March 3, 2017

RAMESH THAKUR. The Trump effect and Japan

Japan has an exceptional opportunity, while maneuvering to remain close to Washington, to reduce its unhealthy security and economic dependency on the United States, and to educate the U.S. administration on the merits and benefits of the key planks of a rules-based global order and international cooperation.

July 30, 2018

GEOFF MILLER. Iran: No bombing until…..

It’s a relief that last week’s story has been hosed down both here and in the US, but causes for concern remain.

December 21, 2016

MICHAEL KEATING. Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, 2016

The Government’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) released yesterday contains few changes and no surprises. The critical question is whether the path back to surplus is actually credible, especially given the many failed promises in the past. This post examines the government’s economic forecasts that underpin the budget numbers and whether the government’s approach to Budget repair is really viable.

June 30, 2014

The rich are inheriting the earth ... our earth

The last budget kept our Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) unchanged at a nominal amount of $5.03 billion. In real terms that was a cut of 2.25% or over $100 million. Julie Bishop told us that it was a contribution that ODA would have to make to repair our budget deficit.

At the same time the government is abolishing the mining tax. We are obviously expected to believe that we cannot continue helping the world’s poor. It is more important to give money back to the miners.

February 6, 2017

PETER DAY. Catholic Archbishops to front Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

This week the Catholic archbishops of Australia will be called to give evidence at the full panel of Royal Commission in Sydney.

March 8, 2016

Merriden Varrall. The Chinese elephant in Australia–Japan relations

Earlier this month, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop visited Tokyo, where she outlined an increasing emphasis on security cooperation between Japan and Australia. The next day she was in Beijing, where she reportedly received a frosty reception. The two are not unrelated — Beijing is not thrilled about Australia’s growing security ties with Japan.

Because Australia is concerned about China’s increasing assertiveness in the region, but at the same time benefits from China economically, we find ourselves in somewhat of a foreign policy pickle. In this very complex situation, it is critical that Australian policymakers respond with both immediate and long-term outcomes in mind. To understand the long-term implications for Australia’s interests of policies drawing Japan and Australia closer together, we need to understand how Chinese policymakers view the world and China’s role within it.

March 4, 2025

A five-minute scroll

No Other Land winning an Oscar shows a shift in perception of Western opinion on Gaza. Seyed Mohammad Marandi reports that Iran will not negotiate with the US because Trump violates agreements. Why is the ABC gaslighting Anthony Albanese’s election chances? Jonathan Pie gives his spin on Trump’s response to Ukraine.

December 15, 2015

Allan Patience. Fighting Holy Wars in the Middle East

How do we deal with Daesh? The Islamic State (ISIS) has proven to be a brutally formidable force in Syria and Iraq. As we saw recently in Paris, it has spread its vicious tentacles into Europe. It is highly probable that we’ll see it erupt in North America and very possibly again here in Australia, quite soon. It is clear that for all the blood and treasure invested in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria – heavy bombing raids, military advisors/trainers on the ground, intelligence gathering on an apocalyptic scale, all to the tune of billions of dollars – little has been won and much has been lost. Death rates and injuries (especially among civilians) are mounting every day and the refugee crisis is now counted in the millions. What is to be done?

January 23, 2017

MICHAEL GARCIA BOCHENEK. EU cannot copy Australia's offshore asylum model

Casting about for ways to manage refugee flows, some European policymakers speak of emulating Australia’s use of offshore processing centres. But Australia’s approach to asylum seekers is fiscally irresponsible, morally bankrupt, and increasingly unsustainable politically. It’s no model for Europe.

January 3, 2017

JOHN TULLOH. Just a case of Israeli 'chutzpah' or the action of a village tyrant?

The apoplectic rage of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was something to behold. How dare the U.N., an organisation he takes little notice of anyway, condemn his ever expanding housing program for Jewish families in the contested West Bank and how dare the U.S. not even bother to veto it as has been the custom.

January 8, 2015

A taxing tale of two peak bodies.

In the SMH on 2 January, Michael West drew attention to the ways that two BCAs were treated differently. The Blind Citizens Australia (BCA) learned that it had been subject to federal government funding cuts. Another BCA, the Business Council of Australia, did much better. ‘Only a week earlier the government had backflipped on a proposed tax-avoidance reform entailing some $600 million in tax deductions that multinational companies could claim on interest on their debts in offshore subsidiaries.’ For the full story from Michael West see link below. John Mendue

March 13, 2017

IAN MCAULEY. Warning from Colin Barnett: Privatisation is on the nose

The WA Government’s proposal to privatise Western Power – the government-owned electricity utility – was one of the factors contributing to the extraordinary anti-Liberal swing in Saturday’s Western Australia election. Privatisation of electricity has also been an issue in the eastern states. While the coal lobby and climate change deniers have blamed South Australia’s blackouts and shortages in other states on renewables, more detached observers, such as _John Quiggin__, have pointed out the part played by privatisation in raising prices and contributing to electricity shortages._

May 26, 2017

FRANK BRENNAN. Gonski in An Age of Budget Repair

School funding is a very complex issue in Australia. It’s now a poisonous political cocktail. David Gonski who had been the poster boy for Julia Gillard’s bold education reforms has now been showcased by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Education Minister Simon Birmingham announcing their new deal for school funding.

September 13, 2013

What does Labor stand for? Principles to drive policies and programs. John Menadue

Late last year I was approached by a friend who is very politically active about what I thought the ALP could do to renovate its policy platform.

I discussed this request with an old friend, Ian McAuley. Together we prepared a paper ‘Principles to drive policies and programs – or – What does Labor stand for?’ It is dated 18 December 2012. Quite deliberately, this paper was not widely distributed. It can now be found on my website . It is on the home page and also in the folder ‘democratic renewal’. It is also reproduced at the end of this blog.

March 5, 2014

John Menadue. The war on asylum seekers

For political purposes the government has deliberately embarked on a policy and a language to militarise the asylum seeker issue in the same way the Howard Government did in the “war on terror”. It is designed to highlight the government’s resolve, to play to our fears about a threat and to lessen our rights to be informed. Failure to disclose is justified because we are ‘at war’.

But the ‘war on terror’ and the so-called ‘war on asylum seekers’ would in fact be much better conducted by police, customs and our intelligence services.

May 23, 2014

Michael Keating. Part 5. Federalism

The Government’s Commission of Audit, which preceded this Budget, recommended that policy and service delivery should as far as practicable be the responsibility of the level of government closest to the people receiving those services, and that each level of government should be sovereign in its own sphere, with minimal duplication between the Commonwealth and the States. The Government for its part has insisted that it does not run schools or hospitals and that the States are ultimately responsible for them and what happens to them.

March 30, 2017

GILES PARKINSON. How AEMO's new boss will reform Australia's energy vision.

Audrey Zibelman, the new chief executive of the Australian Energy Market Operator, has been in the job for little over a week, but is already making her mark, signalling the biggest shift in energy management philosophy in a generation.

February 27, 2017

MUNGO MacCALLUM. The Abbott geyser.

Unless Malcolm Turnbull is prepared to take the pretender front on, to attempt to blow him away in the manner he is trying to dispose of Shorten, he will continue to cop the wrecking, sniping and undermining that Abbott is so enjoying.

March 2, 2017

JACK WATERFORD. We need a Catholic Yom Kippur, and a serious sacrifice.

The major intersection between the child abuse royal commission and the Catholic Church went into act four over the past week. The drama, plot and moral of the miracle play would be much enhanced if scene one, rather than scene four, of act five began with the resignations of each of Australia’s archbishops, along with that of the nuncio, the archbishop representing the Pope in Australia.

May 12, 2015

John McCarthy. Foreign Policy. Australia, the United States and Asia.

Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy Series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue

In a conversation in October last year with two British foreign correspondents and a former Japanese Prime Ministerial foreign policy adviser, the subject turned to the United States. All three interlocutors argued that in recent years Australia had superseded both Japan and the United Kingdom as the United States’ closest ally.

This view should not have come as a surprise.

March 8, 2017

FRANK STILWELL and CHRISTOPHER SHEIL. The IMF is showing some hypocrisy on inequality

The IMF should practice what it preaches when it comes to inequality.

September 12, 2019

RICHARD BUTLER. The Termination of a Terminator: John Bolton

The departure of John Bolton from the post of national security advisor to Trump removes from a crucial position a person whose belief in the US waging war on what he identified as its enemies was boundless. His recommendation for every perceived foreign policy problem has been to take military action. He was the fourth person to hold the position of National Security Advisor under Trump, during the past 33 months. His predecessors resigned or were “let go”. Bolton’s departure is easily the most dramatic of them.

February 8, 2017

JOHN MENADUE. We are losing our sense of community

Markets are displacing society and community. Exclusion is winning out over inclusion.

November 29, 2016

JOHN AUSTEN. Sydney, metro again: $10billion more to ‘build something later’?

John Austen suggests that the NSW government’s approach to railways is at least back-to-front and probably misconceived.

May 4, 2015

John McCarthy. Australia and Indonesia: hard times ahead.

The executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran will leave most Australians dismayed by President Joko Widodo’s refusal of clemency, angered by the clumsy, ugly execution process and jaundiced by the attitudes of a number of Indonesians on killing two of our countrymen.

This latest downturn with Indonesia will make us reflect—again—on what we should do. Make no mistake, it will deeply affect Australian perceptions of Jokowi through the rest of his tenure, and more widely, of Indonesia for years to come.

June 18, 2018

RICHARD BUTLER. Singapore: Sound and Lights

Trump told us that, in Singapore, he would make it up as he went along. It appears that he kept his word on that. Afterwards he told the world that if it all tanks, he will “make up an excuse for it”. His central motive for the Summit was domestic distraction and, the usual addiction to self- aggrandizement. A potentially heavy price was paid in Singapore, by all affected by DPRK policies and, the US domestic distraction was not achieved.

May 19, 2017

FRANK BRENNAN. The invidious choice for refugee advocates

Robert Manne’s latest piece on the future policy options for refugees on Nauru and Manus Island is now available here. The moral-political question is about the choice confronting those of us advocating a change of policy by the major political parties.

March 27, 2014

Ian McAuley, Jennifer Doggett and John Menadue. The case for government funding of healthcare.

In our joint submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Abbott Government’s Commission of Audit, we drew attention to the fact that by international comparison, Australia is a low-taxed country. Furthermore, the trend in Commonwealth expenditures has been downwards since the mid-1980s. Our full submission can be found on my website (click above).

In that submission we made the case for government funding of healthcare as a superior option. Extracts from this submission on healthcare follow.

September 10, 2013

The aftermath of Saturday's election. Guest Blogger: David Combe

David Combe was ALP National Secretary from 1973 until 1981

Just over a month ago, I received an email from an old friend - an ALP Life Member who belongs to the ‘my party right or wrong’ school of loyalists - asking my thoughts on the likely outcome of the election which Prime Minister Rudd had just called. In my reply to her, I said in part:

“I have not been optimistic for some time….. Unless the way things happen has changed dramatically, I still believe that once the electorate ‘takes out the baseball bats’, there is nothing which is going to change the outcome. And they took them out a long while ago.

January 31, 2017

Welcoming the Stranger

In solidarity with refugees, young Catholics joined in a Mass in Lafayette Square outside the White House. See link below to article in ‘America, The Jesuit Review’.

November 10, 2014

William Grimm MM. Japan's 'inside-outside' culture guarantees a bleak future.

Society’s overwhelming suspicion of ‘foreigners’ will eventually lead to its decline.

Japan is a dangerous place. The country is prone to volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis and typhoons. The earthquake and tsunami that three years ago took more than 18,000 lives brought that fact to the attention of the world. But, smaller quakes are a daily occurrence. In the week before my writing this, there were 32 earthquakes in Japan.

Though dangerous in one sense, socially Japan is an extraordinarily safe country. Serious crime is rare, and generally enforced and obeyed safety regulations protect most residents from natural disasters and accidents.

March 5, 2013

'I was a stranger and you took me in.'

‘I was a stranger and you took me in’ (Matthew 25)

Well not really, according to Scott Morrison.

In her article in the SMH on 3 November 2012, Jane Cadzow describes Scott Morrison as ‘a devout Christian who worships at Shirelive, an American style Pentecostal Church. The Shirelive website says its members believe the Bible is the ‘accurate authoritative word of God’.

Formerly, Scott Morrison belonged to Hillsong. In his maiden speech to the House of Representatives in 2008 he said ‘from my faith I derive the values of loving kindness, justice and righteousness’.

February 21, 2017

JOHN TULLOH. What will Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop say to Benjamin Netanyahu?

It would be intriguing to know the position Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop intend to adopt in talks when the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visits Australia this week. It comes a week after Netanyahu had startling discussions with Donald Trump. The neophyte US leader on the Palestinian question did not seem too bothered what happened as long as both sides could reach ‘a deal’. Two-state, one-state, whatever! The two sides should work it out, he said, or perhaps get some of the friendlier Arab states involved, eh?

October 3, 2024

A five-minute scroll

In our five-minute scroll on X: Julian Assange recognised as a political prisoner; shameful, divisive western media commentary; Iran strikes Israel’s most secure air base; Russian carpet bombs in Volchansk; Malcolm Turnbull speaks his mind on Peter Dutton, and Hong Kong anti-China groups awash with mystery cash.

April 3, 2017

JOHN MENADUE. Alexey Navalny has roused a democratic Russia. Turnbull and Bishop are too busy sleeping to care.

In Australia we conjure Russia through the basest of filters: take your pick of Pauline Hanson expressing her admiration for Russia’s autocrat Vladimir Putin, or of the sometime boxer-sometime- Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s vows to ‘shirtfront’ said autocrat.

March 11, 2014

Eric Hodgens. Sydney's next bishop - what sort?

What should we look for in a bishop for Sydney in these changing times?

A Christian.

One committed to Jesus’ message of love, forgiveness and compassion. One who holds that the Church is not just the hierarchy, but the People of God on a journey.

A citizen of the world.

One who, while suspicious of all “isms” including secularism and pluralism, loves the world’s secularity and plurality. One who sees this non-confessional culture as an ideal setting for proclaiming a message of hope and salvation amid the reality of sadness, loss, sickness, poverty and death. One who wants the believer’s response to be free, not enforced by state or tribe.

June 14, 2017

RICHARD BUTLER. Turnbull, Trump and the Alliance

Trump’s presidency is in deep jeopardy. There is serious instability in the US polity. Political leaders of virtually all countries comparable to Australia are stepping back from, loosening, their relationship with the United States. Prime Minister Turnbull, alone, is not. Instead we are buying massively costly US military equipment and Turnbull thought it useful to announce, publicly, that Australia’s purpose in the Middle East is to kill as many ISIS as possible.

August 12, 2014

John Menadue. Will the new Colombo Plan work?

Julie Bishop has announced a ‘signature initiative’ of the Australian government which aims to lift knowledge of the Indo-Pacific in Australia by supporting Australian undergraduates with internships in the region.

This initiative is commendable but I hope it avoids the problem of earlier attempts to lift Australian understanding and skills for our region. The main problem before was that young Australians who committed themselves to skills about our region couldn’t get jobs in Australia. So they drifted away. Will we make the same mistake again?

September 4, 2013

No vision for the health system we need. Guest blogger Prof. John Dwyer

In this election the Coalition has provided dollar promises for worthy projects but no new health policy initiatives while only two of note have been forthcoming from the government; a long-term investment in stem cell research and the threat to remove family tax benefits from parents who put their children and the community at risk by not immunising them. Both are laudable but of greater interest to Australians would be our politician’s plans for solving the many problems that compromise the delivery of sustainable quality health care in our country. In a recent survey “Research Australia” found that funding for health and medical research is a higher priority for Australians than immigration policy and border control.

February 13, 2017

STEPHEN LONG. Malcolm Turnbull's turnaround on renewable energy, from pro-carbon price to clean coal

What a stunning turnaround. The man who lost the leadership by fighting to introduce a carbon price is now railing against renewable energy.

February 10, 2017

Ukraine, Crimea and the push for war

Instead of recognizing the historical and geopolitical realities, including that Ukraine is now a failed state ruled by neo-fascists, Western governments continue to parrot the tired cliché that the Russians are to blame. Upon such fatal ignorance are wars often started.

September 12, 2019

The Sri Lankan family – just a case of bloody mindedness

We await further operation of Federal Court processes before the future of the Sri Lankan family being held on Christmas Island is finally known. In the meantime, it’s worth reflecting on why the government has chosen to take such a hard line on this family.

February 9, 2017

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. Why is the government still pushing the Trans Pacific Partnership.

An important matter facing Australia is how to find a sound balance between China’s relations with neighbouring countries and with the United States. This has become a strategic issue in the region. So far China seems to be handling it more effectively than the United States.

October 28, 2016

DOUGLAS NEWTON. The Slide to World War I. Shades of 1914 today?

Are there shades of 1914 in today’s international collisions? So much is different. Talk of ‘parallels’ is probably overstatement. But there are disturbing continuities.

The setting in 1914

In 1914, the ‘Hobbesian’ fatalists who believe that nation states are always natural enemies, and that warfare is more or less inevitable, held sway in many nations.

The megafauna in the jungle of vested interests, that is, the ‘defence’ industries and their bankers, were extremely powerful. They funded the lobby groups, the ‘think-tanks’ of the pre-1914 world, the army leagues, navy leagues, universal service leagues, and so on. These were filled with sombre-faced ‘realists’, shunning ‘sentimentalism’, briefing journalists about the challenge of ‘inescapable geo-strategic realities’ to be met with ever more arms spending.

Most decision-makers knelt before the great God Deterrence. Supposedly, only superior armed force could guarantee peace.

April 20, 2017

DUNCAN MacLAREN. UK General Election: clever cunning or miscalculated folly?

Theresa May’s snap general election decision can be seen as hypocritical in that she ruled this out consistently (and as recently as 20th March) until, the Anglican vicar’s daughter hinted, God told her while hiking in Welsh Snowdonia over Easter to go for it since there was ‘no unity’ in the Westminster Parliament to allow her to obtain the best deal for the UK out of Brexit. No unity? For a Government which hasn’t a clue where it is going and is regarded as incompetent by the international community and national political class alike, how can it command unity? That requires knowledge of the possible outcomes from the Stygian political journey the UK is about to take with a hard Brexit.

May 20, 2013

We are a more generous people than the politicians think we are. John Menadue

It is easy to be disappointed and depressed with the whole toxic debate about asylum seekers. The government is doing some things well, such as releasing more people from detention, but it is failing to provide political and moral leadership in this sensitive area. Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison do their best to demonise asylum seekers and create fear.

But many people don’t want to be part of this.

Last Friday night, with 500 other people, I attended a fund-raising and fancy-dress dinner for the Asylum Seekers Centre in Sydney. My wife and I dressed as best we could – French clowns. Perhaps that would not be hard you might say.

April 19, 2017

IAN McAULEY. Capital gains taxes: Keating got it right in 1985

Most commentators on the crisis in housing affordability correctly attribute the problem, in part, to the Howard Government’s decision in 1999 to “halve the taxation of capital gains”. But that was only one aspect of the 1999 change: the other was an end of indexation. The combined effect was to shift investors’ incentives to favour speculation in high-growth but risky assets such as housing while penalising more conservative investments. Labor proposes to reduce the discount on capital gains, from 50 per cent to 25 per cent, without restoring indexation, but this would retain some of the worst aspects of the Howard changes.

June 13, 2017

GILES PARKINSON. Finkel decoded: The good, the bad, and the very disappointing

The Finkel Report on the future of the national electricity market falls short of its opportunity to redefine energy markets. It has been focused on trying to find a pathway through the toxic energy politics in Australia, and accommodating the Coalition’s modest climate targets, rather than seizing the moment and outlining what can and should happen, and what Australia would need to do to meet the Paris climate targets.

April 28, 2017

MARK BEESON. ANZUS: Too obliging for our own good?

Malcolm Turnbull is dropping everything and travelling to America to meet a man that only recently subjected him to a very public humiliation. Although members of the Trump administration have tried to make amends for this initial snub to a supposedly valued ally, one might have thought the damage had been done.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal