November 13, 2017

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Bizarre 'No' campaign still trying to grab the controls

Simon Birmingham and other exasperated colleagues are quite right: it is bizarre and dishonest in the extreme for those who have spent the last months - years even - implacably opposing same sex marriage to now demand the right to determine how it is to be implemented, assuming the interminable plebiscite get a majority this week.

November 29, 2017

HANS J. OHFF. Nukes, the strategic advantage or otherwise.

In a reply to Paul Dibb’s and Richard Brabin-Smith’s piece ‘ Australia's management of strategic risk in the new era’, Hugh White observes : ‘…so much of the investments we’re now committing to in massive warship programs make no sense. [The] ADF that could defend Australia independently from China would be very different from the ADF today, and the country and economy that could sustain such a force on protracted operations would be very different too.’ Australia’s learned defence planners and strategist know that the corollary of a decline in US global supremacy is the continuing rapid rise of China and a more adventurist Russia. The Trump Administration’s demand for an increase in US nuclear strike capability will not reverse this trend.

August 26, 2020

Superannuation: how much do we need to save?

A hot political issue is whether to proceed with the legislated increase in superannuation contributions from 9.5 to 10 per cent next July. There are pros and cons but if the superannuation increase is further postponed, there should be an offsetting increase in the minimum wage.

March 1, 2016

Peter Hughes, Arja Keski-Nummi and John Menadue. Part 2. Refugee Policy

A repost from 26/05/15

Part 2: Refugee Policy

2.1 Overview

The current and future global environment for irregular migration is extremely challenging.

Many more people are on the move globally to gain protection from persecution, security from conflict or greater economic opportunity - or a mixture of these things.

The movement of people is being accelerated by growing awareness of the opportunities to move, new communications technology, cheaper transport and active facilitators.

December 13, 2019

LESLEY RUSSELL. Tackling the Emergency Department crisis: Some “what if?” scenarios

The crisis in Emergency Departments is causing harm to patients and staff, and transformative health system re-design is urgently needed.

November 29, 2019

MARK BUCKLEY. Seriously Under-achieving

_The current Government seems to be, almost universally, staffed by a large group of impostors. Are they visitors from another planet, passing themselves off as movers and shakers, decision makers? Have they infiltrated the bodies of the incumbents, but are insufficiently programmed to carry off the deception? Are they all zombies, not alive, but not dead. Whatever the explanation, there is an eerie emptiness about them, as if their batteries are running down.

April 26, 2018

Media Watch. How News Corp and The Australian mislead us on climate change.

Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching

The Australian and Cairns Post highlight a dissenting view on whether global warming is the cause of mass coral bleaching.

December 7, 2017

TIM COSTELLO. A striking lack of ambition.

The Turnbull Government’s white paper on Australian foreign policy has raised as many questions as it has provided answers. Much comment has focused on its failure to resolve, or even point to a resolution of, the tension between Australia’s unwavering adherence to US hegemony and the undeniable rise of China as a global and regional power.

June 27, 2019

WILLIAM GRIMM MM. What's under the miter? Legal systems and media exposure are the chief tools to deal with corruption among church leaders

When I was a boy, I watched a narrow clamshell bucket dipping into a sewer up the street from our home to clear muck. I was still too young and too inexperienced in the ways of the Church to be aware of the irony of it, but I found it amusing that the muck-filled bucket looked vaguely like an upside-down version of the hat I had recently seen filled by the head of a bishop who came to our parish for Confirmations.

December 18, 2018

MICHAEL KEATING. The Government's Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook Statement

As widely heralded by the Government in advance, the mid-year update of the economic and fiscal outlook shows an improvement in the budget balance. A larger surplus is forecast, starting in the next financial year and increasing thereafter. Whether this reflects good management, as the Government would have us believe, is a moot point. Equally, if the Government wants to maintain that forecast surplus, it is doubtful that there is much, if any, scope for new policy initiatives in the run-up to the election that would lower taxes or increase expenditure.

January 9, 2020

AMANDA MEADE.-The Australian newspaper downplays bushfires in favour of picnic races.( The Guardian 4.1.2020)

And the Herald Sun relegates bushfires to page 4 while the Courier Mail brings good news via’Onion Oricle’

Read how the Murdoch papers deny climate change and largely ignore the fires.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/04/the-australian-murdoch-owned-newspaper-accused-of-downplaying-bushfires-in-favour-of-picnic-races?CMP=share_btn_link

October 11, 2019

ROSS GITTINS. Viking economics: How Nordic nations debunk a Scott Morrison mantra (SMH 9.10.2019)

_I’d like to tell you I’ve been away working hard on a study tour of the Nordic economies – or perhaps tracing the remnant economic impact of the Hanseatic League (look it up) – but the truth is we were too busy enjoying the sights around Scandinavia and the Baltic for me to spend much time reading the books and papers I’d taken along.

April 2, 2019

TONY SMITH. Christchurch: a challenge to the sincerity of Australian politicians

Two weeks after the massacres of worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealanders held a moving multilingual commemorative service emphasising unity. Among the speakers was Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel who said that it was important that each of us looks into our hearts to acknowledge and eradicate any prejudice. Successive speakers emphasised the importance of beginning the quest for peace by changing ourselves. This is a challenge for Australian politicians unused to critical self-analysis.

December 5, 2019

Uighurs and glass houses

The West’s modern sensibility is rightly offended by the scale of Uighur incarcerations in Xinjiang the and the ruthlessness with which the Chinese government is pursuing the extermination of Uighur culture, language, and religion. To the contemporary mind these acts are repugnant. This notwithstanding, the darker episodes in European and American history nonetheless should be kept in mind when crafting condemnations of China.

October 12, 2017

MICHAEL GRACEY. Aboriginal health: An embarrassing decades-long saga

It’s been widely known for fifty years that the health of Aboriginal people lags far behind that of other Australians. Despite that and the expenditure of billions of taxpayers’ dollars, serious gaps persist between Indigenous versus non-Indigenous health and wellbeing.

November 24, 2015

Francis Sullivan. Learning As We Go: The Pope Models the Change the Church Needs

Francis Sullivan ABC Religion and Ethics 12 Nov 2015

Ever since the conclusion of the recent Synod in Rome, I have been thinking about the signals of change that Pope Francis is sending. He does it in words and by his disposition.

Observers at the Synod frequently commented on the informal and casual style of the Pope. He mixed easily and readily with participants. He didn’t stand on ceremony and was eager for a chat - more a “first among equals” than some sovereign ruler.

April 13, 2018

LEANNE WELLS. Private health care in Australia: health policy’s wicked problem.

The anguish expressed by many of the 1,200 respondents to the Consumers Health Forum’s Out of Pocket Pain survey highlights the widening gulf between the cost of modern medical care and the struggle of many Australians to pay for that care.

December 5, 2019

DAILAN PUGH. A Fiery Future

Hundreds of ancient Brush Box and other rainforest trees, many over a thousand years old, have been felled in the head of Terania Creek, their bases eaten out by fire. While the community stepped up to stop the loggers 40 years ago, this time nothing could stop the assault initiated by human-induced climate change.

December 29, 2018

JONATHAN STEVENSON. How Jim Mattis failed (New York Times 24.12.2018)

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, who submitted his resignation on Thursday, was the last “adult in the room” of the Trump administration — or so claim a small army of pundits, who now worry that the president, finally unchecked, will unleash an unvarnished, unpredictable America First foreign policy on the world.

December 19, 2019

STEPHEN ROACH.-America’s strategic China blunder( EAF 15.12 2019)

_From tariffs and the blacklisting of Huawei to democracy and human rights concerns over Hong Kong and Xinjiang Province, the United States raised the heat on China to a boil.

February 2, 2018

JAMES O'NEILL. When will the Australian Opposition and Parliament actually do its job over the Syrian war?

The US Secretary of Defence, General Mattis, recently announced that the US was intending to create a 30,000 strong “border force” to occupy a portion of northern Syria. This is territory in which the largest group are ethnic Kurds who in the past have been supported by the US, not on any principled basis but because they represented a group that may assist US geopolitical objectives. Those objectives are neither singular nor necessarily consistent. They include the often reiterated claim that the “Assad government must go”, a view echoed until recently by the Australian government; although the latter’s statements on anything related to Syria have been markedly muted.

Given the silence of the government, the equally supine stance of the Labor opposition, the complicity of the main stream media and the complete absence of meaningful parliamentary debate about Australia’s foreign policy misadventures for and on behalf of the fading US imperium, it is difficult to discern quite what the Australian policy actually is.

November 22, 2019

GEOFF RABY. Beijing’s Own Goal on Hastie and Johnson (Australian Financial Review, 21 November 2019)

These days there is never a dull moment in Australia-China relations. After a seeming slight thaw with the recent meeting between Prime Minister Morrison and Premier LI Keqiang in Thailand on the margins of the recent ASEAN meeting, Beijing has now spectacularly kicked an own-goal.

August 1, 2019

JESSIE BATKIN-WALKERDEN. Homelessness: Why Early Intervention Matters

Early intervention is a vital piece of the complex puzzle, that is Australia’s homelessness. Long-term, appropriate and stable housing is becoming increasingly unattainable for many people. The current state of housing unaffordability leads to many people being at risk of becoming homelessness, or indeed being homeless.

June 19, 2018

JOHN DWYER. Health care reform - Part 1.

Without acceptance of a ten year plan and the creation of an instrument to implement that plan, we will not be able to engineer the evidence-based structural reforms to our health care system that will improve quality, equity and cost effectiveness.

November 5, 2019

MIKE SCRAFTON. It's not all about Brexit

Everyone’s crystal ball is fogged. The outcome of the UK’s election is clouded. More than the future of the nation’s relationship with Europe depends on the outcome. Brexit might be one of the lesser consequences.

December 11, 2019

JOHN DWYER. What a mess! Insurance for health care, both public and private, is increasingly dysfunctional with sensible and equitable solutions held hostage by “vested interests”. PART TWO

At least 50% of the money private health insurers pay out annually to those insured is absorbed by just 5% off their customers. Most of these patients have chronic medical problems and have multiple admissions per year .While private hospitals need bottoms on beds to be profitable, public hospitals and private insurers are desperately in need of a reduction in hospital admissions. Numerous strategies for achieving this are being floated but sensible reforms are difficult as those with vested interests in the status quo have undue control of government initiatives.

October 9, 2019

GREG BARTON. Australia isn’t taking the national security threat from far-right extremism seriously enough (the Conversation, 3 October 2019)

Until the terror attack in Christchurch in March, the threat of far-right terrorism in Australia was one we knew was coming, but believed was well over the horizon.

The sordid story of the Christchurch attacker – “ordinary Australian” turned hateful bigot turned mass-murdering terrorist – contains some uncomfortable truths for our country, not least of which is the fact that the threat of far-right extremism has arrived in the here and now.

July 11, 2019

Thai police seize 51 Pakistani Christian asylum seekers (UCANEWS Reporter, Bangkok, 8 July 2019)

Thai authorities in Bangkok have arrested 51 Pakistani Christian asylum seekers in an incident that has reignited fears among the city’s Christian refugees of another immigration crackdown on illegal immigrants.

According to eyewitnesses, immigration authorities arriving in two police vans pulled up outside a low-rent apartment building in Bearing Soi 7 in eastern Bangkok where several Pakistani Christian families had been hiding out after having overstayed their tourist visas to Thailand.

January 8, 2020

ANDREW FARRAN.- Weaponising Hostage Taking in International Diplomacy

Hostage diplomacy is about as low as it gets in a system of sovereign states that supposedly adheres to the inherent principles of comity, good faith and state responsibility.

May 30, 2020

Beethoven and the ABC Classic 100 Countdown - A not-to-be missed event

On the weekend of the 7 and 8 June, ABC Classic will be conducting its Classic 100 Countdown for 2020. Being the 250th anniversary of his birth, it is devoted to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven.

January 3, 2020

MARK BUCKLEY. Memo to Scott Morrison

_In Australia we do not vote for the Prime Minister, we vote for a local member, who is usually a member of a political party. In simple terms, when all the votes are counted the party with the greatest number of members becomes the government, and the assembled members have already decided, or they will very quickly decide, who is to be their leader. This person is then deemed to be the Prime Minister.

March 16, 2018

NICOLE GURRAN, BILL RANDOLPH, PETER PHIBBS, RACHEL ONG, STEVEN ROWLEY. Affordable Housing Policy Failure Still Being Fuelled By Flawed Analysis.

Australia has a housing affordability problem. There’s no doubt about that. Unfortunately, one of the reasons the problem has become so entrenched is that the policy conversation appears increasingly confused. It’s time to debunk some policy clichés that keep re-emerging.

November 8, 2019

TONY SMITH. A flicker of interest in human rights

Foreign Minister Marise Payne recently incurred the wrath of China by daring to mention the treatment of the Uighurs. At first sight this might seem to signal the beginning of a new commitment to human rights by the Coalition Government. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister is leading domestic policy in the opposite direction.

January 3, 2020

KERRY GOULSTON. Vietnamese and Australian doctors learning together: reflecting on 20 years of collaboration

This is a story of friendship and support between doctors in Australia and Vietnam, originating some 20 years ago, which shows how modest beginnings have evolved into important and lasting relationships of mutual respect and learning with one of our increasingly important Asian neighbours.

November 22, 2019

ERIC HODGENS. Pastoral Planning - A Church Crisis.

Church Pastoral Planning languishes – ignored and unloved. Yet, with the church being in freefall, it is needed today more than ever. It’s time to bring it in from the cold.

November 25, 2019

CAMERON DOUGLAS. Court bans Thai military opponent

Thailand’s Constitutional Court has banned as an MP the leader of a new and successful political party that opposes the military and the current prime minister. It could turn out to be step 1 in ending his political career.

August 20, 2019

DONNA AH CHEE. Given this history of strength and success, why do Aboriginal health dollars keep going to NINGOs? (Croakey 14-8-19)

Aboriginal community controlled health services have many advantages, including their power to advocate and shame governments into action, according to Donna Ah Chee, CEO of the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress.

June 30, 2020

Judge Dyson, moving in the lower circles of hell

If Dyson Heydon is guilty of the sexual harassment allegations made against him, most people would agree that he deserves what he gets.

December 6, 2019

JOCELYN PIXLEY. What is new about Westpac's robber barons after Hayne's Royal Commission?

Was it surprising to hear AUSTRAC’s allegations that Westpac breached money-laundering laws 23 million times? When the LNP won government in May 2019, bankers cheered reinstalled Ministers, delighted that the Royal Commission’s February recommendations were unlikely to be fully implemented. Conditions were in place, then, with the unfolding script already tattered. Less discussed was the meaning of “money laundering”.

November 21, 2019

JOHN DWYER Australia's opioid epidemic

The Opioid epidemic that has so devastated America is now well established in Australia.

November 24, 2017

BRUCE DUNCAN. Francis’s World Day of the Poor. ‘The poor are our passports to paradise’.

Even atheists, agnostics and humanists, as well as people of the great religious traditions, would likely welcome Pope Francis instituting a new World Day of the Poor. While a shallow and at times vulgar commercialism trivialises the profound religious meaning of Christmas, the World Day of the Poor highlights our God-given responsibility for all in distress.

October 20, 2018

STEPHEN HOWES. Bringing in backpackers is not the right way to get more workers onto farms.

Suddenly, getting workers onto farms is a top political priority.

Over the weekend, and again in parliament on Monday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced plans to get more backpackers working on farms.

December 21, 2017

JONATHAN PILBROW. IPAN on the link between war and refugees

Human Rights Day, recently observed, is a very significant day, commemorating the UN General Assembly endorsement on 10 December 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the right to seek asylum. Human Rights Day is an important time to highlight that that wars create and exacerbate humanitarian crises and the conditions that lead to refugees, which raises critical issues about Australia’s continued involvement in U.S. wars.

November 6, 2019

HAL PAWSON. The First Home Loan Deposit Scheme: Housing affordability action – or just more busy work? (UNSW Blogs 31-10-19)

The Australian Government has this week revealed the policy details for the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme (FHLDS). From 1 January qualifying first home buyers (FHBs) become eligible for a government guarantee that will enable them to access a mortgage with a 5% deposit rather than the normal 20%, at no extra cost to the borrower.

October 9, 2018

STEPHEN COSTELLO. Who controls US policy on the Korean peninsula? (East Asia Forum, 5 October 2018)

Much has been made of the theatrical stand-off between North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump. But most signs show that the two could quickly reach a deal on how to move forward with DPRK denuclearisation and economic development. The real tension is between Trump, Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in on one side, and White House figures, department secretaries and the US Congress on the other.

April 9, 2016

Bryce Barker. Of course Australia was invaded - massacres happened here less than 90 years ago.

Much has been made in the last few days of the University of New South Wales’ “ diversity toolkit” offering teachers guidelines on Indigenous terminology.

The most controversial directive was a line about using the term “invasion” to describe Captain Cook’s arrival here:

Australia was not settled peacefully, it was invaded, occupied and colonised. Describing the arrival of the Europeans as a “settlement” attempts to view Australian history from the shores of England rather than the shores of Australia.

January 5, 2020

MICHAEL PASCOE.- How Murdoch's Myrmidons Murdered Climate Policy(TND2.1.2020)

_“The Murdoch media, determined to remove the Labor government at any cost, mounted a savage war on the science of climate change and the structural reforms that needed to be undertaken,” wrote former Labor Treasurer Wayne Swan in a 2017 article and reprised this week on Twitter.

March 7, 2019

PETER RODGERS: Alive in Israel - the ghost of Richard Nixon?

Are we watching the end of the Netanyahu era? The Prime Minister opted for an early election but then had serious charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust levelled at him by Israel’s Attorney General. Netanyahu’s response was straight out of Trump’s playbook, he’d rather trash the place than admit fault. That all lies with the ‘Bolshevik’ media and its fellow travellers.

December 29, 2018

M.K.BHADRAKUMAR. Trump’s Afghan withdrawal could pave the way for peace (Asian Times 24.12.2018)

The US president’s controversial decision signifies a well-crafted political and diplomatic move aimed at ending the 17-year conflict

_There has been withering criticism from within the United States regarding the reported decision by President Donald Trump on troop withdrawal in Afghanistan. Predictably, Trump’s detractors in Washington are painting the town red lampooning his decision (especially its timing) and visualizing apocalyptic scenarios. But the good part is that no one has had the audacity to present an alternate road map.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal