Politics
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Quigley, former CEO of NBN, attributes $15 b. cost blow out to Turnbull’s Multi Technology Mix.
For comment by Renai LeMay, see link to his blog delimiter.com.au below: https://delimiter.com.au/2015/11/05/quigley-releases-detailed-evidence-showing-mtm-nbn-cost-blowout/ John Menadue. Continue reading »
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Quentin Dempster. Countering Rupert Murdoch’s plan to destroy public broadcasting in Australia.
I regret to report there are forces at work in this country out to destroy public broadcasting… the ABC and SBS. But the fight to protect and enhance a more dynamic public broadcasting sector has just begun. Tomorrow in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, you will see a half page ad paid for Continue reading »
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Douglas Newton. Australia’s Leap into the Great War.
One of the great clichés of Australia’s entry into the Great War is that Australia stepped up to ‘answer the call’ of the Mother Country. Much of the press coverage of the centenary of Anzac repeats this claim and adds a nationalist frosting: our entry into the Great War was a moment of national awakening. Continue reading »
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Steve Hatfield-Dodds. Australians can be sustainable without sacrificing lifestyle or economy.
A sustainable Australia is possible – but we have to choose it. That’s the finding of a paperpublished today in Nature. The paper is the result of a larger project to deliver the first Australian National Outlook report, more than two years in the making, which CSIRO is also releasing today. As part of this Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The Dismissal. How John Kerr saved Malcolm Fraser forty years ago,
In my post on 27 October 2015- ‘The Dismissal – Forty years on. A smoking gun’ I pointed out that Jenny Hocking in her recent book confirmed what I had always assumed that John Kerr had given Malcolm Fraser a clear indication of support. In her book ‘The Dismissal Dossiers; Everything You Were Never Meant Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The unfairness and waste in health. Private Health Insurance is the real culprit.
Medibank Pte has been in dispute with the Calvary Hospital Group and now with UnitingCare over performance in their hospitals. At last our largest private health insurance company, MBP has come to understand that the private providers, hospitals and doctors, are really in control. These private providers determine the quality of care and its cost. Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Malcolm Turnbull and the NBN mess
As Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull had two major responsibilities. They were the public broadcasters, ABC and SBS, and the NBN. As I pointed out in an earlier post, the ABC needs rebuilding after the harsh budget cuts and termination of the Australian Network contract while Malcolm Turnbull was the minister. The plight of the Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Abbott lectures London on how to ‘stop the boats’.
Tony Abbott has been at it again, this time in London, claiming that he stopped the boats and that Europeans should follow suit. It is an oft repeated untruth that he stopped the boats. His one-liners are not supported by the facts. But the lie is deeply imbedded. Last month, Peter Hughes and I posted Continue reading »
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Mark Gregory. The new PM and the NBN. ‘An expensive lemon’
The National Broadband Network (NBN) is now delayed by between five and ten years and will cost significantly more over a 20 year lifetime due to the government’s decision to shift from a Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) fixed access network to the Multi-Technology Mix (MTM) approach that includes Fibre to the Node (FTTN) and Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The Turnbull Government’s Response to the Financial System Inquiry
The Government has adopted 43 of the 44 recommendations of the Financial System Inquiry (FSI). These recommendations had received wide support, and as I said in an earlier blog (21 January), ‘they should be relatively easy for the Government to adopt’. Indeed, the surprise would have been if the Government had not been supportive (whoever Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Malcolm Turnbull and rebuilding the ABC
Our new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull has a chance to repair the damage that was done to the ABC when he was the minister in charge. Malcolm Turnbull was unable to stop Tony Abbott’s cultural war on the ABC which was aided and abetted by Rupert Murdoch. Today, Friends of the ABC published an advertisement Continue reading »
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Erica Feller. Good democracy is challenged by mass migration.
Mass migration in a globalised world might well turn out to become, not least from the perspective of democracy, one of the overarching and defining challenges of our time. Syria and the exodus of millions of Syrians to neighbouring states and beyond is currently bringing this home in the starkest of ways. The autonomous sovereign Continue reading »
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Chris Bonnor. Educational opportunity in Australia.
 Educational opportunity in Australia – who succeeds and who misses out? This critical question about our schools is the title of a new report commissioned by the Mitchell Institute. It is a thorough, timely and outstanding contribution to our understanding of disadvantage in schooling. The report, produced by Victoria University’s Centre for International Research Continue reading »
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Marie Coleman. The FTB cuts have been softened, but they’re still a con
The Turnbull Government might be trying to scale back the size of its planned Family Tax Benefit cuts, but the fact is they still hit the poor hardest and ask them to foot the budget repair bill, writes Marie Coleman. After a year of the Senate blocking its radical changes to parental benefits, the Government Continue reading »
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Robert Brown Two concerns about the government’s response to the financial system inquiry.
It’s been a big week for the Australian financial services industry. Firstly, there was the unusual decision by the big banks to raise mortgage interest rates in an economic environment which would normally result in no change or even a drop in rates, claiming with some justification that new capital adequacy requirements ‘forced’ them to Continue reading »
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Ranald Macdonald. The ABC and SBS are under attack.
Now is the time to support the ABC and SBS and the reasons are clear for all to see. Our new Prime Minister has the chance of reversing decisions made during the Abbott leadership – but with him as the Communications Minister. Public broadcasting is under attack in many countries. The BBC has been particularly Continue reading »
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Richard Letts. Mitch Fifield should dump it while he can.
In a Senate Estimates hearing this week, the new Arts Minister Mitch Fifield was gently questioned for ten minutes by Senator Scott Ludlam about his intentions with regard to the future of arts support: in particular, did he intend to implement the plan of his displaced predecessor, Senator George Brandis, to use funds taken from Continue reading »
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Derk Swieringa. Ka-ching – The interest of the Labor Party in poker machines in the ACT.
This article is prompted by the recent ABC program ‘Ka-Ching’ which details the subtle mechanisms that are programmed into poker machines to make them addictive. It reminded me of the clever engineers at VW who were able to program software into their cars to cheat pollution testing. Let me also declare my personal experience Continue reading »
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Sam Bateman. US muddle in South China Sea.
Strong calls continue to be made in Washington for the US Navy to increase its freedom of navigation (FON) activities in the South China Sea. This is despite apparent differences of view between the Pentagon and the White House about the wisdom of such action. The US has done little in 2015 to ease concerns Continue reading »
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Richard Woolcott. Foreign policy priorities for Malcolm Turnbull – focus on the region, get out of the Middle East, and other ..
This can be an exciting time for Australia in that there is a coincidence of the need for long overdue foreign policy adjustments and the appointment of Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister. He has said he intends to be a forward-looking Prime Minister for the 21st Century. This is indeed encouraging but success will call Continue reading »
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John Tulloh. Turkey at a dangerous crossroad.
Spare a thought for Turkey as it goes to the polls on November 1. It straddles Europe and Asia, but it is not sure if it is part of either. Nor is it part of the Middle East, yet it shelters more Arab refugees than any other country there. They number two million – mainly Continue reading »
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David Combe. Tony Abbott’s soul-mate has gone.
After the second longest campaign in Canadian history – 11 weeks – finally Federal Election Day for Canadians had arrived on Monday, October 19. When I was moving to Canada 30 years ago, Gough Whitlam said to me that “There are no two peoples in the world who are so similar, have so much in Continue reading »
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Jon Stanford. Australia’s New Submarine: What is its Mission?
Recent papers published in Pearls and Irritations by Jon Stanford and Rear-Admiral Ian Richards have suggested respectively that: the case for providing significant financial support to the naval shipbuilding industry is flawed, both on defence policy and industry policy grounds there are unacceptable risks involved in building Australia’s proposed new fleet of submarines locally. In Continue reading »
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Ian Richards. The Submarine Menace
Way back in the 1980s, then Defence Minister Kim Beasley gave birth to the greatest industrial White Elephant in the history of our nation – the establishment of the submarine construction facility in Adelaide,South Australia.  So much has been written and said about the Collins Class submarine construction project that I do not need to Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Coal is good for humanity! The Tony Abbott story continues.
The messenger may have changed, but apparently not the message. Only this week our new Prime Minister said ‘Can I simply say, the government’s policies are unchanged’ An obvious example of this unchanged policy is that Malcolm Turnbull has agreed to the go-ahead of the $16 b. Carmichael Coal Project in central Queensland. This is Continue reading »
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Luke Fraser. Rail and roads: a reform blueprint to match Turnbull’s boldness and innovation
Australia’s new Prime Minister demands boldness and innovative action. Amen. To date road and rail reform has proven too dry and monolithic for most Prime Ministers. But failure to act is now accruing several billion dollars in road debt annually. Transport consumes over $30 billion of taxpayer treasure annually. Boldness and innovation here can bankroll Continue reading »
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Dean Ashenden. What is to be done about Australian schooling?
Dealing with high and rising social and cultural segregation is the real challenge of school reform. Over the past two or three months alone, no fewer than five prominent individuals and organisations have tried to answer an increasingly vexing question: what is to be done about Australian schooling? Australia, these various commentators agree, is among Continue reading »
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Peter Gibilisco and assisted by Bruce Wearne. A Special Minister for Disability.
Disability support and policy is currently undergoing much needed reform. Such reforms highlight the attenuated life chances of people with disabilities and how these can be mitigated by policies that emphasize the inclusion of people with disabilities into the social life of us all. There is much public money being spent on getting things right, Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Is Malcolm Turnbull sacrificing his principles?
The polls show most Australian voters have welcomed Malcolm Turnbull’s election as Prime Minister. I did. It is very early days, but I am concerned by signs that he is bowing very much to the right wing of his own party and former Abbott supporters rather than spelling out clearly his own policies that we Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The new compradors and the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement
Compradors are sometimes described as those who help a foreign country exploit their own. I was reminded of this when I read that the ALP Caucus had compromised its concerns over jobs for Australians and was prepared to waive the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement through the parliament with only a ‘diluted’ list of demands as Continue reading »
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