May 13, 2020

JOHN WARHURST. Catholic Bishops must embrace transparency and accountability

Senior Catholic bishops must exercise leadership and firmly grasp the fresh opportunities now provided to them for increased transparency and accountability within the church. They must grab the moment.

May 30, 2018

MAX HAYTON. NZ's government looks towards investing in better lives.

The New Zealand Labour-led Government’s first budget has been judged to be conservative, cautious, restrained. It was the first step in an innovative way to reverse trends that have been souring New Zealand society. The aim is to invest in the wellbeing of the nation and improve lives, not just the economy.

July 21, 2020

We have to fix environmental policy while we can

Two months ago, the budget of the New Zealand Government set aside an amount of $1.5 billion to create 11,000 regional jobs in the protection and restoration of the environment. If Australia were to match this COVID stimulus initiative per capita it would budget $7.5 billion for 55,000 jobs in the regions.

October 28, 2019

NOEL TURNBULL. Halloween hex for Trump

While it will probably solidify Trump support in the minds of some Christians – for instance the US versions of Australia’s Sydney Anglican Archbishop and Southern snake handlers – a campaign is being conducted by Michael M. Hughes to ‘bind’ Donald Trump.

September 30, 2020

LobbyLand

In Pearls and Irritations, we will be running a series on lobbyists and their threat to our democracy.

December 3, 2019

JACK WATERFORD. Sexing up the charges for PR purposes

Austrac’s record on remittance scrutiny looks as lamentable as Westpac’s

April 2, 2018

JOHN MENADUE. The Quad and the Japanese Prime Minister

To contain China, Japan has been keen, along with Australia and the US, to develop the Quad, a defence relationship or alliance with India. The Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has a particular reason to include India. It would burnish his ultra-nationalist credentials and win support for his anti-Chinese posturing.

August 25, 2020

China: are we asserting Australia's independence or America's?

The recent determination to make an enemy of our important trading partner China is the most egregious foreign policy blunder since John Howard’s reckless decision to join George Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

June 19, 2019

PAUL KRUGMAN. Mar-a-Lago comes for the N.H.S. (New York Times 8.6.2109)

Probably everyone who followed Donald Trump’s visit to Britain has a favorite scene of diplomatic debacle. But the moment that probably did the most to poison relations with our oldest ally — and undermine whatever chance there was for the “phenomenal” trade deal Trump claimed to be offering — was Trump’s apparent suggestion that such a deal would involve opening up Britain’s National Health Service to U.S. private companies.

August 1, 2016

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. The South China Sea, China, Philippines, Australia and the US.

I was surprised the Opposition did not differentiate itself from the Australian Coalition Government’s strong support for the US and the Philippine position on the South China Sea issue.

It can be argued that it was misleading to state in public that the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) judgment in favour of the Philippines was “binding". This was a matter between the Philippines and China only. China had declared at the outset that the Court had no jurisdiction over the dispute, a position also taken by one of the other claimants, Taiwan, which argued that any such dispute should be settled peacefully through multilateral negotiations.

August 21, 2020

The Coal Curse – A Review

Governments are abrogating their first responsibility, which is to safeguard the people and their future well-being.

The first part of historian Judith Brett’s Quarterly Essay, The Coal Curse - Resources, Climate and Australia’s Future, is a masterly dissection of Australian economic history since WW2.

July 8, 2020

China won't care what we think or do about Hong Kong

One can look at the future of the seven million people of Hong Kong only with the deepest foreboding.

November 25, 2015

Frank Brennan SJ. Cardinal Pell, his lawyers and the Royal Commission

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is about to recommence its case study on the Catholic Church in Ballarat. Last week, the Melbourne Herald Sun reported: ‘Victims of child sexual abuse look set to be grilled by lawyers for Cardinal George Pell in a bid to quash explosive allegations he was complicit in a widespread cover-up.’

Cardinal Pell will have legal representation separate from the legal team appearing for the Church. He will return from Rome and give evidence at the public hearing next month.

September 1, 2020

It was a mistake to privatise aged care

We are trying to care for our elderly on the cheap. What an indictment that we seem willing to spend more on defence than we do on the elderly.

October 12, 2018

KEVIN BAIN. “Down with refugee capture and storage!” Part 2 of 2

In Part 1 I pointed to opinion research which suggests that European and Australian political leaderships are playing to their narrow base, that the population has not abandoned humanitarian attitudes towards refugees, but do reject the dominant slogans of advocates and the implied consequences. I’ll comment on one of the aspects, and report on the 2017 Alexander Betts and Paul Collier book “Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System.”

August 9, 2016

MICHAEL KEATING. Improving employment participation.

This is a repost of an article by Michael Keating last year which was part of the Fairness, Opportunity and Security policy series. John Menadue

The rate of employment participation and the productivity of those employees together determine the average per capita incomes of Australians, and therefore our living standards. In addition, being employed creates many of the social contacts and sense of self-esteem that are vital to our individual well-being. While arguably the best way to reduce inequality is to create the conditions where those disadvantaged people who are presently on the margin of the workforce get work, or in other cases get more work.

In short increasing employment participation is most important if governments want to improve living standards, individual well-being, and equality.

August 14, 2020

It is high noon in the wild West for Clive Palmer

E_xtraordinary legislation rushed through State Parliament this week to protect Western Australia against an estimated $30 billion damages claim marks a dramatic escalation of the Government’s battle with Clive Palmer._

July 31, 2019

JOSEPH MARTOS. Can laypeople lead a parish? Look to Louisville for a thriving example.

In his recent book Worship as Community Drama, sociologist Pierre Hegy described an unusual Catholic parish whose identity he hid under the name Church of the Resurrection. When the book was published earlier this year and we read the chapter titled “A Lay-Run Parish: Consensus Without a Central Authority,” we could tell that it was about us.

I asked Hegy about possibly revealing the facts behind the chapter. He replied that sociological protocols had to be followed in the book, but these would not apply to an article in a newspaper. OK, here goes.

August 26, 2020

Military and security agencies are eroding civil society

War and militarisation has become ever-present in so much of our public life. Civilian power and responsibility is being marginalised. We go to war without our Parliament even debating the merits of such a momentous act. We are ceding civilian control to our military and security agencies.

June 1, 2020

CHEK LING. The mutating 'China question'

What a shemozzle! The cash cow has turned into a contagious apparition!

May 4, 2020

HENRY REYNOLDS. James Cook and the Contested 'Discovery' of Eastern Australia

_A problem with the way Cook’s voyage has been taught to generations of Australians is that it has been so relentlessly Anglo-Centric. The much earlier and more significant exploration of Dutch navigators has often been overlooked particularly in the eastern mainland states.

October 13, 2018

PETER RYAN. 'Big four' accounting firms should face banking royal commission to prove independence, former ASIC investigator says.

A former forensic investigator at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has called for the major accounting firms hired to audit and approve sensitive company reports to be brought before the financial services royal commission to prove their independence.

July 21, 2016

CAVAN HOGUE. Australian Foreign Policy. (Repost from Policy Series)

Summary.

Australian Foreign Policy is dominated by fear, defence issues, the American Alliance and the search for votes in marginal electorates. We talk about the importance of Asia but instinctively cleave to Europe and North America who are said to share our values but don’t always do so. We need to look beyond the next election and question some of our basic assumptions like whether the American Alliance gets us into more trouble than it gets us out of. We should also not get involved in peripheral issues which may serve American interests but have nothing to do with Australia. The world is changing and we must look to the future instead of focusing on the past. We need an integrated and independent foreign policy which takes a hard headed view of Australian interests and which keeps in mind the old but true saying that countries don’t have friends, only interests.

August 10, 2016

IAN McAULEY. Health care and Labor.

In the recent election Labor had fine words on health care – “Labor will ensure that access to health care is determined by your Medicare card, and not your credit card” – but in reality its policy proposals, if implemented, would have been even more destructive of Medicare than the Coalition’s.

The Coalition, true to form, proposed to entice more people into holding private health insurance, but Labor’s enticements to hold PHI were even stronger.

September 24, 2020

The Foreign Interference law is more a political stunt. But what about Rupert Murdoch's foreign interference?

_Rupert Murdoch and NewsCorp are currently campaigning to have the ABC neutered. Murdoch is a foreigner, as NewsCorp would seem to be. Australians and others are allegedly doing Murdoch’s bidding, with the intention to “influence a political or governmental process”; or “to influence the exercise … of an Australian democratic or political right or duty”.

June 26, 2020

Proposed University Funding is Policy Ideological Vandalism

Minister Tehan’s targeted university funding proposal is part of an ongoing government plan to destroy the ‘hotbeds of left-wing ideological fervour’ seen as centred in arts and social science faculties.

August 27, 2020

Why has Labor lost its once-strong voice on foreign policy? (AFR August 25, 2020)

The opposition has failed to ask what the government has received in return for its lavish support of Trump’s regional strategies.

May 19, 2020

BOB CARR. While the world looked the other way, corporate giants abandoned coal (SMH 15.5.20)

Can we deal with a pandemic and global warming at once – both urgent, one an immediate hit, the other a decade-long burn? Well, yes, because – even with front pages dominated by COVID-19 – last month saw an astonishing concentration of decisions by international corporates to ditch carbon. And they slipped by, with the world looking the other way.

February 14, 2021

Sunday environmental round up, 14 February 2021

Australian coal causes at least 320,000 premature deaths globally every year – six times more people than the industry employs. Coal from a fully operational Galilee Basin will cause approximately 200,000 premature deaths per year. Australia’s whole fossil fuel industry employs only 133,000 people. Electric vehicle prices falling. Sawfish severely threatened.

August 20, 2020

Being old and disabled in the time of COVID

The Prime Minister has apologised for the number of deaths in residential aged care during the COVID disaster. But he hasn’t apologised for the large number of people in residential aged care who don’t need to be there.

September 17, 2020

No one wins in a race to the bottom on national security: Let the Chinese academics back in (The China Story Sep 15, 2020)

If politicians don’t change course, the deterioration of Australia’s relationship with China will go hand in hand with the erosion of our civil liberties.

May 8, 2018

MARIAM MOKHTAR. Mahathir’s Last Hurrah.

Critics of Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, used to joke that he would like to be prime minister for life. Today, that prediction may have a ring of truth, although others believe the incumbent PM, Najib Abdul Razak, would like to stake the same claim.

November 2, 2017

HENRY REYNOLDS. Beersheba and the Militarisation of Australian History.

The commemoration of the centenary of the battle for Beersheba illustrates many features of the progressive militarization of Australian history. No other aspect of our past attracts the lavish funding provided by the federal government. The cost of the commemoration must be considerable given the abundant travel grants and the funding of the new Light Horse Museum. The attendance of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, and other prominent Australians, including the Ambassador to the USA Joe Hockey, further enhances the asserted national importance of the event. The uncritical reporting of the accompanying Australian media contingent provided little scope for sceptical assessment of the battle itself and its long term significance.

October 31, 2019

RANDALL HEYN-LAMB. Episcopal Church officially bars investments in companies benefitting from the Israeli occupation (Mondoweiss 24-10-19)

This week, the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church adopted a human rights investment screen related to Israel and Palestine and will sell its holdings in Motorola Solutions, Caterpillar, Inc., and the Israel Discount Bank.

September 18, 2020

Driving in the dark in our conflict with China

There is a co-ordinated front from the defence and security establishments, the Coalition back-bench, US-financed think tanks and the Murdoch-dominated media in attacks on China

August 10, 2020

We still need to provide adequate retirement income.

The current early drawdowns of superannuation balances will reduce those workers’ retirement incomes. It would therefore be desirable to allow and encourage them to restore their superannuation balances as and when they can.

February 20, 2018

MARC HUDSON. It’s 20 years since privatisation lit the spark under South Australia’s livewire energy politics

February 17, 2018, marks the 20th anniversary of a momentous day in South Australian energy politics. The then premier, John Olsen, announced that, despite repeated promises during the previous year’s state election campaign, his Liberal government would be putting the Electricity Trust of South Australia (ETSA) up for sale.

August 7, 2020

Time for ALL to think about race in Australia

Do Black lives matter in Australia? Race is surely this nation’s primal wound. But the actions of those with most power to lead or inspire this nation are not reassuring.

February 7, 2019

LIZ HANNA. A warming Australia spells serious trouble for human health

Climate change. Global warming. A hotter planet. A hotter Australia. Yet few are asking the difficult question of ‘how hot is too hot?’. We have so many elephants in the room at present that ‘the room’ is getting pretty crowded, but as we are barrelling towards 1.5oC of planetary warming since pre-industrial times, the ‘how hot is too hot’ elephant is definitely ‘in the room’. We need to let it out and examine heat tolerance.

November 17, 2018

JOHN MENADUE- Sacrifice is being politicised. Militarism is becoming the norm.

Remembrance is morphing into acceptance of conflict. The culture war about remembrance being waged by conservatives and the military is winning with little opposition. The never ending stories of Gallipoli, the Western front and Armistice go on and on. We are celebrating war on a scale that no other country does. Government ministers, Veterans Affairs, the Australian War Memorial and the media imbedded in the military complex can’t contain themselves. Public occasions are invariably backgrounded by numerous flags and the military, often regardless of the subject at hand.

So that we won’t ask the hard question WHY we fight in so many futile wars we immerse ourselves in HOW we fight. We are deceiving ourselves.

July 3, 2020

China must obey international rules in the South China Sea but the US can ignore them in Diego Garcia.

China is rightly criticised for building islands for military purposes in the South China Sea whilst ignoring an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) brought by the Philippines. But what of the US in Diego Garcia?

July 23, 2020

Hong Kong from the inside

Reporting by outsiders on Hong Kong tends to be over-simplistic and seen through Western eyes. We need to look at things through the eyes of Hong Kongers. The old Hong Kong is dead but the new one may emerge not quite like either the West or China would foresee.

December 29, 2019

CRAIG WHITLOCK.-At War with the Truth(Washington Post 9.12.2019)

A confidential trove of Government documents obtained by the Washington Post reveals that senior US officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18 year campaign, making rosy announcements they knew to be false and hiding the unmistakable evidence that the war had been unwinable.

(Behaving like a US colony ,Australia joined the disastrous Afghanistan War like so many other US led wars of intervention that ended in defeat ,untold human suffering and brought terrorism to our shores. John Menadue)

See the Washington Post _documents_ .

August 24, 2020

It was the threat of Soviet invasion, not the bombs that drove Japan's surrender.

_The 75th Pacific War end anniversary has revived once again the debate over whether the US in 1945 had to resort to nuclear bombings to force Japan’s surrender. The global anti-nuclear movement has long used the horror of those bombings to promote its cause.

April 1, 2019

BRUCE THOM. Climate change adaptation: perspectives from canada and england

Australia can learn lessons from other countries who take very seriously the importance of addressing now the various complex challenges of climate change impacts on environmental assets and the lifestyles and livelihoods of citizens. We have no national plan to mitigate the threats and impacts of natural disasters and extreme weather events under emerging conditions of the new climate era. Two recent initiatives from the UK and Canada provide directions a future federal government could follow building on current work especially by some state governments.

July 31, 2020

When the war on terror turns inward

We now have evidence of a campaign conducted in Australia to attack the credibility and the reputation of individuals and organisations seen as being too close to China.

January 22, 2019

Curiouser and curiouser: The Marketing of Private Schools

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER. The Marketing of Private Schools

In its recent newspaper advertisement for a Director of Advancement, a long-established Sydney private school for Catholic boys described itself as “an inclusive, non-selective, school, with students attending from all walks of life”. This is a school with exorbitant upfront fees and resource levels to match. Such an audacious attempt at re-branding suggests that there is more afoot here than semantics.

July 29, 2020

Australia-China relations affected by COVID-19 crisis (RN Breakfast with Fran Kelly )

China has hit back at Australian calls for an international investigation into the origins and spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Guest: Hugh White, Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies, ANU.

September 15, 2020

Secrecy covers up abuse of power and poor performance by security services

One would have to go back to the 1970s to find the nation so ill-served. All the more so as politicians have politicised national security, and reverted to 1960s games of gathering and using secret information for political purposes. It would not be strictly correct to describe the agencies themselves, or their leaders, as politically compromised – at least in a party-partisan way – but each now operates in a far from detached environment.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal

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