Search Results
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JOHN AUSTEN. How port privatisation will hobble Newcastle
Commonwealth action is necessary to undo potential penalties on Newcastle Port. While the infrastructure conversation focusses on major projects like electricity grids it can ignore more significant matters. One such matter in NSW that deserves immediate attention is port privatisations. A deal included in the sales of Botany (2013) and Newcastle (2014) impedes the development… Continue reading »
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JOHN AUSTEN. High speed rail – here we go again.
Another proposal involving high speed rail Sydney-Melbourne recently surfaced; from CLARA (Consolidated Land and Rail Australia). Extensive media reports noted an advisory board including former Trade Minister the Hon. Andrew Robb, ex Premiers the Hon. Barry O’Farrell and the Hon. Steve Bracks , and former US Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood. A figure of $200billion was… Continue reading »
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JOHN AUSTEN. High speed rail – where to? Competing with airlines or cars?
This article proposes a change in focus for the high speed rail debate. Rather than seeking to compete with airlines, rail should contribute to settlement that eases pressures on capital cities. This change of focus does not require ego stoking thousand kilometre distances at 350kph plus speeds, but trains for comfortable commuting between second tier… Continue reading »
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JOHN AUSTEN and LUKE FRASER. Urbane transport policy. Part 2 of 3.
Urbane transport policy This article is the second in a series about transport infrastructure. Part 1 dealt with the Prime Minister’s focus on mass transit and 30-minute cities. This deals with other matters raised by the Prime Minister: value capture, city deals. A final article will deal with the Commonwealth’s role.[i] Value capture Value capture… Continue reading »
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John Austen and Luke Fraser. Urbane transport policy. Part 1 of 3.
Prime Minister Turnbull made a splash on urban transport recently. He sketched a vision of ‘30 minute cities’ where residents spend on average just one hour a day travelling to regular activities like work and shopping. He also considered mass transit solutions rather than just more motorways. This article is the first of three raising… Continue reading »
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John Austen. Grattan Institute on transport projects: a better mousetrap?
In ‘Road to riches: better transport investment’ the respected Grattan Institute joined commentators, independent authorities and lobby groups in advancing ideas on transport ‘investment’. Like others it proposed publication of assessments for public spending; a better mousetrap to ensnare politically motivated proposals. The report proposed a three stage process for government transport ‘investment’: Spending only… Continue reading »
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Tony Broe. Coordinating Community Aged Care & Hospital Aged Health Care
Getting Australian Health Services right depends on delivering both Aged Care & Health Care effectively for frail ‘high risk’ older-old people. Reducing inappropriate hospital admissions, shortening length of stay, returning frail people to their homes rather than Residential Care, all depend on accessible, locally based, Community Aged Care assessment support and management systems. For around… Continue reading »
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John Duggan. Advice from expert clinicians or the AMA
For those interested in the cost of health care the recently released interim report by the Medical Benefits Schedule (MBS) Review “obsolete MBS items track one” demonstrates the dawning recognition that there are procedures and tests that do not justify their existence or federal funding. The story begins with the decision of Ms Sussan Ley,… Continue reading »
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John Duggan. The effect of healthcare privatisation on patient outcomes
Recent actions by the Federal Minister of Health and her predecessors indicate the government’s aim to shift hospital care from the public to the private sector. Associated with this is the developing perception that private hospitals are superior just as private schooling is increasingly held to be superior to publicly funded schooling. However, while there… Continue reading »
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Ross Kerridge. GP Remuneration.
Current Affairs I understand that at the recent National Conference of the AMA there was general support for a move to help funding systems other than just fee-for-service. Ross Kerridge examines this issue below. John Menadue Healthcare Heroes. How to reward GPs for what they do best: a hospital specialist’s proposal There is an old… Continue reading »
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Stephen Morey. How 37% of the vote in the UK resulted in 51% of the seats.
Current Affairs. UK election On Thursday, May 7 2015, the Conservative Party won the national election in the United Kingdom – despite the fact that nearly two-thirds of ballots were cast for other candidates. With only 36.9% of the vote – some 3% more than opinion polls predicted – the Conservative Party won a 50.9%… Continue reading »
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Amanda Tattersall. Community organising aims to win back civil society’s rightful place.
In the wake of the Second World War, Karl Polanyi wrote that the public arena is made up of three interconnected sectors: the market, government and civil society. He argued that democracy thrives when these three are in balance. If only that were the case today. Since the late 1980s, the global influence of the… Continue reading »
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John Attia, John Duggan. Why the government would have us pay more for poorer health.
The Coalition government has been claiming that Australia’s public health system is unsustainable since the 2014 budget. But its plans for the health system actually reflect the underlying belief that user-pays health systems are better – despite evidence to the contrary. Less than a year and a half into the Abbott government’s first term, we’re… Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. On being a Priest.
I’ve been a priest for thirty years and for perhaps the past two decades, I have known that when I walk into an unfamiliar setting or join a new group of people and tell them what I am, a goodly number are thinking to themselves: “What sort of a weird, psychologically deficient, sexually repressed and… Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The Bishop and the Prime Minister
In August 1987 The Bulletin published an account by Tony Abbott of why he left the seminary. A link to Tony Abbott’s account is below. Following Tony Abbott’s account, Fr Bill Wright on August 25, 1987, replied. He was a priest at that time in the Archdiocese of Sydney and Vice Rector of St Patrick’s… Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Catholic Church needs to show more than legal compliance
It’s been a big few weeks for the clergy and their dealings with the police across the world. In legal matters in countries covering four continents – India, the Dominican Republic, Italy and Australia – clerics are being held to account by police and civil courts. Two priests in India have been charged with murdering… Continue reading »
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Catholic Church – catch-up and cover-up
The sad saga of the Catholic Church in its response to sexual abuse goes on and on and on. Pope Francis is yet to grasp the nettle. Invariably it is people outside the hierarchy and clergy who are responding and calling for action. The latest has been former NSW Premier, Barry O’Farrell, who spoke in… Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell. Canon Law and the Truth, Justice and Healing Council.
In his more than 40 blogs posted on the Truth Justice and Healing Council’s web site, Francis Sullivan, its CEO, has never, until last week, mentioned any difficulties that canon law might have posed for bishops in reporting sexual abuse by clergy to the police or in dismissing them through the Church’s own internal disciplinary… Continue reading »
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Chris Geraghty. Appropriate responses to the scandal in Newcastle
After Bishop Bill Wright appeared on television to register his reaction to the findings of the special enquiry into the Church’s and the Police response to the paedophile activities of two priests in the Newcastle diocese, and to express his sorrow for the whole messy scandal, there was an inter-change of emails between two… Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell. The Cunneen Report’s Comments on Canon and Civil Law
On 30 May 2014, the Report of the Special Commission of Inquiry into Matters relating to the Police Investigation of Certain Child Sexual Abuse Allegations in the Catholic Diocese of Maitland–Newcastle (“Cunneen Report”) was published by the New South Wales Government. The Report rejected allegations by former Detective Inspector Fox that there was an attempt… Continue reading »
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John Menadue. This is about more than a bottle of wine.
To mix my metaphors, the bottle of red wine that Barry O’Farrell received is only the tip of an iceberg – a sleezy world of lobbying, influence-peddling and corruption. It is really about the covert influence of political power players in undermining our democratic system. No wonder there is a growing alarm. People with money… Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Sexual abuse and the humiliation of the Catholic Church. A new spirituality.
Michael Kelly SJ invites Australian Catholics to embrace the humiliation that is bound to increase as the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse continues in 2014 through a spirituality based in the gospel. The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola invite us to pray for the gift of identification with Jesus in the abuse and derision he experienced… Continue reading »
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Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. John Menadue
On December 9 the Royal Commission will commence public hearings into the role of the Catholic Church in Australia on this issue. Francis Sullivan the Executive Director of the Truth Justice and Healing Council of the Catholic Church said on 3 December that “Catholics and non-Catholics will be shocked and disillusioned when they hear the… Continue reading »
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What a good effort. Guest blogger: Chris Geraghty
This is the best effort at an apology so far and “the leaders of the Catholic Church in Australia” are to be congratulated, finally. They have been dragged, fighting and squealing, to their knees, no, to their bellies, but eventually a thorough and unqualified commitment statement has been published and read to the faithful at… Continue reading »
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Systemic issues arising from the Victorian Parliament’s ‘Betrayal of Trust Report’ Guest blogger: Kieran Tapsell
On 13 November 2013, the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organizations handed down its Report, entitled “Betrayal of Trust”. It stated: “No representatives of the Catholic Church directly reported the criminal conduct of its members to the police. The Committee found that there is simply no justification… Continue reading »
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Frontier War and asylum seekers. John Menadue
Launch of the 2013-14 Catholic Social Justice Statement by John Menadue 11 September 2013 This statement follows the proud tradition of the Catholic Church in Australia since 1940 of calling Catholics and all Australians to act for social justice. The 65 statements issued over the years cover a great range of social justice issues – poverty, violence,… Continue reading »
