Top 5
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How (hard) They Fought: sophistication of First Nations’ resistance
The push to recognise the Frontier Wars at the Australian War Memorial, the teaching of this history in many high schools, and growing commemoration of Frontier War incidents is seeing parallels being drawn between the heroism of First Nations’ warriors and that of the ANZACs. Continue reading »
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Culture and Religion, Defence and Security, Indigenous affairs, Politics, Religion and Faith, Top 5, World
Fulfilling human potential and saving the planet
Australia, and my Party too, must make a commitment to restoring the primacy of reason, rejecting a paranoid view of history and ‘telling truth to power’. Our blind adoption of irrational policies, supine and unquestioning acquiescence to anything the United States proposes must end. Our species, facing an existential threat to civilisation from climate change, Continue reading »
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Australia pays Washington swamp monsters for war advice
Australia has been paying insiders of the US war machine for consultation on how to run the nation’s military, a massive conflict of interest given that Washington has been grooming Australia for a role in its war agendas against China. Continue reading »
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We are being seduced into war again by the US, this time over Taiwan
The US must be told that we will not be involved in any way in a war with China over Taiwan. Continue reading »
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Australia’s remarkable current account surplus
In recent years, commencing in the pre-COVID period, Australia’s balance of payments has consistently recorded a surplus on the current account. This has confounded some commentators, especially those who followed the compelling ‘debt and deficit’ (and especially the ‘twin deficits’) narrative that emerged in the mid-1980s. Does it mean that that narrative should no longer Continue reading »
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Like justice, medical specialist care delayed is care denied
The statistics released by ABC journalist, Stephanie Dalzell on April 20, define a national disgrace and expose a massive hole in the once intact Medicare safety net. Continue reading »
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The Defence Strategic Review is a claim to command civil society
The kind of strategic study Australia needs, to preside over this kind of defence staff college scribble, is one which gives a sense of our civil society’s capacities, needs, aspirations — and our neighbourhood. The Flippingbook is an entirely inappropriate, narrow minded, chauvinistic, militaristic thing that belongs in a country practising for fascism, the submergence Continue reading »
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The NSW government’s ‘quiet little’ review of Sydney transport crises
The new NSW Government is riding its luck with quiet little piecemeal reviews of Sydney transport crises. Continue reading »
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Time to accept the truth about the legend of Anzac
The ‘Anzac Cloak’ smothering any matter of opinion that does not adorn the ‘Anzac Spirit’ has become pervasive. Too often, this appropriation of one facet of development of a uniquely ‘Australian’ character – rooted by the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia – has at least one of two perverted purposes: political or commercial. Continue reading »
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Integrity and complex systems: The rum rebellion or the shearers’ strike?
While we’re acutely aware that the COVID-19 pandemic has tested the underlying integrity of our current economic and financial models, our infinitely greater concern must be with the inexorable progression of climate change. As physicist Richard Feynman said: ‘For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.’ The Continue reading »
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What’s the point of the Australian Labor Party?
The ALP seems intent on abandoning progressive policies and turning itself into a competent version of the Coalition. This is not good for them, our collective future, or democracy. Continue reading »
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AUKUS and Australia’s national sovereignty
The value of AUKUS depends critically on how far it increases the chances of Australia being dragged into an unnecessary and potentially catastrophic war at the behest of the US. Continue reading »
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Why dental care was excluded from Medicare and why it should now be included (an edited repost)
In 1974, the Whitlam Government decided to exclude dental care from Medicare for two reasons. The first was cost. The second was political. Whitlam felt that combatting the doctors would be hard enough without having to combat dentists as well. Forty-six years later, with Australia much richer and the proven success of Medicare, it is Continue reading »
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The present risks to life on earth
“The splitting of the atom has changed everything, bar man’s way of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophes” – Albert Einstein Continue reading »
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Racial discrimination and imperialistic standards of power: my experience at the Commission on the Status of Women
When I first visited New York last September, I did not anticipate being physically assaulted in broad daylight within my first 24 hours in the country. Continue reading »
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Australia adrift and a foreign minister all at sea
On Monday, Penny Wong delivered her much awaited address to the National Press Club. What a disappointment! So many words, and so little substance. One could dismiss the episode as just another case of a minister who’s not up to the task. Unfortunately, the speech points to a deeper ailment – a government oblivious to Continue reading »
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The derangement of the American mind
The world, we have a problem. It is Houston. Continue reading »
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Malcolm Fraser would have agreed with Paul Keating on AUKUS
Like so many Australians, I am very worried by our commitment to AUKUS. I agree strongly with many other critics that we have been placed in peril by our government’s submarine agreement with the US and the UK. Continue reading »
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A tainted Defence Strategic Review
P&I Editorial: Conflicts of interest at the heart of AUKUS and the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) – including the principal author of the DSR benefitting from US State Department funding designed to build support for AUKUS and the US alliance – demand independent investigation. Continue reading »
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How squabbling pollies let miners wreck our economy
A speech by former Treasury secretary Dr Ken Henry last month was reported as a great call for comprehensive tax reform. But it was also something much more disturbing: an entirely different perspective on why our economy has been weak for most of this century and – once the present pandemic-related surge has passed – Continue reading »
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Never before has a Labor Government been so bereft of policy ambition
In facing the great challenge of our time, a super-state resident in continental Asia and an itinerant naval power seeking to maintain primacy – the foreign minister was unable to nominate a single piece of strategic statecraft by Australia that would attempt a solution for both powers. Paul Keating’s response to Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s Continue reading »
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Australian journalists in China: Send them back!
In August, it will be three years since Australia’s China-based correspondents were harried out of China. In an extraordinary over-reaction, the ABC, Fairfax, and News Corp closed their offices in Beijing and Shanghai. Continue reading »
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Australia will be left stranded as a lonely Western outpost in Asia
It is understandable that Australian leaders may feel insecure, even paranoid, about Australia’s future in the Asian twenty-first century. As Western power recedes from the world – especially from East Asia – Australia and New Zealand will be left stranded as lonely Western outposts in Asia. Continue reading »
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An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: A moment whose time has come
‘I believe the time for the Voice has come’. With those words from the Liberal MP Julian Leeser announcing his resignation as shadow minister for Indigenous Affairs, the path to a successful referendum on an Indigenous Voice to parliament just got a lot clearer, as did Peter Dutton’s dire miscalculation in opposing it. Continue reading »
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What if Medicare was restricted to GPs who bulk billed? This kind of reform is possible
Australia’s health system is under significant pressure. The Labor government has inherited a system with declining bulk-billing rates for GP visits. These fell from almost 90 per cent of all GP attendances bulk billed in December 2021 to just over 80 per cent a year later. Continue reading »
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High stakes debate on Albanese Government’s social and affordable housing plans
The Albanese Government’s flagship housing legislation has stalled in the Senate, with the PM alarmingly flagging a risk that the package might be abandoned until the next election. Continue reading »
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The incredible shrinking ASPI
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but has ASPI’s China-like propaganda model run its course? Continue reading »
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Whitlock and Jones: Former top U.S. admiral cashes in on nuclear sub deal with Australia
In its quest to build nuclear-powered submarines, the government of Australia recently hired a little-known, one-person consulting firm from Virginia: Briny Deep, write Craig Whitlock and Nate Jones in the Washington Post. Continue reading »
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Australia prepares legal case for war over ‘non-sovereign nation’ Taiwan
Australia is inventing an unheard-of way to go to war at the invitation of a ‘non-sovereign nation’ – an obvious reference to Taiwan. The Government’s intent seems to be to have it ready for the conflict with China that US Generals keep telling us is coming. Continue reading »
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Parachuted professors
In a who-cares-about-standards world, the appointment of some university professors looks very much like insider trading, secret patronage, and who you know, not what you know. How else to explain appointments as professors of public figures, seemingly agile enough to vault over the usual obstacles straight to the top of the academic hierarchy? Continue reading »