problem with child sexual abuse by pointing out that such abuse happens outside the church as well.' For the text of Kristina Keneally's article, see link below. John Menadue http://www.smh.com.au/comment/truth-justice-and-healing-councils-challenge-of-celibacy-falls-on-deaf-ears-20141215-1276nv.html

Tony Doherty. Remaining balanced in times of tragedy and turmoil.

Our ability to hang on to sanity and some sense of equilibrium this week has been sorely tested. In the face of scarcely imaginable acts of violence right in the citys heart, Martin Place, the balance of our emotional lives could be endangered. The press sifts through the many and various reactions casual bystanders, politicians, radio commentators, the police. Everyone feels impelled to respond in their own way. A young woman on a suburban train declares her solidarity with Muslims (#illridewithyou) too scared to ride on public transport. Her twitter message goes viral. Recently when thinking about...

Hazel Moir and Deborah Gleeson. Evergreening and how big pharma keeps drug prices high.

Efforts by pharmaceutical companies to extend their patents cost taxpayers millions of dollars each year. In some cases they also mean people are subjected to unnecessary clinical trials. Big pharma makes big profits. Their useful new drugs are patented, protecting them from competition and allowing them to charge high prices. When the patent ends, other companies are allowed to supply the previously patented drug. These are known as generics. The prices of generic drugs are much lower than the prices of in-patent drugs it has been suggested that for widely used drugs price falls can be as much...

Hazel Moir, How trade agreements are locking in a broken patent system.

Ten years on from the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, Australia is entering another round of negotiations towards the new and controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership. In this Free Trade Scorecard series, we review Australian trade policy over the years and where we stand today on the brink of a number of significant new trade deals. Australia has long had low requirements for obtaining patents. Some of these low standards were locked in in the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement. This made reform to the system difficult but not impossible. The same cannot be said of the proposals in...

Antony Ting. Australia eyes missing billions with very own 'Google tax'.

Joe Hockey has hinted he may introduce a Google tax as a new weapon to tackle profit shifting by multinational enterprises. The Treasurers suggestion is not only political as a counter to aggressive tax avoidance by multinationals, but also suggests the government may not have full confidence in a successful outcome of the G20/OECD work on base erosion profit shifting (BEPS). The suggestion of a Google tax in Australia appears to be a coordinated action with the UK. Last week, the UK Treasury announced the introduction of a Diverted Profits Tax (commonly dubbed the Google tax). The tax will...

John Menadue. The Sydney seige and social misfits. Will we ever learn?

I posted the following blog 'Will we ever learn?' on 27 October this year. Amongst other things it highlighted the domestic risks that would result from the Abbott Government's decision to join the war in Iraq and Syria. Keysar Trad from the Islamic Friendship Association has today described the hostage taker and killer as a 'nutter'.It is also clear that there were numerous warning signs in the previous behaviour of the attacker, John Menadue. The Coalition and conservative commentators have told us for years that international action by Australia in taking the lead on climate change...

Helena Britt. General Practice and value for money.

Last year taxpayers spent A$6.3 billion on GP services through Medicare, about 6% of the total government health expenditure. This was a 50% increase (A$2.1 billion) in todays dollars over the past decade and equates to about A$60 more per person in real terms. Health Minister Peter Dutton says this growth is unsustainable. He plans to introduce a GP co-payment in hope of reducing the number of times Australians visit a GP and to ensure users foot some of the bill. But targeting primary care for cost savings could backfire. Research were releasing todayshows that while the number...

Walter Hamilton. Japanese election.

Four more years of Oh, by the way, Japan is having a national election on Sunday. Has anyone told the Japanese? Some are calling it the Seinfeld electionthe election about nothing. Which probably suits Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who called it two years early, with no apparent justification. Others have cynically observed that some in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) reckon a disillusioned electorate is easier to govern. After 10 December, when Japans new Designated Secrets Law came into effectlocking up sensitive information for 60 years and threatening to lock up any leaking public servant for...

The Wit of Whitlam - a great read.

ISBN: (Paperback)9780522868081 ISBN: (E-Book)9780522868098 PUBLISHED:03/Dec/2014 IMPRINT:Melbourne University Press SUBJECT:Biography: general The Wit of Whitlam James Carleton Paperback $14.99 E-Book $9.99 See more at: https://www.mup.com.au/items/154221 Self-proclaimed international treasure Gough Whitlam never shied away from a pun, a put-down or a witticism. His wife Margaret was his 'best appointment', he called Malcolm Fraser 'Kerr's cur' after the Dismissal and when Sir Winton Turnbull called out in parliament 'I am a country member', Gough interjected 'I remember'. When it was suggested he was funny, Gough responded: 'Funny! Funny? Witty, yes. Epigrammatic...

Graham Freudenberg. Gough being Gough.

LAUNCH OF JAMES CARLETONS THE WIT OF WHITLAM,BELLEVUE HOTEL, PADDINGTON, NSW, 8 DECEMBER 2014 As Henry Kissinger discovered to his chagrin in Beijing in 1971, Gough made a habit of getting there first. The Bellevue is no exception. Most of us here probably associate the Bellevue with its glory days when Suzie Carleton was, as Gough always described her, its chatelaine. And Gough and Margaret were very much part of that scene. But Gough and the Bellevue go back to 1951, before he even entered the Parliament. Thats when, as junior to Bill Dovey, Margarets father, counsel assisting...

Max Corden. Australia needs higher taxes, not spending cuts.

The federal budget balance is expected to deteriorate. The reasons are numerous but, in a lengthy statement, the government sums it up in terms of two key factors. These are: the softer economic outlook; and unresolved issues inherited from the former government. The economy is going through a transition. A decline in resources investment will be offset by a recovery in the non-resources sector. It seems the decline in resources investment may be sharper than previously forecast while the recovery in the non-resources sector may be more gradual. Thus, with real gross domestic product growing at a slower...

John Menadue. The dogs breakfast in co-payments has got worse.

The government is trying to dump its co-payment mess on to doctors. If doctors decide not to absorb the reductions in the Medicare rebate, many will pass it on to patients and dramatically reduce bulk billing. What a mess! In justification for their ill-considered GP co-payment in the budget, the Minister for Health Peter Dutton and Prime Minister Tony Abbott kept parroting that we need some improved price signal in health in order to make our health system sustainable. But this argument is not valid. We have one of the best and most sustainable health services in the world....

Tilly Gunning. Children in detention.

The 'Were Better Than This' campaign was launched on the 26th of November 2014, its aim is to end the Australian Governments indeterminate detention of over 700 refugee children. Lots of influential Australians have come together to support the cause by participating in a choir song, the proceeds will go to charity. To listen to the song and view the video of support, click here. Visit the Were Better Than This website to discover figures regarding children in detention, and contribute to the organisation, and make a change. Tilly Gunning is John Menadue's 14 year old grand-daughter.

John Menadue. Temporary Protection Visas and the Senate cross-bench.

I wish that the Rudd, Gillard and Abbott Governments had done things very differently on refugee policies. But faced with the impasse at the present time, I welcome the compromise arrangement which the government has negotiated with the senate cross benches two senators from the Palmer Group, Nick Xenophon, Ricky Muir, Bob Day and David Leyonhjelm. But like the curates egg it is good and bad in parts. As a result a negotiated package has been achieved that will enable the government to get the refugee processing system moving again to assess the claims of over 30,000 asylum...

Tim Colebatch. The Abbott budget is hard to sell.

The Abbott governments problems began long before the 201415 budget, but now the budget is at the heart of them. It has failed to win support from the voters, and failed to win support from the Senate. Why? I think there are two reasons. The first is that its measures, taken together, fail the test of fairness. Thats well known, and the opinion polls show the publics reaction. The second is not well known, but it may have been grasped intuitively by many Australians, which is why the governments appeals to national interest have fallen flat. In short,...

Australia is worst performing industrial country on climate change.

For the Lima Conference on Climate Change that has just begun, a report by the think-tank Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe examined the 58 emitters of greenhouse gasses in the world, and about 90% of all energy-related emissions. The report named Australia as the worst performing industrial country in the world on climate change. We have now replaced Canada as the worst performing industrial country. The report author told The Guardian, which has published this story 'It is interesting that the bottom six countries in the ranking - Russia, Iran, Canada, Kazakhstan, Australia and Saudi Arabia - all have...

Jock Collins. Australia's shift from settler to temporary migration nation.

Immigration is a political hot potato. On the day the OECD published its latest annual survey of global migration, Swiss voters rejected a referendum to reduce annual migration numbers. A few days earlier, yet another UN committee criticised Australias asylum seeker policies. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans to reduce annual immigration from 260,000 to below 100,000 per year in response to the UK Independence Party (UKIP) securing its second parliamentary seat. And on November 20, US President Barack Obama announced his intention to permit millions of resident undocumented migrants access to permanent residence. The 2014...

John Menadue. Tony Abbott did not stop the boats.

The data just does not support the never-ending claims by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison that they stopped the boats. The under-resourced and uncritical media accepts the Coalitions line. I will come to the recent data, but first the evidence is clear that action by the Coalition along with the Greens in the Senate to prevent amendments to the Migration Act greatly assisted people-smugglers and boat arrivals from 2011 onwards. The rejection of the arrangement with Malaysia by the High Court started the rot. The High Court decision may have been sound in law, but it had powerful...

John Menadue. Outsourcing and redundancy at the ABC.

Mark Scott has expressed concern at the pain being felt by staff losing their jobs and careers. He announced that he and his senior team would take a pay freeze for a year. When it was pointed out that there would not be sufficient staff left to fill the program schedule, some senior manager apparently announced that the money achieved through some of the budget savings would be used to commission some individual programs and short series from some of those very people who are about to be made redundant. So, the ABC management is proposing to sack long...

John Menadue. Our Environment Minister is not going to Lima

Almost all countries will have their climate change or environment ministers at the UN Climate Change Conference which commences this week in Lima, Peru. This conference is in preparation for the crucial conference on climate change in Paris next year. But our Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, will not be there. Tony Abbott is sending his Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, but is also sending Andrew Robb, our Trade Minister to keep an eye on her. It is reported that Julie Bishop went bananas over this insult to her. News reports suggest that Tony Abbott had no intention of sending...

Refugees - some middle ground is opening up.

See below a speech made in the Senate on 4 December by Senator Xenophon. The Senator was one of six cross-bench senators who negotiated with the government for a compromise on the contentious Migration Bill. Senator XENOPHON (South Australia) (12:17): Australia's migration policies have always had a long and vexed history. They have been, and rightfully so, open to significant scrutiny from international and domestic courts, independent experts, interest groups and the electorate. It has and will continue to be a passionate debate about a wicked and vexed issue. For me it is always important, always, to remember that...

Tony Kevin. Cuts to ABC Classic FM strike at Australias cultural heritage

Limelight, ABC Classic FMs online magazine, reported on 24 November The number of concerts recorded will be slashed by a massive 50%, with just 300 performances due to be recorded over the next two years verses the 600 concerts recorded during the previous two years. Broadcasts of live performances currently account for 17 hours of Classic FMs weekly output. http://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/news/major-cuts-abc-classic-fm%E2%80%99s-programming-confirmed So listeners will lose around 50%, i.e., 8-9 hours of Australian-performed broadcast music each week. What will we lose? Events like the 30 November broadcast of the fine new Australian opera by Iain Grandage...

Eric Walsh. A ragged year not a ragged week.

Nobody laughed things must be different in the press gallery these days. Prime Minister Tony Abbott in one of his longest press conferences was trying desperately to erase the hangover from the setbacks which have dogged him and his government since his dismal performance at the G20 meeting which he had hoped forlornly as it proved would rescue the image of a very disordered and unimpressive government. He was trying to end the year on what at least might seem to be a high note. He had just told the assembled media that despite the...

John Menadue. Why the ABC is unique and important.

The BBC is the most successful public broadcaster in the world. It is a good model, not to copy but to adapt to our own needs and circumstances. Lord Reith who was Director General of the BBC 1927-38 pithily described the BBCs purpose in three words...educate, inform and entertain. He was famously determined that the BBC would provide its audiences with something rather better than they thought they wanted. He said, He who prides himself on giving what he thinks the public wants is often creating a fictitious demand for lower standards which he himself will then satisfy, ...

John Menadue. The smoko continues.

In April 2012 Greg Dodds and I posted an article on this blog The Australian Century and the Australian smoko. We argued that while we responded well to the opportunities in Asia for over a decade in the 1980s, we went on smoko from the mid-1990s. There was widespread complacency and fear of Asia was promoted. The result has been two decades of failure by business, universities, schools and the media in equipping ourselves for the region. That complacency is still with us and the fear of Asia is promoted by ministers like Scott Morrison. Another report has just...

Kerry Brown. Australia's vanishing China policy.

One of the side effects of the visit by Chinese president Xi Jinping to Australia, New Zealand and the region in mid November was to raise questions about whether each of these countries has what might be called a strategic vision of their relationship with a country that has quickly become their largest trading ally. Xis suspicion that they dont may lie behind his observation, addressing the Australian parliament on 17 November, that there needs to be more imagination and ambition in the bilateral relationship. At a time when many in the rest of the world are asking China...

John Menadue. The scholarship is the real issue.

Freya Newman has been placed on a two year good behaviour bond with no conviction recorded for accessing the computer system of the Whitehouse Institute of Design concerning a scholarship awarded to Francis Abbott. Overwhelmingly the media coverage has been about Freya Newman and very little about the substantial issue, the scholarship. The substantial issues seem quite clear. They have not been publicly disputed. The Whitehouse Institute is a private tertiary body. It awarded Francis Abbott, the then Opposition Leaders daughter, a scholarship which saved her family more than $60,000 in fees. The scholarship was not advertised....

Rethinking the cost of Western intervention in Ukraine.

In the Washington Post on November 25, Katrina vanden Heuvel had a very interesting article on the mistakes that Europe, NATO, and the US have made in their approach to Russia over the Ukraine and Crimea. She quotes Henry Kissinger as saying 'Nobody in the West has offered a concrete program to restore Crimea. Nobody is willing to fight over Eastern Ukraine. That's a fact of life.' Kissinger has said that the West might weigh its real security concerns before posturing and escalation over Ukraine. Even far away Australia has been posturing over Ukraine. In one of his more...

John Menadue. The ABC should stop kicking own goals.

There is not much doubt in my mind that the budget cuts to the ABC are part of a vendetta against the ABC and to oblige Rupert Murdoch who intensely dislikes quality competition. The ABC is the most trusted media organisation in the country and News Corp is the least trusted. But the ABC looks to be kicking some own goals. Walter Hamilton, John Tulloh and I have pointed to the very disquieting cut backs in the ABC regional coverage when it should be dramatically increased given the rapidly increasing importance of our region. We still have a...

Stephen King. The ABC's "me too" strategy puts it on track for redundancy.

Is the ABC trying to make itself redundant? Because that appears to be its strategy. Heres why. The ABC is expensive. In 2013 it was allocated more than A$1 billion of taxpayer funds. The ABC claims, however, that its real funding since 1985-86 has dropped by about one quarter. And the current federal government has cut further A$120 million in the May budget and a further A$207 million over four years. The ABC has responded with cutbacks in niche areas such as womens sport and rural services and a renewed focus on internet-based services. But with...

John Menadue. Our best friend in Asia is in trouble.

Japan now faces its fourth recession since 2008. The Japanese economy has contracted in 13 of the last 27 quarters. In effect, there has been no growth for six years. The Japanese economy has been moribund for two decade. So far Abenomics is not delivering as Prime Minister Abe had hoped. His attempt at money-creation on a vast scale to monetise Japans enormous public debt is not working. Facing failure of his economic policies, Prime Minister Abe has done what many politicians do when they are not sure of their position. He has called an election for next...

Lifters and leaners in tax.

In the SMH today (27 November 2014), Michael West has a very interesting story about the leaners and lifters in the business community and the unfairness of tax avoidance by some companies. It clearly works to the disadvantage of many Australian companies who are paying fair rates of taxation. For the link to this story, see below. John Menadue   http://www.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/leadership-needed-on-tax-fairness-in-australia-20141126-11ukw2.html

John Menadue. Move over Joe Hockey

The Julie Bishop media blitz continues. But will it flame out like the media blitz of her namesake, Bronwyn Bishop who was also touted by the media as a possible Liberal leader over a decade ago. Like Julie Bishop now and Bronwyn Bishop then, they had amazing free runs in the media. But in the end substance and not style wins out. And on substantial issues as I have mentioned in my earlier blogs, there is little of real achievement... There have been record cuts in overseas development aid, Ebola delays, needlessly provoking China over its island dispute with...

John Menadue. Capitalism, inequality and taxation.

In his challenging series last week on Is capitalism redeemable Ian McAuley drew attention to how growing inequality is the cause not only of serious social concerns, but it is also presenting us with some quite serious economic problems. There is not much doubt that in the US, the growing tax concessions for the wealthy and the obstacles placed in the path of low income and poor people to organise themselves through trade unions, has had serious economic as well as social consequences. With companies like Walmart paying poverty wages, low income people dont have the money to buy...

John Menadue. Murdoch and Abbott vs ABC.

This is a repost of a blog which I initially posted on December 19 last year. Tony Abbott has a debt to repay to Rupert Murdoch for the extremely biased support he received in the last election. With the help of Senator Cory Bernadi, Tony Abbott is now following the Murdoch Media line in attacking the ABC. He is also following in the steps of the Howard Government that attempted, unsuccessfully, to bring the ABC to heel. During the Howard Government, Minister Richard Alston and Senator Santo Santoro led a concerted campaign against the ABC to force political...

Walter Hamilton. The ABC and its competitors

When the British conducted atomic tests at Maralinga in South Australia in the 1950s Australias newspaper proprietors tried to prevent the ABC bringing along its recording equipment to capture the event. They wanted the ABC locked out of the story because it would steal their thunder: how could a printed article about an atomic explosion compete with sound and vision? The national broadcaster appealed for help to Prime Minister Menzies who ruled that the ABC had the right to be there. There was a time, of course, in the 1930s, when the ABC news consisted of a radio presenter...

John Menadue. Undiplomatic, politically partisan and wrong!

Julie Bishop has decided to take on the President of the United States over his comments to an audience at the University of Queensland on the state of the Great Barrier Reef. It shows immaturity to jump in so quickly to defend what I think is the indefensible by attacking others without any real basis. It is also an example of how the Liberal Party sees the alliance between us and the US, not as an alliance between our two countries, but as a special relationship between the Liberal Party of Australia and the Right Wing of the...

Geoff Hiscock. Cleaning up the coal energy pillar a central task for Modi and Abbott

Narendra Modi and Tony Abbott explicitly defined energy as a central pillar of the India-Australia economic relationship in their joint statement this week. Thats a good sign, but if they want to make a truly significant contribution to the long-term economic and social benefit of India and Australia, then they need to deliver forcefully and quickly on the commitment they made to work together on clean coal technology. An emphasis on utility-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects in India would be a good place to start. With 1.93 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions last year (5.5...

Walter Hamilton. Japan: when in doubt, call an election

Japan, Australias second biggest export market, has fallen back into recession. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has reacted by calling a snap election for mid-December, a year ahead of schedule, claiming he needs a new mandate to tackle the nations economic problems. Trade deals or talk of trade deals between Australia and both China and India should not distract us from the fact that one of the regions great powers is sick and we are not immune. Japan buys 16% of Australias exports: not as much as a few decades ago but still substantial. Since 2008, the Japanese economy...

John Menadue. Julie Bishop substance and style

According to opinion polls, Julie Bishops standing has climbed. In Harpers Bazaar she has been described as the Woman of the Year. It is suggested that she could be a leadership contender But how much substance and how much achievement has there really been. How has Australias foreign policy interests been advanced? Before looking at the performance, it is worth recalling that no Australian Foreign Minister could be said to have failed in recent decades, from Gareth Evans to Bill Hayden to Alexander Downer, Stephen Smith, Kevin Rudd and Bob Car. One advantage that Foreign Ministers have is...

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