July 15, 2020

Banking business as usual

If the banks make concessions to borrowers deprived of income due to the pandemic it will be their first socially considerate act since financial deregulation.

March 21, 2019

ISABELLA HARDING. How would I sum up the youth climate strike in Melbourne last Friday ?

If I had to sum up the youth climate strike in Melbourne last Friday in one word, it would be empowering. If I had to sum it up in three words, they would be empowering, inspiring and disappointing.

June 24, 2020

Confronting anti-Asian racism shows Australia's commitment to democratic values.

_The question of whether there has been an increase in anti-Asian racism has become a political football between Australia and China. Claims that Chinas warnings are politically motivated and that COVID-19 related racism is on the rise are not mutually exclusive but denials of growing anti-Asian racism in Australia go against the personal experience of many Asian Australians

December 2, 2019

MADELINE GLEESON. Behrouz Boochani: Still in limbo (The Interpreter 28-11-19)

The Kurdish-Iranian journalist left Manus Island after sixyears, but the bureaucratic hurdles still lie before him.

March 3, 2019

Trump-Kim summitry a work in progress (Japan Times, 1 March 2019)

CANBERRA - The cameras are gone, the lights have dimmed, the scribes have filed their reports and returned home and Hanoi has faded from host of a potentially life-and-death summit to being merely the capital of a booming Southeast Asian country. Attention will now turn fully to the simmering crisis in Kashmir.

January 28, 2018

ROGER SCOTT. Gittins on Universities Part 2: Home and Away

‘Weve turned our unis into aimless, money-grubbing exploiters of students’ [Ross Gittins, Canberra Times, 17 September 2017]

Part 1 of my response to Gittins article dealt with the human side of the current university scene and noted pressures to conformity and uniformity, but this underestimates the element of underlying competitiveness.

December 3, 2017

BRUCE THOM. Keeping the Murray mouth open

Maintaining an open mouth of the Murray River in South Australia was a key objective of the Murray Darling Basin Plan (MDBP). The Basin Plan was established by the Australian Government to address the chronic over-allocation of water for irrigation and other purposes. One aim of the MDBP was to recover more water for the environment including sufficient water to maintain an open mouth without the need for dredging most of the time. Following a review of the MDBP by the Wentworth Group it appears that this objective will not be meet.

September 24, 2020

Houses are becoming commodities to buy and sell and not homes.

The Property Council and our tame media are obsessed on property prices. Are prices up or down this month? They see property as a commodity for wealth creation.

Housing policy should be about housing as a human right and for use, where in homes we raise families, entertain friends and where we can close off from markets and business.

August 31, 2020

No need for buyer's remorse: realism key to Australia's engagement with China

Australia, unlike the US, never expected China to become like us. That’s why the relationship continues to be an outstanding investment in our prosperity and security.

September 13, 2020

Juukan Gorge - the thick plotens

Under cross-examination, Federal Environment Minister, Sussan Ley made two major admissions on ABC Radio National last Friday over the destruction of the two ancient Aboriginal rock shelters at Juukan Gorge. The shelters had been inhabited for 46,000 years, and now will become bits of iron and steel.

June 15, 2020

The Australia-India Strategic Partnership: Shared values mask the real strategic purpose

The phrase shared values is regularly used as the basis for international relationships and alliances, and the lack of the same shared values as the reason for adversarial relationships or friction. It is a mantra that is much over-used, and often deployed deceptively and hypocritically.

January 16, 2019

JOHN AUSTEN. WestConnex inquiry report.

The Parliamentary inquiry into WestConnex is the type of thing that should happen before any major infrastructure project starts. However, it let the project off too lightly.

January 20, 2020

JON BLACKWELL and KERRY GOULSTON. Aspects of Australian healthcare reform (part 2 of 3) Learning from Denmark

In the first of this 3 part series, we described some partially successful NSW government healthcare reforms in Greater Metropolitan Sydney, and identified shortcomings in their planning and implementation. In this second part, we look at radical reforms to the Danish healthcare system, commencing in 2007, and some of the outcomes of those changes.

November 13, 2019

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI. Catholic synodality as a response to the crisis of democracy.

The global crisis of democracy is yet one more challenge for a Church fighting for social justice.

July 26, 2020

Three identical and inaccurate reports on the South China Sea.

Several leading Australian journalists have made identical but inaccurate statements on the recent letter sent by the Australian government to the UN on Chinas South China Sea claims. Were they briefed by a political staffer pushing a false interpretation?

August 2, 2020

Pragmatism not American Militarism is the answer

Just as most Australians probably do not wish to see the Americanisation of our police services - through excessive militarisation, more powerful arms, more sophisticated equipment and battlefield tactics so we should resist the call to arms from the anti-China enthusiasts in Washington.

June 18, 2020

It's time to reform Australia's higher education system.

The drying up of international student numbers because of the coronavirus border closures, plus the Coalition governments indifference (indeed, hostility) to universities, is undermining morale right across the countrys higher education sector.

August 25, 2020

China: a manufactured threat

Is China a threat? Presidents, Prime Ministers, governments and opposition parties all tell us that it is. There is barely a day passes without the media finding new and more expansive ways to prove the existence of this threat. And while all this goes on, the voices of dissent become marginalised.

June 3, 2020

JOHN MENADUE.The dangerous and erratic ally that offers us protection! An updated repost. Part 1 of 2

Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war. The greatest military risk we run is being led by the nose into a US war with China. The record is clear. We have allowed ourselves to be drawn into the wars of the UK and the US time and time again. We have forfeited our strategic autonomy while parroting on about our sovereignty

September 6, 2020

Blessed are the rich Catholic schools

The ABC news report How the Catholic school system takes from the poor to give to the rich is a significant and telling revelation of how Catholic school authorities have used public funding to play rich favourites among their schools. This unacceptable practice has been long standing and far reaching.

July 9, 2020

The 2020 Defence Strategic Update: Finding coexistence with China

There is little to quarrel with in Hugh Whites assessment of the uncertainties in East Asia. His counsel to the government on the way forward for strategic policy, on the other hand, is less satisfactory.

June 4, 2020

JOHN MENADUE. The dangerous and erratic ally that offers us protection! An updated repost. Part 2 of 2

Yesterday I discussed US exceptionalism and that the US is almost always at war. Today I discuss the US domestic sickness- a failing democracy,inequality, racism and violence.

September 2, 2020

Australia's needs to stand up for the arts

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Coalition Government has been widely criticised for its failure to support the arts in the COVID-19 crisis. The PM has responded with a handful of PR announcements. But what’s needed is a complete change of policy direction.

November 12, 2019

J. A. DICK. Political Religion and the Prosperity Gospel

Re-reading a bit of political philosophy, I came across a 1939 quotation by the French philosopher Raymond Aron (1905-1983) who warned of notre poque de religions politiques. If Aron were around today, he would have much to wrote about.

March 19, 2019

ANDREW GLIKSON. At a climate tipping point

According to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chief climate advisor to the European Union, Were simply talking about the very life support system of this planet. As fascism and the horror of murderous hate crimes are spreading around the world, governments are presiding over runaway climate change which is leading toward a mass extinction of species, costing the lives of billions and the demise of much of nature, while children are protesting the betrayal of their future.

May 5, 2019

MARTIN WOLF. The politics of hope against that of fear (Financial Times 1.5.2019)

_Charismatic politicians entice disillusioned people into giving them support. Some of those politicians are would-be despots. Others are scoundrels. Yet their siren songs are enticing.

June 22, 2020

History Hits the Headlines.Our Troubled Past

History haunts many countries at the moment. This is especially true of the United States. But Australia , New Zealand, Britain, France and Belgium are being forced to once again face up to their legacy of colonial brutality and attendant racism.

June 17, 2020

How and why political parties are corrupted in Victoria and elsewhere

Modern Australian political parties are more likely to be corrupted by ideological or religious fanatics and power-seekers than by disputes about policy and how to get into government.

February 20, 2019

Review Lite for VET! - What happened to the Royal Commission?

Under the pressure of an upcoming Federal election and little action taken to address ongoing issues in the vocational education and training sector, in November 2018 the Prime Minister announced a review into VET. The review was to be undertaken by a New Zealander with a report due in March 2019. One suspects this is only review lite for the VET sector with restricted consultations and limited recommendations.

April 8, 2020

MARK BUCKLEY. Meet John Roskam the real PM

_I confess that I feel like a complete fool. I had heard bits and pieces about the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) for years, but I had always associated them with tired old culture warriors, like Gerard Henderson, maybe Bob Santamaria.

January 27, 2020

RICHARD FLANAGAN. How a nation adapts to its own murder.(NYT 27.1.2020)

_Australia is going up in flames and its government calls for resilience while planning for more coal mines.

December 3, 2018

JOCELYN PIXLEY. The cosy relations between bank misconduct and LNP Governments

When Ken Henry (NAB Chair) tried to dismiss SC Rowena Orrs questions about the NAB top managements significant compliance breaches with Well, we could have fired everybody, I suppose, he was correct. Hayne did not call his bluff. Henry had a duty to fire them, since the Gillard legislation about the clients best interests was saved, though later PM Abbott tried his best to ensure that banks need not serve peoples best interests. That they plainly did not (anyway), is a story of former Treasurer Costellos making.

July 13, 2020

Rocky Road as the UK and EU prepare to navigate through the WTO. Part 2

According to a Report of the House of Lords on various BREXIT outcomes: Trading with the EU under WTO rules alone would be the most disruptive option this optis therefore unattractive for UK-EU trade in goods and in services.

April 11, 2020

PETER SAINSBURY. Sunday environmental round up, 12 April 2020

Biodiversity features heavily this week: a distressing update on bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef but good news that the right action now could restore the Earths oceans to good health by 2050; the Tasmanian government hellbent on logging native forests; and the decline of Spotted Frogs in the USA heralding bad news for humans. Finally, a cause and effect conundrum.

July 1, 2020

A yellow peril revival fuelling Western fears of Chinas rise (East Asia Forum 5.6.2019) REPOST

_Most Western portrayals of Chinas emergence as a great power lack balance. They tend to highlight negative dimensions of Chinas rise but omit the positive dimensions.

August 31, 2020

Cowardly Labor won't fight Morrison over China policy

Enemies, foreign and domestic, appear to be preoccupying the minds of our foreign minister, Marise Payne, and our Defence Minister, Linda Reynolds as they maintain their lonely patrols in the diplomatic cocktail circuit and the officers’ messes.

July 30, 2020

What should Australian business do about its waning influence on Australia-PRC relations? (China Matters 29 July, 2020)

Australian business leaders have been overly cautious in their response to the crisis in Australias relationship with the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).

June 28, 2020

Time for a "Green New Deal" in Australia?

Is the current political economic situation an opportunity for some progressive policies? Never let a good crisis go to waste is a theme more familiar on the political right, but a “Green New Deal” could play well for the left or just for common sense.

January 26, 2020

MUNGO MACULLUM. The Land of Hopeless Tories

January 26 is , in the end, no more than an excuse for a self-indulgent and self-deluded piss-up.

September 17, 2020

ASIO Doublespeak

A party member lives under the eyes of the Thought Police:

He can be inspected without warning and without knowing that he is being inspected;

He should live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors..

January 2, 2021

Some joy in the gloom

A photo taken in Warruwi on South Goulburn Island off Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory

June 7, 2020

GEORGE BROWNING. Trump vs Christianity

_Just as Muslims worldwide have been expected to stand up against the appropriation of their religion by extremist ideologies that have expressed themselves in various forms of terror, so the Christian community must make it clear that Christ and the Gospel will not be sullied.

May 4, 2020

Sound the Trumpists: The deputy sheriff rides again Part Two: India and Australia

Consider the case of India. What exactly does social distancing elegant as it is as an abstract concept mean in practice in Indian conditions, a country of 1.3bn people with a population density of 464 per km2 compared to 153 in China?

June 9, 2020

The ScoMosa Summit

The value of personal diplomacy was on display in the Morrison-Modi Summit last week quickly dubbed the ScoMosa summit after some culinary Twitter banter between the leaders.But the virtual dialogue had great substance, paving the way for closer bilateral relations against the backdrop of a more aggressive China and less reliable US.

July 9, 2020

The structural and ideological foundations of Australias economic malaise: Can we avoid one crisis after another?

The dramatic and sudden shuttering of businesses following the imposition of coronavirus social-distancing rules has propelled the Australian economy into what is increasingly looking like a deep recession contradicting the rhetoric that the fundamentals are strong and provide a springboard for a speedy recovery.

June 8, 2020

National Cabinet to replace COAG: Part 2 of 2.

Part 1 of this article yesterday discussed the reasons why National Cabinet has been successful so far. Today, Part 2 will discuss how replacing COAG seek to define the future mandate of the National Cabinet and its revamped ministerial committees, and what are the chances of these new arrangement being any more successful than the previous Council of Australian Governments (COAG).

September 7, 2020

Part 2: Society bears costs of education policy crimes

In most other countries it would be hard for a government to persuade an electorate it was dealing with widespread economic hardship while it was funding private schools with resources beyond the dreams of avarice.

August 14, 2020

What the new Iran-China partnership means for the region (AL Jazeera 6.8.2020)

This new realignment in Asia provides new opportunities not only for China and Iran, but also for Pakistan.

June 24, 2020

A rose coloured view of the dangers of Pine Gap

Fifty years ago this month Pine Gap, the American military base in the centre of Australia, commenced operations. With no public fanfare, this anniversary might have passed by unnoticed if former National Security Agency electronic intelligence analyst at the base, David Rosenberg, hadnt drawn it to attention.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal