June 25, 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, hadn’t drawn it to attention.

July 30, 2020

The powerless suffer and the powerful carry on amid Covid-19

Covid-19 presents us with an opportunity. A more equal society, more resilient to the challenges ahead, or a society ruled by power imbalances, struggling to cope with both natural and man-made disasters.

March 14, 2019

DAVID SPRATT: Existential risk, Neoliberalism and UN Climate Policymaking Part 2

International climate policymaking has failed to avoid a path of catastrophic global warming. Two often-overlooked causes of this failure are how climate-science knowledge has been produced and utilised by the United Nation’s twin climate bodies and how those organisations function. Part 2 of 2.

September 5, 2018

Business gives up on Coalition, turns to Labor and states on energy, climate

Here’s the most damning assessment of the Coalition’s energy and climate policy, such as it remains after the crucifixion of Malcolm Turnbull and the elevation of conservatives Scott Morrison as prime minister and Angus Taylor as energy minister:

September 16, 2020

Radical hope in the time of climate crisis

As ice melts, bushfires, heatwaves and cyclones intensify, many grapple with the question of “what kind of hope, if any, can I hold as climate catastrophe deepens?” To answer this question, we need to not only accept the realities of worsening climate destructions, but also re-examine the nature and agency of hope in the face of existential crisis.

December 30, 2017

LUKE FRASER. Good debt, bad debt: Poor infrastructure choices, no reform - and Lee Kuan Yew -A REPOST

In the Fairness, Opportunity, Security policy series and the resulting book, Dr Michael Keating AC and I wrote of Australia’s out-of-control transport infrastructure spending that:

‘It is scandalous that this investment escapes proper scrutiny, while at the same time the proponents are calling for cuts in other government programs, including education and training programs that would actually increase productivity and participation’.[i]

June 19, 2020

Westpac’s pursuit of profit “placed children directly at risk of harm”

In 2018, when Westpac executives skimped on embedding proper controls to track financial crimes, they earned large bonuses after reporting an operating profit of $8 billion; but they put children at risk of sexual abuse.

April 27, 2020

PETER HARBISON. In a less liberal aviation marketplace, China is likely to be the big winner.

By the middle of this decade, China was to have overtaken the US as the world’s largest aviation market. It surpassed it in the week of 13 April 2020, operating capacity at almost 80% of its corresponding 2019 levels. That transformation was greatly influenced by the cycle of COVID-19 and China’s earlier emergence, but it is surely a sign that the previous evolutionary course has shifted.

January 28, 2020

JACK WATERFORD. Are our leaders morally fit for purpose?

Sports rorts, scandals, climate inaction and contempt for public interest show a robber mentality.

September 21, 2020

Australian aged care death rate among highest in the world. Aged care Insite. August 12 2020

The aged care royal commission has heard evidence that the government had no COVID-19 plan for the aged care sector, leading to one of the highest aged care death rates in the world.

January 13, 2020

Dwelling construction is still falling despite record low interest rates

Monetary policy has lifted the prices of the most expensive dwellings, but this impact is yet to flow through to the rest of the housing market. This experience reinforces doubts about the effectiveness of monetary policy when inflation and therefore interest rates are very low.

July 21, 2020

Deliberately missing the opportunities

There were - are - people who have seen great social and philosophical opportunities in the disruption caused by the pandemic, quarantine, closures of business, and mass unemployment rendered somewhat less painful by massive government spending and new income maintenance schemes.

February 12, 2018

JOSHUA GILBERT- Partnerships in Agriculture- the time for mutual collaboration and respect

Farmers have a natural affinity with their land. The farm is the home of their family’s dreams and aspirations; the page upon which they write their stories of passion and love; their life; their livelihood; their heart.

August 17, 2020

Senate committee extends deadline on banking inquiry

_‘Parliament should endorse the Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill 2020 to explicitly rule out the possibility of bail-in where authorities would allow banks to convert your deposits to shares in a banking crisis – should be a no-brainer for any government."(John Hewson)

January 22, 2020

MUNGO MACCALLUM. The mob has found him out.

It was almost a throwaway line. In the course of his friendly chat welcoming David Speers to the ABC, Scott Morrison mused that his climate change policy was “evolving.” And since, as usual he had nothing substantial to say in his ramblings, the commentators, speculators and fortune tellers seized on the remark, investing it with genuine significance.

September 28, 2020

When climate risks are so high, short term actions matter most

Many carbon budgets are based on an under-estimation of warming to date, and the path of future warming. And all such budgets either ignore, or underplay, the loss of carbon from long-term stores — such as the melting of permafrost — which are already active processes.

July 16, 2020

It’s time to stop locking up 10-year olds

Australia still allows children as young as 10 years old to be arrested by Police, sentenced to prison by Courts, and locked in a cell. On 27th July, Governments around Australia will have the opportunity to change that.

May 8, 2020

MIKE SCRAFTON. The harder reality of humanity's road to the future

After the pandemic passes the world will be left with a series of far graver challenges. The solutions, if there are any, will only be found through clear-eyed, objective analysis of the interrelated causes and effects, shorn to the extent possible ideological assumptions.

April 30, 2020

Vale Greg Dodds

After a long illness Greg Dodds died last week in Perth. Kim Beazley will speak at his funeral today (30 April 2020)

July 22, 2020

1975 and all that

45 years have passed since the most controversial crisis in Australian political history – the dismissal of the Whitlam Government by the Governor-General on 11 November 1975. But it was not the first dismissal of an elected government by a vice-regal figure in Australia.

July 1, 2020

The ABC-Out of sight, out of care

This continues yesterday’s feature on ABC Australia, our underfunded and neglected TV presentation to the Asia Pacific. Look on, ye neighbours, and despair.

June 11, 2020

Poor prospects for Indigenous justice.

Those of us who would like to live in a more just Australia have little reason for optimism. We endure the shame of continually failing to address the social disadvantage affecting Indigenous peoples. Demands for change will continue.

September 29, 2020

Corporate Covid giveaways wide-open for mega-rorting

History would suggest that conservative politicians, of all folk, would be the ones who were cautious about uncontrolled public spending programs. But it sometimes seems that the apparent moral collapse and decline of social responsibility in Australian business has also affected politics.

May 1, 2020

JOCELYN CHEY. Who Would Be a Chinese Ambassador?

I write in defence of PRC Ambassador Cheng Jingye, who is accused of threatening a tit-for-tat trade war.

August 5, 2020

The RBA should stick to inflation targeting

The RBA faces an unprecedented challenge in trying to address a global recession with its main policy interest rate at the effective lower bound and the Australian economy now undergoing its first episode of year-on-year deflation in decades.

August 4, 2020

Why studying humanities is more important than ever to counter one-sided debates trend

In the age of science, technology and the obsession with faster living, studying humanities at university continue to decline. However, I believe it’s not the end for this “dying” discipline because critical thinking skills is needed more than ever to counter the rising trend of one-sided arguments, as Covid-19 has demonstrated.

July 10, 2020

Moslem MP branded a terrorist. Is there a fair go?

Armed police and a media lynch-mob terrorised Labor Upper House MLC Shaoquett Moselmane, his family, neighbours and friends. His parliamentary rights, civil liberties, privacy and reputation have been trashed.

May 4, 2020

JOHN DWYER. Palmer’s Pills, all 32 million of them!

Sydney Morning Herald, March 3, 2022. A grateful nation rewards Clive Palmer with the Prime Ministership for using his personal fortune to save Australia from a Covid catastrophe. President Trump tweets his congratulations noting that the two men are “kindred spirits”.

June 17, 2020

Australia’s foolish and embarrassing silence over Israel’s annexation plans

What an absurd, paradoxical situation. The Australian Government pursued a very public campaign against China over Covid-19. Yet regarding Israel’s plan to unilaterally annex parts of the West Bank - the government has lost its tongue.

September 25, 2020

Chinese interference overblown

Floating the idea of a Foreign Interference Commissioner in the face of a diplomatic storm front is not going to steer us into calmer waters

August 6, 2020

On being ‘very different countries’: AUSMIN and China’s rise (UTS Australia China Relations Institute August 4 2020)

During discussions with American thinkers, analysts and officials in New York and Washington DC in late 2017, one particular conversation gave a chilling insight into how some see the ultimate strategic calculations in US China relations.

July 7, 2020

It’s time to strip ‘national security’ of its sacred cow status. Part 2

On closer inspection, the immense financial, institutional, and rhetorical investment in this elaborate security edifice rests on questionable assumptions. The costs may far outweigh any likely benefits.

January 5, 2018

RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Korean Hot Line

Kim Jong-un’s offer to re-open the hotline with South Korea cannot be seen as merely a ploy to wedge ROK and the United States, as so readily claimed last Tuesday by Nikki Haley, United States Ambassador to the United Nations.

August 25, 2020

The military-industrial-intelligence-security complex

In 1961 President Eisenhower warned that a vast and permanent ‘military-industrial complex’ could produce ‘the disastrous rise of misplaced power’. Earlier, US Senators Robert La Follette and J. William Fulbright also foresaw the dangers of militarisation. Now we have a military/industrial/security/intelligence complex, and it is dangerous.

July 1, 2020

Higher education reform: use and abuse of Menzies

_Announcing his plans for university reform on 19 June, the minister for education, Dan Tehan, did as many of his predecessors have done. He invoked Robert Menzies.

September 27, 2020

How SUVs conquered the world – at the expense of its climate (The Guardian Sep 1, 2020)

Exclusive new emissions analysis shows how much more dangerous for the climate SUVs are than smaller vehicles, and how embedded they have become in our lives.

September 7, 2020

Part 1: Education policies over the decades have intensified socio-economic segregation

As prime minister, John Howard, along with his education minister David Kemp, drove the push to privatise schooling in line with their political philosophy.

January 13, 2020

PAUL COLLINS. A New Era of Fire Part 2

Never before have we experienced fires like the present. They challenge us to re-assess our whole approach to living in Australia. With global warming a reality, we now face some pretty stark options.

April 10, 2020

WITNESS J in the Pell case. I am content. Do not be discouraged.

I respect the decision of the High Court. I accept the outcome.

July 16, 2020

‘The Eleventh’, ABC's podcast on the dismissal (A repost)

An edited transcript of an interview I conducted with the ABC for a podcast series The Eleventh.

August 18, 2020

Demystifying Australia’s South China Sea stance (EAF 12 August, 2020)

The only freedoms of navigation under threat in the South China Sea are ones associated with rights claimed by the United States to conduct certain military activities in the maritime zones of other countries.

July 24, 2020

Gough Whitlam’s dismissal and the CIA

Buried in the Palace Papers was a letter from Governor-General Sir John Kerr to Sir Martin Charteris. Kerr scorned an article in New York’s Village Voice that he was a CIA agent, and that America’s spy agency was involved in Whitlam’s sacking. “Nonsense of course”, Kerr wrote.

June 15, 2020

Chinese ties put Indonesia in a bind.

_Beijing has warned citizens against travel to Australia claiming ‘a significant increase’ in racial discrimination and violence against Chinese and Asians blamed for the Covid-19 pandemic.

September 4, 2018

DAVID SHULMAN. The Last of the Tzaddiks.

In the somewhat exotic Jewish home in Iowa where I grew up, it was axiomatic that there was an intimate link between Judaism and universal human rights. Like nearly all Eastern European Jewish families in America, my parents and grandparents were Roosevelt Democrats, to the point of fanaticism. They thought that the Jews had invented the very idea, and also the practice, of social justice; that having started our history as slaves in Egypt, we were always on the side of the underdog and the oppressed; that the core of Judaism as a religious culture was precisely this commitment to human rights, and that all the rest—the 613 commandments, the rituals, the theological assertions—was no more than a superstructure built upon a strong ethical foundation. For me, this comfortable illusion was shattered only when I moved to Israel at the age of eighteen.

September 4, 2020

Scenarios for the South China Sea :The good, the bad and the downright ugly

With ever more tit-for-tat belligerent rhetoric and military posturing, China and the US seem to be slouching towards a showdown in the South China Sea. What might come next can be captured in three scenarios - good, ugly and bad.

September 4, 2020

Tin ear PR

Sometimes PR campaigns to address problems cause even bigger PR problems. For instance the aged care industry is planning a major campaign to ‘change the conversation’ and ‘win the hearts and minds of middle Australia’ according to The Age (2 September 2020).

August 13, 2020

What went wrong with Aged Care?

The definite turning point in the quality and the humanity of Australia’s care of the elderly was the Aged Care Bill 1997 (Cth), introduced as part of the Howard Government’s 1996 Budget measures. It was a huge failure.

September 29, 2020

Tackling the mental health crisis in the time of Covid 19; prescribing the same remedy over and over again?

The Productivity Commission’s inquiry into mental health is recommending the same policies which have been advocated for the better part of 30 years. There is nothing to suggest that continuing to pursue them will produce the improvements that the Commonwealth government seeks.

August 18, 2020

The effect of COVID-19 on religious habits

Church life will need to rebuild anew in the midst of a culture whose habits have been shredded by COVID 19. And God only knows where that will take us. But that’s the exciting part: we can discover it.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal