July 22, 2020

Prospects for refugees and migrants if the population bomb goes bust

The University of Washingtons Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) says that the UN projections up to 2100 for global population growth are about 2 billion too high, because fertility rates almost everywhere are dropping much faster than expected.

June 9, 2020

Turnbull Exposes Rorting of School Funding by Catholic Church

In his recently published memoirs, Malcolm Turnbull thoroughly exposes the hypocrisy of Catholic education authorities in diverting taxpayer funding intended for poor schools to subsidise rich inner-city schools. In doing so, he exposed his own hypocrisy by allowing them to continue to do so under his Gonski 2.0 funding model.

July 20, 2019

PETER SAINSBURY. Sunday environmental round up, 21 July 2019

The close connection between climate change and loss of biodiversity is finally receiving the attention it deserves, particularly the need to halt deforestation and begin massive programs of reforestation. Vales Point power station in NSW provides an indication of the perils in store for the public purse as privately owned fossil fuel facilities reach the end of their lives, and coal executive turned climate warrior Ian Dunlop is interviewed on the ABC. Electric vehicles sales are picking up in Australia if youre tempted to plug in, theres a guide to which one might be right for you. Coral reefs are good for fish; fish are good for coral reefs ecosystems in action … plus a pretty picture.

March 12, 2019

HAJO DUKEN. The Brexit crisis devils work and peoples contribution the peoples vote: democracy or arson?

Most people, both in Britain and the rest of the world, would by now agree that Brexit has proven to be the most important single issue Britain has faced since WWII with significant (if not life-changing) consequences for many generations to come. Many would also agree that it has been the management of Brexit (rather than the decision for Brexit itself) that has manoeuvred Britain into its biggest crisis since WWII. Surprisingly, however, the root causes of this mess are rarely discussed.

June 16, 2020

Regardless of the EU, the UKs trading status is about to default to the WTO

The UK has already left the EU. Thats the reality. What remains to be decided, before 31 December, is its future relationship with the EU. But there is more to it than that.

September 2, 2020

The Australian Government is pursuing economic suicide

The prime objective of a country is to maximise the interests of its inhabitants. That objective is met in trade by selling its goods at the best possible price. What the countries leaders may think of the politics of their trading partners is an irrelevant consideration.

July 15, 2020

In this pandemic, children will suffer far more than we realise

We are told, quite correctly, that one of the few bright spots of the Covid-19 pandemic is that children are at significantly lower risk of being infected, and less likely to have a severe illness should they become infected. But this is only part of the story.

August 10, 2020

Is Indonesia's 'dreamy idealist' losing the plot?

Akhirnya! At last! Just in time for the 75th anniversary of the declaration of Indonesias independence next week (17 August) were starting to examine our big neighbour with some honesty.

August 3, 2016

JOHN MENADUE. Democratic Renewal.

Our loss of trust in institutions.

We speak often about the need for new ideas and policies to fill the void in the public debate.

We will be examining these issues in this series Fairness, Opportunity and Security.

But I think there is a prior problem. We need political reform to restore trust in our political system and our polity.

August 5, 2020

Section 92 of the Constitution lost to shortsightedness

It is a pity that the Commonwealth has formally dropped out of the Clive Palmer challenge in the High Court over State boundary closures as offending Section 92 of the Constitution - though prior to that it had made a written submission to the Court. The issues transcend Mr Palmers interests.

May 7, 2020

DAVID SOLOMON. The triumph of federalism?

How good is federalism Australian style? Until the coronavirus crisis struck, the verdict would have been: pretty ordinary, at best. But at the moment it is flourishing. Can this outbreak of good health last?

October 10, 2018

KEVIN BAIN. New thinking needed on refugee policy for a new period (Part 1 of 2)

Both Robert Manne and John Menadue have recently put proposals at this blog for better refugee policy. As an amateur who has accumulated an awareness of the counter-intuitions, swirling dynamics and deep knowledge required in this fiendishly complex policy space, I have no detailed prescriptions of my own other than first, do no harm. But the European events and an imminent Australian election suggest an urgency for advocates to review their orthodoxies and adapt to new realities. Theres not much public conversation and it needs to happen.

September 30, 2020

A Bill to enable use of foreign troops or foreign police in Australian emergencies

A bill is before federal parliament to enable the ADF, Reserves and foreign military forces and police to be used in Australian emergencies. It gives them immunity from civil or criminal prosecution for actions arising from these emergency duties.

May 28, 2019

TED EGAN. Semantics.

Any person who can establish genetic link to Australia in 1787 may be acknowledged, honoured and respected, by official recognition as a First Australian.

August 16, 2020

Getting past the champagne corks: the complexities of the Israel-UAE deal (NY Daily News14.8.2020)

So much of President Trumps foreign policy has been sleight of hand illusions what you think you see is not what you get that it is hard to take seriously any announcement of a major diplomatic achievement. This is the dilemma in assessing the announcement that Israel and the United Arab Emirates have decided to start a process of normalization.

May 28, 2018

ROBERT MICKENS. Chiles bishops offer their resignations en masse.

The question is did they all decide to jump together or were they pushed?

It can be called nothing less than cataclysmic. The Catholic bishops of an entire national hierarchy have offered to step down for their negligence in handling cases of alleged clergy sex abuse of minors.

September 8, 2020

Coughing up a smokescreen

It isnt accidental irony but a deliberate insult from Big Baccy two fingers to the government, medicos and public health pros. Just above the small government warning on the ad banners bottom corner showing a tracheotomy is the latest buy-line: I choose, I live.

June 25, 2020

Searches, Seizures and Sanctions in Australia's Immigration Detention Camps

_A disturbing and distressing new development has occurred in the Commonwealths policies with respect to immigration detention. Pursuant to an amendment to the Migration Act (Cth), non-citizens who have committed criminal offences in Australia are now subject, under s.501, to mandatory cancellations of their visas.

May 17, 2020

JUSTIN O'CONNOR. The domestic agenda for Australias anti-China rhetoric

Australias anti-China rhetoric is not just about foreign policy. In demonising China as a malign communist power it distracts us from looking at what ails Western liberal democracies, presenting us with a stultifying either/or.

April 6, 2020

DUNCAN GRAHAM.- Not a model land

Curious about life as a sheep? Visit Incredible Indonesia, as the tourist promos once hollered.

July 5, 2020

Indefensible policies - Defence Strategic Update

The recently released Strategic Update may please traditional security analysts, but it wont influence the behaviour of China or make individual Australians any safer.

June 10, 2020

Chinas Consumers Increasing the Price of Provoking the Dragon

Australias governments, businesses and media have accorded inadequate attention to the power of the Chinese consumer when picking fights with Beijing.

September 16, 2020

Australian values: what are they and what has Covid done to them?

Australia is the only common law country with neither a constitutional nor federal legislative bill of rights. Only a few rights are constitutionally protected. For the most part, we have all the rights that Parliament and the common law have not yet taken away.

August 23, 2020

Sinking billions of taxpayer dollars into gas would make Australia an international pariah (The Guardian, August 21 2020)

The Morrison governments post-Covid recovery commission has called for an astonishing level of support for a declining carbon fuel.

September 10, 2020

The myth and the veterans' problems that will not die

There are almost too many myths about Australias Vietnam War involvement to keep track. But one of them that all National Service conscripts had the option of volunteering or not when about to be posted to Vietnam is possibly the most persistent.

September 6, 2020

Police state governance and the civil liberties of an MP

In disdain for human rights and to display power, governments deploy police forces to harass or arrest citizens, and then justify their actions with claims about the influence of foreign forces.And it’s happening right now in Australia.

July 23, 2020

Asia is more than the US and China but we don't understand Asia.

_Our Asia expertise is not strengthening but in decline. A decrease in research funding for Asia-related topics, a fall in Asian language learning by English-speaking students, a growing neglect of Asian histories and cultures and a serious threat to our library acquisitions these are dangerous trends at a time when we must have a sophisticated not superficial knowledge of Asian developments.

January 29, 2019

BOB DOUGLAS. Would Australian politicians contemplate a strategy for human survival?

Why are governments around the world avoiding the constellation of threats to survival of humans on the planet?

June 15, 2020

The many meanings of the word corruption

It is widely expected by foreigners undertaking commercial activities in the Asian region that facilitation payments or corruption by another name will be required for most services provided to them.

July 22, 2020

Could corporate clean conversion save the economy and the planet?

The recent second wave outbreak of Covid-19 at the Crossroads Hotel in Casula, NSW creates an apt metaphor for the climate crossroads at which nations globally now find themselves.

June 25, 2020

Dyson Heydon bites the dust

Former High Court of Australia judge, Dyson Heydon, was chosen by ex-Prime Minister Tony Abbott to run a royal commission to put the boot into the unions, Bill Shorten and Julia Gillard. The whole exercise was a disaster.

July 15, 2020

Our warmongering allies: the alliance, Part 2

In 2004 Janet Jackson flashed a breast (sorry, suffered a wardrobe malfunction) during the Super Bowl half time entertainment. The same day 109 innocent civilians were killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq.

April 16, 2020

JONATHAN FORD. The battle at the heart of British science over coronavirus (FT 15.4.20)

_When it came to foot-and-mouth and Sars, we used to be the ones telling China how to respond, but now the boot is on the other foot. The Asians are in the lead and theyve responded well. Weve done poorly.

April 9, 2020

FRANCIS SULLIVAN. It is not possible to divorce George Pell's acquittal from the history of child abuse(The Guardian 9.4.2020)

The bishops should end their obsession with Pell and take up their moral responsibility to victims.

August 16, 2020

The withering away of the State

_The inability to come to grips with the COVID-19 pandemic can be traced directly to Reagan’s notion in the 1980s that government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem".

June 11, 2020

An understated and yet a most influential and famous Australian.

Rupert Murdoch aside, which Australian has had the greatest impact on US political and public thinking in recent decades? He comes from Adelaide, is unfailingly modest, was once in the news all the time, despises most politicians and has both incensed and stimulated people with his work.

August 12, 2020

Our states are crying poor. They wouldnt if they charged for rezoning like the ACT (The Conversation, August 4 2020)

Throughout Australia, when land is rezoned from industrial to high-rise residential, a charge is levied to help fund the required infrastructure.

June 25, 2020

Race is not real: Its time to stop acting as though it is.

For something that doesnt exist race exerts a pernicious and persistent influence on society. Rational arguments and protests wont exorcise the racial ghost and the struggle against its worst manifestations will be endless.

June 9, 2020

JACK WATERFORD. Punishing the undeserving - the robo-debt fiasco

Heaven knows how the ultimate costs of the robo-debt fiasco will pan out. So far the Commonwealth has announced that it is paying back about three-quarters of a billion to nearly 400,000 people whose rights were trampled upon.

June 17, 2020

What Does China Want domestically under the Leadership of President Xi? Part 2 of 2

What President Xi wants domestically is to uphold the leadership of the CCP, upgrade Chinas manufacturing capacities to middle and upper end of the production chain so as to make China strong and the people wealthy.

August 25, 2020

Aged Care as part of a National Care Service.

This post was inspired by a piece posted on Pearls and Irritations by Sue Rabbitt Roff which was so comprehensive and profoundly logical that it was only on a second reading that its full value was appreciated.

June 7, 2020

NOEL TURNBULL. Who cares about scandals, incompetence and corruption?

Recently the New Daily ran two Michael Pascoe pieces exposing a $2.5 billion regional grants program rort 25 times bigger than the sports rorts. Forwarding it on to someone elicited the surprising response: Who cares?

June 19, 2018

ABUL RIZVI. Will Dutton's high stakes gamble wrong-foot the Treasury?

Peter Dutton is gambling with a long-standing pillar of Australias economic and budget success. By making the biggest cut to permanent skilled migration since the recession of the early 1990s, combined with a throttling of skilled temporary migration, Dutton will significantly reduce net migration and therefore our population growth rate. The 1.6% per annum population growth assumption in the recent Budget could be too high by between 12% and 25%.

June 11, 2018

KIM WINGEREI. The longevity vacuum.

Short term thinking has taken hold of our society at all levels - our political leaders rarely see beyond the next poll or the next election, and in many ways they are responding to a populace that is equally sucked into the demands of the moment - resulting in ’the longevity vacuum’ - putting us all at the mercy of an unplanned future.

March 3, 2019

MAX HAYTON. The New Zealand Government considers capital gains tax.

The New Zealand Coalition Government promised to create a fairer tax system. With growing inequality and a tax regime that leaves critical areas untaxed, the burden could be shared more fairly. The first step has been taken but hazards lie ahead.

September 10, 2020

Our intelligence agencies are out of control -An edited repost from Jan 17, 2019

It seems likely that the prosecution by the Commonwealth Government of former spy (Witness K ) and his lawyer Bernard Collaery will be heard in closed court. What a travesty of justice this is.

June 4, 2020

RAY MOYNIHAN. Many of the worlds most influential medical leaders too cosy with pharma.

A new study of powerful medical leaders in the US finds around three-quarters have financial relationships with drug companies with some doctors accepting millions. The study could not have been done in Australia, where many doctor-drug company payments remain in the dark.

April 28, 2020

JON STANFORD. A Response to Michael McKinley on Future Submarines

In a series of five pieces in Pearls and Irritations last week, Dr Michael McKinley cites the recent report by Submarines for Australia at some length. While I acknowledge some of Dr McKinleys concerns about our approach, it is not clear to me what he is proposing in its place. But insofar as I understand his criticisms I will respond to them in three areas below.

January 7, 2018

MACK WILLIAMS. Breaking the ice at Pyeongchang?

The decision by the DPRK to reopen high level talks with the ROK next week in preparation for the Winter Olympics is monumental for the ROK. Followed by the US:ROK decision to defer major military exercises at the time of the Games it could well provide an opportunity for informal contacts which could lead eventually to direct US:DPRK talks.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal