Politics
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JOHN MENADUE. Saturday postings
We are changing our Saturday postings. We will continue to post hyperlinks to ‘good listening and reading’ that we feel will be of interest over the weekend. We will also give timely notice of the contents of Geraldine Doogue’s Saturday Extra. Her program starts at 7.30 am, but our email has been going out on Saturday Continue reading »
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Racial misprofiling
On 9 November, Hassan Khalif Shire Ali crashed a vehicle full of gas cylinders in Bourke Street, Melbourne and stabbed three people, one fatally, before being shot by police. The 30-year old was on multiple watchlists at the time because if his known radical views and links to Islamic State. Yet he was not under Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Health Reform Priorities
Health costs are rising through greater use of technology, ageing, lack of coordination and waste. Doctors provide many services that should be provided by others. Mental , indigenous and dental health have serious problems. Services are being delivered less equitably. There has been very slow progress, particularly in prevention of illness and disease .Our health Continue reading »
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KIM WINGEREI. It’s Time for Ethical Politics.
As we decry what many say is the most incompetent Government in living memory, it’s important not to fall into the trap of just waiting for it to be replaced, thinking all will be well henceforth. We need to look at how to avoid Australia ever having to experience this kind of dysfunction again. Just Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Leaderless Australian government outsources all responsibility (New Daily, 20.11.18)
It has come to this for the Australian government: With no leadership, no mettle and no political capital to spend, difficult decisions are outsourced, and responsibility for decisions that might offend is spread far and wide. Continue reading »
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GARETH PORTER. America’s permanent-war complex. (The American Conservative, 15.11.2108)
What President Dwight D. Eisenhower dubbed the “military-industrial complex” has been constantly evolving over the decades, adjusting to shifts in the economic and political system as well as international events. The result today is a “permanent-war complex,” which is now engaged in conflicts in at least eight countries across the globe, none of which are Continue reading »
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ABUL RIZVI. Morrison says ‘enough’ to a problem largely of his making.
Scott Morrison says ‘enough’ to the level of migration to Sydney and Melbourne (see here). Yet he fails to mention that it was his actions that brought about the surge in migration to Sydney and Melbourne in the first place. And more knee jerk decisions won’t help, either from the Commonwealth or the states. Continue reading »
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Another week, another stuff-up. Israel and Indonesia.
Bill Shorten and Penny Wong got it right last week: ScoMo’s pre-Wentworth thought bubble about moving the Australian embassy to Jerusalem should be dead, buried and cremated. It was always a bad idea and if there was any doubt the Indonesians have tried to put it out of its misery with the simple tactic of Continue reading »
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ERIC SIDOTI. Let the Privatisation Games Begin
Privatisation has been the source of ongoing debate in this country since at least the 1980s. For much of the intervening years though to question the virtues of privatisation – and the accompanying sanctification of competition and choice- has been treated as economic heresy. The threat of political excommunication strangled policy development. It’s to be Continue reading »
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JERRY ROBERTS. The Holy City.
The Jerusalem embassy is Scott Morrison’s first serious mistake as Prime Minister, but Australians think Tel Aviv is a subsidiary of Telstra so he may get away with it. It is the bread and butter domestic issues that win and lose elections. There may be subjects that interest Australians less than Middle Eastern politics but Continue reading »
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CAVAN HOGUE. Where the bloody Hell are You?
Our current Prime Minister loves P R slogans and seems to believe that they are a satisfactory alternative to an understanding of a world that does not eat meat pies. To his credit, however, he has publicly criticised US trade policy which is at least standing up for Australian interests as he boasts he does. Continue reading »
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ANDREW FARRAN. Brexit: The Beginning of the End
Thursday 15th November was a most extraordinary day at Westminster where a besieged lady tenaciously stood her ground at the despatch box and stared down some hundreds of howling Parliamentary interlocutors (mostly of her own party) and remained totally unfazed in defending the 585 page Withdrawal Agreement she had negotiated with the European Union. Continue reading »
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ALISON BROINOWSKI. The latest hobgoblins.
On the eve of an APEC meeting, with impeccable timing, Australia’s lack of foreign policy independence was once again on display for our Asian neighbours: mimicry of US decisions, militarism abroad, securitised borders, containment of China, and fear of Islam. Indonesians and Malaysians recognise the pattern from long experience. Another terrorist event in Melbourne could Continue reading »
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. China, The US and the Manus Island naval base.
APEC, Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation, was really Bob Hawke’s idea. The Prime Minister of the day envisaged it as a purely economic gathering, a meeting of finance ministers to deal with the growing impact of globalism and ensure dialogue and the rule of law between its diverse participants. Continue reading »
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JACK WATERFORD. Frydenberg will pick up the election bill (Canberra Times 16.11.2018)
If I were a Labor warrior, thinking cautiously ahead about political warfare from mid-2019 – after Labor had taken government – I might be judging that no present preparation could repay the investment more than a very strong focus on Josh Frydenberg, Scott Morrison’s Treasurer. Continue reading »
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RICHARD TANTER and BUSINES INSIDER INDIA. Darwin, the Marines, and touring the American empire of bases
The idea of ‘US imperialism’ may be seen as a fiction of the ideological left, or as an overblown presentation of the presence of a few US bases in different countries. But the US military does indeed operate on a global scale. Australia is far from a unique position in the US empire of military Continue reading »
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FINTAN O’TOOLE. How Brexit Broke Up Britain (New York Review of Books, 13.11.18)
So, at long last, it seems that the negotiations on Brexit between the United Kingdom and the European Union have produced a draft agreement. We do not yet know what it contains but it will be a compromise that falls far short of the high expectations of June 2016 when the British voted to leave. Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE- Sacrifice is being politicised. Militarism is becoming the norm.
Remembrance is morphing into acceptance of conflict. The culture war about remembrance being waged by conservatives and the military is winning with little opposition. The never ending stories of Gallipoli, the Western front and Armistice go on and on. We are celebrating war on a scale that no other country does. Government ministers, Veterans Affairs, the Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. Has the Cavalcade of Commemoration Finally Halted?
With Remembrance Day behind us we may finally have some relief from the relentless commemoration of conflict which began twenty years ago and climaxed with the centenary of the First World War. Historians of the future may well wonder where this obsession with war came from and why we spent more on the centenary than Continue reading »
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GARRY EVERETT. A tale of two processes.
Last year I participated in a community consultation about increasing the water supply in south east Queensland. It was a very satisfying experience because of the process and skills of the consultants. This year I was invited to participate in a different kind of process. The Catholic Church has instituted a process for decision-making called Continue reading »
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MARC STEARS. Don’t give up on politics. It’s where the fight for the fair go must be won (The Conversation).
This article is the third in the Reclaiming the Fair Go series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the Sydney Democracy Network and the Sydney Peace Foundation to mark the awarding of the 2018 Sydney Peace Prize to Nobel laureate and economics professor Joseph Stiglitz. These articles reflect on the crisis caused by economic inequality and Continue reading »
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PETER ARKELL. Choosing our head of state does not need to be difficult.
The Australian Republic appears to be coming back into the community’s discussion. The stumbling block for previous models seems to have been how the head of state will be chosen and even concern that we do not offend the Queen. Perhaps there is a solution that she would be pleased to step aside for. Continue reading »
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GEORGE BROWNING. Nationalism: the world’s greatest threat
We owe President Emmanuel Macron a debt of gratitude for yesterday’s speech in Paris. “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” the French leader said. “In saying ‘Our interests first, whatever happens to the others,’ you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it Continue reading »
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MARGARET SIMONS. Good riddance to Guthrie and Milne. The ABC needs grown-ups in charge (the Guardian 12.11.18)
The most powerful message to emerge from Four Corners’ sad story about the tumult at the top of the ABC is that neither the former chairman Justin Milne nor the former managing director Michelle Guthrie appeared to be friends of the public broadcaster. Continue reading »
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Poor Malcolm.
Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean people don’t hate you. It sometimes seems that Malcolm Turnbull is being pursued by that old Andy Capp character Joe Btfsplk, who brought bad luck to everyone near him. Continue reading »
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JACK WATERFORD. Let’s hope independents take lead on corruption. (Canberra Times 10.11.2018)
Perhaps the greatest service the House of Representatives’ six independent MPs could do for themselves and the nation over the dying days of this Parliament is to take charge of progress with a federal anti-corruption commission. Good for them – indeed, all six have an excellent chance of being re-elected – and good for the Continue reading »
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MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison drives bus over sincerity.
ScoMo’s blue bus is the perfect symbol of the man and his government – a brash, ostentatious cliché, non-functional and completely phony. Continue reading »
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SAMANTHA MAIDEN. ‘You’ll find yourself in tears’: PM empathises with young asylum seekers on Nauru (The New Daily)
Border protection hardliner Scott Morrison has told a Lifeline fundraiser that he cried “on his knees” over the plight of young asylum seekers held on Nauru. (Yet Scott Morrison has the power to end the suffering of the children on Nauru ,but does not do so.!!.John Menadue) Continue reading »
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TONY STEPHENS. 1918
I’ll go to the Armistice Day service at the Balmain war memorial this November 11 because it will mark the centenary of the end of the Great War and because it will be the end of nearly five years of almost continuous remembrance. While the youthful nation of only 18 years rejoiced with good reason Continue reading »
