World Affairs
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Richard Butler. An act of faith and a blind eye.
The Defence White Paper 2016 has now been published. An engaging, critical, analysis of it has been offered by Professor Hugh White, ANU, (Pearls and Irritations March 10th ). Rightly, the purpose of the White Paper is to outline how Australia’s security can be assured in the current and expected environment. A central assertion of Continue reading »
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Cavan Hogue. The Defence White Paper and the China threat.
In a paper distributed by the ANU East Asia Forum, Professor Hugh White has pointed out that the Defence White Paper makes two invalid assumptions: the post-Cold War US-led international order will be maintained and that it must be. He is right on both counts and I will not repeat his views here except Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell. Cardinal Pell and the Church’s “Omerta”
Cardinal George Pell must now be regretting not having come back to Australia to give his evidence to the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in the relatively small town of Ballarat in the State of Victoria. By claiming that his medical condition did not allow him to travel, and offering Continue reading »
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Terry Laidler. To Michael Pezzullo, Secretary, Department of Immigration and Border Protection.
Dear Mr Pezzullo, Starting to get through to you, is it? Great! Forget your law of the land, let alone your direction of the government of the day drivel — neither of these is some sort of absolute that lets you suspend all moral judgment! For, make no mistake about it: the actions of you Continue reading »
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Richard Woolcott. The burning question – should Australia do more on the South China Sea?
My clear response is ‘No!’ China, as a major trading nation, now has the same rights as the US to protect its maritime and air approaches to its mainland. Australia should avoid provocative statements and actions at sea or in the air. When we talk about the need to support ‘a rules-based global order’, we Continue reading »
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Kishore Mahbubani. The China threat! What happens when China becomes number one?
In considering the Defence White paper, it is important as Hugh White has pointed out, that we consider carefully the growing power of China and its determination to be accepted as a strong regional and global power. In this article (reposted from 27 April 2015) by Kishore Mahbubani, he describes the likely consequences of China Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The Defence White Paper and the China threat The Thucydides trap – do not allow yourself to be manipulated into war.
Very senior Turnbull ministers talk of the ‘Thucydides trap’, the risk that countries allow themselves to be manipulated into war. Could they be referring to the risk of Japan drawing us, together with the US and China, into war. If ministers were seriously worried about this prospect it didn’t seem to influence the Defence White Continue reading »
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Hugh White, Australia’s Defence White Paper and the China threat- a hidebound view of Asia’s future’
Any defence policy is ultimately based on a view of the international system and how it is expected to evolve over coming decades. These are the judgments that most fundamentally influence the nature and scale of armed conflict that a country’s forces must be prepared to fight. Australia’s new Defence White Paper makes two central Continue reading »
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Rosemary Breen. Living Water Myanmar
Five years ago, when I started this project of building large water tanks to collect water during the rainy season in the Dry Zone of Central Myanmar I had no idea how many lives would be changed because of this simple concept. To date 114 water tanks have been built for villages and schools due Continue reading »
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Merriden Varrall. The Chinese elephant in Australia–Japan relations
Earlier this month, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop visited Tokyo, where she outlined an increasing emphasis on security cooperation between Japan and Australia. The next day she was in Beijing, where she reportedly received a frosty reception. The two are not unrelated — Beijing is not thrilled about Australia’s growing security ties with Japan. Because Australia Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Japanese royal family resists war revisionism.
After WWII many people, including me, believed that Emperor Hirohito should bear considerable blame for his complicity in Japan’s wars of the 1930s in China and in the Pacific in the 1940s. There is no doubt that the late Emperor Hirohito was traumatized, as was his nation, by the disasters of WWII. But perhaps that Continue reading »
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John Tulloh. Springtime – the season of alarm and disharmony in Europe.
United in diversity. EU’s motto. If ever there were a line in a report to alarm European leaders, it might have been one buried in a 204-page document on the EU economy last November. It predicted that up to three million additional asylum seekers could enter the 28-nation bloc by the end of Continue reading »
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Kerry Goulston. Postcard from Vietnam. Health and medical cooperation with Vietnamese doctors and nurses.
In 1998, Dr Phillip Yuile visited Professor Ton That Bach, Rector of Ha Noi Medical University, with a letter of introduction from Professor Kerry Goulston, Associate Dean of Medicine at the University of Sydney who had been appointed by the then Dean, Professor John Young, to explore possible links between the two universities. Subsequently Professor Ton That Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Canada’s response puts us to shame.
In this blog on 4 February, I mentioned the failure of the Australian government to adequately respond to the Syrian refugee crisis. I pointed out that at that time only ten refugees had arrived from Syria out of a promised intake of 12,000. I mentioned three factors for this delay. The first was political will. Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Our humanitarian program.
Some issues have no place in partisan politics, they may be topics that are politically charged, but they are not ideological battlegrounds – they are about the personal and the human. Our stance on refugees and on protection is such an issue. It is an area that has been supported by the left and the Continue reading »
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Measuring the misery of those forced to flee.
Robert Shiller, a 2013 Nobel Laureate in Economics says ‘Under today’s haphazard and archaic asylum rules, refugees must take enormous risks to reach safety and the costs and benefits of helping them are distributed capriciously . It does not have to be this way. Economists can help by testing which international rules and institutions are Continue reading »
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Spencer Zifcak. Special Envoy on Human Rights. Ruddock. What?
In 2003, I wrote a short book entitled Mr Ruddock Goes to Geneva. The book was not as superficial as its title might have suggested. It was in fact a serious study of Australia’s vexed relationship with the UN Human Rights Treaty System. My argument was that the Howard Government should have given the recommendations Continue reading »
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Tessa Morris-Suzuki. The ever-shifting sands of Japanese apologies
On 16 February, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida signed a ‘Strategy for Co-operation in the Pacific’, in which both countries emphasised their shared values of ‘democracy, human rights and the rule of law’ As they were doing so, Japanese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Shinsuke Sugiyama was in Geneva addressing a Continue reading »
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Jenny Hocking. ‘The Governor-General, the Palace and the Dismissal of Gough Whitlam: The Mysterious Case of “the Palace Letters”’
The dismissal of the Whitlam government by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, was marked by secrecy and collusion on a scale that has only recently been uncovered. Its history has been no different. From the outset we were treated to a carefully constructed narrative that masked the Governor-General’s secret collusion with members of the Continue reading »
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Peter Gibilisco. Neoliberalism and its Perceptions
Politics has changed so much over the years; our political climate is unstable, since 2007 we have had five different prime ministers. A person in my position would ask how does this affect people with severe physical disabilities? Neoliberalism has its aim to put into question all collective structures capable of obstructing the logic of Continue reading »
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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 »