Public Policy
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Family First or Day First?
The name of Bob Day, the now former senator, was never one to conjure with. If he was noted at all, it was usually as the Sancho Panza to David Leyonhjelm’s Don Quixote – a loyal and reliable hanger-on, grounded where his leader tended at times to eccentricity. Leyonhjelm, the Liberal Democrat Libertarian, could Continue reading »
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TONY KEVIN. Is Hillary the Russia-hater a safer American choice?
The final days of the US presidential campaign – a disgraceful saga at best – have been marked by a frantic race to the bottom by both sides. On the Trump side: an anonymous but skilfully made video is doing the social media rounds, alleging improper links between Hillary Clinton’s long-standing personal assistant and Continue reading »
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PETER CHRISTOFF. The Paris climate deal has come into force – what next for Australia?
The Paris climate agreement comes into legal force today, just 11 months after it was concluded and 30 days after it met its ratification threshold of 55 parties accounting for at least 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions. By contrast, the Kyoto Protocol, which this treaty now replaces, took more than 8 years to Continue reading »
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BRUCE ARNOLD. Testing the body politic? Lobbying by the pathology industry.
Pathology testing in Australia is big business, getting bigger as the population ages and we rely on high-tech medicine for intractable ailments. Advocacy by commercial interests and government pathology service providers shapes public policy. It potentially affects elections rather than just the national budget. It matters. It is inadequately recognised and less understood. What Continue reading »
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MACK WILLIAMS. The real shipping choke point for Australia – Sibutu Channel
Neither the Australian government nor the Australian media have informed us about the critical nature of the Sibutu Channel. As mentioned in this blog some time ago. the active political and media discussion in Australia about the South China Sea has continued to ignore the fact that the most critical choke point for Australia’s huge Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. White Man’s Media – A weekly column. This week: The US elections.
In this blog I propose to run a regular Wednesday column White Man’s Media focusing on the derivative nature of our media and its failure to reflect our own region .. I have in mind pieces of 100 -400 words. The longer pieces might focus on some of our complacent foreign affairs ‘ experts’ Continue reading »
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PHIL GLENDENNING. We Need To End Australia’s Refugee Shame. Now
‘Human beings are never a means to an end. They are an end in themselves’. Emmanuel Kant’s words in the seventeenth century echo down the centuries in stark contrast to Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers and refugees on Nauru and Manus Island. The recent Four Corners program, The Forgotten Children gave Australians an all Continue reading »
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FRANK BRENNAN SJ. Turnbull’s Policy Challenge Wrapped in Turnbull Cant
On Sunday morning, Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Dutton held a joint press conference to announce new legislation in relation to the asylum seekers who have been held on Nauru and Manus Island now for over three years. In this policy area, the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the prospect of a Continue reading »
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JOHN NIEUWENHUYSEN. How Australian Political Leaders Can Abandon and Mistreat Asylum Seekers
Living as a White youth in apartheid South Africa in the 1950’s, I often wondered how it was possible for a small minority to dominate and oppress the large majority of the population who were denied the vote because of the colour of their skins. Much of the answer lay, I believed, in the Continue reading »
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JENNIFER DOGGETT. Seven Key messages in Health.
This week the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released its Health expenditure Australia 2014–15 report. This document contains a wealth of information about the way in which we allocate resources across our health system. There are many interesting stories in this data which can help us understand how our health system works and what Continue reading »
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ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS. Compulsory Third Party insurance in NSW- a Bad System about to Get Worse?
CTP, Compulsory Third Party insurance (Green Slips) in NSW are looking increasingly like a scam. In theory, if you are injured in a motor vehicle accident that is not your fault, all ‘reasonable and necessary’ treatment is currently paid for by your insurer. People might assume this means good, standard medical practice. This is 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. In 1992 we introduced a system Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Our Working Holiday Programs have lost their way.
I have been an advocate of Working Holiday Programs (WHPs) for over 40 years. These programs were an excellent opportunity to ‘foster closer ties and cultural exchanges between Australia and partner countries with particular emphasis on young adults.’. The programs were reciprocal. But the nature of WHP’s have changed dramatically in recent years. In Continue reading »
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Concealing crimes in Manus and Nauru.
Those eminent jurists Malcolm Turnbull and George Brandis are normally very careful with the words they use; indeed, Brandis did his best to bore a senate committee rigid as he spent many minutes explaining exactly what he meant by the term “consult.” But in spite of their learning and erudition, our latter day Perry Continue reading »
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SUSAN RYAN. Older women – the new homeless.
It is more than timely that focus on increasing inequality in Australia include recognition of a massive contributing factor: the lack of affordable housing, especially for older women. Several groups have been identified as severely disadvantaged by the lack of affordable housing: unemployed young people, single parent families, and low paid workers who need Continue reading »
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STEPHEN DUCKETT. Blood money: pathology cuts can reduce spending without compromising health
In the coming weeks I will be posting articles on the high costs and corporate nature of pathology in Australian. The following article by Stephen Duckett in The Conversation, even though posted in February this year, helps set the scene. John Menadue The Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) set the cat among the pathology Continue reading »
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PAUL DALEY. Why Australia Day and Anzac Day helped create a national ‘cult of forgetfulness’.
Australia Day and Anzac Day are months away. But I’m getting in early. It’s beyond time Australia cast off these sturdy cultural crutches that both, somehow, define national birth, so we can discover who and what we truly are. Australia Day, celebrating British invasion in 1788, and Anzac Day, marking Australia’s involvement in the failed Continue reading »
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HAMISH McDONALD. What really happens at Pine Gap.
Hamish McDonald wrote this article in the Saturday Paper on October 1, 2016. The paper was also a tribute to Des Ball who died recently. He was the best informed and independent commentator on Pine Gap. The following is an introduction to Hamish McDonald’s article with a full link at the end to the Saturday Continue reading »
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FRANK BRENNAN SJ. Malcolm Turnbull’s defence of Nauru.
This is Frank Brennan’s most recent post of Facebook. When interviewed by Fran Kelly this morning, Malcolm Turnbull suggested it was a simple binary choice: strong border protection including the cruel, endless warehousing of proven refugees (including children) on places like Nauru OR deaths at sea. It’s not a simple binary choice, and he knows Continue reading »
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JAMES ROSE. From Tampa to now: how reporting on asylum seekers has been a triumph of spin over substance.
Spin designed to dehumanise and demonise asylum seekers. This year marks the 15th anniversary of one of the most divisive national election campaigns in Australia’s recent history: the Tampa affair. Coming just weeks after the September 11 terror attacks, the pitched battle between John Howard and Kim Beazley drew heavily on fear and panic. Continue reading »
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Catholic Bishops – It Is Time To Bring Them Here
Statement in support of offshore detainees By Archbishop Denis Hart, President, Australian Catholic Bishops Conference One of the greatest crises of our day is the plight of people forced from their own countries by war, persecution or poverty and forced to live without a home, without safety and often separated from their families. Pope Francis Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Privatisation and the hobbling of Newcastle Port.
The downsides of privatisation are becoming clearer. A recent example, which has received little publicity in the mainstream media is the hobbling of Newcastle Port for the benefit of Port Botany. In this blog on 5 September 2016 ‘JOHN AUSTEN. How port privatisation will hobble Newcastle’ John Austen pointed out that in the sales Continue reading »
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LYNDSAY CONNORS. Cometh the hour, cometh the man?
Is the Hon. Simon Birmingham, Federal Minister for Education and Training, the man? In his recent appearance on the ABC’s Q&A, Senator Birmingham announced that there are private schools that are ‘over-funded’. This came as the Turnbull Government is under pressure to commit the Commonwealth to meeting its share of the funding required to Continue reading »
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JIM COOMBS. “CIRCLE” Bail Hostels
One of the common reasons for incarceration of Aboriginal children is failure to appear at court and breach of bail conditions (often a residence condition). One way to overcome this is to establish “bail hostels” like those in the U.K. Too often ignorance of the need to comply, losing court papers, illiteracy, and homelessness Continue reading »
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ROBERT MANNE. Oh, No Jim, No Jim, No Jim, No
As readers of John Menadue’s blog might be aware, I believe that Australia ought, on the one hand, to find homes in the next months for the 1,700 or so refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru and Continue reading »
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TONY SMITH. The US presidential election: no Australian perspective
We can’t get enough of Donald and Hilary! John Tulloh correctly identifies US influence in the priorities of Australian media. Half a century ago Henry Mayer argued that while media might not influence how we think, they do decide what we think about. This was before television was firmly established, before big conglomerates destroyed diversity Continue reading »
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PETER YOUNG. Unlike Jim Molan, We must not look away from the harm we are causing.
Monday’s Q&A gave a good insight into the philosophy and principles behind Australia’s Sovereign Borders Policy as described by one of its chief architects Jim Molan. Most telling was his argument that the means of maintaining tight border control and supposedly saving lives at sea justified the ends of indefinite cruelty, suffering and mental Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Preferential treatment for private patients in public hospitals in NSW.
See below a poster from NSW Health which is being displayed in public hospitals in NSW. Readers may be interested to comment. Two things interest me. The first is that the advertisement infers that if you have private health insurance you will get superior service in a public hospital. That surely attacks the principle that Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Australia’s American Leadership Distraction
Back in the 1960s, in his book The Lucky Country (a title he meant as irony), Donald Horne noted that Australia was a lucky country despite being run by second-rate people. Considering today’s leaders across Australia, we would have to conclude that Horne’s judgement is much too generous. The reality is that it’s mostly third-rate Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Australia, the White Man’s Media and Donald Trump
This article was first posted on 29 January 2016. The situation has worsened since then! I am usually interested in politics but I am already sick and tired of the US elections and Donald Trump. And we have twelve months to go!. Forget about Indonesia, China, Japan and India. Our media does not think Continue reading »