Tony Smith.

Recent articles by Tony Smith.

TONY SMITH. Company tax cuts by any other name

The federal government might have called its company tax cuts bill by another almost Orwellian name, but semantic disguises should not fool anyone. Tax cuts are being delivered to Australian business.

TONY SMITH. Hope in diversity and real cases, not ideological claptrap

Self-righteous people, believing themselves to be self-made are prepared to punish children along with single mothers and so entrench disadvantage for generations.

TONY SMITH. Media ignorance of disrespect for parliament and people

It is a shame that at a time when government is so hollow, only a handful of journalists can escape the clich and find a basis for critical analysis of policy, which ought to be the basis for judging a governments performance.

TONY SMITH. A nasty government

The compact between government and citizen is being destroyed.

TONY SMITH. The US presidential election: no Australian perspective

We can't get enough of Donald and Hilary! John Tulloh correctly identifies US influence in the priorities of Australian media. Half a century ago Henry Mayer argued that while media might not influence how we think, they do decide what we think about. This was before television was firmly established, before big conglomerates destroyed diversity and before the 24 hour news cycle shaped politics. Add the immediacy of the internet and social media and the how-what distinction remains a useful theory but hardly describes media influence adequately.

TONY SMITH. Hopes End: the cynics must not prevail

Dear Prime Minister Turnbull Congratulations on your election success. Two years ago very few observers believed the Coalition Government deserved another term so you have a personal achievement of which you can be proud. While you were busy campaigning, I distracted myself by reading Coral Lansburys Sweet Alice. * What an enjoyable read that is! Critics are correct to compare the book with Tom Sharpes farces about life, manners and politics. The novel explores the fortunes of the central character Alice and her son Alaric. With her home in England being demolished around her, Alice learns that she...

TONY SMITH. A major madness

It is only the most naive among us who equate democracy with majoritarianism. The Brexit plebiscite certainly returned a majority in favour of Britain leaving the European Union, but the distress caused by the decision shows that the plan is far from the ideals of democracy. Democracies behave moderately. They demand a degree of consensus. Realising that there may be large numbers adversely affected by majority decisions, democracies ensure that minorities remain part of considerations. The implementation of Brexit threatens to create impacts that will be felt deeply by some sections of society, and in many cases, these sections saw...

Tony Smith. There is a hole in my heart where NITV News used to be

There are times when the rhetoric about closing the gap between Indigenous Australians and the rest of the population sticks in the throat. This week I turned on my preferred television news source the 5.30 bulletin on National Indigenous TeleVision (SBS4) and found that it had disappeared. The gap refers to the statistics showing the disadvantages suffered by the Indigenous peoples relative to other Australians. In fact, there are numerous gaps, in almost every social indicator: employment, income, housing, incarceration, violence, kidney and heart disease, literacy, education, infant mortality and life expectancy. At times, governments seem committed...

Tony Smith. Wasting money on domestic violence?

The implementation of most Government policies requires some kind of expenditure. One of the laziest approaches an Opposition can adopt is to cite slogans about cost. This sloganeering is at its most shallow when arguing that the Government is just throwing money at the problem. Needless to say, there are occasions when this criticism is true. Governments can decide that by giving an issue some funding, it can silence the demands of groups pressuring for action. There are times when Governments decide to fund a campaign, but then undermine the campaign by their actions in other areas. There is...

Tony Smith. Bairds risk on asylum seekers

When New South Wales Premier Michael Baird told an Australia Day luncheon that we should be more accepting of asylum seekers, he was taking quite a risk. Bairds federal Liberal Party colleagues have espoused the hard policy of stopping the boats which the Abbott Government declares is its greatest achievement. It is not unknown for NSW Liberals to openly state their doubts about party policy. During the Howard Governments campaign against asylum seekers, which used inaccurate phrases such as illegal immigrants, queue jumpers and even sleeper terrorists, several backbenchers took principled stands against the more extreme aspects of government policy....

Tony Smith. Our dubious talent as jailers

In 2004 I was a patient in the cardiac unit of RPAH Sydney. I had mysterious heart inflammation which turned out to be due to a rare auto-immune condition known as Churg-Strauss Syndrome, a form of vasculitis that raises the eosinophils in the blood to life threatening levels. In the next bed was an Indigenous man from Dubbo. Because of the way names were written with surname first, the card over the bed read Lord, Stanley. I teased Lord Stan a little but he was there for a serious procedure a triple bypass and soon went nervously...

Tony Smith. The failure of imagination

Australia has rushed to despatch even more armaments into the already troubled areas contested by men of violence across Iraq and Syria. It is clear that once again, our national government has assumed that this action is necessary and unavoidable. In reality, there are always choices and it is disappointing that the Coalition has failed to imagine any alternative to an escalation of warfare. The Government line is reminiscent of the disastrous entry to the invasion of Iraq a decade ago. Minsters argued that Australia had to do something about the regime of Saddam Hussein, but the only thing...

Tony Smith. Dubious celebrations of war.

On 28 July 1914, the world was thrown into a terrible conflict. On that day, a Serbian nationalist assassinated an Austrian archduke and his wife. Because European states belonged to alliances which were heavily armed and many countries on other continents belonged to their empires, the war spread until it had consumed over a million lives. Between 2014 and 2018 those terrible events will be remembered in various ways. Some of those commemorations might be regarded as neutral, but inevitably, many will be matters of controversy. While Australias events will start in earnest around the centenary of the Gallipoli landing...

Tony Smith. Singing out for asylum seekers.

Recent poll results that show rising support for the Abbott Governments approach to border security are disturbing even if not entirely surprising. Asylum seekers have been detained offshore, out of general sight and conveniently out of mind for those Australians who prefer not to think about the issue, and the Labor Opposition has consistently failed to offer any decent alternative. Given that refugee advocates have had the better of the Government on details of truth and on virtually every moral and economic argument, they might well be wondering what they must do to convince Australians that our approach to asylum...

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