August 12, 2020

To mask or not to mask? Is that the question?

_The debate about wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic has fluctuated, but there now seems to be consensus that it is safer for the public to wear masks to avoid or at least reduce community transmission.

January 6, 2020

Australian bushfires: it’s not always about climate change (Straits Times 24-12-19)

Global warming and climate change are scientific facts, but beware of attempts to make them responsible for poor human decisions affecting the environment today.

November 17, 2018

PETER RODGERS. Morrison and Jerusalem - what a way to run a foreign policy!

Scott Morrison’s revelation last October that he was thinking about relocating Australia’s Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem should go down as one of 2018’s crassest comments. For the PM was not “thinking” at all. Casting the possible relocation as shock therapy for the non-existent Israeli-Palestinian peace process is a fraud.

September 28, 2016

JAMES GERRAND. Cambodia Crackdown. Part 2 of 2.

Part 2 Hun Sen’s Red Brotherhood

Hanoi cannot be seen to be interfering in Cambodian affairs but the Vietnamese military has cemented close ties with the Hun Sen regime - none closer than with the Prime Minister’s personal Bodyguard Unit (BHQ), their go-to-man being the Deputy Commander Dieng Sarun. General Sarun’s shadowy Senaneak Youth League (read pro-CPP thugs) mounted the street protest that led to the brutal beating of two opposition MPs by several of his BHQ soldiers outside the National Assembly in October last year.

February 13, 2018

The trust deficit in Canberra.

When Marshall Green was sent by Richard Nixon as Ambassador to keep a close eye on Gough Whitlam, some said his was the first serious American appointment in our history. Harry Harris, for different reasons, may turn out to be another.

March 11, 2019

MIKE SCRAFTON. Another American civil war?

The silhouette of yet another potential catastrophe is beginning to take shape. To add to the dissolution of the post war global order, global warming, mass species extinction, and great power conflict, there seems now the prospect of a post-Trump Presidency American civil war. Maybe. Not really?

November 25, 2017

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND ...

The only argument about housing prices seems to be whether they will crash or fall slowly. Paul Keating warns of a possible “Minsky moment” – a sudden and spectacular crash. A paper published by Ben Phillips and Cukkoo Joseph of ANU, going into regional detail, finds that there is already an oversupply in some inner-city regions, but suggests that oversupply in itself is unlikely to reduce prices to any significant extent in the short term. Core Logic reports that auction clearance rates in Sydney and Melbourne have been on a noticeable downward trend over the last twelve months.

January 30, 2019

MIKE SCRAFTON. The fissures in NATO.

NATO defence ministers will meet in _Brussels over 13-14 February__. Member states will struggle to find any accord in the face of an array strategic and political challenges from internal and external sources. Overshadowing all else will be the vagaries of American policy and the Administration’s undisguised lack of enthusiasm for NATO, or any multilateral arrangements._

September 3, 2020

Those dangerous and subversive sister cities.

Sister cities provide opportunities for coercion, according to Professor John Blaxland.

December 8, 2017

KATHARINE BETTS AND BOB BIRRELL. How do Australian voters’ view the level of immigration? TAPRI and Scanlon compared

There has been growing controversy about Australia’s level of overseas immigration. In the year to March 2017 Australia’s population is estimated to have grown by a massive 389,100, some 231,000, or 60 per cent of which was due to net overseas migration. For the last few years around two thirds of the net growth in migrants have been locating in Sydney and Melbourne.

May 27, 2019

JONATHAN LUXMOORE. 'No words to express our shame': Polish bishops apologize for abuse

The Polish bishops’ administrative council met in emergency session May 22 and later admitted the church failed to act against clerical sexual abuse. The meeting came amid outrage over a two-hour documentary, “Just Don’t Tell Anyone,” that included drastic accounts of cover-up of clerical sex abuse in Poland. The film had more than 19 million views within six days of its May 11 YouTube posting.

November 2, 2018

PAUL KRUGMAN. Hate is on the ballot next week (New York Times 31 October 2018)

In America 2018, whataboutism is the last refuge of scoundrels, and bothsidesism is the last refuge of cowards. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the midst of a wave of hate crimes.

July 21, 2020

Economic recovery is their only target, but do they have a plan?

The consensus is in: the economy rules, okay? Finally, what remains of the national cabinet is essentially united.

January 6, 2020

RAY BRICKNELL. Australia's Broken System of No-Longer-Representative Democracy

A problem recognised is half solved.The biggest single problem facing Australia today is the fact that two major political parties have taken a stranglehold on our system of representative democracy.

July 7, 2020

What does the Eden-Monaro result mean?

The Eden-Monaro by-election status quo ante result raises two questions: why isn’t the Prime Minister’s high approval rating translating into an improved rating for the government; and, why do the media keep up the same old tired approaches to covering political events?

October 29, 2018

GARRY EVERETT. Critical yeast in critical times.

The title of this piece is taken from an address by Bishop Vincent Long, to the Concerned Catholics of Canberra, on the 11th of September this year. The Bishop had been invited to outline his vision for a Catholic Church, in the post Royal Commission (into sexual abuse) era. He addressed the topic by focussing in three reflections.

May 15, 2018

ERIC HODGENS. Reading the Christian Story Properly.

Christianity is now 2,000 years old with a pre-history of a further 1,000 years Its stories are amongst its most prized possessions. Christians love their stories. Stories take pride of place in its liturgies. But for some they are a credibility stumbling block. How can the story be told and heard so that it engenders faith as it was originally intended to do?

November 21, 2017

Justice Peter McClellan says Police had an 'understanding' to protect churches from scandal

POLICE in Sydney and Melbourne had an “understanding..for many years” about protecting church figures accused of child sex allegations, royal commission chair Justice Peter McClellan will say in a speech in Melbourne on Tuesday. This is an article written by award winning journalist Joanne McCarthy

May 30, 2016

EVAN WILLIAMS: Who cares what the papers say?

In the first week of Malcolm Turnbull’s interminable election campaign, the Murdoch press surprised its readers by advocating support for Labor. How’s that again? Had Rupert had a change of heart? Well, not exactly. But it certainly looked that way when his Sydney tabloid, the Daily Telegraph, under the headline “Save Our Albo”, urged voters in Anthony Albanese’s suburban Sydney seat to keep Albo in the job. It turned out that the Greens – an even greater threat to civilisation than the ALP – were threatening to unseat Albo in a preference deal with the Liberals. Luckily this dire plot was exposed in time.

January 14, 2018

GEOFF MILLER. Singapore, Australia, “the Quad” and ASEAN---same same but different!

Singapore and Australia are having to deal with the same set of problems and relationships as the strategic situation in the Asia-Pacific changes. Singapore isn’t a contender for an expanded “Quad” but, as next year’s Chairman of ASEAN, it will have an important role to play in one of the Turnbull Government’s major foreign policy initiatives, the ASEAN-Australia Summit to be held in Sydney next March. A REPOST

May 21, 2019

JOHN FITZGERALD. Reply to Bob Carr

Writing on this blog on 13 May, Bob Carr took me to task for not saying and not writing a good many things, particularly about Chinese Australians. This debating technique is new to me. As a rule, debaters rebut what people do say, not what they don’t. So let me say this.

May 15, 2018

Classes & politics.

The return of the concept of ‘class’ to mainstream public debate is an unanticipated feature of the second decade of the new century. Whether defined by people’s relationship to production or distribution, or as a hybrid of economic and cultural identities, a consciousness of class is crystallising once again within democratic countries, and notably in the United States. Some reasons are obvious.

December 7, 2018

HAMISH MCDONALD. Christian Missionaries and Their Mistaken Message from God (AsianSentinel, 05.12.18)

As fans of the old The Phantom comic strip will recall, an island in the Bay of Bengal is the location of the Skull Cave, home base of The Ghost Who Walks, established by an ancestor washed ashore in a “half-drowned” state after an attack by “Singh pirates” and nurtured back to life by the island’s devoted natives.

October 15, 2019

SETH FRANTZMAN. Smoke Signals in the Next Middle East War (7 October 2019, Tablet)

Iran’s attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil fields was a warning to Israel in an escalating regional war

A bit over two weeks before the cruise missiles and drones detonated in Saudi Arabia’s strategic oil fields, igniting massive explosions that would take out more than half of the country’s daily oil exports, a group of Hezbollah activists emerged on Aug. 22 from a hill overlooking the Golan Heights. They carried with them drones, which malfunctioned when they tried to use them, apparently as a result of Israeli military actions. They were being watched by Israeli surveillance, which caught them trudging through a field. Two nights later the men, whom Israeli officials labeled a “ killer drone” team, were killed in an airstrike. Israel warned at the time that Iran’s drones and precision guided missiles were a significant threat.

July 7, 2020

Australia's American dreaming is turning into a nightmare.

Since the signing of the ANZUS treaty in 1951, Australians have been living a dream that America shares their country’s cultural values, language and democratic institutions. They dream that they are safely cacooned in Tony Abbott’s beloved “anglosphere”, with the USA in the lead. As with all dreams, this fantasy has always had the flimsiest basis in reality. And today the dream is turning into a nightmare.

December 13, 2017

RICHARD BUTLER. The ring seems to be closing on the Trump Presidency

Every day brings deeper levels of concern about Trump’s conduct of his office. There is widening and, given American respect for the office itself, uncharacteristically public speculation about his fitness for it. The ring appears to be closing.

March 28, 2019

DANNY DAVIS. Super power: why the future of Australian capitalism is now in Greg Combet’s hands (The Conversation).

Right now Greg Combet is arguably the most powerful man in Australia.

Earlier this month the former trade unionist and federal politician declared his intention to transform Australian business. His radical idea: to promote the concept of “long-term value”.

September 15, 2020

Isn't less government what the conservatives really want?

The commonwealth has unraveled, federation has unfederated. So why aren’t the Tories cheering?

February 13, 2018

Should Australian Catholic Bishops be Trusted?

“_The bond of trust between the laity and their bishops has been severely impaired…_a serious erosion of trust in the hierarchical leadership of the church’’.- leading Australian Catholic theologian Professor Neil Ormerod of the Australian Catholic University in Fairfax papers on Sunday 11 February 2018.

Many Catholics have become demanding of their Church leaders following the starkly inadequate responses of the Australian bishops to the findings of the Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It is remarkable that the bishops have focussed on processes and procedures, basic changes that did not need a Royal Commission, while failing to address the culture of unaccountable clericalist leadership exposed by the Commission - the actual basis of the cover up and protection of paedophiles.

April 3, 2019

BRUCE THOM. Climate change adaption: 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.

March 1, 2016

David Armstrong. A journalistic career from Tharunka to Bangkok.

David Armstrong has had a remarkable career as a journalist. From Tharunka at the University of NSW . His career includes The Bulletin, The Australian, South China Morning Post, and now business and semi-retirement in Bangkok.

In an interview with American writer, Kevin Cummings, David Armstrong speaks of his travels and career. See following link:

http://peoplethingsliterature.com/2016/01/25/david-armstrong-interview-5-decades-in-four-questions/

December 13, 2018

ABUL RIZVI: Is Minister Coleman Unwinding Dutton’s Sub-class 457 Changes

Poor David Coleman. Business and employer groups, particularly in regional Australia, have been pillorying him for the ham-fisted changes to employer-sponsored temporary and permanent migration implemented by his predecessor Peter Dutton. Contrary to the traditional approach of past Liberal Party Immigration Ministers, Dutton tightened these categories in a way that shocked business and employer groups. Coleman is now sensibly moving to unwind many of Dutton’s changes. But can he make the changes quickly enough to satisfy employers around regional Australia and will he get the balance right between streamlining visa pathways, protecting the opportunities of semi-skilled Australian workers, maintaining visa integrity and minimising exploitation of the overseas workers?

January 30, 2019

JACKSON LEARS. Imperial Exceptionalism -(The New York Review of Books February 7, 2019).

It is hard to give up something you claim you never had. That is the difficulty Americans face with respect to their country’s empire.

January 3, 2019

MACK WILLIAMS. Pine Gap: Cabinet Papers.

Lost in the flurry of media comment on the Cabinet papers released on 1 January was an extremely important( if not the most) submission formerly highly classified and titled as “Establishment of a Joint Australia-United States Relay Ground Station at Pine Gap”. As of writing, seemingly only the ABC has picked up on the submission with the major print media choosing not to report it – for reasons one can only speculate about!

November 29, 2017

IAN DUNLOP. Climate & Energy – Appeasement Does Not Work

The current chaos around climate and energy policy brings to mind George Santayana’s caution that: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. That is exactly what we are witnessing, albeit with far more profound implications even than the advent of the Second World War.

January 2, 2019

JOHN AUSTEN. Public inquiries into NSW infrastructure projects.

The former NSW Opposition Leader proposed a judicial inquiry into WestConnex and Sydney Light Rail. The new Opposition Leader wants public inquiries into major infrastructure projects. The NSW Transport Minister called this a ‘hairbrained idea’ saying projects are already subject to ‘independent oversight’. He is wrong.

May 15, 2020

QUENTIN DEMPSTER. Let ‘er rip!: Snowy 2.0 project now an integrity test for Gladys Berejiklian

The New South Wales Berejiklian Government now faces an integrity test over the fast tracking of final approval for the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro electricity project in Kosciuszko National Park.

April 25, 2019

There is no business like show business

The relationship between John Howard and former AFP Commissioner, Mick Keelty, put the AFP in a bad place from which it has not recovered. The solution is a full blown inquiry followed by reform, a change of culture and better leadership. There is a case for dismantling Border Force.

April 1, 2019

LAURIE PATTON. Fair trade or exploitation – the ‘warehousing’ of Internet domain names.

_auDA_ – the company managing our Internet domain name registration system – is engaged in a reform program. This follows a _review_ by the communications department which called for major governance changes. auDA has released a _discussion paper_ and has called for public submissions on a range of proposed policy and operational changes. This is being accompanied by a consultation process that sees auDA presenting to MP’s and senators at Parliament House this week.

July 22, 2019

JUDITH WHITE. Arts vandalised in NSW

Buoyed by the re-election of the NSW Berejiklian Government in March, Minister for the Arts Don Harwin is ploughing ahead with the controversial move of the Powerhouse Museum from Ultimo to Parramatta. He has at last responded to the painstaking, long-running Upper House Inquiry into Museums and Galleries, which focused on the affair. His response is to disregard the findings of the Inquiry and the highly experienced professionals who gave detailed evidence to it.

April 17, 2019

Energy Minister Angus Taylor said greenhouse gas emissions have turned around by 1.1 billion tonnes under the Coalition. Is he correct? (ABC News)

The Morrison Government has for months argued Australia is on track to meet its international greenhouse gas emissions abatement targets “in a canter”.

April 4, 2018

CAVAN HOGUE. Russia and Australia: The Empire strikes back?

Russia is the prime suspect in the poisoning but cannot be convicted on the basis of the circumstantial evidence before we get the report of the independent commission. But this article is concerned about what this exercise tells us about Australian priorities. We have joined 28 NATO countries to put sanctions on Russia and ignored the165 countries that did not. We made no attempt to discuss our action with our Asian friends. Where do our priorities lie? Russia is a Pacific power so might it not have been a good idea to discuss things with some Asian powers?

December 7, 2017

ROSS GWYTHER. A sledgehammer for a walnut ?

Unbeknown to most Australians, a court case has been underway in Alice Springs over the past few months with implications far and wide. Employing a sixty year old law drafted during the height of the anti-communist 1950s in Australia, the Federal Government has called for seven years jail for each member of a small group of people known as the Pine Gap Peace Pilgrims, whose only offence was singing and praying in the grounds of Pine Gap in 2016.

July 14, 2018

Get-tough rhetoric has denied us any sway with Beijing (AFR, 10/07/18)

As foreign minister I recall an irritating flare-up in our relations with one of the Pacific states. There had been a “misunderstanding” at Sydney airport that upset the island state’s prime minister. The anger ran strong and the state contemplated a big anti-Australian gesture: terminating an arrangement under which we trained their police. And, here’s the rub, inviting China to fill the gap.

July 13, 2018

PETER DRYSALE AND SHIRO ARMONSTRONG. Getting Australia’s geopolitical and economic strategies aligned (Australian Financial Review, 08/07/18)

Australia, it has been said, is faced with hard choices in strategic policy because its principal security partner is the United States and its major trading partner, China. By deﬁning Australia’s national interest comprehensively where both China and the United States matter – and where security and economics are integrated into strategic decision making from the outset – Australia would be better placed to deal with the ongoing challenges from both countries (and others) in a complex world.

January 6, 2017

CHRISTINA HO. Hothoused and hyper-racialised ethnic imbalance in our selective schools.

This is a repost from November 3, 2016.

“Across Sydney students from a language background other than English (LBOTE) regularly make up 80% or 90% of enrolments in selective schools.”

As families increasingly turn away from their local public schools, our kids are less likely to experience the full range of our diverse society.

July 25, 2016

JOHN MENADUE. What our next Prime Minister should do on asylum seekers.

The following is a repost from 22 June 2016 - before the recent election.

After the election, our new Prime Minister should arrange an urgent meeting with the leaders of the three other major parties to negotiate a sensible and humanitarian response on asylum issues that have been avoided in the election campaign. At that meeting the new Prime Minister should make it clear that compromise will be required and that at least metaphorically, no-one should leave the meeting until there is an agreed response.

May 11, 2020

JEFF KILDEA. Lessons to be learned from the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919 - Part 2

By the end of February 1919 the NSW government, by prompt and strict measures, had, in today’s parlance, ‘flattened the curve’. But the worst was still to come.

September 9, 2020

Government must stop militarising our biggest challenges

Proposed legislation to enable the PM to declare a national emergency and call in the troops appears to be yet another example of the government’s dangerous tendency to militarise our biggest challenges, including climate change.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal