Public Policy
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Nationals and the Voice: How to derail policy you oppose but the public doesn’t?
One of the most difficult tasks facing politicians – particularly conservative ones – is how to derail a policy which is popular and principled but which you oppose. Continue reading »
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Environment: COP’s over but climate change is like ‘ol man river …’,
‘… he just keeps rolling along’, destroying homes, communities, health and farming. Continue reading »
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Weekly roundup: Morrison censured, National Party opposes the Voice
Morrison censured, the National Party opposes the Voice, and democracy is in retreat in our region. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts, and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy. Continue reading »
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Environment: How to feed 10 billion and predict the next Covid
The global population is now 8 billion but the vast majority make little contribution to global warming. The search is on for ways to feed 10 billion sustainably in 2050. Continue reading »
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Weekly Roundup: is the Reserve Bank overshooting on inflation?
A former Liberal leader calls for higher taxation; Is the Reserve Bank overshooting in its war on inflation; and wasn’t Medicare meant to be universal? Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy. Continue reading »
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Noel Pearson and the job guarantee
Indigenous leader Noel Pearson’s third Boyer lecture, first broadcast on ABC on 18 November 2022, is worthy of much praise. It is titled ‘The first game changer: a job guarantee for the bottom million’. Continue reading »
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Environment: 1.5 degrees is still alive (just)
The bad news: more evidence of humanity’s callous disregard for the environment and our own future. The good news: sex in the moonlight is not yet dead. Continue reading »
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How to fix the broken system of public policy making
Last week the NSW Legislative Council introduced a standing order requiring that all government bills include a Statement of Public Interest (SPI). This is the first time in Australia that a public policy framework for interrogating bills has been given legal force. It’s a big breakthrough that other governments and parliaments should emulate. Continue reading »
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Weekly roundup: Multi-employer bargaining won’t bring industrial strife
Hard numbers on emissions are really scary; how Australia goes to war; multi-employer bargaining won’t bring industrial strife; and slavery in company supply lines. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy. Continue reading »
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Weekly roundup: Trump does poorly, Morrison takes blame for Robodebt
Will we do better at Sharm el-Sheikh than Glasgow? Australia’s feudal rental market; Trump does poorly; and Morrison takes the blame for Robodebt. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts, and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy. Continue reading »
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Environment: Greenhouse gases – same old winners, same old losers
Whitehaven Coal is selling more coal and making record profits and (apparently) helping countries reduce their emissions. Rich nations should cancel developing nations’ debt to help them cope with climate change. Continue reading »
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Weekly Roundup – If only they hadn’t kept the tax cuts…
Reflections on the federal budget; Could the Reserve Bank be replaced by an algorithm?; Peak coal just around the corner; and business lobbies fear that capitalism may replace feudalism. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy. Continue reading »
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Weekly roundup Saturday 29 October
Labor’s radical idea; How two state government undermined Australia’s capacity to speak on human rights; and Britain’s warning for other democracies. Read on for the Weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy. Continue reading »
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Environment: Rich countries export their social and environmental problems
Self-righteous rich countries export their problems to poor countries. Animal population sizes a third of what they were. Is Direct Air Capture a promising technology? Continue reading »
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Weekly roundup Saturday 22 October
We need to have a serious talk about tax; Imagine a public service that serves the public!, and a beginner’s guide to getting a Teal elected. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy. Continue reading »
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Towards a phase shift in flood management?
The call by Murray Watt, Minister for Emergency Management, for a national discussion about new development in disaster-prone areas should be welcomed. Continue reading »
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Environment: A bleak, hot future for Australia
New data confirms Australia’s vulnerability to climate change. Nitrous oxide emissions set to become a climate battleground. Answers to where I’ve been for the last month. Continue reading »
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Weekly roundup: IMF spreads gloom, Reserve Bank observes imminent demise of capitalism
Weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy. Continue reading »
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Features of a sustainable society
A sustainable society would have the following 12 features. It is ‘better, not bigger’ and should receive a high score on the Sustainable Development Index and Genuine Progress Indicator. Continue reading »
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Renewable energy is not enough – we must reduce consumption too
Alan Pears explains why we must stop ignoring energy efficiency gains instead of just focusing on switching to renewables. Is Australia’s focus on “clean energy” part of our economic and climate problems? Continue reading »
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Medicare reform must not just be about more money to do the same things the same way
Medicare must now focus on how health services are delivered. When it was established in 1974, Medicare funded the way health services were delivered at that time. That delivery system has not been changed much at all since then. After fifty years the way we deliver health care needs substantial reform and updating. Our health Continue reading »
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From marriage equality to the Voice
Discussion about the Voice often stresses the difficulty of passing Constitutional referenda, which require a majority of voters in a majority of states. The last successful change came in 1977 to ensure that a retiring Senator would be replaced by someone from the same party. Continue reading »
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Violet Coco is right: The climate hyperthreat demands emergency action
Australia has achieved international infamy through the decision to jail climate protestor, Violet Coco, for 15 months. Allow me to add evidence to support her stance that emergency action is demanded of us to avert the climate crisis. Continue reading »
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55% of Teal voters were Labor and Green supporters
While we worry about social media misinformation we overlook that one of the main sources of misinformation about politics is mainstream media. Continue reading »
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Australia excoriated over refusal to allow UN torture committee to visit places of detention
Australia is a party to the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Pursuant to the terms of the Convention, the UN has established a Sub-Committee for the Prevention of Torture (SPT). The Committee’s mandate is to prevent torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. It pursues that mandate through visits to member states. Member states are obliged Continue reading »
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We are overdue for a hybrid Aboriginal-Western map of juvenile justice
Highly troubled Aboriginal youth offenders are rolling down the road of Western justice at everyone’s peril and which Four Corners has exposed as perpetrating great harm. It’s about time we followed a different hybrid Aboriginal-Western map – one that is relevant, properly funded, and respected. Continue reading »
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Modular nuclear reactors: snake oil from the nuclear lobby propagandists
Nuclear lobby propaganda in favour of small modular reactors ignores Australia’s terrible nuclear history and plays fast and loose with the facts. Many forensic enquiries have already recommended against the introduction of nuclear power into Australia on the grounds of proliferation risk, cost, safety, and the environment. Continue reading »
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Four myths about Pandemic preparedness
We are assured by the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, the G20, and their friends that pandemics pose an existential threat to our survival and well-being. Pandemics are becoming more common, and if we don’t move urgently we will have ourselves to blame for more mass death of the ‘next pandemic.’ Continue reading »
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UK chaos: Hong Kong emigrants duped by false prospectus
In 1711, Alexander Pope, the English poet, wrote that “fools rush in where angels fear to tread”. Continue reading »
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UNESCO calls on Australia to commit to 1.5°C limit to protect the Great Barrier Reef
UNESCO has once again raised the alarm about the state of the World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef. Continue reading »
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Overseas students visa criteria – a new approach needed
One of the most important issues the Migration System Review must address is the overseas student visa system and associated pathways to permanent residence. Continue reading »
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Can we build on Whitlam’s legacy and place patient need at the heart of Medicare?
Our health services should be first and foremost about patients, and a revamped Medicare should be focused primarily on patient need, not on the antiquated view of some providers as to how a 21st century health system should be. Continue reading »
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The Guardian could help Assange by retracting all the lies it published about him
The Guardian has joined The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País in signing a letter from the five papers which collaborated with WikiLeaks twelve years ago in the publication of the Chelsea Manning leaks to call for the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange. This sudden jolt of mainstream Continue reading »
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Whitlam was elected fifty years ago today: Medibank/Medicare was conceived five years before that
On a bleak Melbourne midwinter night in 1967, Medicare was conceived. The election of the Whitlam Government on December 2 ,1972 gave impetus to what was to come. Medicare was finally launched in 1975. Continue reading »
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The Voice of an obstructionist, willfully ignorant National Party
The National Party’s decision to campaign against a voice to parliament is destructive and wilfully ignorant. Contributors to this decision ignore a history of Indigenous punishment and powerlessness. They criticise a referendum process which has not been published but which they pretend to know. They attribute to the Uluru Statement goals which it does not have. Continue reading »
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Yes, the Chinese protests are about politics and freedom. But they are also about what COVID might do if it is let loose now
While a lot of attention has been given to the unprecedented protests in China about the “dynamic zero COVID” policy, not much has been written about the wider political context, and particularly the young people leading the protests. Continue reading »
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Should WeChat be banned? Australian users say no
Banning WeChat/Weixin would mean cutting Australian users’ “lifeline” to China; it would risk further alienating an already alienated community amid the anti-Chinese sentiment in Australia. For non-Chinese WeChat users in Australia, banning the platform would deprive them of individual choice and agency. Continue reading »
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Disability is not a hobby: our mutual obligation to society is paid richly and in full
Why shouldn’t my participation in the development of (disability) social policy through academic research and writing – voluntary or not – be viewed as a substantial contribution to Australia? I do not understand “mutual obligation” in the individualistic way that government and neo-liberal social policy interprets it. Continue reading »
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The BBC’s abysmal coverage of Qatar’s World Cup
The British state-owned broadcaster’s refusal to show Qatar’s Opening Ceremony reeks of hypocrisy. Continue reading »
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US officials concern about world press freedoms while assaulting them
I will never get used to living in a world where our rulers will openly imprison a journalist for telling the truth and then self-righteously pontificate about the need to stop authoritarian regimes from persecuting journalists. Continue reading »
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A matter of conscience: what to do about the national medical regulator
The national medical regulator, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), is responsible for the oversight of fifteen different groups of health professionals, covering a total of 825,700 practitioners. AHPRA has become a huge and well-resourced bureaucracy which now has the capacity to ‘pull the wool over the eyes’ of distant and poorly-briefed health ministers Continue reading »
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AP editor said she “can’t imagine” a US intelligence official being wrong!!!
The Associated Press journalist who reported a US intelligence official’s false claim that Russia had launched missiles at Poland last week has been fired. Continue reading »
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The case of the wolf and the sheep in Hong Kong
Recently, a correspondent on Australia’s national broadcaster casually referred to Hong Kong as a “police state”. This ignores that the courts operate under common law rules. The role of the judge is key. They are not mouth-pieces of the central government. In HKSAR v Lai Man-ling & 4 Others, Hong Kong’s image overseas has been Continue reading »
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Your Medicare card: the Whitlam government’s contemporary legacy
On December 2 we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the election of the Whitlam government. Health reform was one of that government’s signature achievements. It appears that the stars are now aligning to build on Whitlam’s remarkable legacy and create a new Medicare fit for purpose in the 21st century. Continue reading »
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