Public Policy
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PETER SAINSBURY. Macron tests his entente cordiale with Turnbull on climate change.
France’s President Macron is taking the opportunity while briefly in Australia to bully, embarrass, shame, blackmail, whatever, Prime Minister Turnbull into taking meaningful action on climate change and become the real leader the Australian people and Macron himself are looking for. He’s got a hard task ahead of him but we need whatever help we Continue reading »
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CHRIS BONNOR. Gonski’s second coming
When they update the history of Australian school education the name Gonski, and the names of those he has worked with, deserve to be up there in lights. He’s done it again: an exhaustive investigation into what we need to do to improve school education. Will it all come to pass this time around? What Continue reading »
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JAMES FERNYHOUGH. Revealed: Australia’s richest professionals and the suburbs they live in.
If you’re a surgeon living in one of the opulent suburbs on the southern shore of Sydney Harbour, then congratulations: you are a member of the highest paid group in Australia. This will come as no surprise for people who have experienced fee gouging by surgeons and anaeshetists Continue reading »
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Public servant to the First Australians.
Funeral Homily for Barrie Dexter CBE. Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, 26 April 2018. Listen on SoundCloud [commencing at 2:00] In Australia, there have been many children of the manse who have gone on to be great contributors to Australian society, regardless of their own religious faith or practice. Barrie Dexter was one of Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. The international press at Panmunjom for the KIm-Moon Summit were much more impressed than the Australian press.
I was struck by the response, amazement and obvious excitement of the international press at Panmunjom, near Seoul last Friday. See link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw8mROuQs44 But the media interest in Australia seemed remarkably low key and almost disinterested. At least our media was not as sulky and cynical as the Japanese media, Continue reading »
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GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND …
The ABC’s Spirit of Things has woven together several ANZAC stories, including the revelation that the puggaree on our slouch hat is a variant of the Sikhs’ turban. The program starts with presenter Noel Debien interviewing Marist Brother John Lutterll, who has written a biography of an Australian who served in the Gallipoli campaign as Continue reading »
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Media Watch. How News Corp and The Australian mislead us on climate change.
Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching The Australian and Cairns Post highlight a dissenting view on whether global warming is the cause of mass coral bleaching. Continue reading »
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Anzacs fought and died at Gallipoli for Britain, not Australia
Conservatives and militarists want us to cling to a disastrous imperial war. Such a war could never be ‘nation building’ as the apologists for empire suggest. It was quite the reverse.The Anzac myth makers encourage us to focus on how our soldiers fought in order to avoid the central issue of why we fought. We Continue reading »
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SUE WAREHAM. Honouring the war dead means learning from the horror.
This Anzac Day, as on every other, we will hear of the horrors of war to which many of our service people have been exposed, horrors that certainly call into question any notion of us assuming the title “homo sapiens”. We will “honour the fallen” and utter the hallowed words “lest we forget”, as we Continue reading »
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JULIE P SMITH. Live sheep exports are not worth the moral cost.
Growing up near Midland on the outskirts of Perth during the 1960s and 1970s, I endured the weekly stench from the local abattoir. It was the price we paid to get meat to population centres. My first job was in the local meat processing plant, working with people described as “salt of the earth, working Continue reading »
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IAN DUNLOP. Climate Change: The fiduciary responsibility of politicians & bureaucrats. Part 2 of 2.
“Fiduciary: a person to whom power is entrusted for the benefit of another” “Power is reposed in members of Parliament by the public for exercise in the interests of the public and not primarily for the interests of members or the parties to which they belong. The cry ‘whatever it takes’ is not consistent with Continue reading »
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ALEX WODAK. Why is the drug policy debate in Australia stuck?
Drug policy in Australia has been debated for decades but doesn’t seem to be getting close to resolution. However some progress is being made. Examples include the Victorian government’s decision in 2017 to establish a Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Melbourne and the ACT government’s in principle decision in 2017 to allow a trial of pill Continue reading »
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RICHARD FLANAGAN. Freedom means Australia facing up to the truth of its past. (Part 2 of 2)
We should, of course, question these things more. We could ask why – if we were actually genuine about remembering patriots who have died for this country – why would we not first spend $100m on a museum honouring the at least 65,000 estimated Indigenous dead who so tragically lost their lives defending their country Continue reading »
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IAN DUNLOP. Climate Change: The fiduciary responsibility of politicians & bureaucrats. Part 1.
“Fiduciary: a person to whom power is entrusted for the benefit of another” “Power is reposed in members of Parliament by the public for exercise in the interests of the public and not primarily for the interests of members or the parties to which they belong. The cry ‘whatever it takes’ is not consistent with Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. The banking royal commission confirms our worst fears about many business executives and crony capitalism
There was a revealing heading in an article a while back by Ross Gittins, the economics editor of the SMH, ‘Faster growth demands better chief executives’. He concluded his article by pointing to the need for business leadership to seize the economic opportunities -‘ Our overpaid and underperforming chief executive officers are getting (it) wrong’. Continue reading »
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Girt by Sea – Australia, the refugees and the politics of fear.
Some at least of the South Africans who have come here, and no doubt most of those Dutton is promoting, want to emigrate to get away from blacks. Continue reading »
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ROBERT MANNE. How we came to be so cruel to asylum seekers.
This is an edited extract of a talk delivered to the Integrity 20 Conference at Griffith University on October 25, 2016 If you had been told 30 years ago that Australia would create the least asylum seeker friendly institutional arrangements in the world, you would not have been believed. Continue reading »
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EMMA CARMODY. Lack of transparency in irrigation efficiency programs
An article by Kerry Brewster in the Guardian this week reports on a significant fraud investigation by Queensland’s Major and Organised Crime Squad (Rural) into subsidies granted to a landholder under the Healthy Headwaters Water Use Efficiency Program. Continue reading »
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DAVID BLOWERS. Australia’s slow march towards a National Energy Guarantee is gathering pace.
The finer policy details of the of the proposed National Energy Guarantee (NEG) have begun to leak onto newspaper front pages and websites, ahead of Friday’s crucial meeting of federal and state energy ministers. The good news is that the leaked information suggests solid progress has been made over the past couple of months on Continue reading »
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ROBERT FISK. The search for truth in the rubble of Douma – and one doctor’s doubts over the chemical attack
This is the story of a town called Douma, a ravaged, stinking place of smashed apartment blocks – and of an underground clinic whose images of suffering allowed three of the Western world’s most powerful nations to bomb Syria last week. There’s even a friendly doctor in a green coat who, when I track him down Continue reading »
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PATRICIA EDGAR. The Death of Australian Children’s Broadcast Television Programming.
How many times must it be said that if we do not take action Australian children’s programming will disappear from our screens? Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. The Coalition and media myth about stopping the boats.
With the appointment of Angus Campbell as the new Chief of the General Staff we have witnessed again the repetition of the nonsense that the Coalition and Operation Sovereign Borders stopped the boats. As if the media farce over a Chinese military base in Vanuatu was not enough the media has climbed aboard again to Continue reading »
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STEPHEN LEEDER. Home (not so) sweet home
Medical homes, where you as a patient are known personally by name and history and where a team of health professionals, generally led by a general practitioner, arrange and provide your care, have not taken off as expected. Why? Continue reading »
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PETER MARTIN. It’s time for sweetest tax of them all.
Never before has a tax been such an instant success. I am talking about what happened in Britain last Friday. That’s when new so-called sugar tax sprung into life, with much of its work already done. The whole idea was to cut the consumption of sugar, something we have just as much need to do Continue reading »
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TIM SOUTPHOMMASANE. Australian business and other organisations persistently fall short on cultural diversity.
Australia is widely celebrated as a multicultural triumph, but any such success remains incomplete. There remains significant under-representation of cultural diversity in the senior leadership of Australian organisations. Our society does not yet appear to be making the most of its diverse talents. Continue reading »
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LEANNE WELLS. Private health care in Australia: health policy’s wicked problem.
The anguish expressed by many of the 1,200 respondents to the Consumers Health Forum’s Out of Pocket Pain survey highlights the widening gulf between the cost of modern medical care and the struggle of many Australians to pay for that care. Continue reading »
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NICOLE GURRAN and CATHERINE GILBERT. England expects 40% of new housing developments will be affordable, why can’t Australia?
Australia has record levels of supply of new properties but despite various government interventions, housing still remains unaffordable for many. Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. Brendan Nelson and the War Memorial – what about the Frontier Wars?
On Friday the Director of the Australian War Memorial Brendan Nelson announced plans for a massive redevelopment of the institution which would cost up to $500 million.He hoped to receive the required funding in next year’s budget and he is likely to be given what- ever he asks for having already received strong support from Continue reading »
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IMOGEN ZETHOVEN. Trashing our Global Ocean Leadership.
Australia was once a global leader in marine protection. Today, we have fallen spectacularly from grace. The Commonwealth marine park plans tabled recently in federal Parliament represent a triumph for the oil, gas and fishing industries and a massive backward step for our threatened oceans. Continue reading »
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CAROLYN PETTIGREW. Tourism and NSW National Parks – looking to the future. Part 2 of 2
The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) is facing a future crisis that perhaps is not fully recognised by supporters of nature conservation. Visitation is skyrocketing http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/research/NSWparkspopularity.htm which on the face of it is wonderful. More and more people are beginning, potentially at least, to value our national parks and enjoy the experience of Continue reading »