A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts in other media

ABCs Saturday Extra (from 0730 to 0900 or on their website in case you miss it). Yhis saturday Hamish Macdonald will be in the chair.

Last week’s violent military crackdown on protestors has put Sudan’s transition to civilian-led government in peril. Ihab Ibrahim Osman, President of the US-Sudan Business Council, joins us from Riyadh.

From Dark Mofo, a panel discussion about declining trust in the media with _New York Times_bureau chief Damien Cave, satirist and writer Julian Morrow, and editor of Quilette Claire Lehman.

Mike Pezzullo is secretary of Home Affairs the person at the centre of stories about raids, surveillance and national security concerns. But who is he and how does he have so much power? We profile a very public servant.

Dictatorships come and go but in North Korea they keep on keeping on. So how have the Kim family kept a hold on power for seven decades? Anna Fifield, Washington Post journalist and author of the new book The Great Successor, looks at the worlds most dysfunctional family.

Longtime Pacific watchers say Australias renewed foreign policy focus on the region should be based on hearing from islanders themselves, and understanding their cultures and needs. Thats one of the prompts for Tom Bamforths book The Rising Tide: Among the islands and atolls of the Pacific Ocean.

(There may be a live cross to Hong Kong depending on overnight news.)

Other commentary

Our loss of civil liberties: the raids are just the latest instalment

Writing in Open Forum Johan Lidberg of Monash University reminds us that governments have been eroding our civil libertiesever since the terrorist attacks on America in September 2001. While many have been writing on this issue in the wake of the police raids, Lidberg and his colleague Denis Muller warned about this trend in their 2018 book In the name of security Secrecy, surveillance and journalism.

Trust in media

Caroline Fisher and her team at the University of Canberra have produced the Australian editionof the 2019 Digital News Report. Among other findings it reveals that many Australians (62 per cent of respondents) avoid news sources, and that urban dwellers are more engaged with news sources than rural dwellers. Many Australians are concerned about fake news and seek verification of news, but that concern is not uniform: it is most marked among those with education and among younger and older people, but less so among the middle-aged.

The ABCs Eleanor Hall has an interview with Caroline Fisheron _The World Today_website.

The full report, covering 38 countries, is available from the Digital News Report website. Its summary report on Australia reveals the importance of the ABC as our news source. (Murdochs print media are a long way behind.)

The Liberals really believe they can manage the economy

On the ABCs _Between the Lines_Tom Switzer interviews Liberal Party historian Gerard Henderson on his analysis of the Coalition win. Unlike serving politicians Henderson doesnt fall back on spin and prepared scripts: we can therefore be fairly sure he is sincere in his beliefs and accurate in the way he recounts the way the party faithful see themselves. One of those beliefs is that the Liberal Party is much more competent than Labor in economic management.

(Most ignorant of what hes most assured Measure for Measure)

At least one Liberal is realistic about his partys economic management

Writing in the Canberra Times, John Hewson points outthat Morrisons marketing strategy, rather than policy agenda, failed to address key economic issues. His strategy was to control the economic narrative while creating a sense of anxiety, nervousness, even fear, about a Shorten alternative. Its little wonder that there has been a fall in consumer confidencesince his election and that we seem to be drifting towards another economic crisis.

Advice on economic management

Although our Treasury and Finance Departments may be politicised to the point of economic irrelevance, the Productivity Commission enjoys a degree of independence. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Jessica Irvine reports on an interview with PC Chair Michael Brennan, who calls for productivity-improving tax reforms, including road use charging (to replace fuel excise) and land taxes (to replace real-estate stamp duties), and improved policies on infrastructure funding and workforce policies. (In view of the ACT Liberal Partys hysterical opposition to land taxes, its unlikely that the Morrison Government will welcome his advice).

Transport policy takes us on Argentine road

Thats the title of an article on transport policy, or rather our lack of a transport policy, by _Canberra Times_journalist Crispin Hull. He reminds us congestion is costing us $17 billion a year, and that Spain is poorer than Australia and Madrid and Barcelona are significantly smaller than Sydney and Melbourne, yet there is a very fast train service between them (2 hours 30 minutes) 19 times a day over much the same distance.

Employment and unemployment

Most media covered the ABS May labour force data, showing reasonably strong growth in part-time jobs and a rise in the participation rate, resulting in no change in the unemployment rate (5.1 per cent). In the two bigger states the rate was lower: New South Wales (4.4 per cent) and Victoria (4.7 percent).

Between census collections we have little information at a sub-state level, and we are inclined to believe that such figures indicate that Sydney and Melbourne can be considered as having reasonably healthy labour markets. But writing on the ABC news site, David Ross looks at the differences between regional workforces and jobs available, finding that in our big cities jobs are concentrated in the CBDs. Long and slow commutes are the costs Australians pay for suburban unemployment. Its a daily commute similar in some ways to the internal migration workers make to cities in developing countries. (Policymakers consistently fail to recognise the significance of regions _within_our big cities, with the word regional meaning somewhere out in the bush.)

Deloitte Access Economics has prepared a report on areas of skill shortages and areas of over-supply, based on employers responses. The report considers 35 skills (in a strange classification which mixes skills and occupations). Of those 35, there is no shortage of the 3 that require work of the hand, a shortage of the 23 that require work of the head, and a shortage of the 9 that require work of the heart a classification that includes customer service and conflict resolution.

Australians fundamental right: a holiday in Bali

There is sometimes in the upper-middle class a sense of ‘we are paying too much tax, we are doing it hard’ writes Tim Costello in an article lamenting the meanness of our foreign aidcontribution. We see a trip to Bali as a fundamental human right but shut out of our mind real suffering in poor or conflict-ridden countries. Even poorer countries, such as the UK, spend much more.

As revealed in Lowy Institute figures, as a percentage of national income our foreign aid is at an all-time low.

Aid to mates

The Commonwealth may be cutting foreign aid, but it is keeping up its assistance to Australian corporations. During the week the Productivity Commission released its regular Trade and Assistance Review, revealing that in 2017-18 selected Australian industries received $14 billion in budgetary and non-budgetary assistance (a figure that does not include the $11 billion support for private health insurance.) Much of the growth in assistance has been in the form of financial support for small business, even though the Commission does not find such assistance is really needed.

A whos who of rent-seekers

Have you ever wondered why 18 per cent of the worlds poker machines are in Australia? Why governments privilege private schools over government schools? Why the coal lobby is so successful? Why retail pharmacists have been protected from competition policy?

Starting this Sunday June 16 at 0800, ABCs Radio National will be broadcasting a four-art series Who runs the place. Richard Aedy and Eleni Psaltis have an introductory article on the ABC news website.

Trade under threat

The Productivity Commissions Trade and Assistance Review, referred to above, warns that the world trading system is experiencing greater stress than at any time since the 1930s. The US policy of protectionism and its assaults on the WTO are major threats.

In an interview with Christina Pazzanese of the Harvard Gazette, Professor Robert Lawrence of the Kennedy School describes the damage inflicted by Trumps protectionism, not only to the world economy, but also to domestic US industries as international supply chains are disrupted. We no longer live in a world where everything has one clear country of origin. Lawrence, like most economic liberals, and unlike our own government, is a strong supporter of multilateralism.

The Bretton Woods order that did so much for world trade and peace has given way to hyperglobalization the surrender of national economic sovereignty to globalization as an end in itself argues Dani Rodrik writing in Foreign Affairs Globalizations wrong turn. He compares the dysfunctions of the present world economic order to the stagnation resulting from historical adherence to the gold standard (an adherence that brought affluence to Australia in the 1850s and misery in the 1890s).

_Foreign Affairs_has a paywall, but it allows non-subscribers to download one to three articlesa month. A full subscription costs around $A50 a year.

Americas plan for Palestinians indefinite colonialism

Trumps son-in-law and presidential adviser Jared Kushner is responsible for developing Americas Middle East peace plan. Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, writing in the New York Review of Books, sees Kushners plan as a replica of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which disregarded the political aspirations of Palestinians. He writes:

Understandably, almost universally, Palestiniansalong with many international commentatorssee such an approach as simply paving the way to a normalization of never-ending occupation and creeping annexation under conditions of extreme legal discrimination between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs: a situation resembling nothing so much as apartheid South Africa.

We might remember that during the election campaign former Rudd Government minister Melissa Parke was forced to quit the campaign when she likened Israels treatment of Palestinians to South Africas apartheid.

Global peace

The Institute for Economics and Peace has released its 2019 Global Peace Index. Global peacefulness has improved in the latest year, but only slightly there is no reason for arms dealers to fret. This improvement reflects a reduced level of conflict in Syria and Ukraine, partially offset by increasing violence in the Americas.

In country rankings Iceland remains in top place (Nordic noir does not detract from its ranking), followed by New Zealand in second place. Australia has slipped down a place to #13, but were well ahead of the UK (#45), China (#110), the USA (#128), Saudi Arabia (#128) and North Korea (#149).

Yet another police raid

At least the police raids on the ABC and a News Corporation journalist were in the public eye, but disturbing evidence is emerging of a recent secret police raidon a media organisation.

_Saturdays Good Reading and Listening_is compiled by Ian McAuley

Watch out tomorrow, Sunday, for Peter Sainsburys Sunday environment round up