Politics
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The perils of outsourcing (privatisation) – a repost
In Pearls and Irritations last year we posted articles about the serious erosion in the quality of care and services in many fields – disability care, vocational education and training, child care and particularly aged care, where more than 650 older people have died in private, for-profit “homes”. All too often service quality has been Continue reading »
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Don’t Mention the Ban: Australia’s evasion of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
Australia has disagreed with its major military ally on the prohibition of other unacceptable weapons and we must do so again. If our alliance requires allegiance to weapons of mass destruction, who does it really serve? Continue reading »
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Most viewed posts 2020: Father Glen Walsh paid a heavy price (Sep 9, 2020)
The revelations never end about priests and brothers, of monsignors and bishops with their secret sexual lives, masturbating, buggerizing, sodomizing and raping boys and girls – protected by an amoral hierarchy and a few corrupt members of the upper-echelons of various police forces. Continue reading »
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Europe and China’s year-end breakthrough
America’s real intention in opposing China has nothing to do with human rights. Particularly under Trump’s lawless administration, US policies have been motivated by a hunger for dominance, plain and simple. Continue reading »
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Continuing strategic dependence on the US or strategic independence for Australia?
A People’s Inquiry has been opened by IPAN for submissions on the impact of the U.S. -Australia alliance, its costs and consequences and to canvas alternatives. Readers and contributors to Pearls and Irritations are invited to respond and join this urgent national conversation. Continue reading »
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Gutless Wonders: when will politicians demonstrate the accountability they foist on the rest of us?
Politicians are past masters at ducking responsibility, though busy prosecuting perceived foes. All the while, in the absence of a federal anti-corruption commission, the political scandals unfold, and pass without consequence. Continue reading »
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Forget empire and swaggies, we now need an anthem for all of us
Provoked by piss-weak, one-word Scotty and feisty Julian ‘Matilda’ Cribb, I offer my anthem words that come from a rather different place. Continue reading »
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NARA Treaty debacle
Today our intelligence agencies and bureaucrats tell us that China is the enemy. But less than 50 years ago the same agencies and bureaucrats (or their predecessors) were warning us that the enemy against which we had to prepare was Japan. Continue reading »
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Stop playing with our lives, this is not a game
While it has proven very difficult to convince politicians that we have a climate change emergency on our hands, we might expect that bushfires and the pandemic would rock their complacency. And yet, the New South Wales government insists on taking a relaxed approach to the public health crisis when it comes to mass entertainments. Continue reading »
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Most viewed articles 2020: Gladys’ arrogance paves the way for Federal ICAC (Oct 20, 2020)
The most remarkable thing about the revelation of Gladys Berejiklian’s love life was that it was remarkable at all. Continue reading »
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Some joy in the gloom
A photo taken in Warruwi on South Goulburn Island off Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory Continue reading »
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Our national anthem is a joke. Tinkering won’t fix it.
“For those who’ve come across the seas, We’ve boundless plains to share.” The blackest satire in the entire rigmarole. Endorsed by both sides of politics, the plains of Manus Island, Christmas Island and Nauru are scarcely boundless. As for sharing, forget it mate. If you’re a new chum, especially an African or a woman in Continue reading »
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It’s time to decommission ASPI
The time has come – indeed, is well past – for those responsible for giving the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) its Length Of Type Extension to decommission it in the manner of a ship of the line, or submarine, whose usefulness to the fleet has demonstrably expired and cannot under any circumstance be regarded Continue reading »
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How Murdoch extracts concessions from governments. Consider how he got control of Foxtel!
Rupert Murdoch claims, falsely, that he has never asked a Prime Minister for anything. Yet his whole business career in three countries has been founded on threatening or seducing politicians for privileged commercial access or opportunities. Continue reading »
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Paranoid politics is back – again
Paranoid politics always seem to be with us in some form or other. It has ebbed and flowed for centuries but in the past year, it has seemed more like a flood than a flow. Continue reading »
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EXCLUSIVE – National Archives to release hundreds of letters between the Queen and Governors-General.
The National Archives of Australia is set to release decades of correspondence between the Queen and Governors-General, from Sir Richard Casey in 1965 to Bill Hayden in 1996. The decision follows the High Court’s ruling in my landmark ‘Palace letters’ case against the Archives which, in May 2020, overturned the Queen’s embargo over her correspondence Continue reading »
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Australia, Sovereignty: the long and short of it
Projections on Australia’s future are bleak if it maintains it’s hostility to China and cloying dependence on America, particularly when coupled with a corrupt and incompetent LNP government. Continue reading »
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Cabinet papers 2000: the Coalition before climate denialism, but on the path to offshore detention
Australian Cabinet papers from 2000, released today, reflect a relatively quiescent Australia where Islamic militancy and offshore detention were barely glimpses on the horizon, and climate science denialism was not a factor in cabinet considerations at all. Continue reading »
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The smoko continues
In April 2012 the late Greg Dodds and I posted an article on this blog ‘The Australian Century and the Australian smoko’. We argued that while we responded well to the opportunities in Asia for over a decade in the 1980s, we went on ‘smoko’ from the mid-1990s. There was widespread complacency and fear of Continue reading »
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James K. Galbraith Says More… (Project Syndicate Nov 17, 2020)
J This week in Say More, PS talks with James K. Galbraith, Professor of Government and Chair in Government/Business Relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Continue reading »
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The world after 2020
What a year 2020 was for Australia, with first the fires and then the pandemic. Now at the end of it, we’re still confronted with the challenges of climate change in the shape of floods, not fires, and our Prime Minister unable to get a speaking slot at an international climate change conference. Continue reading »
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Eggbeaters in full flight: extoling the virtues of new Trade Minister Tehan
Tehan to the rescue, a Hastie move into Defence and Chinese whispers. Continue reading »
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How NSW lost control of the virus. Yet Scott Morrison said that NSW was the ‘gold standard’ in infection control.
When Covid was detected in Sydney’s northern beaches area, the peninsula was locked down strongly by the Berejiklian government. While that cluster seems to have been contained, outbreaks elsewhere around Sydney have thrown some curious decisions into the limelight. Continue reading »
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Polarisation decades in the making
Between 70% and 80% of Republican voters believe the recent Presidential election was rigged. While it’s astonishing funding it is not simply representative of the Trump years but more a reflection of steadily developing attitudes over some decades. Continue reading »
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Assessing democratic governments from first principles
Australia regularly gets rated as one of the best performing representative democracies in the world. But anyone who regularly reads the posts by wise and experienced writers on the Pearls and Irritations site must surely wonder how that can be. Continue reading »
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2020 and beyond. Comeback, but to what?
Scott Morrison’s government has been spruiking its life and economy saving program named Comeback on television and digital platforms. This means comeback from the unexpected changes imposed on individuals and the economy in 2020 by the COVID virus. But comeback to what? Continue reading »
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Twenty-Twenty
I will not wish my life away, But Twenty-Twenty I can say, Was the worst I can recall, Not just for me, but for us all. Continue reading »
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The Twerp Factory (IPA) wants to destroy the ABC
During the neoliberal boom of the 1970s and 1980s, it became fashionable to sell many valuable state-owned enterprises, often for a song, and usually to friends of the regime. Later on this would become something of a blueprint for the Russians, who created a whole class of thieving kleptocrats, who then went on to pillage Continue reading »
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Post Brexit? It is not pages of legal text that sustains communities. It is political commitment.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his government may have got Brexit across the line, and avoided the embarrassment and discomfort the country would have suffered had they not, but clearly they have not delivered on what was promised at the 2016 referendum. Continue reading »
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The Murder of 2020
During the weeks and months of restrictions this year, I became addicted to the British TV crime series Vera. Vera is moody and temperamental, but she gets results, with no sex, no romance, no ghosts or extra-terrestrial influence, just terrific acting and good mystery. So let’s ask the question of Vera, “Who killed 2020?” Continue reading »