World Affairs
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Judith Crispin. Anzac day, the Armenian Genocide and destruction of cultural heritage in the Caucasus.
“Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating Continue reading »
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Frank Brennan SJ. Still seeking a way of stopping the boats decently
This is part of the Gasson Lecture which I delivered at Boston College today: I return to Australia accepting that my political leaders will always maintain a commitment to stopping the boats, no matter what political party they represent; but I return insisting that there is a need for international co-operation to determine how decently Continue reading »
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John Tulloh. An inconvenient centenary Turkey prefers to ignore.
The Gallipoli battle aside, you can be sure that Turkey will not be commemorating the centenary of another major event in its history this month. A few hours before Australian, New Zealand and other allied forces landed at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915, what has become widely known as the Armenian genocide got Continue reading »
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Paul Komesaroff, Alphonso Lingis, Modjtaba Sadria. Julie Bishop can reach out to Iran now that confrontation has failed.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s visit to Tehran this week presents a rare opportunity for Australia to take the lead in global diplomacy. The publicly stated goal of the trip has been limited to the dubious intention of convincing the Rouhani government to allow Iranian nationals seeking asylum in Australia to return without fear of victimisation. Continue reading »
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Frank Brennan. Cunneen v ICAC
Margaret Cunneen is a high profile public prosecutor. The NSW Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC) wanted to investigate her for corrupt behaviour, but not in relation to anything she did as a prosecutor. They wanted to investigate her behaviour as a private citizen, she being the mother of a boy whose girlfriend was involved in Continue reading »
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Andrew Elek. Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is miles ahead of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is a far more economically efficient option than the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) for integrating Asian economies to each other and to the rest of the world. While the United States is attempting to thwart China’s AIIB by completing the TPP, it is likely to result in net costs to Continue reading »
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Fiona McGaughey, Mary Anne Kenny. Lashing out at the UN is not the act of a good international citizen.
The United Nations has again criticised Australia’s human rights record in relation to its treatment of asylum seekers and refugees. A report by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Méndez, has raised a number of concerns. These include: Australia’s policy in relation to the detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island breaches Articles 1 Continue reading »
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Vicken Babkenian. Gallipoli’s inconvenient ‘other side’.
Leading up to the Gallipoli centenary, a growing trend emerged in Australia of presenting the ‘other side’ of the story. From popular books, official histories, films and academic conferences, the ‘Turkish’ perspective of Gallipoli became widely told.[1] According to this perspective, as illustrated in a recent article by Dr Jennifer Lawless, the allied landing at Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Who and for what are we fighting in Iraq.
Australia has sent troops to fight in Iraq Wars I, II and III. Our participation has been disastrous in each. The latest news tells us that in the battle to oust IS from Tikrit the victory belonged to the Shiite militia controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp. So our ‘allies’ in Iraq against IS Continue reading »
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Peter Day. Mum and Dad, or Mum and Mum, or Dad and Dad?
Human sexuality is a complex and fragile thing – far greyer than black or white. It is best tended to by gentle, wise, and humble hands. Alas, there hasn’t been much gentleness or wisdom surrounding the same sex marriage debate, let alone same sex attraction in general. Witness the recent furore over an alleged homophobic Continue reading »
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Walter Hamilton. Lee Kuan Yew and Australia
Lee Kuan Yew ran the island-state of Singapore, someone said, with a mixture of charisma and fear. Having worked there as a correspondent for the ABC in the mid-1980s, the remark seems apposite to me. Lee’s brilliance as a politician and statesman is undisputed, but the country he forged, improbably, out of a remnant of Continue reading »
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Defence and Security, Human Rights, Immigration, refugees, Indigenous affairs, Politics, Tributes, World Affairs
Tributes to Malcolm Fraser.
See below, tributes from Fred Chaney and Robert Manne on Malcolm Fraser’s achievements in public life. John Mendue. Fred Chaney in The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/20/malcolm-fraser-a-leader-who-believed-there-is-a-moral-compass-in-our-nations-life Robert Manne in The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/20/frasers-great-conservative-achievement-cementing-whitlams-progress-on-race Continue reading »
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Laurie Patton. The ‘metadata’ Bill.
The House of Representatives has passed, with amendments, the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2014. The Bill requires telcos and Internet Service Providers to store certain information (called “metadata”) for a period of two years. Metadata is essentially the information that reveals the parties to phone and email communications and other things Continue reading »
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Joseph Stiglitz on the Trans Pacific Partnership.
At a community meeting in New York Joseph Stiglitz drew attention to the risks of TPP. He referred to the secrecy about the whole proposal. He said that TPP ‘is much worse than a blank cheque about trade’. He added that TPP ‘would not only become the law of the land, but every other law Continue reading »
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John Quiggin. The Trans-Pacific partnership: it might be about trade, but it’s far from free.
There can be few topics as eye-glazingly dull as international trade agreements. Endless hours of negotiation on such arcane topics as rules of origin and most favoured nation status combine with an alphabet soup of acronyms to produce a barely readable text hundreds of pages long. But unless you were actually involved in exporting or Continue reading »
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John Tulloh. Israel the promised land of democracy.
Surrounded by a hostile region where even basic freedoms cannot be taken for granted, Israel is to be admired for its electoral democracy at least. It has a boisterous political system full of wheeling and dealing with everybody having a say. One party even has a 101-year-old leader. Electioneering is in full swing right now Continue reading »
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Amanda Tattersall. Community organising aims to win back civil society’s rightful place.
In the wake of the Second World War, Karl Polanyi wrote that the public arena is made up of three interconnected sectors: the market, government and civil society. He argued that democracy thrives when these three are in balance. If only that were the case today. Since the late 1980s, the global influence of the Continue reading »
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Michael Gracey. Risks of Closing Remote Aboriginal Communities.
Forced dislocation from traditional homelands in the late 1960s and early 1970s made many Aboriginal families and groups move, for the first time, to small towns in the north and north-west of WA. This drift to strange environments with access to alcohol and living close to people from different backgrounds, languages and alien beliefs and Continue reading »
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Tony Kevin. A Confused Military Endgame in Tikrit
In an effort to understand what is happening in the very important battle to retake the Sunni city of Tikrit in Iraq, now approaching its climax, I consulted yesterday’s news and editorial coverage in the Washington Post, (‘Iraqi forces break militants’ hold on Tikrit in major battle against Islamic State’), http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraqi-forces-battle-islamic-state-in-streets-of-strategic-tikrit/2015/03/11/a0dca5c0-c778-11e4-aa1a-86135599fb0f_story.html CNN, (‘Battle for Tikrit: Continue reading »
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Spencer Zifcak. The Martin Place Siege
I first came across Man Haron Monis, the Sydney siege gunman, in early 2013. The High Court of Australia had just handed down an important new decision on the breadth of the protection the Australian Constitution provides for freedom of expression. The facts of the case centred upon offensive letters sent to the parents of Continue reading »
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Spencer Zifcak. Proportionality Lost: Australia’s New Counter-Terrorism Laws. Part 2
The Foreign Fighters Bill The second tranche of counter-terrorism legislation introduced by the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, late last year was contained in the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill. This Bill (now passed into law) amended several Commonwealth Acts, most notably the Commonwealth Criminal Code. The primary purpose of these new laws is to enable Continue reading »
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Spencer Zifcak. Proportionality Lost in Australia’s new Counter-Terrorism Laws. Part 1
The Attorney-General, George Brandis, crashed two major tranches of counter-terrorism law through federal parliament recently. As always there are two problems with such an approach: overkill and error. Both tranches demonstrate these deficits in abundance. It’s important to say that in Australia the threat of terrorist attacks is real. So is the danger posed by Continue reading »
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Brian Johnstone. The execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
The deaths of these two men now appear to be inevitable. The key argument of President Joko Widodo is that this lethal means (death by firing squad) is justified for the purpose of saving his people from the addiction and death caused by drugs. The Indonesian government claims that, in that country, approximately 50 victims Continue reading »
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Safdar Ahmed. A moving inside story about detainees in the Villawood Detention Centre.
Safdar Ahmed has sent to me a very moving and powerful online comic book about life in the Villawood detention centre. The press release which he issued, follows. John Menadue A new graphic novel depicts life inside the Villawood Detention Centre A documentary web-comic by Safdar Ahmed depicts the stories of asylum seekers and refugees Continue reading »
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Elaine Pearson. Time for an Asia-Pacific Anti-Death Penalty campaign.
Many Australians are sickened that Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, two Australians sentenced to death by Indonesia’s courts for drug smuggling, have been transferred to an Indonesian island in preparation for their imminent execution. They are slated to be executed alongside three Nigerians, a Filipina, a Brazilian, a Frenchman, a Ghanian, and an Indonesian. “I Continue reading »
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Cavan Hogue. Australia will not be safer.
Australia’s upping the ante in Iraq is a recipe for disaster. It is hard to see anything positive coming out of it. Mr. Abbott said the request came from the Iraqi Government and the USA. As in the past, the request from the USA was almost certainly what it is all about plus the domestic Continue reading »
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Graham Freudenberg. Gough Whitlam Commemorative Oration.
You will see below what I think is a remarkable speech by Graham Freudenberg about Gough Whitlam’s contemporary relevance. This oration is much longer than I normally post on this blog, but it is an outstanding oration which I am sure you will enjoy. The Whitlam Institute will also be publicising this oration. John Menadue Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Here we go again – more mission creep in Iraq.
We seem unable to learn from the history of past centuries and decades as we plan to send another 300 Australian troops to Iraq to train forces fighting IS. To show his patriotic fervour Tony Abbott needed eight Australian flags as a backdrop for his announcement yesterday. I don’t recall seeing a Prime Minister wrapped Continue reading »
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Walter Hamilton. The Nationalist Siren of Destruction
Virulent, fanatical nationalism is not the answer. It’s not the answer in Russia, where an opponent of Putin’s war on Ukraine was murdered on the streets of Moscow in broad daylight. It’s not the answer in China where the ruling Communist Party needs a new raison d’etre after embracing capitalism without liberalism. It is not Continue reading »
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Michael Breen. Home Sour Home
Fourteen women have died this year as a result of domestic violence. Australians killed by terrorists in the same period, zero. The ABC Q&A programme February 23rd on Domestic Violence had an enormous response from the viewer and studio audiences. Many thanked the ABC for broaching the matter. Many tragic first hand experiences were aired. Continue reading »
