World Affairs
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Jonathan Page. The Inspiration of Vietnam
Postcard from Hanoi: I have been an oncologist for some 35 years, treating adults with advanced cancer. Despite a far greater understanding of the disease, with the discovery of quite remarkable “targeted” therapies, most patients still die of this disease. Many are not suitable for these treatments, many don’t respond or respond poorly and briefly, Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Postcards from Hanoi.
I will be in Hanoi from February 17-26, attending a Hoc Mai Foundation workshop on learning from each other about health issues in Vietnam and Australia, and assisting in the learning of English in the health field. Hoc Mai means ‘forever learning’. The foundation was established in the late 1990s. University of Sydney was a Continue reading »
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The things that must be done…
Some Genuine Decision-Making Power: Dealing with the over-representation of Aboriginal people in the prison system This is an extract from the 2016 Frank Walker Memorial Lecture delivered by the Hon. Bob Debus AM on 16 February 2016. The Hon. Frank Walker QC was NSW Attorney General from 1976 to 1983. He later became a Federal Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Regional cooperation on refugees, Bali and a Track II Dialogue.
I attended a Track II Dialogue in Bangkok recently to try to help develop a framework of shared responsibility to manage in a humane and efficient manner, displaced people movements in the region. There is concern that the Track I Regional Dialogue at government level has not been particularly fruitful. So much of the response Continue reading »
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Jim Bowler. Mungo Man needs help – to come home
It’s time for funds and a plan to preserve and commemorate this visitor from Ancient Australia, writesJim Bowler, the geologist who discovered Mungo Man’s remains. Forty-two years ago, on 26 February 1974, I first encountered the remains of Mungo Man eroding out of the desiccated shores of Lake Mungo. He had been ritually buried over Continue reading »
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Frank Brennan SJ. The Taxpayer’s Liability for Long Term Detention on Nauru (and Manus Island)
As the Commonwealth Government contemplates what to do with the Bangladeshi woman in the recent High Court asylum case and her baby born in Australia, it will be relevant to consider the possible civil liability of the Commonwealth for its participation in her detention on Nauru for six months at a time when the Commonwealth Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The collapse of the Malaysian Arrangement has led to the depravity of Manus and Nauru.
Having done its best in Opposition to wreck the Malaysian Arrangement in 2011, the Turnbull government is now seeking the help of Malaysia over detainees in Manus and Nauru. For political cynicism, this is hard to beat. In May 2011, the Australian and Malaysian governments announced an ‘in principle’ arrangement that up to 800 boat Continue reading »
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Frank Brennan SJ. High Court not the answer to Nauru depravity
The moral depravity of Australian funded and orchestrated holding of asylum seekers, including children, on Nauru and Manus Island is to continue. On Wednesday the High Court made clear that it is in no position to question the retrospective law passed by the Commonwealth Parliament on 30 June 2015 authorising the Australian Government to do Continue reading »
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Ian McPhee. Let’s talk about dying.
What does it mean to die well? We must acknowledge divergent views on assisted dying and start framing laws that will enable it, writes Ian McPhee. I am a medical specialist with advanced cancer. In a career begun more than 35 years ago, I have seen death in all its guises: in homes, at the Continue reading »
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Niall McLaren. A case for ‘armed neutrality’
In its short history, Australia has been among the most aggressive nations on earth, regularly engaging in wars that, on any objective basis, have nothing to do with us. These military adventures cost us dearly in men, material and credibility without ever showing the slightest evidence that they improve our security. Malcolm Fraser argued that Continue reading »
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Bob Kinnaird. Turnbull Government buries the FTA bad news
The Turnbull government has proved just as determined as the Abbott government to hide from the Australian community the truth about what their FTA deals mean for the 457 visa and other temporary work visa programs. Under the Turnbull administration, the conclusion of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations was announced on 6 October 2015 and the Continue reading »
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John Tulloh. Middle East: The Arab Spring becomes the Arab Winter.
‘Arabs have rarely lived in bleaker times’. The Economist. An impoverished Arab would have been been flabbergasted at the consequences of his single, desperate protest five years ago. It precipitated the ousting of his country’s ruler and two other Arab leaders, the greatest upheaval and carnage of this century in one country, protests in others, Continue reading »
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Cavan Hogue. Mr Turnbull goes to Washington.
Despite one welcome outburst of independence by refusing a request for more troops on the ground in the Middle East and a generally less sycophantic approach than most of his predecessors,the Prime Minister’s visit to Washington had all the usual hallmarks of a client presenting tribute to the Emperor. The fact that Australian and American Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Supporting Adam Goodes.
This blog is a repost from 1 August 2015. Adam Goodes has been bullied and vilified because he has reminded us of our dark history and the discrimination that continues against him and many others in Australia today. We don’t like being reminded of the dispossession, killing, poisoning and discrimination against our own indigenous people. Continue reading »
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What do we owe each other?
In this opinion piece from the New York Times, Aaron James Wendland draws on work by Emmanuel Levinas in response to the surge of refugees around the world and particularly into Europe. Levinas describes the allergic reaction to refugees. In response he suggests three things. First, an appeal to the ‘infinity’ in human beings, that Continue reading »
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How ‘Crazy’ are the North Koreans?
Joel S. Wit writes about how the North Koreans have played their cards extremely well despite the appalling nature of their regime. See link to an article in the New York Times, by Joel S. Wit, who is a Senior Fellow of the US-Korea Institute at John Hopkins University. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/opinion/sunday/how-crazy-are-the-north-koreans.html Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Preferential trade deals – gigantic foundation stones or pebbles?
Malcolm Turnbull has described the TPP as a ‘gigantic foundation stone’ that will deliver ‘more jobs, absolutely’. The World Bank now tells us that the TPP will be more like a pebble than a foundation stone. See following article by Peter Martin in SMH on January 12, 2016. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/transpacific-partnership-will-barely-benefit-australia-says-world-bank-report-20160111-gm3g9w.html The following is a repost on Continue reading »
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Peter Drysdale. Taiwan’s Political Choice.
On Sunday, Taiwan will elect its next president, the successor to President Ma Ying-jeou from the Kuomintang (KMT) party who has been in power for the past eight years and is ineligible to run for another term. The vote will almost certainly record a decisive choice for political change. In the run up to the Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Australians who fight in overseas wars.
Repost from 02/03/2015 The government has been concerned, as many of us are, about Australians fighting for IS in Syria and Iraq. The government is threatening to revoke the Australian citizenship of dual nationals who involve themselves in this war. Whether this will be successful is a very moot point. It is asserted by many Continue reading »
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Vale Malcolm Fraser
Repost from 21/03/2015 I am sure that Malcolm Fraser’s concerns for human rights were always there. But as he grew and matured, that concern flourished and became obvious to all. He became our moral compass on human rights. I was first conscious of Malcolm’s concern for human rights when I listened to his speech in Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. Nuclear North Korea: Profound and Dangerous Hypocrisy
During the last 10 years, North Korea has resigned its membership of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and conducted four nuclear test explosions. It claimed that the latest of these, detected four days ago, was of a hydrogen (fission-fusion) bomb. It made no such claim for the earlier three tests; said to be merely Continue reading »
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The forgotten war – Chinese resistance to Japan.
Repost from 17/09/2015 WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 — Few in the West remember the fact that China was the first country to enter what would become World War II, and it was an ally of the United States and Britain from just after Pearl Harbor in 1941 till Japan’s surrender in 1945, an Oxford expert said. Continue reading »
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Bob Kinnaird. Foreign worker exploitation.
To reduce foreign worker exploitation, enforce employer sanctions laws 2015 produced a never-ending stream of stories of exploited foreign workers on all kinds of temporary visas. They include overseas students, working holiday and 457 ‘skilled’ visa-holders. Nearly all temporary visas and some permanent residence visas are implicated. A Senate committee on Australia’s temporary work visa Continue reading »
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John Tulloh. The Cost of the star-spangled arms banner.
Repost from 05/10/2015 O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O’er the ramparts we watched, we’re so gallantly streaming? And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through Continue reading »
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Cavan Hogue. Shia vs Sunni in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia’s execution of a Shia cleric who criticised its policies has exacerbated the split between Shia and Sunni Nations. Politics and religion have come together in a way that will be familiar to anyone who knows Northern Ireland. Sunni Saudi Arabia is the home of the deviant puritanical Wahabi sect which is rejected by Continue reading »
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Allan Patience. Australia and the War in Syria.
Repost from 02/09/2015 Australia and the War in Syria: Perverting a Noble Vision in International Law for Ignoble Domestic Political Purposes In 2005 a summit of world leaders at the United Nations unanimously endorsed the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Along with the establishment of the International Criminal Court, it constitutes one of the most Continue reading »
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Jenny Hocking. The Dismissal Forty Years Later: When Everything Old is New Again
Repost from 10/12/2015 The 40th anniversary last month of the dismissal of the Whitlam government by the Governor General Sir John Kerr met with the predictable flurry of breathlessly delivered revelations and history-making hyperbole. Among the excitable claims of dramatic new ‘never before released’ material we were offered the charred remains of a burnt Liberal Continue reading »
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Kim Oates. Don’t forget children when talking about domestic violence
Children are victims of domestic violence too. Last week the Children’s Commissioner released this year’s children’s rights report. It provided new data about the prevalence of child physical and sexual abuse and their links with domestic violence. Christmas, traditionally a time of peace and goodwill is sadly, a time of increased domestic violence, thought to be Continue reading »
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John Menadue and Peter Hughes. Slogans vs Facts on Boat Arrivals, Part 2
Reposted from 23/09/2015 Tony Abbott did not stop the boats In this blog yesterday (22 September 2015) we pointed out that Tony Abbott kept the door open for tens of thousands of boat arrivals by opposing legislation that would have enabled implementation of the Malaysia Arrangement in September 2011. By this action, he helped turn on Continue reading »
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John Menadue and Peter Hughes. Slogans versus facts on boat arrivals. Part 1
Reposted from 22/09/2015 How Tony Abbott helped to keep the door open for people smugglers. The ABC provided us with excellent coverage of the Turnbull-Abbott shoot out, but the various commentators still swallowed the myth that Tony Abbott stopped the boats. That is a great piece of spin, but the reality is different. This blog Continue reading »
