Politics
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Wiryono Sastrohandoyo. Getting the Australia-Indonesia relationship back on track.
John Menadue asked me to discuss how best to get Australian-Indonesian relations back on track, although I agree that this is a politically sensitive issue and weighing it up may not be the prudent thing to do while there is still a lot of anger in the heart of many Australians and Indonesians. The anger on Continue reading »
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John McCarthy. Australia and Indonesia: hard times ahead.
The executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran will leave most Australians dismayed by President Joko Widodo’s refusal of clemency, angered by the clumsy, ugly execution process and jaundiced by the attitudes of a number of Indonesians on killing two of our countrymen. This latest downturn with Indonesia will make us reflect—again—on what we should Continue reading »
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Richard Woolcott. Australia and Indonesia.
For Australia no bilateral relationship will be more important, complex and challenging in the future than that with Indonesia. The relationship is, however, going through a difficult period at present, especially due to the reaction in Australia to the execution of the two Australian citizens for drug smuggling. The necessary improvement will take time and Continue reading »
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Gigi Foster and Paul Frijters. This budget … will favour the rent-seekers.
Long before the release of French economist Thomas Piketty’s smash bestseller, it was recognised by social scientists that income inequality in developed countries had been rising for a while. Economists’ stock-in-trade explanation for this trend was that people whose skills combined well with modern production technologies had seen bigger income growth than people whose Continue reading »
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Philippe Le Corre. World War II is also not over in Asia.
Historians estimate that 14 million Chinese died at the hands of the Japanese in WWII. The Chinese economy and society was in ruins. Will Australia attend the 70th anniversary of VJ Day in Beijing on September 3 this year. John Menadue. All the controversy on the Russian celebration of the end of World War Continue reading »
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Peter Christoff. On these numbers, Australia’s emissions auction won’t get the job done.
Last Thursday, the Abbott government announced the results of its first reverse auction of emissions-reduction projects. Using A$660 million drawn from the A$2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), the government has purchased 47.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, as a first step towards reducing greenhouse emissions under its Direct Action plan. Federal environment minister Greg Continue reading »
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Mark Triffitt and Travers McLeod. Hidden crisis of liberal democracy.
A “burning platform” with big, tangible impacts on our everyday lives is often the tipping point for concerted action. We call these crises. Think of the G20’s actions in the wake of the global financial crisis or the global response to 9/11. Both events left governments and decision-makers with no choice but to act. Then Continue reading »
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John Dwyer. Sliding down the slippery slope to two-tiered health care.
Private Health Insurance gets a foothold in primary care. Imagine the following scenario. You are checking in with your GP’s receptionist for your scheduled appointment and are asked to produce your Medicare Card and, if you have one, your private health insurance membership card. If you have both you move into the waiting room on Continue reading »
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Walter Hamilton. In the Name of the Emperor
Emperor Hirohito never made it to Okinawa. He passed away before he could fulfill that stated desire. (He was scheduled to go in 1987, until illness intervened.) Okinawa was the scene of some of the most savage fighting of the Pacific War: 100-200,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians died there in April-June 1945, as well as Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The price we are paying for the Greens.
The recent successes of the Greens in state elections in Victoria and NSW show us how populist nonsense can succeed at least in the short term. It has also shown the failure of the ALP to counter the threat of the Greens. There are two major issues on which the policies of the Greens have Continue reading »
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David Stephens. Atatürk’s famous words of 1934 questioned
Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours … You, the mothers, who Continue reading »
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Julianne Schultz. The Great War and Australia’s future.
The Gallipoli centenary provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the many wartime legacies – human, political, economic, military – that forged independent nations from former colonies and dominions. Over the next fortnight, The Conversation, in partnership with Griffith Review, is publishing a series of essays exploring the enduring legacies of 20th-century wars. It seems Continue reading »
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Bruce Kaye. Corporate Tax and Ethics Dodging
The Senate committee hearings with testimony from high profile executives from some very large corporations have brought to notice the strategies to shift profits in order to avoid paying taxes in Australia. The companies claim that they are acting legally. The counter claim is that such manipulation of the law is unfair – it is Continue reading »
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Trevor Boucher. International Tax : Some Constraints
I certainly would not want to be seen as an apologist for multinational company groups in the current debate on what to do about profit-shifting tax avoidance activities of groups like Google and Apple. But there are some significant legal/technical obstacles in the way of solutions. Like other countries, Australia taxes each company in a Continue reading »
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Judith Crispin. Anzac day, the Armenian Genocide and destruction of cultural heritage in the Caucasus.
“Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Best we forget – the Frontier War and the Maori Wars.
See below post I made on this subject in October 2013. John Menadue Repost. The drumbeat grows louder. In the lead-up to the centenary of Gallipoli in 2015 the military drums are growing louder. We are expected to cheer it all. In the process we will be encouraged to engage in a lot of mindless Continue reading »
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Frank Brennan SJ. Still seeking a way of stopping the boats decently
This is part of the Gasson Lecture which I delivered at Boston College today: I return to Australia accepting that my political leaders will always maintain a commitment to stopping the boats, no matter what political party they represent; but I return insisting that there is a need for international co-operation to determine how decently Continue reading »
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Alex Wodak. The toxic combination of illicit drugs and politics: Australia confronts ice
John Ehrlichman, the Watergate conspirator, claimed to have come up with the idea of waging a war on drugs while he was a member of President Nixon’s ‘Committee for the Re-Election of the President’, wonderfully referred to as ‘CREEP’. The aim, Ehrlichman told Nixon, was to ensure that the elderly wealthy white voters who Continue reading »
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Government White Paper on Energy – the good, the bad and the ugly.
In the Australian Financial Review on 15 April, Ross Garnaut comments about the Abbott Government’s Energy White Paper. He says that by failing to take global warming seriously, the White Paper discourages solar power, encourages doomed coal investment, hobbles the RET and misses the chance to raise petrol taxes. John Menadue. See link to article Continue reading »
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John Tulloh. An inconvenient centenary Turkey prefers to ignore.
The Gallipoli battle aside, you can be sure that Turkey will not be commemorating the centenary of another major event in its history this month. A few hours before Australian, New Zealand and other allied forces landed at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915, what has become widely known as the Armenian genocide got Continue reading »
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Paul Komesaroff, Alphonso Lingis, Modjtaba Sadria. Julie Bishop can reach out to Iran now that confrontation has failed.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s visit to Tehran this week presents a rare opportunity for Australia to take the lead in global diplomacy. The publicly stated goal of the trip has been limited to the dubious intention of convincing the Rouhani government to allow Iranian nationals seeking asylum in Australia to return without fear of victimisation. Continue reading »
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Marilyn Lake. Fracturing the nation’s soul.
You might be interested in this repost. John Menadue. During World War 1 Australia lost its way. Its enmeshment in the imperial European war fractured the nation’s soul. World War I had consequences for individuals as well as nations. HB Higgins’s life would be deeply affected by the British decision to invade the Ottoman Continue reading »
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Frank Brennan. Cunneen v ICAC
Margaret Cunneen is a high profile public prosecutor. The NSW Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC) wanted to investigate her for corrupt behaviour, but not in relation to anything she did as a prosecutor. They wanted to investigate her behaviour as a private citizen, she being the mother of a boy whose girlfriend was involved in Continue reading »
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Andrew Elek. Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is miles ahead of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is a far more economically efficient option than the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) for integrating Asian economies to each other and to the rest of the world. While the United States is attempting to thwart China’s AIIB by completing the TPP, it is likely to result in net costs to Continue reading »
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Ian Webster. On thin “ICE”.
“If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start at the bottom of the pyramid: the addict in the street, and stop tilting quixotically for the higher-ups so-called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Murdoch is about ideology not tax dodging.
There was an interesting exchange between Julian Clarke, News Corp’s local boss, and Senator Christine Milne in the Senate Economic References Committee into Tax Avoidance. Julian Clarke spelt it out very clearly that Rupert Murdoch was running The Australian for ideological purposes. The exchange was as follows: “With due respect, I don’t expect you to Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Tax dodging may be legal, but is it fair and ethical.
Senior executives of companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple have all admitted to the Senate in the last week that they have avoided billions of dollars of Australian tax by a range of devices such as transfer pricing and earnings made in Australia being diverted to Singapore which has a lower tax rate. In every Continue reading »
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Harold Levien. The Coalition Government’s Bankrupt Economic Policies:
The Coalition Government seems to have been fighting the next elections since the day it won Office and using the same misleading tactics. Throughout the last election campaign, and for months before, the Coalition bitterly attacked both Labor’s budget deficit and government debt. Yet when the Labor Government left Office Parliamentary Library statistics show government Continue reading »
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Alcohol is a bigger problem than ice.
In the Herald Sun on April 8, 2015, Jeff Kennett, the former premier of Victoria, said that it was time to stop the promotion of alcohol. See link to article below. In this article he says ‘If it is good enough to ban the advertising of tobacco products, if it is good enough to make Continue reading »
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Fiona McGaughey, Mary Anne Kenny. Lashing out at the UN is not the act of a good international citizen.
The United Nations has again criticised Australia’s human rights record in relation to its treatment of asylum seekers and refugees. A report by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Méndez, has raised a number of concerns. These include: Australia’s policy in relation to the detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island breaches Articles 1 Continue reading »
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