November 20, 2017

GREG WOOD. The Australian Dream: Many Belts Many Roads.

The ALP has indicated that, if elected, it will consider positively Chinas so called One Belt One Road initiative. The ambition of BRI is vast. It would reshape global trade, transport and logistics in a China-centric way to meet that countrys requirements, contribute to it becoming the worlds pre-eminent economy and, ultimately, its dominant power. It fits with President Xis articulation of the Chinese Dream, the national rejuvenation of China as the Middle Kingdom, the communist party front and centre of that objective. Is Labor on the right path? If the Chinese have a dream do we need an Australian Dream?

December 18, 2015

Walter Hamilton. The Great Wall in the South China Sea

As Australians enter the end-of-year doze zone they would do well to take time to watch a report, available online, prepared by the BBCs Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, which lifts the curtain on Chinas bid to permanently militarise the South China Sea.

Wingfield-Hayes and his crew defied threats from the Chinese Navy in order to video construction activity at several disputed coral reefs currently being turned into military airfields and bases through massive dredging and construction operations. The BBC report shows scores of ships moored around what previously were largely submerged atolls.

December 2, 2019

MICHAEL KEATING. Retirement Incomes Review: Part 2

The Governments independent Review of the retirement incomes system has identified four criteria against which that system should be judged: adequacy, equity, sustainability and cohesion. Yesterday I reviewed the performance of the Australian retirement income system against the criteria of adequacy. This article completes the review against the other three criteria.

October 20, 2019

TESSA MORRIS-SUZUKI. Australia, the US, the Yellow Peril, and the Baby-Strangling Chinese: A Cautionary Tale.

As the Morrison government moves ever closer to the Trump administrations approach to our region and the world, it is time to look more closely at the ’expertise’ that underlies Trumps China policy. It draws on some very curious sources.

March 4, 2019

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Reboots,fig leafs and climate wars

Scott Morrison may be shedding minister like the early leaves of autumn, but, as usual, there are distractions and for once he can be profoundly grateful.

May 29, 2020

ALEX MITCHELL. NRL power play in NSW

Who governs NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian or NRL boss Peter Vlandys? One is elected, the other isnt. One is a blue-stockinged Tory from Sydneys North Shore, the other is a Labor supporter from working-class Wollongong. Who will prevail?

December 11, 2018

JOHN MENADUE. A way out of the politicking on refugees- A repost from 20 August 2018

We can be proud of what we have done for refugees in the past but like many others I am ashamed that we have now had a succession of ’leaders’ who have appealed to our most selfish instincts.

When I feel discouraged about our national failure, I am reminded of Graham Greenes challenge that the only unforgivable sin is despair.

November 24, 2019

GREG BAILEY. Climate Change Politics in Theory and Practice (1).

Given the centrality of the problem of an emerging climate catastrophe in the consciousness of many Australians now, it is timely to canvas the progress of the two main parties in conceptualizing and dealing with climate change. Not just because of what they might or might not have done in the past, but because of what their activity or inactivity portends for the future.

June 11, 2019

WILLIAM PESEK Abe-Trump smiles mask the coming anger. (Nikkei Asian Review 30.5.2019)

Donald Trump visited Tokyo for four days (25-28 May) intending to cement his “unshakable bond” with Shinzo Abe. Instead, the visit showcased why their unlikely bromance is headed for trouble.

March 20, 2019

STEPHANIE DOWRICK. We owe the dead and grieving insight and action as well as unlimited sorrow

The first response of most to the catastrophic tragedy in Christchurch is unlimited sorrow for all those directly and indirectly affected, but most especially for those whose lives have been ended or shattered. Noor means light in Arabic. Most of those slaughtered were at al-Noor, the Mosque of the Light.

February 15, 2018

Many are thinking: we can surely do better as a nation

Across the country there is much amusement, and a good deal of bewilderment. People are asking: how can our subservience to Washingtons bidding hit such an all-time low? How can a government think it can shape Australias future security and prosperity by mouthing one inanity after another?

November 19, 2018

MICHAEL PASCOE. Fairfax joins the Murdoch sectarian beat-up brigade (The New Daily).

The first law of journalism is that bad news is good news bad news sells. On Monday,FairfaxsSydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers had a choice between a good news story and twisting the facts to make a bad news story. No prize for guessing which way the decision went.

October 28, 2018

RICHARD ROBISON. The crisis of the Right in Australia: the liberals are gone and the hard-right can never triumph.

Now that the dust has settled after the coup that toppled former Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull it is clear that this was more than a tale of revenge and malice within the Liberal Party.

But while Turnbulls son, Alex Turnbull, might be right in his assessment that the Liberal Party has been taken over by extremists on the hard right, he is mistaken if he thinks that the Party can be brought back from the brink and its small-L liberal credentials restored.

October 22, 2019

ALLAN PATIENCE. Re-imagining Australia's higher education sector

Recently a report commissioned by Education Minister, Dan Tehan, recommended a tightening of the criteria by which any tertiary education institution can call itself a university.

October 20, 2019

'It's no crime to be a refugee'.

Review of Kavita Puri, Partition Voices: Untold British Stories (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 297 pp.

This is an important, interesting and elegantly written book. ‘It is no crime to be a refugee’, says one of the persons interviewed for the book. The story of refugees is the story of transience, fragility, rootlessness and impermanence. With refugees turned migrants, doubly so. For the children of refugee-turned migrants, their past ancestral land now often lies in ’enemy’ territory.

October 1, 2018

State Govts Evade Commitments to Public Schools

Public schools have suffered a double blow in the last fortnight. The Morrison Government announced a $4.6 billion appeasement deal for private schools with no increase for public schools. Last week The Guardian exposed how Labor and Coalition state governments are trying to evade commitments to increase their funding of public schools through a subterfuge. If successful, public schools, which enrol over 80% of disadvantaged students, could lose up to $2.6 billion a year. Public schools need and deserve better than this.

December 21, 2017

CLIVE KESSLER. Old enemies reconcile as Malaysian elections near.

Malaysias fourteenth general elections are looming. This time, almost unprecedentedly, they will see the two great Malay political parties the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and the Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) working implicitly as allies, not rivals.

July 10, 2019

KERRY BROWN. Whither one country, two systems? (East Asia Forum)

If reportedly a quarter of the population of the country or city where you live go out on the streets to demonstrate, there is a serious problem. We can quibble about whether it was indeed two million that demonstrated in Hong Kong on Sunday 16 June, or a half of that or less. But for once the eyes could not lie: the whole of the central area was crammed with people, many of whom had already been demonstrating only a few days before.

May 9, 2018

RANALD MACDONALD. ABC cuts - the gloves are off.

The Coalition’s latest budget aimed at ensuring the voters return it to the government benches has dropped any pretence of supporting a vibrant, independent and properly funded ABC.

January 3, 2018

No politician has the spine to stand up to Australia's intelligence state

Its standard in an end-of-year piece to attempt to identify some unifying theme in the events of an arbitrarily selected period of time. Sometimes themes and commonalities really do emerge. Other times, theyre the authors confection.

February 18, 2018

LINDA JAKOBSON ET AL. China and Australia Relations-Submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security

I am grateful to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) for this opportunity to comment on the Bill. Please note that this submission is a duplicate of my submission to the PJCIS regarding the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Bill 2017.

September 5, 2019

ROBERT FISK. The Crazed, Rogue Leader is in Washington Not Tehran (Counterpunch 2.9.2019)

_History in the Middle East is unkind to us westerners. Just when we thought we were the good guys and the Iranians were the bad guys, here comes the ghostly, hopeless possibility of a Trump-Rouhani summit to remind us that the apparent lunatic is the US president and the rational, sane leader who is supposed to talk to him is the president of the Islamic Republic ofIran. All these shenanigans are fantasy, of course like the imminent war between America and Iran of which more later.

August 10, 2020

The federal government is hiding under the covers

Having tried pleas, threats, restrictions, lockdowns, fines and closures in vain, our political masters are now apparently cutting to the melodramatic climax: scare the living crap out of us writes Mungo MacCallum.

October 9, 2019

JERRY ROBERTS Income management by the Cashless Welfare Card

The Cashless Debit Card when seen in the context of drug testing at Centrelink, tax cuts for the comfortable, religious protection laws. the Witness K trial and open slather for financiers adds to the impression that our country now resembles more closely Margaret Atwood’s Gilead than Ben Chifley’s Australia.

November 23, 2017

EVA COX. Unhealthy Tribalism

The marriage equality survey has re-enforced the tribal type divides that now seem increasingly endemic in our socially defined political differences. Like most Western democratic nations, we are finding that the traditional views about voters as predictable blocs of left and right or class based voting groups are becoming increasingly less relevant. The growth of factions and fraction are displacing the comfortable labelling of party loyalists or simple categories. To add to the confusion, categories such as radical and conservative have also become less useful to define what people are thinking.

November 24, 2019

It is secret government, not Chinese subversion, we have most to fear

Paul Barratt has put the country on notice that, as currently practiced by government, Australia could find itself at war before it knew it see https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/paul-barratt-its-too-easy-to-take-us-to-war.

October 14, 2019

JACK WATERFORD. If you break it, you own it.

A president owns his nations history and its honour … the luxury of being able to make history, but not of repudiating it.

February 25, 2016

Which country has the world's best healthcare system?

On 9 February, the Guardian published a report on health systems around the world. It drew particularly on analysis of ratings by the Commonwealth Fund and its correspondents around the world. The UK’s national health service was ranked number one in the world. Australia was ranked number four.

For Guardian article, see link below:

http://gu.com/p/4f6vb/sbl

December 31, 2018

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Kill Bill remains the default option for Scott Morrison.

_Scott Morrison, his office informs us, is talking a short break off to the country for a bit of biking, boating and fishing._But not shooting; the image of our easy going prime minister with a lethal weapon in his hands might send the wrong message.

November 21, 2019

DAVID MARR. Blood, brains and foul murder: evidence of Australia's massacres is in its newspapers (The Guardian, 17 November 2019)

Were only human. We hang on to lies that comfort us. A big consoling lie that still hangs around this history of slaughter and dispossession is that we cant apply the outlook of the 21st century to killings on the frontier.

Tell that to those who denounced the crimes as they were being committed. Theirs was real time rage. It is a fitful war of extermination waged upon the blacks, something after the fashion which other settlers wage war upon noxious wild beasts, wrote Carl Feilberg, editor of the Queenslander in 1880.

May 5, 2019

MARK SWIVEL. Why is no-one talking about non voters?

Australia is famous the world over for our compulsory voting system. We are one of a handful of countries that require our citizens to vote. Technically we only require voters to turn up and get their name marked off the roll, but compulsory Roll Call doesnt sound as good as Compulsory Voting. Maybe we should extend the vote to teenagers on their Ls and Ps. Either way voting is a right, a privilege and for me, a dead set obligation we should all embrace.

March 5, 2019

MARGARET REYNOLDS. Ita, the new ABC Chair

It is interesting to ponder the thoughts of the Prime Minister before he decided to make a captains call by appointing Ita Buttrose as Chair of the ABC Board. In doing so he has confounded critics and perhaps even signalled some remorse for the Federal Governments continuous assault on Australian public broadcasting.

January 8, 2019

We need a national political summit to promote democratic renewal

Bob Hawke’s Economic Summit following the 1983 election promoted cooperation and consensus which led to remarkable economic and social reform. With the loss of trust in our political institutions and politicians today, we need a political summit to build consensus on democratic reform. Such a proposal, if carefully implemented, could produce real political and policy dividends for its advocates and more importantly, for Australia.

Australians are sick and tired of politicians. The community is deserting the major political parties in droves.

After the next election we need a government that will assist us in major democratic renewal. It is urgent. We need a summit of community leaders to help chart a new course for democratic renewal.

October 1, 2018

JOHN ELDER. Gas leak: Government tries to release its greenhouse news on the quiet.

The Morrison government stands accused of trying to sneak-release the latest greenhouse gas emission figures theyve gone up, again by making them public on the eve of the footy grand finals.

July 2, 2019

RORY MCGUIRE. Middle East: Comedy or Tragedy?

It is increasingly difficult to decide whether the ongoing drama in the Middle East is a comedy or a tragedy. The actors are performing roles written for comedians but the consequences of their actions are tragic too often.

January 3, 2020

GEORGE GRUNDY.- The Slow Death of Retailin Perth

Champagne corks were conspicuous by their absence as Amazon recently announced plans to expand their operation in Australia by opening a new warehouse in Perth.

March 25, 2018

Dutton ventures where fools fear to tread

The Minister for Home Affairs, Peter Dutton, has gratuitously interfered in the internal affairs of South Africa. His comments on what he termed ’the horrific circumstances’ relating to white South African farmers, at the urging of white right-wing extremists, has done harm to finely balanced race relations in South Africa and to the relationship between the two countries.

November 15, 2017

ROGER SCOTT. With Friends Like These ...

If Week 2 of the Queensland election campaign was dominated by parochialism and regional development, Week 3 was about statewide preference deals and the price to be paid by the LNP as it seeks to bolster its sagging fortunes by agreeing to a list of One Nation demands. In addition, one or two of the chaotic events on the national stage caught the attention of locals, after Canberra being invisible earlier in the campaign. These also related to the LNPs new-found friends.

July 10, 2019

JOANNE WALLIS. Australias one step forward, two steps back in the Pacific (East Asia Forum)

In 2016, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull expressed Australias commitment to a step-change in its engagement with the Pacific Islands. The 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper sketched the skeleton of this step-up but it wasnt until 2018 that those bones were fleshed out. While Australia is set to implement several meaningful labour mobility, security and diplomatic initiatives, simultaneously counterproductive domestically driven policies could undermine the ability of those programs to improve engagement with Pacific Island states.

January 19, 2018

GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. His speech at the Graham Freudenberg Tribute Dinner- A REPOST from June 19 2017

On 2 June, the NSW Branch of the Labor Party hosted a dinner for Graham Freudenberg, former speechwriter for federal and state Labor leaders, including Arthur Calwell, Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Neville Wran, Barrie Unsworth, Bob Carr and Simon Crean. This is a transcript of his speech at that dinner personal reflections and recollections of the people he has travelled with in his more than 40 years of service to the Labor Party and to Australia.

October 16, 2017

JOHN MENADUE. The end of car manufacturing in Australia

Last Friday General Motors Holden closed its last Australian manufacturing plant at Elizabeth in South Australia. In an attempt to save Christopher Pyne. Malcolm Turnbull has told us that ship and submarine building in SA will take up the slack. But consider the figures. The car manufacturing industry employed 200,000 people across Australia with an effective rate of protection of 8% .The submarine project will employ about 2000 people in Adelaide but with an effective rate of protection of 300 %. Yes 300%. Go figure that out for a waste of money!

August 22, 2016

GREG BAILEY. Populist Limitations on the role of the IPA in the New LNP government

On July 2 the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) had at least two of its members elected to parliament in the Double Dissolution, James Pattison and Tim Wilson and that Senators Bob Day and David Leyonhjelm, at times members of the IPA, also were reelected, albeit on small quotas. LNP politicians like George Christensen and Cory Bernardi, both assumed to be thorns in the side of Malcolm Turnbull, have received the praises of the IPA because of speeches they have given, echoing broad IPA doctrines such as small government, abolition of the nanny state and individual self-reliance. But the propitious environment for the likely direct influence of the IPA on the formation of policy has changed, though not as in clear cut a manner as one might think.

October 11, 2018

WANNING SUN. PM Morrisons Strange Speech to China and the Chinese: A Selective Charm Offensive?

Last week, on 4 October, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, accompanied by Immigration Minister David Coleman, paid a visit to Hurstville in south Sydney, dropped in on some local Chinese shops, and had lunch with around 80 peoplemembers and leaders of the local Chinese community. The event generated quite a buzz among the Chinese communities but went mostly unnoticed by the English-reading public.

It was a strange way to do diplomacy with China or was it domestic electioneering.It was all very odd.

December 28, 2018

All we want for Christmas is bishops who listen and act

This is amodified version of the Christmas editorial ofCatholics for Renewal, an Australian group seeking to make the Catholic church more Christ-like. Itishoped that the Australian ChurchsPlenary Council, to be held over two sessions in 2020 and 2021 and the first since 1937,will beenergised by the condemnations of the Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. For the Plenary Council in 2020/21 to deliver, individual bishops must engage and listen to the people of their dioceses.

May 17, 2018

RICHARD TANTER. Tightly Bound: Australia's Alliance-Dependent Militarisation.

Australias unique military and intelligence relationship with the United States, combined with the country being geographically a part of Asia but historically, culturally and intellectually identified with the Anglo-Saxon world, have significant implications for Canberras current military modernisation. Richard Tanter examines how the countrys dependence on its alliance relationships helps determine the direction of that modernisation.

May 17, 2020

DAVID FIDLER. The dangerous COVID-19 quest for WHO reform (EAF 10.5.20)

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a health and a political crisis.Political tensionsthreaten to damage the global fight against the coronavirus.

November 4, 2019

LAURIE PATTON. Catch 22.0 we wouldnt need inquiries if public administration wasnt so broken

On ABC Insiders host Fran Kelly asked health minister Greg Hunt why the Government didnt have an immediate response ready on the aged care royal commission report just released. It wasnt a surprise to anyone, was it, Ms Kelly observed with obvious frustration.

November 28, 2019

LAURIE PATTON. The Assange dilemma updated. What is journalism in the online age?

Its time for more humane treatment of Julian Assange. Guilt or innocence aside nobody should be treated the way he is allegedly being treated. More than 60 doctors have now written an open letter to the UK authorities saying he suffers from psychological problems including depression, dental issues and a serious shoulder ailment. They want him transferred to a hospital. Clearly they have a point. However, while I accept that Assange is not in good health and deserves better treatment lets not applaud what was a dangerous practice and a dubious precedent publicly exposing unverified data that could potentially risk peoples lives and create unforeseen collateral damage. How would you feel if it had included sensitive and confidential information about you?

May 21, 2020

TIM HARCOURT. Eight things we need to do for Corona recovery

Bill Kelty, the former Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Secretary (and my old boss) recently praised Prime Minister Scott Morrison in The Conversation and his: Go big, Act fast and keep the lights on approach to Coronavirus.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal