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Category Archives: Politics
Crown chair Helen Coonan conflicted in role of ombudsman chair
Crown profits from the hardship of problem gamblers, the banks refuse to stop credit cards for problem gamblers. Helen Coonan is chair of both Crown and bank ombudsman AFCA (Australian Financial Complaints Authority). It is a conflict that makes her … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
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A special investigation: Naval, builder of Australian submarines, at centre of numerous global corruption scandals
The arms company at the centre of a deadly criminal saga and numerous global corruption scandals, Naval Group, was selected by the Australian government to build our new fleet of submarines – a deal heralded as ‘one of the world’s … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, Economy, Politics
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Shenzhen is overtaking Hongkong
Hong Kong people, most of whom have only the barest acquaintance with the city only twenty miles away, look down on Shenzhen as a poor dirty cousin. Reality is rapidly running away from this perception…. A gradual realisation has crept … Continue reading
Shaoquett Moselmane, Dan Oakes and Julian Assange: what price justice? What about the media?
Under the guise of a phenomenon called security, currently interpreted as ‘suspect any pro-China sentiment’, or ‘don’t reveal murder by US forces’, sinister theatrics play across Australia. These reveal Shaoquett Moselmane MP as one victim, ABC journalist Dan Oakes another, … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
5 Comments
McCarthyism is now rampant in Australia
Linda Jakobson spoke at the National Security Summit hosted by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on 22 October 2020 on the issue of foreign interference in Australian education and society.
Posted in Politics
5 Comments
Following up on Otto and Eric Abetz
A Google search for the German-born Abetz’ condemnation of the Nazis produced very little, except that, according to Wikipedia, his great uncle, Otto Abetz, was a convicted war criminal, a Nazi SS officer and the German ambassador to Vichy France.
Posted in Politics
2 Comments
Sunday environmental round up, 25 October 2020
The absorption of solar energy by the earth is getting faster and faster. This is having dramatic effects on the dynamics, chemistry and life of the oceans, and bringing ‘Hothouse Earth’ closer. Over half of residents of the USA are … Continue reading
Posted in Environment and climate, Politics
2 Comments
Homily to Susan Ryan
As we gather here in the Lady Chapel at Newman College, people are gathered in socially distant numbers at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney for the state funeral of Susan Maree Ryan.
Posted in Politics, Tributes
2 Comments
Shaoquett Moselmane MLC returns to Parliament despite the media. (AMUST Oct 23, 2020)
Mr Shaoquett Moselmane MLC returned to the NSW Parliament on Thursday 22 October 2020 following months of controversy after the Parliamentary Privileges Committee exonerated him and cleared the way for his dignified return to the House.
Posted in Media, Politics
9 Comments
Conflicted cuts at the Audit Office (Inside Story Oct 20, 2020)
The federal agency that revealed the sports rorts scandal has had its funding cut — again.
Posted in Politics
3 Comments
End our national crisis: the case against Donald Trump (NYTimes Oct 19, 2020)
Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.
Posted in Politics, World Affairs
12 Comments
When does incompetence become a crime? (Counter Punch Oct 20, 2020)
Instead of relying on experienced public health experts with a successful record in finding, containing and isolating people infected with HIV and TB, the government handed the project over to the private sector, pouring great sums of money into the … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
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Saturday’s good reading and listening for the weekend
What people in other forums are saying about public policy
Dan Oakes, Witness K and Bernard Collaery
Dear Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, please demonstrate that the decisions whether or not to prosecute, and the decisions to continue the prosecutions of Collaery and K, are not influenced by possible political advantage, disadvantage or embarrassment to the Government. … Continue reading
Posted in Human Rights, Justice, Politics, Top 5
15 Comments
Tamed estate: ‘no holes in Gladys’ story’ … give or take 152 moments of amnesia
The Premier then went on 2GB to discuss her relationship with shock jock Kyle Sandilands. Not a sentence I thought I would ever write. This one doesn’t really require further elaboration.
Posted in Media, Politics, Tamed Estate
2 Comments
“When a scholar meets a soldier …”: Why I’ve decided not to speak to the senate inquiry on diaspora communities in Australia (ABC Oct 21, 2020)
What purpose does Senator Abetz’s questioning of Chinese Australians serve, other than to make them feel that they will never belong, no matter how long they have lived here or how hard they have tried?
Posted in China, Politics
13 Comments
The Un-Australian Activities Committee and Eric Abetz. Media in the Asian Century
Is Senator Eric Abetz working for the Chinese Communist Party’s United Work Front Department?…Not one Australian newspaper has editorialised about his conduct.
Posted in Politics
3 Comments
COVID 19 and Victoria: responsibility in Australian politics – Part 2
The COVID epidemic has laid bare many of the stresses that have been building up in Australian society, polity and economy over the past four decades.
Protests against Indonesian economic reform: stability and a minimum wage have gone
Indonesian President Joko Widodo wants to snare foreign investors. They’re a wary lot. Though excited by big markets and the chance of bigger returns, they’re fearful of losing fortunes, and with good reason: Risk.
Posted in Asia, Politics
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Darylgate: a Federal matter as well
A week is a short time in politics. In less than that time, an affair emerged that had lasted five years if you believe Gladys, or seven if you believe Daryl.
Posted in Politics
4 Comments
Home Affairs is too heavy handed to handle immigration
The 2020 Budget highlighted the dependence of Australia’s economic growth on a continually rising population. The Covid-19 border restrictions have caused negative net migration for the first time in more than a century. In a double whammy, the pandemic-induced anxieties … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Refugees, Immigration
4 Comments
Who runs Crown? Packer’s enablers
The latest revelation is that Crown is being formally investigated by AUSTRAC for breaches of money laundering regulations. But these are the tip of what is becoming a fairly substantial iceberg.
Exorbitant cost of the Coalition’s renewed interest in manufacturing
Before the budget Scott Morrison announced through Michelle Grattan a $1.5 billion plan to boost manufacturing in six priority areas – resources technology and critical minerals processing, food and beverage, medical products, recycling and clean energy, defence and space. Not … Continue reading
China is not the urgent threat; climate change is
Spending priorities by the federal government are increasingly questionable, if not indefensible; they raise fundamental questions about the competence and intelligence of our policymaking elites.
Joseph McCarthy smiled in his grave
McCarthyism was re-incarnated when Senator Eric Abetz asked three young Chinese Australians to “unequivocally condemn” the Chinese Communist Party. Congratulations to Chiu, Jiang and Chau for having the courage to defend themselves when bullied.
Posted in Politics
16 Comments
Forgotten East Timor: Island, principles, people
Did Gough Whitlam greenlight Indonesia’s violent seizure of East Timor in 1975? The invasion and 24-year occupation took the lives of up to 300,000 people in a population of 650,000 living on a wretchedly poor leftover from European colonisation.
Posted in Asia, Politics
3 Comments
The renaissance of nuclear energy is a myth
Nuclear energy is often abused to secure power political and geopolitical strength. Renewable energy, on the other hand, strengthens democracy, participation and prosperity.
Will our Glad have a chair when the music stops?
Spare a thought for the personal tragedy of Gladys Berejiklian, a genuinely hard-working and on the face of it a decent premier of NSW. Brought low because she formed a long-term personal relationship with a spiv, one whose general dishonesty … Continue reading
Abetz fearlessly proclaims he is not a Fascist by birth
Likely, none of the three distinguished Australians of Chinese ethnicity appearing a Senate committee hearing expected to be comprehensively done over by two ideologues from the Australian right – Senators Eric Abetz and Concetta Fierravanti-Wells.
COVID 19 and the transformation of Victoria – Part 1
As Melbournians waited with bated and unbated breath for the announcement last Sunday about relief from the Stage Four lockdown, the pressure that has been increasing dramatically for the past month has eased. Will a new normal be reached?
Posted in Politics
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