Politics
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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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John Menadue. Making the Federation work better.
The Abbott Government decided that over the next decade commencing in 2017 the Commonwealth Government would reduce grants to the states for education and health by $80 b. This is likely to produce a major and concerted campaign by the states to protect their hospitals and schools. It does provide an opportunity for more effective Continue reading »
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Alex Wodak. Endgame in the protracted drug policy debate: are we there yet?
The long running debate about illicit drugs policy has moved a great deal in the last five years. But social policy reform is a different matter from a debate. Actual reform usually takes many decades. The recent growing consensus regarding the abject failure of a criminal justice dominated approach to drugs is very encouraging. Retired 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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John Nieuwenhuysen. Multiculturalism Today and the Little Evil
According to the ABS, the proportion of Australians born overseas has reached its highest point in 120 years. At about 6.6 million people, the overseas born represent 28 per cent of the country’s total, and, since 2005, migration has contributed half of total population growth. Some 47 per cent of Australians in 2015 were either Continue reading »
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What’s holding back the world economy.
In this article from The Guardian, Joseph Stiglitz points to the slow growth rates in the developed world and the reasons for them. He says that ‘In the US, quantitative easing did not boost consumption and investment partly because most of additional liquidity returned to central banks’ coffers in the form of excess reserves. … Continue reading »
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Murdoch takes Abbott as his guest to President’s banquet in US.
According to a report on Media Watch on 8 February, Rupert Murdoch brought Tony Abbott as his guest at a banquet in Washington which President Obama attended. Several of the Murdoch papers in Australia suggested that this was a personal meeting between Tony Abbott and President Obama. It was nothing of the sort. It was Continue reading »
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Paul Budde. Building Australia’s white elephant – cheap buy for white knight Telstra.
The following piece by Paul Budde foreshadows a ‘white knight’ role for Telstra when NBN fails. He says: We are now getting a second-rate network and the first signs from customers, as we heard in a recent Senate Hearing, are not good. This is in line with our assessment. An MtM network, by its very Continue reading »
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Robert Manne. Why we have failed to address climate change.
In this article, published in the December The Monthly Essays, Robert Manne describes the major obstacles to addressing climate change. He refers to the unique nature of climate change and the difficulties that it has presented for scientists to persuade the world community about the problem and the need to take action. Robert Manne also Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Hoist with their own petard
Private health insurance funds like NIB are complaining about high specialist fees. But these very same funds are major contributors to the problem. And it is a problem. In the last 30 years we have seen a dramatic increase in specialist fees. A major contributor to this increase in specialist fees is the ‘gap insurance’ 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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John Menadue. Part 2. How we deliver healthcare is as important as the funding of healthcare. Medicare has degenerated into a payments system.
In Part 1 I focussed on the importance of improving the delivery of health care and not just funding. In Part 2 I will focus on specific areas where costs should be reduced. Part 2 Getting costs down The government should abolish the subsidy for private health insurance which costs all up about $11 Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Privatising Medicare’s payments system and the erosion of Commonwealth Public Service capability.
The government has apparently accepted the advice of the Commission of Audit that Medicare’s payments system should be reviewed with the possibility of privatisation. The payments system includes Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, Aged Care Services and Veterans’ Affairs. It sounds like another expression of neo liberalism, that only the private sector can be efficient Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Part 1. How we deliver health care is as important as the funding of health care. Medicare has degenerated into a payments system
Part 1 of these articles will focus on the inefficient way we deliver health care, the many perverse incentives and the power of vested interests to resist reform in health care delivery. Part 2 will focus more particularly on examples of waste and inefficiency in health care delivery Part 1 We have been told many Continue reading »
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Laurie Patton. Utopia: the professor, the public service, and the need for change.
In an article in The Mandarin former Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department, Professor Peter Shergold, is quoted urging public servants to adapt and to show courage. http://www.themandarin.com.au/60090-adapt-die-peter-shergold-manifesto-public-service-transformation Shergold is spot on. But before things can change we need to be willing to accept that mistakes are made, even by the best of people. Last week Continue reading »
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John Thompson. Fiona Nash and private health insurance for rural Australians
A few nights ago on Q&A, the Minister for Rural Health, Fiona Nash, undertook to drop out of private health insurance while she was in office. Ms Nash lives in Crowther, a small town about midway between Wagga Wagga and Bathurst. Foregoing private health insurance makes a lot of sense for her because, like most 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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Reversing the Flight to Private Schools Depends on Reforming Australia’s Incoherent and Unfair Funding System
New school enrolment data show that the long-term shift of students to private schools has stopped in recent years. But, whether it will be sustained is uncertain given school funding trends that massively favour private schools. Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics this month show no change in the share of enrolments between Continue reading »
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Michael Gracey AO. Grappling with the Indigenous health gap.
By most recognised markers of socio-economic status, Indigenous Australians fare badly compared with their non-Indigenous counterparts. This is certainly the case where health standards are concerned. For example, rates of infections and hospitalisation for these and many other illnesses are much higher; chronic diseases like heart disease, stroke and diabetes are more prevalent; and Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. An Update on Tax Reform
The Prime Minister seems to have been encouraging speculation that the Government has decided not to consider any reform of taxation that involves an increase in the GST. If true, hardly a courageous decision, given the support he has received from some State Premiers. But this posting is concerned about the consequences. First, in the 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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Ian McAuley. The only unifying thread in the Liberal Party is a compulsion to keep Labor out of office.
There is a German saying “The less the people know about how laws and sausages are made, the better they sleep at night”. In his book Credlin & Co (Black Inc 2016), an exposé of the political relationship between Tony Abbott and his loyal Chief of Staff, Peta Credlin, Aaron Patrick of the Financial Review Continue reading »
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David Isaacs. Secrets and lies and bad morality: Australia’s policy on people seeking asylum
The latest episode in the long, sorry saga of how badly we can treat people seeking asylum was played out in the High Court in February 2016. Long because the story started in 1992 when the Paul Keating Labor government introduced mandatory detention ‘as a temporary measure’ in reaction to a handful of people arriving 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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John Menadue. ‘We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem’.
Treasurer Scott Morrison has been expounding the above philosophy of his for months. But he couldn’t be more wrong. Unfortunately the Secretary of Treasury has now followed up with nonsense that Australia should have a ceiling of 25% of GDP on government spending (I assume he is referring to Commonwealth Government spending). Michael Pascoe (Michael Continue reading »
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Stephen Duckett. Health in 2016: a cheat sheet on hospitals, Medicare and private health insurance.
We start 2016 as we started 2015 – with big challenges for the health system and uncertainty as to how governments will meet them. The health care headaches in 2016 are, in fact, the same ones we faced a decade ago, albeit different in severity and symptoms. They include population growth, ageing and the rise Continue reading »
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Bruce Duncan. Australia’s moral crisis: shipping babies and families off to Nauru
How has it come to this, that the Australian government is poised to send back 37 babies, 54 children and their families – 267 in all – into the traumatic conditions of Nauru? Only a few years ago many Australians would have considered it inconceivable that our governments should have imposed such shocking treatment on Continue reading »
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How long can we keep lying to ourselves.
In the SMH on February 5, 2016, columnist Waleed Aly says ‘The history of asylum seeker policy in Australia will be remembered as a story of how successive governments legislated their lies to justify a world of make-believe borders and imaginary compliance.’ See link to article below: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/nauru-how-long-can-we-keep-lying-to-ourselves-20160204-gml6or.html Continue reading »
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