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

Clare Condon SGS. Sanctioned Violence: What does it do to our society and relationships?

Some violent acts, depending on where and how they were perpetrated, are regarded as criminal. Others, however, are sanctioned by society, even applauded and cheered. Some are blatant; others are covert and subtle. Some are justified by cultural norms, by the blind eye or the deaf ear; they happen behind closed doors. Others are justified by official permission and approval, or even by public opinion. I wish to highlight four areas of sanctioned violence which I believe impact adversely on society and relationships. Australias response to asylum seekers and refugees Currently in the Australian community, the government...

John Menadue. Who owns Medibank Private (continued)

In my blog of August 14 I examined the question of who owns Medibank Private (MBP) particularly in light of the Abbott Government proposal to privatise the business. This is not an idle question or an academic issue only. MBP has 3.5 million members and the government has estimated its sale value at $4 billion. The Government has now announced that MBP will be sold by Christmas It is clear that for many years it was assumed that the policy-holders/members owned MBP. That is clear from an examination of the accounts and the comments of a former chairman...

John Menadue. Refugees and asylum seekers..a re-think on Temporary Protection Visas.

I have long argued that Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) should be rejected on the grounds that they dont deter asylum seekers, people are left in limbo and because TPV holders could not sponsor family which resulted in risky boat journeys by women and children. It is time to think again about TPVs. At the present time there are over 30,000 asylum seekers in detention or in the community awaiting refugee assessment. That caseload is the result of the large influx of boat arrivals following the collapse of the Malaysian Agreement and the refusal of the Coalition and the...

John Menadue. The Iraq disaster - reaping what we have sown.

The seeds of the disaster in Iraq were sown long ago. We are now reaping a very bitter harvest. A major contributor to the upsurge in violence, terrorism and extremism in Iraq is the sense of outrage that many young Muslim men feel about the invasion of their country by successive Western powers, including Australia. The Howard Government and News Corporation which supported our participation in the coalition of the willing must bear a heavy responsibility for the unfolding horror. I have set out below an article by Tony Walker in The Australian Financial Review of 29...

John Menadue. Scott Morrison at the Human Rights Commission.

Minister Morrison, assisted by the Secretary of his department, continued his aggressive ways at the hearing on August 22. He said that his policies discouraged asylum seekers risking their lives at sea. He described himself as the champion of the voiceless, the ones that are at the bottom of the ocean. He clearly wants to occupy the high moral ground. But was it really concern about deaths at sea which motivated his campaign against asylum seekers arriving by boat? Wikileaks reported that a key Liberal strategist told the US Embassy in November 2009 that the boats issue was...

John Menadue. Keep trucking!

At the hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Melbourne last week, Cardinal George Pell is reported as saying that if the driver of a (trucking company) sexually assaulted a passenger they picked up along the way I dont think that it is appropriate for the .. leadership of that company be held responsible. As a citizen I was angered as most people were by these comments. As a Catholic I was ashamed. If any trucking company, or indeed any organisation, had a record of sexual abuse like the Catholic Church I...

Richard Woolcott. Indonesia under President Widodo.

Australia will be dealing with a new Indonesian government in just two months. This will involve challenges and opportunities for both countries. The Constitutional Court in Jakarta has now confirmed the election of Joko Widodo as President-elect with 53.15% of the eligible vote. The Courts decision is not appealable and he will be sworn in as President on the 20th of October. All Australians, especially our political leaders and senior officials, should be in no doubt that no bilateral relationship will be more important in the future than that with Indonesia. Indonesia stretches across our north, a...

John Menadue. The Bishop and the Prime Minister

In August 1987 The Bulletin published an account by Tony Abbott of why he left the seminary. A link to Tony Abbotts account is below. Following Tony Abbotts account, Fr Bill Wright on August 25, 1987, replied. He was a priest at that time in the Archdiocese of Sydney and Vice Rector of St Patricks College, Manly. He is currently Bishop of the Diocese of Maitland/Newcastle. He is mentioned as a possible successor to Cardinal George Pell in Sydney. http://nofibs.com.au/2013/03/28/tony-abbott-on-why-he-left-the-priesthood/ Bill Wrights Bulletin article Abbotts decision: the other side is published below. John Menadue Abbotts...

John Menadue. Those pesky nuns.

I was taken with an article by Nicholas Kristof. It was first published in the New York Times and yesterday in the SMH. The link to the article is below. In this article there is a quote from an American nun Let me get this straight. Some priests committed sex abuse. Bishops covered it up. And so they are investigating nuns!'. If only the nuns were running the show, the Catholic Church would be in much better shape.   http://www.smh.com.au/comment/superheroes-none-compare-to-our-heroic-nuns-the-first-frontline-feminists-20140819-105rfs.html

John Menadue. The ANZAC Myth.

The four-year and well-funded carnival celebrating Anzac and WWI is now rolling. The carnival will depict WWI as the starting point of our nation, as our coming of age! It was nothing of the sort. It was a sign of our international immaturity and dependence on others. What was glorious about involving ourselves in the hatreds and rivalry of European powers that had wrought such carnage in Europe over centuries? Many of our forebears came to Australia to get away from this. But conservatives, our war historians and colonel blimps chose deliberately to draw us back to the stupidities...

Elizabeth Elliott. Compassion goes missing on Christmas Island

When it comes to children in need, most Australians feel compassion. Most will applaud todays announcement that Boat Kids will be released into the community. However this decision does not go far enough. It includes only kids aged less than 10 years (excluding many vulnerable teens); only those detained on the Australian mainland (excluding kids on Nauru, Manus and Christmas Islands); and only kids who arrived before July 19th 2013. Furthermore, the number to be released includes kids already living in community detention housing. Christmas Island is a remote tropical paradise in the Indian Ocean, over 2600...

An abuse of power by the Israeli lobby.

In 1967 the Israeli military attacked the USS Liberty, an American spy-ship which had been monitoring Israeli transmissions about the conflict during the Six-day War. Intercepted Israeli communications indicated that the goal was to sink the Liberty and leave no survivors. As the story reveals, - see link below - both the US President Lyndon Johnson and the Secretary of Defence, Robert Macnamara, did their best to ensure that this action by the Israeli military - an attack on the US navy - never became public. This story is written by Ray McGovern who works with Tell the...

John Menadue. Who triggered the disaster in Iraq?

George Bush and his neocons must bear the principal responsibility for the disaster which is continuing to unfold in Iraq. In Australian terms, the most guilty partners are without doubt the Howard Government and News Corporation. The Howard Governments decision to support the invasion of Iraq in 2002 was loudly supported by Tony Abbott. He said the invasion was to liberate other people, to advance everyones interest and to uphold universal values that the coalition of the willing went to war in Iraq. If its possible to engage in an altruistic war, this was it. The consequences of...

Jennifer Chesters. Private schools, fees and longer term payoffs.

In a recent article published by TheConversation, Barbara Preston examined the link between type of school attended and progress at university. Barbara concluded that after controlling for tertiary entrance score, university students from government schools outperformed students from private schools. This finding suggests that paying for an expensive private school education may not be the best preparation for university study. If this is the case, perhaps parents paying private school fees are looking for longer term pay-offs for their investment. In this paper, I analyse data from the 12th wave of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia...

Saree Makdisi. The catastrophe inflicted on Gaza - and the costs to Israel's standing.

The Israeli public relations is almost as powerful as the Israeli military machine. An alternative view is expressed below by Saree Makdisi, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA, and the author of 'Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation'. This article was published in 'Mondoweiss' which describes itself as 'a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective'. John Menadue http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/catastrophe-inflicted-standing.html

John Menadue. Is there light at the end of the dark tunnel?

In my blog of April 17 I outlined ways in which we might find a way out of the refugee quagmire. It is reposted below. There is speculation that the government may announce an increase in the refugee intake to help the Christians and other minorities suffering dreadful persecution in Iraq and Syria. I hope this turns out to be the case and the beginning of a return to a more humane refugee policy. I could almost write Tony Abbott's announcement. 'Now that we have stopped the boats and put the people smugglers out of business, we can...

John Menadue. Who owns Medibank Private?

The government has announced that it hopes to raise $4 billion from the sale of Medibank Private. But like many of its budget savings it might find that it has to rely in this case on the High Court rather than the Senate to decide if the $4 billion saving can be realised. The case has been made by many people that the government is not the owner and certainly not the sole owner of Medibank Private. A view is strongly held that Medibank Private is owned by members/policy holders of Medibank Private. There are 3.8 million members. There is...

Peter Sivey. Health budget: GP care isn't the problem, costly specialist care is.

The opening of eight new medical schoolsin Australia in the past decade has seen amassive increasein the number of new doctors entering the workforce. The number of new junior doctors graduating in Australia doubled between 2004 and 2011. But while fears of an overall shortage of doctors seem assuaged, we dont have the right mix of doctors. A recent trend is the increasing specialisation of the medical workforce. In 1999, 45% of Australian doctors were general practitioners (GPs) but this proportionhad fallento 38% by 2009. Similar trends can be observed in the United States and United Kingdom. This...

John Menadue. Missing in action when Kerry and Hagel come calling?

I can understand Tony Abbotts wish to direct attention away from the budget by going off to The Hague and London. But are Australias national and policy interests being served by his absence when John Kerry and Chuck Hegel visit us. In my blog of July 31 Overplaying ones hand I quoted Tony Abbotts comments on MH370 in PNG. He said Satellite footage shows what could be debris from the missing airlines flight MH370. But he was wrong. In Shanghai about two weeks later Tony Abbott said We are confident that we know the position of the black...

Barbara Preston. State school kids do better at uni.

State school graduates do better at university than private school graduates with the same end-of-school tertiary entrance score. Thats the clear finding in a number of Australian studies since the 1980s and in England since the 1990s . The Australian research compared academic results at the end of first year at particular universities for cohorts whose entry was based on tertiary entrance scores (now ATAR) for the previous year in the same state.The most recent English researchtracked all students who completed the end-of-school A-levels and went directly on to complete a full-time four-year degree course. The differences between...

David Zyngier. Senate committee backs Gonski.

Gonskis report on school funding has been backed by a senate committee even though the federal government isnt backing it.

John Menadue. Will the new Colombo Plan work?

Julie Bishop has announced a signature initiative of the Australian government which aims to lift knowledge of the Indo-Pacific in Australia by supporting Australian undergraduates with internships in the region. This initiative is commendable but I hope it avoids the problem of earlier attempts to lift Australian understanding and skills for our region. The main problem before was that young Australians who committed themselves to skills about our region couldnt get jobs in Australia. So they drifted away. Will we make the same mistake again? Let me give some background. The early Colombo Plan which was introduced...

John Menadue. Diplomatic lessons for Canberra.

In my blog of July 31 'Overplaying one's hand' I said that there were clear lessons to be learned from the disasters of MH370 and MH17. The lessons are - don't overplay your hand or overstate your case for domestic political reasons. Today in the SMH, Paul McGeough, see link below, refers to the failure of megaphone diplomacy over the loss of MH17. He says 'While Abbott and Bishop opted for megaphone diplomacy against the rebels' sponsors in Moscow, Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak, quietly made phone calls to the rebel leadership in Donetsk, in which he achieved essential...

John Menadue. . Come by air - no problem!

Many newspapers this morning are full of stories about fraud and bureaucratic negligence over air arrivals. The integrity of the visa system is being called into question. One June 20, last year, I posted an article 'Come by air - no problem!' It is reposted below. This blog highlighted the widespread preoccupation with boat arrivals. Other major issues have been overlooked,including the 50,000 plus in our community, who having overstayed their visa have 'disappeared' Repost: Come by air - no problem! There is an easy way to solve the boat people problem. It...

Kerry Murphy. The persecutions.

In March 2001, the Taliban dynamited the ancient Buddha statues of Bamian because the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, claimed they were idolatrous and idolatry is banned in Islam. In July 2014, ISIL destroyed the ancient tomb of the prophet Jonah in Mosul for the same reason.[1] This site was considered a sacred site for Jews, Christians and Muslims for centuries. Tragically it is not just ancient cultural monuments that are being destroyed by ISIL. Other accounts refer to smashing of statues in churches and the looting of churches. What is especially worrying and amazing is their willingness to publicise their...

'The real danger to Israel comes from within' interview with Eva Illouz and De Spiegal.

This interview in De Spiegal is of interest and merit on the Gaza crisis. See link below. John Menadue. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-sociologist-eva-illouz-about-gaza-and-israeli-society-a-984536.html

Lisa Petheram. Listening to young peoples voices on Refugee and Asylum Seeker Policy

They are playing with our lives...every year I get older ...I want to start a family but I cant. What are young people in Australia thinking about refugee and asylum seeker policy? Two youth roundtables recently held by Australia21 have given some insight into the ways that young Australians think about these issues, and their visions for the future. The youth roundtables were held as part of a broader project Australia21 has been undertaking in collaboration with other groups Asylum Seeker Policy: A fair, just and effective approach. As part of this project, a collection of short essays and...

Mike Steketee. Mandatory detention punishes but it does not deter.

It has not been easy for organised world opinion in the United Nations or elsewhere to act directly in respect of some of the dreadful events which have driven so many people from their own homes and their own fatherland but at least we can in the most practical fashion show our sympathy for those less fortunate than ourselves who have been the innocent victims of conflicts and upheavals of which in our own land we have been happy enough to know nothing Robert Menzies, Prime Minister, broadcast for the opening of World Refugee Year, September, 1959. Even...

John Menadue. Suffer the little children to come unto me

Well, not so if they are Palestinian children or asylum seeker children in our detention centres. At last counting there were 1,230 Palestinians killed in Gaza as a result of 3,000 or more air and artillery strikes. 56 Israelis have died. Close to 1,000 of those Palestinians killed were civilians, including children. Only three Israeli civilians died. Just imagine the outcry of the Israeli lobby if those figures were reversed and 1000 Israelis had been killed... Clearly the Israel lobby and many others dont regard Palestinian civilians and children of equal value to their own. In her article...

John Menadue. Overplaying ones hand.

With the benefits that governments get with incumbency, presidents and prime ministers need to be careful not to overstate their case or overplay their hands. The temptation is great, particularly when there are national outpourings of grief and when a global stage awaits. Tony Abbott was certainly on the world stage over MH370. On 21 March in PNG he announced that satellite footage showed what could be debris from the missing airlines flight MH370. Then he added, now it could just be a container that fell off a ship we just dont know we owe it to...

Walter Hamilton. One Man's War.

Japan both treasures and abhors its status as the only nation to have suffered a nuclear attack. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are perceived, because of their unique and extraordinary destructiveness, as moral markers: warnings to the world and proofs that Japan paid in full for its part in the war. The A-bomb attacks are also portrayed in some Japanese narratives as events outside history, in the sense that they cannot be compared to anything else, acts that should never have happened and should not happen again. Rather than being the historical full stop in a sentence that...

Noura Erakat. Five Israeli Talking Points on Gaza Debunked.

Five Israeli talking points on Gaza debunked. Why does the mainstream media keep repeating these false claims? Israel has killed almost 800 Palestinians in the past twenty-one days in the Gaza Strip alone; its onslaught continues. The UN estimates that more than 74 percent of those killed are civilians. That is to be expected in a population of 1.8 million where the number of Hamas members is approximately 15,000. Israel does not deny that it killed those Palestinians using modern aerial technology and precise weaponry courtesy of the worlds only superpower. In fact, it does not even deny that...

Wiryono Sastrohandoyo. The new Indonesian President Joko Widodo.

Joko Widodo is an upright, decent and honourable person. It is the general feeling in Indonesia that his election is a victory for the Indonesian people and the generally peaceful election process. This is a sign of the growing maturity of Indonesias young democracy. Jokowi was great during his two terms as mayor of Solo, a small city of half a million people in central Java. He has been less impressive during his two years as Governor of Jakarta with a diverse population of more than ten million people. Now he has to deal with a larger and even...

Ben Saul. The Occupation of Palestine.

There is very partisan criticism of Hamas for firing home-made rockets into Israel. But the core problem is not rockets. It is the occupation of Palestine by Israel and the imprisonment of two million Palestinians in a sliver of land called 'Gaza'. I often think how we should or could respond if our country was occupied by a foreign power. Surely there would be resistance to that occupation. That is fundamentally what the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians is about. In a speech given at Parliament House, Canberra, on July 16, Professor Ben Saul, says 'The...

Another Israeli massacre of Palestinians.

One thousand and thirty-five Palestinians in Gaza, mainly innocent civilians, women and children have been massacred and so far the world turns its head away. And the number is increasing by the hour. We don't want to feel the suffering of the Palestinian people. Alongside this 1,035 dead Palestinians there are 42 Israeli's who have died. Just imagine what the Israeli lobby would be saying if 1,035 Israelis had died. We are angry and concerned that 297 innocent people lost their lives when MH17 was shot down by separatists in the Ukraine. These separatists were obviously funded and...

John Menadue--President Jokowi and Australia

The election of Joko Widodo as Indonesias seventh president is a victory for burgeoning democracy in our neighbour with 240 million people. It was a victory for civil participation by ordinary people to defeat Prabowo Subianto by a margin of 53% to 47%, by 8 million votes and winning in two thirds of Indonesias provinces. Prabowo had a very dubious performance on human rights when he was in the military. But like so many people from born to rule elites he now refuses to accept the result. What would the lower orders know about the need for strong leadership...

John Menadue--King Coal to be dethroned.

On May 1 last year I posted A canary in the coal mine. It focussed on the growing and wide concern about the damage to the climate caused by coal fired electricity generation. It also drew attention to the action of Jonathon Moylan who sent a hoax email concerning Whitehaven Coal to the ANZ Bank about the risk of investing in coal. The worthy and powerful tut tutted his action but I likened it to the canary in the coal mine warning of danger ahead. In the Supreme Court a few days ago. Jonathon Moylan pleaded guilty but it...

Richard Rigby. Tiananmen 25 years on.

On the night of June 3-4, units of the Peoples Liberation Army entered Beijing, killing some hundreds of ordinary Beijing citizens as they made their way to their objective, Tiananmen Square, the focal point of massive protests that had begun in late April following the death of former Party Secretary Hu Yaobang. The square was cleared of protestors. Further killings and arrests ensued over following days. A small number of soldiers were also killed. Protests in scores of other Chinese cities were simultaneously brought to an end, with varying degrees of violence. Significant protests in Shanghai were settled largely peacefully....

John Menadue--A lot of nonsense about productivity.

A lot of nonsense about productivity For years the Business Council of Australia and News Corp have been warning us about our poor productivity record and the need to change our industrial relations laws to bring trade unions to heel. A part of this campaign against unions is now being played out in the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption. The partisan nature of this action is obvious when we see that the government has refused a Royal Commission on governance and corruption by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and other banks in the treatment of thousands...

John Menadue--Power prices - we aint seen nothing yet!

We have seen wild exaggeration about the effects of the carbon tax on prices and the economy. It has all turned out to be quite a fizzer. The price increases we have seen have little to do with the carbon tax and the economy continues to grow steadily. Whyalla has survived. But we have a real problem just around the corner in energy policy. The price of domestic gas is likely to at least double in the next year or so as the domestic price of gas rises to meet the international price. Compared with the impact of the...

Walter Hamilton. When Local Becomes Global

Why is Vladimir Putin calling down upon himself the ire of the world by failing to help secure the crash site of MH-17 for international investigators? The answer, I think, is pretty obvious. He does not want to demonstrate how much influence, if not control, Russia has over events in eastern Ukraine. Putins response has been to blame the government in Kiev and hold it responsible for the situation. Since the fall of the Moscow-backed regime in Kiev, it has been Russian policy to destabilize its neighbour so as to discredit and weaken the pro-Western government that has taken...

MH 17-Light a candle rather than curse the darkness

In the horror and sense of evil we all feel about the downing of MH17 how should we respond? Perhaps out best response is summed up in the above exhortation which is attributed to Peter Benenson the founder of Amnesty International. The candle cycled by barb wire has become the emblem of Amnesty. The quote was also used by Adlai Stevenson in a speech in the UN in tribute to Eleanor Roosevelt As a Christian I find such horror and pervasive evil hard to understand or explain. We particularly respond to MH 17 because of the large number of...

Bugger the planet, ignore our children and trash our reputation.

The repeal of the carbon tax is a political victory for Tony Abbott but it is hard to imagine a worse combination of poor reasoning and bad policy making. It shows little appreciation of economics. It will increase the budget deficit. It shows a mistrust of the market. Tony Abbotts political legacy will be defined by the repeal of the carbon tax. It is one of the worst examples of policy vandalism in our history. As the worlds greatest carbon polluter per capita, we are now probably the only country in the world going backwards on carbon reduction. We...

Refugee success

In recent years we have been getting a diet designed to diminish, denigrate and demonise asylum-seekers and refugees. We have lost a sense of proportion and the enormous contribution which refugees have made to this country. I have set out below links to information and articles which describe the remarkable way in which we have accepted refugees in the past and the way that they have helped build Australia. It is a thrilling story. These links are provided courtesy of the Refugee Council of Australia. Some of the information may be a few years old but the stories...

How does Australias health system compare.

The Treasurer, the Minister for Health and the Commission of Audit have warned us in one way or another that the Australian health service is unsustainable, particularly with an ageing population. The Treasurer tells us that the age of entitlement has to end in health as elsewhere. We need to keep modernising Medicare but by almost any international comparison we have one of the best and most sustainable health services in the world. We need to keep our problems in perspective. The Commonwealth Fund publishes a regular research report on health systems in major countries. The Commonwealth Fund...

Take your pick on the way News Corp operates.

On oath before the Leveson Enquiry, Rupert Murdoch said Ive never asked a prime minister for anything. (Leveson transcript 25 April 2012) In his book The Whitlam Government 1972-75, published in 1985, Gough Whitlam says in the week after the 1972 election, Menadue, who had become my private secretary at the beginning of 1960 and had then become Murdochs financial manager in mid-1967, saw me on Murdochs behalf to put the proposition that Murdoch should become High Commissioner in London. Murdoch was confident that there could be no conflict of interest, since he would put his...

Chris Mitchell, The Australian and Iraq

As part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of The Australian, the editor, Chris Mitchell, revealed on Monday 14 July that he was a secret opponent of the invasion of Iraq. This will come as a surprise for many who followed The Australian's wholehearted support of the Iraq invasion and hectored and criticised those who opposed it. In The Monthly magazine yesterday, Robert Manne tells us about this remarkable confession by Chris Mitchell. See Monthly link below. John Menadue.   http://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/robert-manne/2014/07/14/1405315103/chris-mitchell-australian-and-iraq

Malaysia, Manus, Nauru and offshore processing.

I have not always held the view that asylum seekers who come to Australia could be transferred and processed in another country. I changed my mind on that partly because of the rapid increase in boat arrivals after the Agreement with Malaysia fell over in 2011. The large number of boat arrivals was reducing public support for a generous and humane refugee program. I came to the view that what was important is that asylum seekers are treated with humanity and that the process is fair and efficient. The issue of where that processing occurs, on shore or offshore...

Creating a Long-Term Framework for Asylum Seeker Policy

Last Friday 11 July 2014, I attended a roundtable at Parliament House, Canberra to discuss possible actions that could be taken to find a way out of the present divisive and harsh treatment of asylum seekers. The media release following that roundtable is reproduced below. The roundtable drew on discussion paper 'Beyond Operation Sovereign Borders', prepared by Peter Hughes and Arja Keski-Nummi. That discussion paper can be found by clicking on my website at the top of this page. The paper is described on the website as 'Final Policy Paper - Beyond Operation Sovereign Borders'. John Menadue. High-level Roundtable...

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