Top 5
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Saturday’s good reading and listening for the weekend
What people in other forums are saying about public policy… Continue reading »
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Arrest of Kristo Langker represents gross misuse of resources and threat to our freedom of speech
When politicians in Australia rushed to legislate in the wake of 9/11 and the commencement of the so-called ‘war on terror’, some of us warned that such legislation and the bureaucracy it created would be abused by police. We warned that the sorts of concepts and powers that anti-terror laws spawned would find their way… Continue reading »
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Moral bankruptcy and cruelty in the treatment of the Biloela Family.
The government is hiding behind legislation as a reason for not doing anything. This is truly a morally bankrupt position as anyone who understands Immigration law knows…. Continue reading »
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Blink and the boats will restart the Government says, but that is nonsense
The Government excuses its cruelty to the Biloela family by wrongly asserting that the boats bringing asylum seekers will start again . Over the past 6-7 years, the Government has presided over the biggest labour trafficking scam and abuse of Australia’s asylum system in our history. As a result of that scam of asylum seekers… Continue reading »
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The Tiananmen Square massacre: the one sided story
If you thought we knew everything about the Tiananmen Square Massacre of June 3-4, 1989, think again. Mysteries remain. Some are so significant we need to review our ideas about what was going on in China at that time…. Continue reading »
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A family from Biloela holds a mirror to unconscionable Government behaviour
For the second time in their lives the two adults of the Murugappan family have been forced to be resilient and brave in the face of confrontation by a government intent on causing them harm…. Continue reading »
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Australia’s facile immigration policy debate
Australia’s immigration policy debates over the past 30 years have largely consisted of the usual suspects trotting out the usual lines…. Continue reading »
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Saturday’s good reading and listening for the weekend
What people in other forums are saying about public policy… Continue reading »
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We’ve got you on file: Australia’s McCarthyist moment
Some people think that McCarthyism – casting doubt, without evidence, on the loyalties of people in public life – was dead and buried with the Cold War…. Continue reading »
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Australian democracy is fading fast
Australian democracy is fading fast, with little care on the part of the Coalition and mainstream media or realisation on the part of Labor…. Continue reading »
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Government rorting is now the Australian way of doing business
Australia has moved to a deeply corrupted system of doling out consultancy contracts to mates by pure discretion, in circumstances which in the classic Morrison style are compulsively secretive, and vague in sums and contract terms…. Continue reading »
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Stalinist-style prosecutions of Witness K and Bernard Collaery
Following the Bernard Collaery and Witness K matters, occasionally there are little glimpses into the strange Stalinist world within which the Commonwealth beavers away to discredit two distinguished Australians. The Senate Estimates hearing on 29 May provided such an opportunity. … Continue reading »
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The French submarine boondoggle is Australia’s biggest defence blunder. Our tame corporate media hardly noticed.
For the first time in over five years of delay and evasion the Secretary of Defence has at last told us that the Government is looking at an alternative to the French submarine. Our corporate media has failed to hold the government to account in its scandalous handling of the $90 billion French submarine purchase…. Continue reading »
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Saturday’s good reading and listening for the weekend
What people in other forums are saying about public policy… Continue reading »
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Who just gives away billions? Is this what the Collaery case is all about?
Many of us have heard about the prosecution of Bernard Collaery on the say-so of Christian Porter. But very few know much more than that it is an almost secret trial against the former ACT Attorney-General. Unfortunately, John le Carré is no longer with us to tell this intriguing tale…. Continue reading »
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Public servants as courtiers rather than stewards
Phil Gaetjens, former Treasury official, former boss of Scott Morrison’s private office and now head of the Prime Minister’s Department is an unusual public servant who seems to have accepted that he is never going to be regarded as any sort of detached public servant independent of the government of the day. … Continue reading »
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The probity standards public servants walk past are the ones they accept
Phil Gaetjens is not the only senior public servant who can be relied upon to see things in the government’s eyes, even when being asked for an objective opinion. There’s all too much advice coming to government which is masquerading as independent judgment but has merely been pre-arranged to appease, to the point where some… Continue reading »
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The rich are getting richer and richer – what is Labor planning to do about it?
While Federal Labor is disappearing into a fearful huddle desperate to avoid any suggestion it would ever try to make Australia a more equitable place, the rich are getting richer and richer…. Continue reading »
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From white Australia to what Australia?
After living in Australia for 57 years, my memories of the era of the white Australia policy suggest that it might have been a less stressful time than my experiences of what today is called “multicultural Australia”…. Continue reading »
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Saturday’s good reading and listening for the weekend
What people in other forums are saying about public policy…. Continue reading »
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A national disgrace: the National Archives turns to crowdfunding to save irreplaceable historic records
This week marks one year since the High Court handed down its landmark decision in the Palace letters case that letters between the Queen and the Governor-General Sir John Kerr are considered public documents, ending the Queen’s embargo and leading the Archives to release them. In what I described then as a moment of “legal colonial… Continue reading »
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Advice being tailored for political, not medical, need
Scott Morrison has repeatedly reiterated that all decisions in relation to Coronavirus public health measures have been taken in accordance with medical advice. But the advice itself has frequently been considerably less than transparent, even as he has had medical officials standing alongside him, giving every appearance of having crafted his words and drafted his… Continue reading »
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The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is done and dusted
There was a time in the sixties through to the 1980s when the Department of Foreign Affairs, (Trade was subsumed into it in 1987) was a powerful department within the Federal bureaucracy. It had Branches that mirrored every major department in Canberra and when it felt necessary it would intervene in policies being developed by… Continue reading »
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I weep for India, and those left behind
I will never again see India in the same light, once a place of excitement, vibrancy and opportunity. Its people are hurting at depths we will never understand. In my heart I may never forgive myself for what I’ve done…. Continue reading »
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Is the US a reliable ally?
Australia has put almost all its defence eggs in the American basket at the cost of further weakening relations with China. We are betting that in our hour of need, the US will come to our aid. But will it? It is worth looking at the American record of supporting its allies of one kind… Continue reading »
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Education department refuses to hold private schools accountable for taxpayer funding
Yet another damning report by the Auditor-General shows that the Commonwealth Department of Education continues to fail to fully hold private school systems accountable for how they distribute taxpayer funding. It also criticises the Minister for Education and the Department for failing to meet their parliamentary reporting obligations…. Continue reading »
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Saturday’s good reading and listening for the weekend
What people in other forums are saying about public policy… Continue reading »
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Australian Media in the Asian Century.
This week’s media roundup sees the welcome return of journalist Max Suich. In response spluttering snipes from the anti-China hawks’ nests at ASPI and the ANU’s National Security College were weak. There were also several book releases around growing tensions between Australia and China and new information on the ASIS bugging of Timor-Leste in 2004…. Continue reading »
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Being driven to war with China by government folly. How to change course?
Essays by Max Suich on 16, 17, 18 and 19 May 2021 in the Australian Financial Review have unearthed the dreadful path of mismanagement of Australia’s relations with China since 2017, entrapping us foolishly in a path to war. We have to end this folly. Machinery of government is bung, leadership is out of control. Change… Continue reading »
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How to understand China: which books to read?
New books on China are flooding the market but their scope and quality are variable. Publishers have recognised that the public is keen to understand more about our major trading partner and the strategic challenges of the new world order. Readers would be well advised however to read the reviews before placing their orders. One book… Continue reading »
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Top 5 most read
- Arrest of Kristo Langker represents gross misuse of…
When politicians in Australia rushed to legislate in the wake… - This is leadership: Germany bids farewell to Angela Merkel At a press conference, a female Journalist asked Merkel :…
- As Biden inflicts a new cold war, his acolyte…
Morrison’s first trip overseas since COVID has shown him as… - Australia’s facile immigration policy debate
Australia’s immigration policy debates over the past 30 years have… - A family from Biloela holds a mirror to…
For the second time in their lives the two adults…
