Public Policy
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The AFP clearing-house: more political than useful
Some of the AFP commissioners have entrenched the AFP’s reputation as the most politicised force in the country. When one considers the NSW and Victoria Police, that is really saying something…. Continue reading »
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More talk, no action: Australia’s approach to trade rules restraining vaccine production
Papua New Guinea’s COVID-19 outbreak is a portent of the “catastrophic moral failure” the head of the World Health Organization warned of in January due to poor countries being pushed to the back of the vaccine queue…. Continue reading »
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Do we still burn witches? The petition to pardon Kathleen Folbigg over the death of her four children
The recent petition to the NSW Governor to pardon Mrs Kathleen Folbigg led me to read the 557 page report of the inquiry conducted into her case in 2019. What I read made me feel uncomfortable and raises a number of questions for the legal system and for all of us who are subject to… Continue reading »
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Vaccine misinformation on social media is out of control, but we should expect better from the mainstream media
I am surely not alone in being angry that The Australian would accept Clive Palmer’s money and let him publish dangerous, inaccurate claims about our Covid vaccination program…. Continue reading »
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How effective are the Covid vaccines for our global immunisation efforts?
While there are more than 200 vaccines against Covid-19 being developed, there are now seven vaccines being widely distributed and used around the world. Do they all work? That depends on how you judge “works” often described in terms of “efficacy” in achieving desired goals…. Continue reading »
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The alarming unintended consequences of the Online Safety Bill
The Online Safety Bill promises to improve and promote the online safety of Australians. But not for all Australians. The broad-brush approach of the bill goes far beyond what is necessary to achieve its objective, and the Government has ignored community concerns over its many shortcomings…. Continue reading »
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Developing a systems approach to enable patient navigation: A path to achieving patient empowerment?
The CSIRO Future of Health Report cites the importance of patient-centred healthcare but the current state is that the Australian healthcare system is cited both nationally and globally as too complex to navigate. Finding the consumer in the current system is likened to a game of Where’s Wally. In the 1990s, patient activism in HIV/AIDS… Continue reading »
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The Quad: an unlikely friendship with unfriendly motives
Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor Peter Hartcher has told us that a historic friendship meeting between Japan, the US, Australia and India – the Quad, has begun. However, it’s not particularly friendly, or historic…. Continue reading »
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Sunday environmental round up, 21 March 2021
Last chance to have a say on the review of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. Increasing temperatures are changing the climate-defining currents of the Atlantic Ocean. Forests being lost to provide wood to burn for electricity and land for agriculture. Hotchpotch of rules govern single-use plastics across Australia…. Continue reading »
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Vaccine Diplomacy Is Paying Off for China
Beijing Hasn’t Won the Soft-Power Stakes, but It Has an Early Lead…. Continue reading »
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Orwellian media manipulation: PM’s answer to ‘Dorothy Dixer’ published before he uttered the words
Look over there, mate. Should we really ignore a rape allegation against the first law officer of the nation because Labor also has skeletons in its closet?… Continue reading »
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Police drug busts divert our attention from policy failure
Harm reduction is used in many policy areas and found to be generally effective, safe, cost-effective and well accepted. But when pragmatic harm reduction is applied to psychoactive drugs, it is often fiercely resisted by those preferring prohibition. The war on drugs provides media with attractive eye candy in the form of mounds of recently… Continue reading »
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It took an accounting book to teach me the importance of Indigenous peoples’ connection to ‘Country’
It is said that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity came to him as he was leisurely riding a bike. Christopher Stone’s inspiration to write a potentially world-changing paper came to him as a result of a flippant question he posed to a law class he was teaching in 1972: Should trees have rights? Both changed the… Continue reading »
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Truth and Treaties: the ongoing legacy of the Uluru statement
The 27th of October 2017 was the most shameful day in Malcolm Turnbull’s tenure as Australia’s Prime Minister. It was the moment when he peremptorily rejected the Uluru Statement which had been addressed to the people of Australia five months earlier. He declared that the projected voice to parliament would not be ‘either desirable or… Continue reading »
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Canberra: the nation’s capital in progress
One gets used to people suggesting that the whole idea of Canberra was a terrible mistake. A waste of good grazing country. A folly, an expensive indulgence, which ultimately and inevitably produced self-reproducing bureaucrats and a governing class out of touch with the lot of ordinary Australians. Perhaps they are right…. Continue reading »
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Beyond apocalypse fatigue
We can have economic growth without wrecking the planet, says economist Per Espen Stoknes…. Continue reading »
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Ignorance and Prejudice on China is now entrenched in Australian media – Part 2
With a mainstream media climate like this on China and dissenting voices being discouraged, it is hard to see any early prospect of easing tensions. The Australian people have been badly let down on China by our policy elites…. Continue reading »
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QUAD: A public relations exercise to disguise Big Pharma’s obstruction and to combat Chinese vaccine successes
QUAD (US, Japan, India and Australia) was regarded as a strategic bloc to contain China. However, the recent virtual meeting between President Biden and Prime Ministers Suga, Modhi and Morrison ,whilst highlighting the provision vaccines to the region was really about curbing Chinese vaccine successes- an expression of soft power…. Continue reading »
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The long Chinese march into Indonesia with vaccines
Chinese officials in Australia rarely miss an opportunity to chill relations by turning down the thermostat on our democratic values and way of seeing the world. Meanwhile, the Middle Kingdom’s men in Jakarta are playing a long and warming game.So far about four million have had their first vaccine shot and around 1.5 million needle… Continue reading »
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The powerful national upside of net zero emissions
Major countries and the private sector are embracing net zero as the growth opportunity of the future. With Australia increasingly isolated diplomatically and economically, Morrison is feeling the pressure. … Continue reading »
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‘Ignorance and prejudice on China are now entrenched in Australian media’. Part 1
Ignorance and prejudice on China are now entrenched in Australia, fed by media repetition of false narratives; possibly encouraged by US and UK origin foreign influences; and enabled by stubborn and inept Australian political leadership…. Continue reading »
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Sunday environmental round up.
Threats to human existence – not what you might expect. The lightly tapped potential of energy efficiency (turning off your computer camera helps) and the heavily exploited pangolins. Cormann’s Pauline conversion to climate action on the plane to Paris undermined by sceptics…. Continue reading »
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How to tackle the dangerous epidemic of fake news and conspiracy theories.
The Macquarie Dictionary recently declared ‘fake news’ the word of the decade. While the epidemic of fake news and conspiracy theories shows no signs of abating, the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communications has made a significant contribution to the fight. … Continue reading »
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Exporting hydrogen the last throw of the dice for brown coal
Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor’s backing for the Victorian-based hydrogen export plan, which he described as a “significant project”, defies financial credibility…. Continue reading »
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The biggest step yet in Truth Telling about Australia’s history since colonisation
Focus has rightly been on the very serious issues of sexual violence that have been raised regarding the Federal Parliament and historically with the Attorney-General, Christian Porter. However, there is already a risk that the profound importance of what has been announced in Victoria this week by the First Peoples Assembly and the State government –… Continue reading »
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Media in the Asian Century
They come at it from different angles but Chinese deputy ambassador Wang Xining and Peta Credlin, former prime ministerial staffer of Tony Abbott and current Sky News After Dark presenter, are agreed on one thing: the Australian media have gone to the dogs…. Continue reading »
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Sexual violence an issue of ideology? The Australian then stopped digging
The recovered memory line took hold after being given an outing in Crikey, although coverage showed some fundamental misunderstandings. Meanwhile the Australian Financial Review lamented the fact that Scott Morrison wasn’t receiving the glory of the vaccine rollout. Just as well, actually, because it is occurring at a snail’s pace. … Continue reading »
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Climate war’s Catch 22: We need targets before we can deploy technology
There is a terrible circularity about saying we will only commit to a target when we know the technological path to reaching it. This is because the development of new technologies and their actual deployment, depends on governments having goals (aka targets) and signalling their firm intention to stick to them…. Continue reading »
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Rising house prices putting at risk the economic stability of the nation
Housing policies are contributing to stagnating economic growth and putting at risk the economic stability of the nation. … Continue reading »
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Abbott and Morrison did not stop the boats, but the media collaborated in the spin
Our corporate media will not acknowledge that Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison did not stop the boats. Despite clear evidence, the Canberra Press Gallery fell for the spin. With a tame media and cooperation by the military, the big lie was repeated time and time again and became accepted as fact. This was all before… Continue reading »
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