Politics
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John Menadue. More problems with the Department of Health and Ageing.
On 16 March, I drew attention to a Capability Review of the Department of Health and Ageing by the Australian Public Service Commission. It set out a very worrying analysis of the overall performance of DHA. We now have a report by the Australian National Audit Office of DHA’s administration of the Fifth Community Pharmacy 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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Ian Macphee. Personal memories of Malcolm Fraser.
I first met Malcolm in 1973 when he was shadow minister for Industrial Relations in the Coalition opposition. I was Director of the Victorian Chamber of Manufactures and intensely involved in industrial relations. Malcolm had just been given that responsibility and wished to explore issues seriously. We did so for over two hours. I told 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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John Menadue. Cars are killing our cities.
At almost every election, we are being wooed with stories of more freeways to accommodated more and more cars. It is self-defeating. In our public infrastructure we waste more money on roads than on anything else. As I have argued in my re-post below, there are a whole range of policy issues that we must 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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Kerry Goulston. Two health reform issues.
Instead of tinkering around the edges of Health Reform in Australia,and dodging meaningful revision of the Medical Benefits and Pharmaceutical Benefits Schemes, all Federal politicians and leading clinicians could be debating two issues which would have significant effects over the next 20 years. Currently thousands of clinicians (doctors, nurses, allied health and other healthcare providers) Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Private health insurance and funding a Medicare Dental Scheme.
In this blog I have written extensively about the damage that private health insurance (PHI) is doing in Australia. We are sleep-walking into a US style health disaster. If people want private health insurance, that is their right, but I see no reason why the taxpayer should subsidise a socially divisive and nationally damaging subsidy. Continue reading »
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John Menadue. A capability review of the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing (DHA)
In this blog I have raised many times my concerns about the major shortcomings of DHA and the barrier it presents to improved health policy and programs… We saw it most recently over the GP co-payment. I argue that the ministerial/departmental model in health has failed and needs review… Since 2011 the Australian Public Service 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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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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Julia Davison. It takes a nation to raise a child.
The week after Australia Day each year, around 260,000 five-year old Australians start school. Of those, almost 60,000 children – 23 per cent – will start school developmentally vulnerable in some way. Children who start school behind often stay behind, and are likely to finish school with skills and competencies that have not equipped them 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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Alex Wodak. Reducing the demand for illicit drugs
At his Congressional confirmation hearing in January 2001, the then Secretary of Defense-designate Donald Rumsfeld was asked whether US drug problems were best attacked by reducing demand or targeting drug supplies. Rumsfeld said that he believed that illicit drug use was “overwhelmingly a demand problem”. He added, “If demand persists, it’s going to find ways Continue reading »
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Helen Sykes and David Yencken. Leadership in the public interest.
No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It’s because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up – demand – demand – demand change. (Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States) History shows that the public interest can vary over time and between societies. These are, nonetheless, ideals Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The 2015 Intergenerational Report
Purpose of the Intergenerational Report The Intergenerational Report (IGR) should be an important document. It purports to tell us what the Australian population, economy and Budget could look like in forty years time. Of course no-one really knows what the economy will look like in forty years time. Instead the IGR tells us how fast Continue reading »
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Alex Wodak. The current imbalance between public and private interests.
The public interest, meaning ‘the welfare or wellbeing of the general public’, has always competed with private interests. Furthermore, public and private interests will always be in competition. What is so unusual about the current tension is the extreme imbalance: these days, private interests almost always get what they want. The policy domination by huge companies Continue reading »
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Max Corden. Bring Back the Carbon Tax?
Mr Hockey has invited the Australian public to join in a conversation about the economy and budget issues. Here is my mildly radical contribution. There are two strong reasons for bringing back the carbon tax. Tony Abbott, when Leader of the Opposition, promised to repeal the carbon tax brought in by Prime Minister Julie Gillard. Continue reading »
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John Falzon ‘Welfare reform’ but where are the jobs?
If by “welfare” we mean giving assistance to those who don’t really need it and who are living off the public purse, then it is indeed time we had a comprehensive review of welfare. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the McClure Welfare Review was given the task of cutting social expenditure to those who actually do 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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We should expect more.
In this article in The Guardian, Richard Flanagan, the Booker Prize winner, refers to the increasing ugliness in Australian public life. He says ‘Writing my novel “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” I came to conclude that great crimes like the Death Railway did not begin with the first beating or murder on that Continue reading »
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Andrew Leigh. The remarkable persistence of power and privilege.
If you want to know who made up Australia’s elite in the nineteenth century, a useful place to look is the Australian Dictionary of Biography. In its many volumes, you’ll find business leaders, scientists, media barons and politicians who have featured among the upper echelons of Australian society. Now, suppose we take the first cohort Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Health Insurance – here we go again!
The Health Minister, Sussan Ley has just announced a 6.2% increase in private health insurance premiums. Increases of this order happen almost every year. Since the Howard government introduced the rebate on private health insurance in 1999, the cost of private health insurance has increased over 150%. Overall prices have increased by less than 50% Continue reading »
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John Menadue. How vested interests are subverting the public interest.
There are many key public issues that we must address. They include climate change, growing inequality, tax avoidance, budget repair, an ageing population, lifting our productivity and our treatment of asylum seekers. But our capacity to address these hard issues is becoming very difficult because of the ability of vested interests with their lobbying power Continue reading »
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Denis Muller. The stitch-up by The Australian.
It is an ugly spectacle when a newspaper aligns itself with the executive government in an attempt to hound from office someone who can otherwise be removed only by the Governor-General. This is what The Australian is doing, in concert with Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Attorney-General George Brandis, to Australian Human Rights Commission President Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Mother Merkel and 800,000 refugees
In September last year I posted an article about the Heroism of Angela Merkel in her generous response to asylum seekers arriving in Germany. She is holding to her course but the difficulties are increasing. The attacks on women in Cologne by men who were reported to be of Arab or North African decent on Continue reading »
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