Top 5
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Australia’s secretive defence establishment: the real enemies of truth and freedom
Australia, with fewer secrets to hide, is more compulsively secretive than the US, China or NATO. Continue reading »
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The ‘China Threat’: Can we escape the historical legacy of Anti-Chinese Racism?
How ironic that mainstream newspapers and conservative commentators should lambast former prime minister Paul Keating for living in the past when he denounced the AUKUS agreement and the Labor government’s fulsome support of it. It was, of course, the AUKUS agreement itself, entered into by Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson and Joe Biden in 2022, that Continue reading »
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Earth Systems Treaty: The emerging cross-cultural commitment
“The evidence is compelling that human exceptionalism is a deeply-flawed construct – a grand cultural illusion – that has led modern techno-industrial societies into a potentially fatal ecological trap.” William Rees, Author, The Human Ecology of Overshoot. Continue reading »
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A funny thing happened on the way to Beijing: Reflections on spy recruitment practices
An innocent invitation to a conference could turn into a nightmare. Next month I shall be on my way to an Australian Studies conference in Beijing, but already I am nervous about my travel plans because of recent stories about the attitude of Australian spy agencies to information exchanges with China. Friends, if I fail Continue reading »
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Albanese: The overseas Prime Minister
Prior to his most recent overseas trip to Jakarta, Manila, and New Delhi, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been abroad a dozen times. Not bad for a government that’s been in office for just on eighteen months. The next few months will see him flying off again for half a dozen more summits, head to head meetings Continue reading »
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Business should serve, not enslave
It is time for government to get the suits back under control and manage the economy for the benefit of us all. Continue reading »
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“Our last, best chance”: How our schools must change to help the most disadvantaged
Without reform, Australia’s schooling system threatens to create a lost generation of young people. Continue reading »
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Going to the mountain for Assange
Later this month I’ll travel to Washington, as part of a Parliamentary delegation, to advocate on behalf of Julian Assange. The Parliamentary delegation includes representatives from across the political colour spectrum – Forest Green (senior Nationals member Barnaby Joyce), Green (Senators Peter Whish-Wilson and David Shoebridge), Red (Labor backbencher Tony Zappia), Navy Blue (Liberal member Continue reading »
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Here’s what the U.S. is doing to prepare for war in Asia
Preparations for the United States to launch a war against China are far more advanced than many people realise. And when you look at just how much work has been done, it no longer looks like a matter of “if”, but more of a question of “when”. Continue reading »
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US decides to supply depleted uranium shells to Ukraine
At the G20 summit in Bali last year, most of the world’s most influential leaders had strongly deplored ‘the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine’. By contrast, the joint declaration from the just concluded summit in New Delhi does not mention Russia by name. Instead, it talks about ‘the human suffering and negative added impacts of Continue reading »
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G-7 and BRICS visions of the future: Coercive unipolarity or cooperative multipolarity
When the Cold War ended in 1991, the West, and particularly the United States, found itself at a fork in the road. One road led to peace, justice, cooperation, nuclear disarmament, a revitalised UN, inclusiveness, pluralism, human rights, multilateralism, fair trade, regulated markets, food security, energy transition, sustainability, and humane governance. The other road led Continue reading »
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Nuclear subs challenge trains 10 year old children for war
It’s time for education ministers across the country to show leadership and protect our children from vested interests and pro-war propaganda. Continue reading »
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Nuclear submarines are now a core Labor value
Perhaps AUKUS should be renamed MAUKUS – the Morrison, Albanese, United Kingdom and United States agreement – to clearly identify those responsible. Indeed, it is surprising that neither Defence Minister Richard Marles nor Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy invited Australian Labor Party National Conference delegates to support a motion of appreciation to former Prime Minister Continue reading »
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Australia’s multicultural framework can no longer be separate from geopolitics
A new multicultural framework needs to recognise that the well-being of Australia’s multicultural communities is closely related to, and inevitably affected by, geopolitics, and by Australia’s foreign policy towards migrants’ countries of origin. It is no longer viable to conceptualise foreign policy and multicultural affairs as two separate entities. Continue reading »
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The Palestinian catastrophe: Occupation, Illegality and Apartheid
It is time for us to use the words Occupation, Illegality and Apartheid. We are applying these words to an occupying power truculent and implacable in its determination its occupation will never end, committed to a creeping annexation to deliver it a permanent hold over Palestinian land and Palestinian people. … Twenty years ago it Continue reading »
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Nail in the coffin: Australia has run out of luck
Once an early experiment in democracy, Australia has declined into a quagmire of unrepresentative governments at state and federal levels. Power games are played obsessively by most members of a narrowly-recruited and self-serving political class whose only interest seems to be staying in power. Politics is not a vocation for these leeches on the Australian Continue reading »
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MOP(S) Act Amendment Bill: Much to commend but critical omissions too
There is a lot more substance to the Members of Parliament (Staff) Amendment Bill now before the Parliament than the Public Service Act Amendment Bill. But, once again, a key reform proposed by the Thodey Review and endorsed by the Robodebt Royal Commission is missing. Continue reading »
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Ukraine: Who is winning?
How is the war going? Two expert observers add to the confusion. Former British soldier Richard Iron, reflects on what he sees as the brittleness of Putin’s situation, thinks Putin could fall in a coup and predicts that Ukraine has a good chance of turfing Russians out of Ukraine altogether. American Professor John Mearsheimer, a Continue reading »
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Breaking the suicidal impasse
In the last few months events have occurred globally which indicate an astonishing, but not unexpected, acceleration in the pace of climate change. The world has now entered a new era of extremely dangerous climate impacts which are already proving catastrophic in many parts of the world. The factors which hitherto have constrained warming, such Continue reading »
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Health ministers maybe in office but seldom in power
The major barrier to health reform is the power of providers or at least their assumed power. Continue reading »
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Ceding more territory to the US military? Will Cocos Islands be Australia’s Diego Garcia
The Australian government has reneged on its 1984 commitment to the UN “that it had no intention of making the Cocos (Keeling) Islands into a strategic military base or of using the Territory for that purpose.” Will the Labor government ignore the warnings of the late Richard Woolcott and make the Cocos Islands a militarised Continue reading »
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How I decided to vote in the upcoming Voice referendum
With the date of the Voice referendum now having been set for 14 October, all households will have received a pamphlet outlining the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ case. Australians should understand that these pamphlets have not been officially fact checked. An attempt at fact checking the two cases by The Guardian is worth reading but I Continue reading »
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The US economic war on China
China’s economy is slowing down. Current forecasts put China’s GDP growth in 2023 at less than 5%, below the forecasts made last year and far below the high growth rates that China enjoyed until the late 2010s. The Western press is filled with China’s supposed misdeeds: a financial crisis in the real-estate market, a general Continue reading »
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Australia’s fiscal challenge
Productivity growth will be less than projected in the Intergenerational Report, the budget deficits will be worse, and the Government should be setting the scene for raising more revenue. Continue reading »
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A compelling voice for rethinking Australia’s national security
Sam Roggeveen’s Echidna Strategy rightly challenges Australia to act as a diplomatic powerhouse, not a military one. Continue reading »
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Albanese’s fealty to America: Shouldn’t we be white hot with rage?
Like Paul Keating, Australians should be angry. Australia’s security is at risk. No other nation is so foolish, so self- delusional, so divorced from the basics of statecraft, nor so feckless with its citizens’ security in pursuit of America’s objectives. Shouldn’t we be white hot with rage at this government’s abdication of sovereignty? Continue reading »
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The Rights of Indigenous People
The 13th of September 2007 was an important day in the history of Australian diplomacy although few people have heard of it. That was the occasion when veteran Aboriginal activist Les Malezer addressed the U.N’s General Assembly as the Chair of the Global Indigenous Caucus and introduced the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People. Continue reading »
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It’s high time to let PHC nurses show what they can do
Australia’s primary health care (PHC) nurses are one of our health system’s biggest assets – but they aren’t working to their full potential. A recent APNA survey tells us that despite the widespread under-utilisation of PHC nurses, recent progress in using nurses effectively has virtually stalled. Continue reading »
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Fatal mistake: Intergenerational report misleads on climate risks
The Australian Government’s public analysis of climate risk, our greatest threat, is dangerously misleading. The Intergenerational Report 2023 (IGR) is a prime example. By dumbing down the implications of climate change with simplified economic models, the IGR and similar reports are institutionalising the global failure to face climate reality. Continue reading »
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Archives, access, and history: can the National Archives’ ‘democratic function’ survive?
How did the National Archives of Australia, whose core function is to ‘collect, preserve, manage and make public Australia’s most significant historical records, become instead an obstacle to public access and a barrier to knowledge of our own history? Minister for the Arts Tony Burke must act to reverse the Morrison government’s attack on the Continue reading »