December 30, 2019

ARTHUR SING.- Thailand also cruelly treats asylum seekers. It has it's own Black Hole of Calcutta.

Manus and Nauru remain a focus in Australia for everyone concerned about the cruel treatment of refugees and asylum seekers and rightly so.

November 24, 2019

JOHN WALLACE. Hong Kong research in 2013 warned of student violence

Research by social scientists at City University in Hong Kong in 2013 could help explain why in 2019 some young Hong Kong protesters have turned to violence in their anti-China campaign. This 2013 article by Dennis Chong of the South China Morning Post summarises the research findings.

May 1, 2019

RICHARD BARCHAM. Not Sorry.

Speech that dehumanises marks the limit of what a tolerant society can accept.

October 31, 2017

GRAEME WORBOYS. About Snowy water, catchment restoration, Snowy 2.0 and jobs

The Snowy 2.0 project, if it is to realise its contribution to lowering carbon emissions, should proceed hand in hand with a program of environmental restoration of alpine ecosystems which have not recovered from past and present alpine grazing and which, as a result of global warming, will have less water yield for downstream users, including Snowy 2.0.

October 31, 2019

CRISTY CLARK. Clean ocean win shows it's worth dreaming big. In a time when bad news abounds, it is welcome that someone's audacious plan to tackle a seemingly insurmountable environmental problem is having success

In 1997, oceanographer and boat captain Charles Moore made a shocking discovery. After deciding to cut through the North Pacific Gyre on his way back to California from Hawaii, Moore gazed into the ocean and, instead of pristine waters, found a vast vortex of floating plastic debris.

June 13, 2019

PETER SINGER. Rugby Australias Own Goal (Project Syndicate 11.6.2019)

_If Rugby Australia had existed in the first century of the Christian era, and Paul had had enough talent to be a contracted player, the sport’s national governing body presumably would have ripped up his contract once his first letter to the Corinthians, with its injunction against homosexuality, became public. Just ask star fullback and born-again Christian Israel Folau.

December 15, 2019

MIKE SCRAFTON: President Trump and the world at the end of 2019

Like the fierce Atlantic storms than weaken overtime and end as gentle zephyrs playing harmlessly along the coast, Trumps blustery and boisterous foreign policy is visibly running out of wind. Strong words and sanctions have led to foreign policy impasses with none of his administrations main objectives being any closer than in 2017. Another year of braggadocio on twitter and a flaccid follow through is not what the world needs.

October 22, 2019

LAURIE PATTON. More broadband porkies. Buying an NBN pig in a poke

To quote veteran IT journalist Sam Varghese,_NBN Cos latest attempt to put lipstick on a pig the animal in this case being the network it is building and the make-up in question being speed goes one step further than the alternative facts which its former chief executive, Bill Morrow, used to dish out__. The spin doctors at_ NBN Co are understandably annoyed at media reports reminding people that Australia has dropped from 30th to around 60th in global broadband speed rankings. So they came up with a novel solution. They made up their own numbers. The trouble is nobody in the IT world seems to believe them.

March 5, 2018

ALLAN PATIENCE. Time to inject some realism into the China debate.

A rising chorus can be heard in Australia voicing fears about Chinas alleged intrusions into our domestic affairs. There are disturbing echoes in all this of a narrative about a dangerous China lurking in the interstices of Australias society and economy. These echoes need top be addressed before we can have an intelligent debate about how to respond to Chinas re-emergence as a great power and how our foreign policy can be revised to prevent Australia being drawn into great power rivalries in the Asia Pacific.

January 6, 2020

TONY BROE. Privatising Aged Care Assessment Teams

The Federal Government, which has long funded Australia-wide Aged Care Assessment Teams, commonly and often affectionately known as ACATs, has made a surprise decision that it will privatise them from April 2021, with a tender to be held this year (30 December 2019).

December 17, 2019

ALISON BROINOWSKI. Quiet Australians wait for the truth

Forty-four Australian servicemen have been killed in action or have died in accidents since our forces went to Afghanistan in 2001, and since the deployments to Iraq and Syria. But in that period, at least ten times that number of Australians serving or no longer in the military have died of suicide. This week, former Commander Kevin Frost was the latest.

December 5, 2019

NOEL TURNBULL. Australian right wing religious fury over The Economist

The Australian right wing seem to be embarking on another cultural crusade this time against what is probably the best weekly news magazine (which the editors insist on calling a newspaper) in the world, The Economist.

March 26, 2019

TERRY MORAN. The next long wave of reform where will the ideas come from? Part 1

I want to talk about, what Im going to describe as a mission Australias next long wave of reform. It is this third wave of reform which must bring us to a compact on the big ideas which will drive policies and programs at all levels of government and within our national community for a generation. It should give effect to consistent Australian attitudes on government and democracy described by Rebecca Huntley in the latest Quarterly Essay, citing CPDs research prominently.

August 9, 2018

WILLIAM PESEK. Toyota driving into a fierce economic storm.

What GM used to be to America, Toyota is to Japan: a weathervane for macro trends. On Friday, the carmaker admitted it is downhill from now.

December 4, 2019

GRETA THUNBERG,LUISA NEUBAUER,ANGELA VALENZUELA Why We Strike Again (Project Syndicate November 29 2019)

After more than a year of grim scientific projections and growing activism, world leaders and the public alike are increasingly recognizing the severity and urgency of the climate crisis. And yet nothing has been done.

April 9, 2019

ABUL RIZVI: Questions Ahead of Home Affairs Meeting That Never Happened

On 29 March 2019, I received an email stating Secretary Pezzullo has requested that a/g Deputy Secretary, Luke Mansfield and First Assistant Secretary, Richard Johnson provide you a personal briefing. Thinking this was the dawn of a new era of transparency in Home Affairs, I asked if I could send a series of questions ahead of the meeting to guide the discussion. This was agreed to and below is the list of questions I sent four days ahead of the meeting. An hour before the scheduled time of the meeting, I received an email stating the meeting had been cancelled. No explanation given.

August 9, 2020

Trump has a problem with China but what is Australia doing?

_Since Trump became President the relationship between the US and China has deteriorated to the point that some observers talk of war. Why is this and what should Australia’s role be?

March 8, 2016

Carol Richards, Bree Devin. Supermarkets and food waste.

In this blog on 25 February, I noted that the French parliament has voted to ban large food stores from throwing food away. In the story below, Carol Richards and Bree Devin highlight the way powerful supermarkets in Australia push the cost of food waste onto suppliers and charities. John Menadue

At a time when one billion people globally experience hunger, as much as 50% of all food produced - up to two billion metric tonnes - is thrown away every year. In Australia alone, as much as 44 million tonnes of food is wasted annually.

November 18, 2013

A mega industry subsidy to private health insurance companies. John Menadue

Many business economists continue to criticise the previous government and possibly the current one over the government subsidy of $10 billion over seven years for the auto industry. But that subsidy is small beer.

The government subsidy to the private health insurance industry (PHI) has been $30 billion plus, over seven years. This year the government will provide $7 billion for the private health insurance industry. $5.6 billion will be in a direct subsidy to the industry. There will be another $1.4 billion in income tax foregone by the Commonwealth Government.

December 10, 2017

ROGER SCOTT. Queensland State Election: Winners and Losers

The last rites were a long time coming but can now be pronounced with confidence. On Monday night, the TJ Ryan Foundation held a post-election function advertised as Who Won and Why. Even then, over a fortnight after polling day, no-one was absolutely sure, despite Antony Greens cautious prediction on election night. Counting was painfully slow because of the expanded engagement of minor parties and there were unpredicted preference flows. It took 13 days before the Leader of the Opposition conceded defeat.

January 29, 2016

Frank Brennan. Meeting Pope Francis - the planet and markets.

41 years a Jesuit, I had never met a pope.

Back in 1986, I was adviser to the Australian Catholic Bishops on Aboriginal land rights. Pope John Paul II came to Alice Springs, met with Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, and spoke strongly about the rights of Aborigines to retain title to their traditional lands.

Frank Brennan presents Pope Francis with a bottle of Sevenhill wine

Next day, a bishop told me the amusing story that the Pope had arrived at Alice Springs airport where he had mistaken Wagga’s Bishop William Brennan for me.Bishop Brennan was very gracious about the matter when we embraced during the sign of peace at mass.

November 7, 2019

MAX COSTELLO. Whos right about Medevac airlifts to Australia the doctors or Peter Dutton?

The governments traditional scare campaign having failed to work because Medevac transfers have not re-started the people smuggler boats a very frustrated Home Affairs Minister Dutton is running a new repeal Medevac line: he says the Medevac law is a con because no transferees are in hospital. But its his own Australian Border Force that is keeping them out of hospital.

October 8, 2019

WANG GUNWU. Chinas rise this time is different (East Asia Forum, 29 September 2019)

On 1 October China will be celebrating the 70 years of unification that followed Mao Zedongs victory over the Nationalist regime in 1949. Many thought that had brought about the rise that the Chinese peoples had been waiting for since the beginning of the 20th century. But it was not to be. After the Great Leap Forward and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution had nearly destroyed all that Mao had established, there were doubts that China would ever rise.

December 28, 2018

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI. Pope Francis's struggle

The most visiblecritiqueof the just concluded Synod of Bishops assembly on young people has focused on sections in the final document that call for a strengthening of synodality at all levels of the Church.It is absolutely surprising how very little so many bishops know about synodality, a method Pope Francis has sought to develop throughout his pontificate and a concept Catholic theologians have been discussing for at least a couple of decades.

November 2, 2018

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND

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

April 12, 2018

ANDREW HAMILTON. Clerical culture produces poor fruit.

In a recent ‘Eureka Street’ article, I remarked that in the Catholic Church clericalism is a pejorative term. I tried also to identify some of the attitudes and behaviour associated with people regarded as clericalist. The article sparked a lively conversation.

February 13, 2018

Closing the gap between the science and politics of progress (Part 1 of 2)

Global politics is based on an outmoded and increasingly destructive model of human progress and development. In the first of two parts, RICHARD ECKERSLEY examines what is wrong with the model with respect to sustainability and quality of life.

February 27, 2016

Eric Hodgens. Child Sexual Abuse A Cascade of Victims.

The sexual abuse of children creates many victims and many levels of victimhood.

Cultures, including ours, have rules about sexual activity. Cultural deviations from what is considered normal meet a range of cultural responses from approval to acceptance, to disapproval, to condemnation as immoral or, finally, criminalisation. Our culture has a minimum age of consent for sexual activity. It criminalises sexual activity with children. Many states have laws of mandatory reporting.

June 10, 2018

GARRY J. EVERETT. The culture of the church - some personal experiences.

Currently the Catholic Church in Australia, and in a number of overseas countries (e.g. Chile and Ireland), is experiencing a crisis in its culture. In Australia the Royal Commission into sexual abuse of minors has described this culture as toxic. The Commission also described the culture as excessively clerical in the sense that it is based on notions of priestly power, privilege and prestige, accompanied by lack of transparency and accountability, as well as failing to engage the lay people effectively. In Rome, Pope Francis has described the culture of the Catholic Church in Chile as one of abuse and cover-up.

November 16, 2017

IAN MCAULEY. The Trans-Pacific Partnership isnt about trade liberalisation: its about corporate protection

Its in Australias interests to remain open to the world on immigration and trade, and to cooperate on climate change and labour standards, but when openness comes to mean a permissive set of policies satisfying the demands of foreign investors, as proposed in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we risk a political backlash leading to isolation and protectionism.

January 8, 2020

MIKE SCRAFTON. Crisis and the Transformation of Government Administration

Today, there are four simultaneous and momentous crises before which modern democracies seem impotent; global warming, population growth, wealth inequality, and a dangerous geostrategic shift. This brings me to the Thodey Review.

October 19, 2018

DAVID WOLPE. The Japanese Man Who Saved 6,000 Jews With His Handwriting.

What the astonishing Chiune Sugihara teaches us about moral heroism.

October 8, 2018

ROSS GARNAUT. Where Australia's at 10 years after climate change review. (AFR 8.10.2018)

_Energy costs will be lower if there is more investment in renewables capacity.

August 14, 2019

INGA LASS. Language of love: a quarter of Australians are in inter-ethnic relationships (The Conversation)

Australians have become much more diverse over the last few decades. In 2018, 29% of Australians were born overseas, the most it has ever been since the late 19th century.

October 15, 2018

GEOFF RABY. East Asia Just Became a More Dangerous Place

Hugh White in his controversial 2010 book, China Choice, warned Australian policy makers that with the rise of China, the time would come when the US would have to make a choice as to whether to withdraw gradually from East Asia and allow China strategic space for its continued expansion or to take a stand and seek to limit Chinas rise.

September 5, 2020

New expose of Catholic Churchs rorting of taxpayer funding

Documents leaked to the ABC expose shocking rorting of taxpayer funding by the NSW Catholic school system with the approval of Catholic bishops. It is the latest in a long line of exposes about misuse of government funding by Catholic systems and which successive Coalition and Labor governments have meekly acquiesced to.

January 30, 2018

ANDREW GLIKSON. 2.0 minutes to midnight on the clock of the atomic scientists.

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences (Winston Churchill).

On 25 January 2018 the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the arms of its doomsday clock to 2.0 minutes to midnight, the closest it has been since 1953, with implications for humanity and nature. This is the closest the clock has been to catastrophe since detonation of the first hydrogen bomb on 1 November 1952 on Eniwatok Atoll in the Marshall Islands. By 2 March 2016 some 14,900 nuclear weapons existed, enough to eliminate a massive proportion of living creatures, as well as destroy human civilization as we know it. Underlying factors for the shift of the Atomic Clock to 2.0 minutes to midnight include rising expenditure on nuclear weapons, increase in accuracy and tactical usability of nuclear weapons, lateral nuclear proliferation, including by North Korea, absence of arms control negotiations and failure in effective measures to combat climate disruption round the worldamounting to crimes against the Earth.

July 26, 2016

JOHN AUSTEN. Is there a simple way of dealing with national infrastructure issues? Yes, but it is not a simple matter of adopting Infrastructure Australia's 'project list'.

The argument

Recent pieces offered a seemingly simple way forward to deal with national infrastructure issues.

It should be simple. All parties should commit to (Infrastructure Australias) project list in part or in full and then stop spending. These projects have been properly assessed and found to be worth doing, and specifically worth doing by the federal government because they have some national significance. [1]

Indeed, governments should limit project spending to proposals that have been properly and publicly assessed. We are entitled to know what is being done in our name and why.

September 27, 2020

Susan Ryan: a forgiving politician

It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of the movements, legislation and offices shaped or led by the late Susan Maree Ryan (Oct 10, 1942 September 27, 2020).

July 5, 2018

CHARLES LIVINGSTONE. The Melbourne casino, and irresponsible gambling

Allegations by whistleblowers about the way poker machines are operated at the casino in Melbourne have underlined how Victorias Casino Control Act allows pokies to operate in ways that encourage harmful gambling.

October 9, 2018

IAN McAULEY. Outdoor advertising enclosing the commons

The furore over the projection of horse racing on the Sydney Opera House raises not only the issue of the treatment of Louise Herron at the hand of a radio shock jock and her lack of support from the NSW Government, but also the broader issue of appropriation of public space for commercial purposes.

February 17, 2019

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Closing the gap.

The biggest gap that needs closing is the lack of an acknowledgement of the past by non-indigenous Australia and a determination that not only will the ignorance and denial not be repeated, but there will be genuine collaboration at every level in future.

Morrison has talked the talk; now he needs to walk the walk, and he had better get on with it if he is not to be part of the unhappy legacy of so many previous leaders.

March 7, 2019

HEIKO SPALLEK and ALEXANDER HOLDEN. Oral health an essential component of a healthy life.

Oral health is fundamental to overall health, wellbeing and quality of life. It is an important part of general health, affecting not only the individual, but also the broader health system and economy. So says the 2017 Performance Monitoring Baseline Report for Australias National Oral Health Plan 2015 2024. This acknowledgement that oral health is an essential component of a healthy life is promising, but how do we know if we are moving towards enshrining good oral health for all Australians?

February 25, 2019

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Wallowing in the chum bucket

A slur, a smear, grubby tactics, thundered the outraged ScoMo. Labor is getting down into the mud.

July 26, 2016

LESLEY BARCLAY. Diagnosing rural health gaps in the election.

The Coalition represents most rural electorates in Australia. But we seldom hear of much concern about their constituents who have poor health and poor health services. this is a repost of an earlier article by Lesley Barclay about the problems of rural health. John Menadue.

It is timely as the federal election approaches to consider whether all Australians are getting the healthcare they need. Approximately 30 per cent of Australians live in rural and remote areas.

Arguably they do not get a fair go in relation to their healthcare compared to the rest of us.

Rural and remote Australians are disadvantaged by social circumstances that influence their health status and ripen them for avoidable chronic disease when compared to counterparts in Australias major cities.

December 29, 2017

CAMERON MURRAY.Game of Mates: How favours bleed the nation A REPOST

Excerpt from Chapter 1 ofGame of Mates: How favours bleed the nation. Get the book viagameofmates.com. Follow author Cameron Murray onFacebookandTwitter.__Come to the Brisbane book launch on 23rd May, 6pm at Avid Reader, West End (Details and RSVP link).

December 19, 2017

TONY DOHERTY. A Christmas reflection.

Christmas is the celebration of a story. A story told in the gospels by two storytellers - Matthew and Luke. Its a tale told and retold, and often so badly that, should the original storytellers be alive today, I could imagine them squirming.

January 15, 2019

JON FINER and ROBERT MALLEY. Trump is right to seek an end to Americas wars (The New York Times International Edition).

The presidents desire to disentangle the country from costly overseas conflicts must be encouraged.

October 13, 2019

DUNCAN GRAHAM How not to engage with Asia

Every decade or so a Western Australian politician on the cast-iron balconies of the States Parliament glances outwards. Looking away from the Darling Range rippling in the heat rising from the Swan Coastal Plain, the watcher wonders: What opportunities lie North West?

Maybe adolescent markets hungry for the abundance of minerals and foods coming from the States hinterland? Just seeing neighbours as consumers is a bit crass, so policies need to be packaged with ribbons labelled relationships and friendship. The latest is engagement. Unwrapping reveals a mostly empty box.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal