September 6, 2020

The militarisation of Australian history: its origin

_C.E.W. Beans account of Australias entry into World War I is misleading. It has a deliberate imperial bias. It was propaganda.

June 27, 2020

Sunday environmental round up, 28 June 2020

Stories from the USA, Britain and Australia about the links between Black Lives Matter, climate change and inequality. Investment in renewable energy continues to climb but it remains woefully inadequate to head off a climate catastrophe. Abandoned oil and gas wells spew out methane but Themeda Green brings happiness.

June 10, 2020

The Light From the Southern Cross. A Report on Catholic Church Governance

The Church culture of the past is still the culture we have today. And that is fundamentally what the Implementation Advisory Group (IAG) had to confront. How to navigate the realpolitik of the Catholic Church. No mean task for a group set up without any institutional clout or effective prominence.

September 14, 2020

The underfunded ABC is at the mercy of well-funded, anti-China organisations

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute is funded by the Defence sector including US arms manufacturers. They call the tune in their anti-China campaign. Yet ASPI pretends it is independent. The ABC and others fall for the anti -China paranoia.

September 1, 2020

When power - or the desire for it - ends

When asked during one of his long, long media conferences about speculation on whether he was planning to stand down as Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, replied Im not going anywhere.

June 4, 2020

DAVID SOLOMON. How the Queen and Kerr were blind-sided

It was both fortunate and fortuitous. The scheming of the Queen and Sir John Kerr to keep their correspondence secret was defeated not on the merits but by accident and thanks to legislation that came into being long after their arrangements were put in place.

August 1, 2020

Been there, done that - Thatcherism and Reaganomics revisited

The Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has announced the government recovery strategy emulate Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. The problem is that Australia has been there and done that with the same very mixed results Reagan and Thatcher achieved.

April 8, 2020

JOHN DWYER. Exploring COVID-19 controversies. Part 1

As we settle into the longest winter of our lives, strict containment strategies are provoking controversy fuelled by misinformation or insufficient knowledge of COVID realities.

September 13, 2020

Local lad's strife pips looming crisis

It’s one of journalism’s nastier cynicisms: When judging news values 100 distant deaths equals ten closer to home and one in the suburb where the paper circulates.If public contempt for the media is to be cured then The West Australian is in much need of reform.

September 10, 2020

"Help!" trumpets the elephant, "I'm being bullied by a mouse."

The elephant is Peter Duttons mega Department of Home Affairs; the mouse is the mobile phone of an immigration detainee.

August 12, 2020

Endemic secrecy in the Catholic Church

Throughout the child sexual abuse Royal Commission the inquirers regularly asked why institutions not only tolerated child abusers but actively concealed their crimes. Secrecy was endemic in the culture of these institutions.

July 2, 2020

Public Schools Face a Funding Crisis While Private Schools Are in Clover

_Government funding increases continue to massively favour private schools over public schools according to new figures published by the Australian Curriculum, Reporting and Assessment Authority (ACARA).

September 7, 2020

The EPBC Review says good-bye to environmental and human health on Planet A

The Samuel Report and its rejection of an independent regulator by the Minister have ‘grave’ implications for the health of countless communities around Australia.

June 24, 2020

Morrison throws the switch to vaudeville

_Fresh from his redemption after The Great Bush-fire Debacle, Scott Morrison is reverting to type. In a farcical press conference he stated that Australias institutions and businesses were being targeted by a sophisticated state-based cyber actor.

May 26, 2020

HENRY REYNOLDS. Australia goes fishing in troubled waters.

A few weeks ago Foreign Minister Marise Payne condemned Chinas actions in the South China Sea, adding that in recent days the Australian frigate HMAS Parramatta had been conducting exercises with two American naval vessels as they passed through the waters.

January 5, 2020

JOHN MENADUE. The facts on boat arrivals that the media wont face(A repost)

From September 2015, almost four years ago, Peter Hughes and I have pointed out repeatedly that Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison triggered the surge in boat arrivals from September 2011 and did not stop the boats as they claim from December 2013 when Operation Sovereign Borders commenced.

September 4, 2018

MEDIA ALERT: Appeal lodged against Federal Court Decision in Palace Letters case.

Professor Jenny Hocking has lodged an appeal against the decision of the Federal Court last month in Jennifer Hocking v. Director-General, National Archives of Australia. The Court ruled that the Palace letters, between the Governor - General, Sir John Kerr, and the Queen relating to Kerrs dismissal of the Whitlam government, are personal not Commonwealth records, continuing the Queens embargo of them.

June 3, 2020

Monthly digest on housing affordability and homelessness Apr/May 2020

The following is the latest instalment of a monthly digest of interesting articles, research reports, policy announcements and other material relevant to housing stress/affordability and homelessness with hypertext links to the relevant source.

One of the key themes for this instalment is that now is an ideal time for a range of good reasons for government at all levels, led by the Federal Government, to facilitate a massive and much overdue investment in social housing.

September 28, 2020

Cock-ups, conspiracies or system failures?

What we now call cock-ups, getting things wrong, being in the wrong place and so on, emerged from the despair and fatalism experienced by troops in World War I. As the pandemic reveals, the propensity for the folly of human action, for cock-ups, persists.

September 9, 2020

Holy See response to Child Sexual Abuse Royal Commission: another example of clericalist obstinance

It is almost three years since the Royal Commission inquiring into child sexual abuse recommended that the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC) request from the Holy See responses on 14 matters. The Holy See responded in February 2020 with observations. Seven months later the ACBC has forwarded them to the Commonwealth Attorney-General and made them public.

September 1, 2020

Has the US Fed buried Milton Friedman's monetary legacy?

The US Fed Chair Jerome Powell last week buried wage inflation targets. Always terrible, does this burial mean new hope?

July 29, 2020

Please, not an austerity government again!

If there was ever a time for a government to take the bit between its teeth and achieve great things, this is the time. The coronavirus has essentially picked up the chessboard, and thrown all the pieces up in the air.

June 21, 2020

Living with China: There is a way, but is there a will? Part 1

_There is a growing sense that its time to step off the merry-go-round of China bashing and the Australia bashing that inevitably follows. But what is to take its place? Many would like to see a more solid foundation for our relationship with China. But what would this look like in practice? And how well equipped are we for the task?

May 25, 2020

MIKE SCRAFTON. Historical amnesia: Great power behaviour and criticism of China

Between 1890 and 1920 the democratic US became a great power. Its trajectory from western hemisphere state to global power has some economic, military and foreign policy parallels with authoritarian Chinas growth in the twenty-first century.

January 7, 2018

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. The Australia Indonesia Agreement on maintaining security in 1995

The Cabinet papers for 1994/95, released on 1 January this year, made it clear that Paul Keating had sought to develop a security agreement between Australia and Indonesia in 1994. The Agreement was completed in 1995.

July 13, 2020

Let the flag follow the trade

Its a curious cluster Jamaica, Luxemburg, Costa Rica and Jordan. Squashed in the middle at 73 is Indonesia. Its a lousy rank on the World Banks Ease of Doing Business Register because it shouts at potential investors: Beware! Yet Australians are being urged by their government to take risks.

May 3, 2020

Sound the Trumpists: The deputy sheriff rides again Part One: The global landscape

Cockwomble: A person, usually male, prone to making outrageously stupid statements and/or engaging in inappropriate behaviour while generally having a very high opinion of their own wisdom and importance. Presently exemplified by Agent Orange who dwells in the casa blanca in the geopolitical capital of the world and is the inheritor of a long line of global sheriffs.

August 3, 2020

True crime confessions being rude to Centrelink

Last year, a Senate inquiry into RoboDebt was told that more than 2000 peoplediedafter receiving their initialRoboDebtletter, many apparently by suicide. I act for numerous RoboDebt clients.

May 25, 2019

PETER SAINSBURY. Sunday environmental round up, 26 May 2019

Some pieces this week relevant to the causes of Labors problems last Saturday. Was their environmental message wrong? not according to a recent report suggesting sea level rise of up to two metres by 2100, or the forced migrations that will occur as temperatures rise, or the rapidly falling price of wind, solar power and batteries pushing coal and gas out of the picture. Was the right message badly sold? Lord Stern firmly believes the transition to 100% renewable energy will be good for the economy and jobs. Maybe he could have done a better selling job. Were Labor too timid? would a promise to declare a climate emergency have helped Labors cause? Or is Australia simply reflecting a global lack of political will to take meaningful climate action as the UN Secretary-General recently stated in New Zealand?

November 12, 2017

PETER YOUNG: Why Health Professionals in Immigration Detention should stop colluding and speak out

As the situation for hundreds of asylum seekers in the Manus Island continues to deteriorate the harmful consequences of Australia’s punitive immigration detention policies are obvious. Despite the secrecy surrounding immigration detention it is only the wilfully blind who avoid this conclusion.

September 2, 2020

US hard line on South China Sea could cause a clash

On 13 July US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a confrontational policy statement on the South China Sea. The US followed up the statement with an across the board full court press of public relations, diplomacy and muscle flexing targeting China’s policy and actions in the South China Sea.

June 17, 2020

Kids are back at school, but some have fallen well behind

The Grattan Institute wants help for disadvantaged students left stranded by the switch to remote learning during the pandemic. Around $1 billion would fund the small-group tutoring needed. Is it going to happen?

December 7, 2017

ALISON BROINOWSKI. Truth is not an excuse.

If ASIO bugged Mr Huangs phone, and sat on what it knew, the political timing of the latest leak against Dastyari could not have been more deliberate.

September 23, 2020

ALP rank and file push reforms

The Bracks-Macklin Victorian ALP review released its first recommendations in July 2020 no brainer rules amendments for immediate action to end bulk membership sign-ups and ensure individual members pay for their own membership.

June 23, 2020

Dan Tehan, BA (Hons): Biting the educational hand that fed him

Someone recently observed that Education Minister Dan Tehan is as dumb as Peter Dutton. Tehans latest foray into higher education policy certainly puts him in the same class as Dutton as a hoary wielder of a sledgehammer when it comes to making public policy.

June 8, 2020

Australia must stem our major military allys rush to nuclear weapon free-for-all?

The danger of nuclear war is growing. A new arms race is ramping up, and hard-won treaties reigning in nuclear weapons are being torn up the Iran nuclear deal, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, now the Open Skies Treaty and a US threat to resume nuclear test explosions, writes Tilman Ruff.

September 1, 2020

Japan's Shinzo Abe Quits in Bid to 'Escape' Potential Prosecution (The Daily Beast Aug 28, 2020)

Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, decided to resign Friday ostensibly because of his health, but also because he fears the unpleasant and unhealthy conditions of aJapanese prison.

September 22, 2020

NZ National Party promises tax cuts while the Labor Government invests in people and infrastructure

The Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her Government have consistently polled ahead of National and its leader Judith Collins. National’s promise of tax cuts could affect the numbers.

December 22, 2017

ROSS GITTINS. A bigger, better public sector will secure our future

There are important lessons to be learnt from the latest news about where our strong growth in employment is coming from. But if we listen to the nostrums of the Smaller Government brigade, we’ll get them exactly wrong.

August 19, 2020

Unmaking socio-economic cohesion - part 1

While the Morrison government promulgates the US and Australian shared values, the nightmare that is the American health system looms large. Yet dominant opinion since the 1980s would have Australia mimic the US and Thatcherite Britains ideological predisposition.

June 25, 2020

Worried about(Chinese) agents of foreign influence? Just look at who owns Australias biggest companies

The attention being given to possible covert influence being exercised by China in Australia shouldnt distract us from recognising that very overt foreign influence now occurs through investment.

September 22, 2020

Neoclassical economics III: a machine to destroy the world

The false nostrums of the pseudo-science of neoclassical economics have been used to create a system that promotes endlessly increasing consumption of resources and endless elaboration of technology. This system already operates far beyond the needs of people. Our survival requires that we rein in the machine and return to proven and durable, social and moral forms of organisation.

August 24, 2020

War defined the scope of emergency powers, but now we may discriminate

Would some of the coercive powers under the pandemic response survive a High Court challenge?

July 12, 2020

Australia and the US, an odd couple for an alliance

Successive Australian Governments have revelled in having a close relationship with their US counterparts. At times it is has been pandering; at others it has resulted in engaging in illegal or unwinnable wars; all cloaked in mutual admiration.

April 30, 2020

JOSEPH A. CAMILLERI. Covid-19 Lessons Not Yet Learnt

For weeks now Covid-19 has dominated the worlds media. Weve had endless facts, advice and commentary on the virus itself, the number of deaths and infections, the level of testing, the dos and donts of hygiene and social distancing, the flattening of the curve, and much else. But on the underlying significance of the pandemic remarkably little.

July 6, 2020

Communications bill will gnaw at privacy.

A few months ago, the federal government quietly began to clear a direct path between your private digital data and law enforcement agents. For the sake of your privacy, its time to wake up and pay attention.

September 13, 2020

Oil, our sword of Damocles

Eighty percent of global oil production needs to be replaced by 2040 to meet projected demand. It is increasingly likely, particularly post COVID, that much of this oil production will not be replaced. There is an urgent and existential need to structurally reduce Australias oil dependence.

August 19, 2020

The perils of pedagogy

The government hates social scientists and our views often do little to improve the mental well-being of students. Should we shut up to protect our self-interest and keep our version of the truth from our students to protect them?

June 29, 2020

Multicultural Australia in danger in resurgent pandemic. Part 1: The problem

A dark hole sits at the heart of multicultural Australia the data by-pass on how the COVID19 virus pandemic is affecting our culturally diverse communities.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal