September 30, 2020

LobbyLand. The scourge of powerful special interests and lobbyists.

A major reason for the loss of trust in governments and parliaments is the way powerful special interests with their lobbyists have come to dominate the public debate and skew decisions in their favour. The fossil fuel sector is the most obvious and recent example.

September 2, 2020

Air pollution from coal blights young lives, even before birth

Air pollution from Australias dirty coal-burning power stations needlessly causes 850 cases of low birth weight and at least 800 premature deaths per year. Coal is also the number one cause of the climate crisis. Clean renewable technology is available now to prevent these problems and protect young lives.

December 12, 2018

JERRY ROBERTS. Sir Joh and The Donald

Queenslands longest-serving Premier, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, cultivated the public image of a country bumpkin. A book about his career was called The Hillbilly Dictator. Donald Trump has taken a similar act to the international stage. Has the world ever seen such a performance? No Hollywood star goes close to The Donald. The President of the United States wins all the Oscars.

October 22, 2018

BOB CARR. Australians have no interest in joining U.S. cold war against China

Alexander Downer chewed ruminatively on his steak: If you want a cold war with China, you will get a cold war with China.

December 14, 2017

SANITSUDA EKACHAI. Why Buddhists fail simple test of compassion

When Pope Francis avoided addressing the Rohingya genocide directly during his recent Myanmar visit, questioning his silence is missing the crux of the problem.

September 29, 2020

LobbyLand. Fossil Fuel Lobbyists: Modus Operandi, Impact, Solutions

In Australia, denial mounts. The recent Gas-Led Recovery and Technological Roadmap announcements of the Morrison government confirm the continued influence of the fossil fuel industry and its lobbyists.

September 22, 2020

ADF and government stage-managing release of war crimes report

We need a fair-dinkum inquiry, by properly independent experts, not only of how and why we went to a useless war, but also into serious shortcomings of leadership, both at the top level and in command of troops on the ground.

October 9, 2019

LESLEY RUSSELL. Where is the Focus on Rural Health (Redux) Looking at You, National Party

The impacts of drought and climate change on health and wellbeing are threatening to increase the growing gap in health status between Australians who live in metropolitan and rural areas. Yet the Morrison Government and its National Party partners have lost focus on rural health, they have failed to focus on a national drought strategy and are international laggards in climate change action. Rural families and communities are suffering as a result.

July 27, 2019

PETER SAINSBURY. Sunday environmental round up, 28 July 2019

Hunger is on the increase again and the world will need yet more food over the next three decades. How can we properly feed 10 billion people and save the planet? Do the solutions lie in technology, behaviour change or socio-economic change? While the Australian government continues to ignore climate change, state, territory and local governments, of both political persuasions, are getting on with the job in multiple ways. As is Kenya, but not without some policy contradictions. Feral cats kill millions of Australian native animals every day. Endangered species are being released into feral predator-free compounds.

May 2, 2019

AMY ZEGART AND MICHAEL MORELL. Spies, Lies, and Algorithms. Why U.S. Intelligence Agencies Must Adapt or Fail. (Foreign Affairs 20.4.2019)

For U.S. intelligence agencies, the twenty-first century began with a shock, when 19 al Qaeda operatives hijacked four planes and perpetrated the deadliest attack ever on U.S. soil. In the wake of the attack, the intelligence community mobilized with one overriding goal: preventing another 9/11. The CIA, the National Security Agency, and the 15 other components of the U.S. intelligence community restructured, reformed, and retooled. Congress appropriated billions of dollars to support the transformation.

September 8, 2020

Trade reform for agriculture cannot wait

The scramble among nations to increase self-sufficiency and re-jig agriculture supply lines in the Covid-19 environment, together with increasing protectionism, points to an urgent need for Australia, together with regional partners, to rethink the legal structure that underpins this sector of world trade.

August 3, 2020

After AUSMIN: How to Ensure Strong Ties to the US and Asia

Following the Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) on 28 July, former ambassador to Washington, John McCarthy, argues our strengthening alliance with the US does not preclude building closer relations with Asia, including a potential modus vivendi with China.

December 7, 2017

TIM WOODRUFF. A proposal for health-promoting welfare reform: could it help six million Australians?

On an almost weekly basis now Im asked as a medical specialist to write a letter to help a patient be accepted by Centrelink as unable to work. My letter and that of the patients general practitioner are then assessed by staff with limited or no medical training.

October 21, 2018

JACK WATERFORD. Morrison lacks whatever it takes.

Only about half the present population were around paying any sort of attention to politics when Graham Richardson was a great power in the Labor Party, in the Hawke and Keating governments and in the land. He had power and menace, and openly relished a reputation for ruthlessness, faithlessness and a complete lack of sentimentality in pushing what he would claim to be in the interests of party re-election. Anything policy, platform or principles or anyone as long as it was not him in the way of what he thought best for the party was excess baggage had to be disposed of, without delay or excessive emotion.

September 3, 2020

Covid controversies continue to hinder our efforts to end a deadly pandemic - Part 1

I__t is truly lamentable that in this most scientific of all ages, so much of the world is making a mess of tackling the worst public health challenge in a hundred years.

December 5, 2019

MICHAEL MULLINS. Leaving Google

Last month an Amnesty International report took Google and Facebook to task for their ‘surveillance-based business model’ that is ‘predicated on human rights abuse. Back in 2006, I recall a colleague telling me about Google’s do no evil manifesto. I wanted to believe it and used many of its free and paid services. Until last week. I finally decided to act after Google bought Fitbit and I realised they would own my health and fitness data from the past four years and would integrate that with everything else they know about me.

June 9, 2019

NIALL McLAREN Broadening the Base.

Allan Patience argued cogently for a substantial change in left-wing political economy: Labor has been trying hitherto to interpret the neoliberal world in various ways; the point however is to change it. A robust public sector is urgently needed to compete against a rapacious private sector. He suggested a number of ways this could be done but we need to make sure we have the financial means to do it. ..The whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century is being deployed to enable wealth to persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power.

April 18, 2019

DUNCAN GRAHAM Kingsford Smith forecast: Expect churls Inbox x

In his 9 April post on this website ANU Professor Ramesh Thakur put the question: Who Will Bell theSydneyAirportSecurity Madness?The expert on disarmament then asked:

Is it possible that pranksters with a perverse sense of humour are in charge of security procedures at SydneyInternationalAirport? Perhaps they are trying to test the limits of traveller tolerance_._

February 5, 2019

MICHAEL PASCOE. And the winner is the big banks (New Daily)

Who would have guessed? The banks have emerged as relative winners from the royal commissions final report.

November 16, 2018

JOHN HANNON. What is good leadership? Lest we forget.

Cant we see parallels in leadership today, both in the Church and in society, where it can easily get more enmeshed in its own self-importance and self-interest, than in the rights and the good of the ordinary people, whom they are meant to serve, rather than command, control and oppress. Leadership by example, in service and humility, sounds nice, but it is not so simple to practise in reality, is it, as we face up to Remembrance Day and what it might mean for us today?

July 12, 2018

ANDREW GLIKSON. On the flooded Thai cave and the Hiroshima deluge

The heroic rescue of 13 young people from the flooded Chiang Mai cave in Thailand represents everything which is wonderful about humans cooperating and helping each other, and where they are at their best. By stark contrast the cover-up by the authorities and the media of the underlying reasons for the unfolding tragedy of the Hiroshima deluge, in which to-date more than 200 people have died or are missing, tells of an indifference vis-a-vis the advancing spate world-wide of extreme weather events, related to global warming. Not that every single storm, flood or fire can be attributed to climate change, but as indicated by global data the trend is ominous, as in the figure below.

June 28, 2020

In the Australia-China relationship, name calling won't help.

It is easy for governments to disguise their inability to manage complex relationships by resorting to finger-pointing and name-calling.

March 19, 2019

MIKE SCRAFTON. Defending against the sacrificial knight errant on an existential crusade

Hopefully the security agencies wont simply default to the jihadist archetype in their response to the atrocity in Christchurch, as the media has. Distinguishing between motives of the perpetrators of such unpardonable acts and understanding the internal logic by which they justify their actions is important. Marques like far right, white supremacist, white nationalist, neo-Nazi, or Islamophobe occlude the detail in Tarrants case and are unhelpful in finding an implementable understanding of these violent phenomena.

August 5, 2020

Democracy is an endangered species.

Democracy is an endangered species. What was recently the worlds dominant political model risks becoming a curio by mid-century. Authoritarian rule, with populist and nationalist flavours, will likely define our childrens futures.

December 12, 2019

NOEL TURNBULL. Innovation and inequality - not as simple as the tech titans make out

If you were told that an Australian politician had published a new book, backed by a solid evidence base, with a highly original take on a major problem the normal response would be to wonder if Barry Jones had a new book out.

June 30, 2020

The Grattan Institute's Fiscal Recovery Plan

The economy is presently receiving an unprecedented, but time-limited, level of fiscal support. The report just released by the Grattan Institute provides a very good analysis of what is now needed to sustain the economic recovery.

July 14, 2020

Double standards are a feature of Australian foreign policy. We condemn China for doing what we and other countries do.

Australia should not assume that democracy is the one true political faith that everyone in the world wants. We have the right to uphold our beliefs but others have the same right.

September 28, 2020

Christian Porterhas shown himself unfit to be federal AttorneyGeneral

By his response last week to the Federal Courts finding that Immigration Minister Alan Tudge engaged in criminal conduct by detaining an asylum-seeker for five days in defiance of an order by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), Christian Porter has shown himself unfit to be federal AttorneyGeneral.

July 22, 2020

The cost of outsourcing public health services

The current Victorian Hotel Quarantine Inquiry headed by the Honourable Justice Jennifer Coate AO is putting two things on trial one predictable media fodder and the other at the root of decades of neo-liberal outsourcing and privatisation.

June 8, 2018

RAMESH THAKUR. Did John Bolton try to sink the Trump-Kim summit?

Had former U.S. President Barack Obama done a Trump with North Korea agreed to a summit with Kim Jong Un without requiring denuclearization first, secretly sent his secretary of state to Pyongyang, described Kim as honorable. canceled joint military exercises with South Korea, been prepared to consider pulling U.S. troops out of Korea the right-wing establishment and populace would have branded him a traitor. President Donald Trump earned multiple nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize for the same until his National Security Adviser John Bolton nearly cost him any chance of that treasured award.

May 22, 2018

RICHARD BUTLER. United States and Israel: Known By the Company We Keep.

In our voting with the US against a resolution of the UN Human Rights Commission to establish an independent enquiry into recent Israeli use of lethal force against Palestinian demonstrators, we have shown far and wide, our subservience to the US and, by extension, to the policies of Benyamin Netanyahu.

August 31, 2020

Opposition to Victorias Belt and Road Initiative Is it Valid?

The feverish opposition to the Victorian governments MoU over the Belt and Road Initiative is nonsensical and shows a worrying lack of understanding from those who should know better. If we are to avoid drifting into a global backwater, we have to find ways to integrate our economy into these new developments.

April 6, 2016

Graeme Hugo, Janet Wall and Margaret Young. Migration between Australia and South East Asia is a two-way process.

Migration flows between countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Australia are generally viewed as going in one direction: toward Australia. In practice, however, data on this migration system reveal a much more complex picture that includes Australian emigration, significant temporary movements in both directions, and close connections between the two regions even after migrants permanently return to their country of origin.

Australia has experienced significant inflows, particularly in the post-war period; almost half of its population of 23.2 million is either foreign born or has at least one immigrant parent. Unsurprisingly, therefore, it is usually regarded as a traditional destination country, drawing students and skilled workers from around the world and across the ten-member ASEAN region. Australia also sends a significant number of emigrants out from its shores. The last official estimates, back in 2003, put Australias diaspora at approximately 750,000. Unpublished Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) data reveal that for every two people who moved permanently to Australia from the ASEAN region between 1991 and 2013, one person moved in the opposite direction.

September 20, 2020

The economic outlook and the Budget

In two weeks the Government will bring down its delayed 2020 Budget. This article discusses the economic outlook and concludes that further stimulus measures will be necessary in the forthcoming Budget. The desirable size of that additional fiscal stimulus and the possible new measures to accelerate economic recovery will then be discussed in a subsequent article tomorrow.

September 7, 2020

Swallowing a Huge Spider to Catch Foreign Relations Flies

In the name of foreign relations, the Morrison government is giving itself extraordinary powers to meddle in the affairs of States, Territories and universities.

May 11, 2018

RICHARD ACKLAND. Peter Duttons power grabs may yet be his undoing

The fate of Amber Rudd offers some hope to Australians who disapprove of Dutton and his methods.

August 5, 2020

Do we share values with the US?

In the escalating Sino-American tensions there is a constant refrain that while China is important for our economy, we are tied to the United States by “shared values”. But what are these shared values and how far should they guide foreign policy?

March 18, 2019

ALEX MITCHELL. Gladys clings on in NSW

Liberals and Nationals will vote in all kinds of weather and in all circumstances. They will show up in coaches, hire cars and even wheelchairs. Some dress up in their Sunday best as if they are going to the races.

July 1, 2020

What should Australia do to manage risk in its relationship with the PRC? (China Matters 26.6.20)

The biggest challenge facing Australias strategic policy is to help craft a new strategic equilibrium in the Indo-Pacific. It must reflect the reality of the Peoples Republic of Chinas (PRC) economic and strategic weight.

December 6, 2018

JOHN AUSTEN. NSW farce rail

NSW Premier Berejiklian says her Government will deliver a fast rail network slashing travel times across the State.’ Work will commence in the next term of Government and wont wait for the Commonwealth NSW will go it alone!

August 6, 2020

We Need a Royal Commission into Robodebt

A Royal Commission into Robodebt could shed light on future policy and administration issues, some going beyond social security writes Whiteford, Podger and Stanton from ANU’s Crawford School of Public Policy.

April 3, 2019

Coalition signs off with a budget tailored for climate denial (RenewEconomy, 2.4.19)

The federal Coalition government has delivered its last budget before the May poll, and pretty much finished the way it started in government nearly six years ago: Long term climate and clean energy policies and technologies are ignored, and the focus is on trinkets and handouts.

October 22, 2018

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Welcome to chaos.

Emergency warning: off the streets, go to the storm shelters immediately, It is too late to flee save yourselves as best you can.

December 6, 2017

JAMES ONEILL. The North Korean situation requires a different policy

It is said that one definition of insanity is to repeat the same process over and over again and expect a different result. That axiom was never truer than when it is applied to United States and Australian policy towards North Korea.

February 19, 2018

Political pregnancies and Opposition renewal in New Zealand

Political pregnancies are the subject of public debate on both sides of the Tasman. In Australia, the Deputy Prime Minister faces a career crisis over his indiscretions. In New Zealand, the Prime Minister is due to give birth in June.

October 22, 2019

SAX INSTITUTE. How politicians who become lobbyists can be bad for our health

The steady flow of politicians and government staffers switching sides to lobby for powerful food, alcohol and gambling companies poses a serious threat to public health, experts warn in new research published by the Sax Institute.

August 20, 2020

TAFE has been drained of funds for poorly performing and dodgy private providers

_What a difference there is between the public vocational education and training provider, TAFE, and private for-profit training providers.

July 26, 2020

US, China, Australia. Now we know what were getting into: a full-fledged anti-China campaign

Very recent actions by the US and Australian governments, and statements in both countries, make it clear that our Foreign and Defence Ministers will be invited to sign on to a full-fledged anti-China campaign and even a coalition when in the US this week.

December 12, 2018

JACOB GREBER. Why Former Australian Leader Believes China is About to Outflank Trump on Trade (CAIXIN GLOBAL/AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW)

(AFR) China could be preparing to spring a global compact to drive tariffs to zero, and approach Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) members including Australia for access to the grouping, positioning Beijing as a champion for free trade.

Thats the view of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who believes Chinas President Xi Jinping may even use next months World Economic Forum summit in Switzerland to launch across-the-board liberalization that would take the world by storm.

That indeed could represent a serious new challenge to American leadership, Rudd warned in a speech in New York on Wednesday

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal