September 14, 2020

Johnson's breaking of Brexit pledge is smart-arse duplicity (Irish Times Sep 11, 2020)

Everybody knows Boris Johnson can lie for England. To his supporters, it was one of his best assets.

July 9, 2020

Neoliberalism: Attacks on the ABC and academia are entirely logical.

Funding attacks on the ABC and the social sciences in academia by Scotty from Marketing: they fit perfectly with Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model.

June 17, 2020

A Plenary of Broken Promises?

When the people in the pews get so restless that evidence of deceptive dealing at the top of the Catholic Church in Australia starts falling off the back of trucks these same leaders should know that they have a calamity looming on their collective horizon.

October 2, 2020

War crimes in Afghanistan: where will justice fall?

One year out from the 20th anniversary of the start of the Australian occupation of Afghanistan, a report is about to explode like a cluster bomb, showering shrapnel of guilt, denial, blame and even deep sorrow.

May 7, 2020

ANNA YEATMAN. Our politicians, we realise, can actually govern.

Human survival and wellbeing must become the ethical basis of all government.

April 24, 2020

DUNCAN GRAHAM Don’t cry for us,, Indonesia

Some foreign correspondents in Jakarta have done a bunk, leaving their Indonesian fixers and colleagues to confront the catastrophes they fear to face.

December 4, 2018

WANNING SUN AND HAIQING YU. Mandarin-speaking voters in Victoria: WeChat, new influencers and some lessons for politicians.

The state election in Victoria saw a dramatic swing to Labor in areas with a high concentration of Chinese-speaking migrants. Mount Waverley saw a 6.4% swing to Labor and Box Hill 7.7%. As participant observers in WeChat discussions, we offer some reflections on the role of Chinese social media, WeChat, in this political process and the emergence of new online opinion leaders in the Chinese communities. And we outline some observations that may interest politicians wishing to woo ethnic Chinese voters in the forthcoming State and Federal elections.

September 3, 2020

Australia at risk of losing subtlety in dealing with China (AFR, Sept 1 2020)

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s tough realism on China has sent strong signals to Beijing about where Australia stands. But the danger now is one of being locked into an entrenched position.

June 12, 2020

Sovereignty and Self-determination: The wider implications of Israel and the West Bank

‘The great thing about sovereignty is we always respect the sovereignty of other nations and we simply expect the same in return’, said Australian Prime Minister Morrison on 14 May 2020. However, there is nothing simple about sovereignty and it makes a poor basis for foreign policy.

March 1, 2019

MARTIN WOLF. The US debate on climate change is heating up (Financial Times 21.2.2019)

Might the US move from being a laggard to a leader in tackling global climate change? Two recent announcements — the “economists’ statement on carbon dividends” and the Green New Deal — suggest that it might. Intellectually, these proposals are from different planets. But they could be a basis for something reasonable. More important, influential people at least agree that for the US to stand pat is unconscionable.

July 3, 2020

Three different views on post-COVID recovery

Two reports on social and economic options for post-COVID-19 recovery, one from the Grattan Institute and one from Phil Ruthven, have recently been published. We can assume there is a third, not yet public: a snap back and marketing plan lurking in the Prime Minister’s mind.

January 29, 2018

LEANNE SMITH. When did Australians stop caring about our national identity?

In 1998 I was a freshly minted law grad who felt great purpose in joining the Harbour Bridge march for the first ‘Sorry Day’. I had just begun my first real job with the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, and my country was grappling with the Stolen Generation Report. It seemed the time was right for recognition and reconciliation, and I shared a sense of optimism about Australia’s identity and place in the world.

April 10, 2020

MICHAEL MULLINS. Blind obedience and the Pell trial jury

While I was training to be a Jesuit in the late 70s, I learned about, and practised, ‘blind obedience’. Rightly or wrongly, what I learned about blind obedience has informed my understanding of how juries work in the court system.

July 16, 2020

Reflections on Mathias Cormann's resignation

Perhaps the most interesting, though less discussed, aspect of Mathias Cormann’s resignation is what it shows us about the professionalization of politics – Politik als Beruf, as Weber put it.

May 5, 2020

DUNCAN GRAHAM The year of living disastrously

Most days the ABC website publishes graphs showing the trajectory of Covid-19 cases. The charts feature nine countries including Taiwan, Japan and Australia. Though not Indonesia.

May 29, 2020

SHEILA SMITH. US pandemic politics spells trouble for its Asian partners (EAF 24.5.20)

The Trump administration’s lack of interest in a global response to COVID-19, or even extending a helping hand to its allies and partners, is bringing home the possibility that US leadership may be gone for good. Beyond exposing a diminished American will to lead, the pandemic response is revealing a new reality — that of US incompetence.

March 7, 2019

MICK PALMER. A summit on drug decriminalisation.

In describing in her findings arising from a wide ranging inquest into six fatal opioid overdose events, current illicit drug policy as “futile” and likely to exacerbate drug related harm, the NSW Deputy State Coroner, Harriet Grahame, urged the NSW Government to have the courage to commit to conducting a summit on drug decriminalisation.

June 9, 2020

Malcolm Turnbull’s ‘political kryptonite’ lesson: Resistance to Big Pharma’s greed can succeed

Australia’s response to US pharmaceutical industry influence in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations holds valuable lessons for the coronavirus crisis.

September 15, 2020

Covid-19 has exposed the reality of Britain: poverty, insecurity and inequality

Only a fairer society can lay the foundations for economic recovery, and build resilience to future crises.

April 21, 2020

GARETH EVANS. Cambodia’s Coronavirus Excuse for Human Rights Abuse

Cambodia is not the only country to declare a state of emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the legislation passed last week by Hun Sen’s government – like that in Orban’s Hungary – should be ringing alarm bells for anyone anywhere concerned with the erosion of human rights and democracy.

April 17, 2020

Socialism, Language and Values for Post Corona World.

New words and phrases, lockdown, self-isolation, flattening the curve, have been coined to explain ways to cope with Covid-19. Language to promote the traits of a post corona society is also needed.

April 14, 2020

JACK WATERORD. A free and innocent Pell, but not a martyr to any cause

The jubilation in some quarters, and the dismay and despair in others when the High Court unanimously ordered a judgment of acquittal of Cardinal George Pell on child sexual abuse charges was entirely predictable, if only because the case has become, in spite of every effort, the symbolic battleground for Catholic Church accountability for such abuse.

January 20, 2020

ABUL RIZVI: Is Dutton Undermining Birmingham’s Tourism Campaign?

Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham has announced an additional $25 million to market Australia to international tourists in response to the impact of the bushfire crisis. He says this is necessary to ‘save Aussie jobs’. But his counterpart Peter Dutton has been dramatically reducing approval rates for visitor visa applications for Asian tourists. Are they not talking to each other?

February 9, 2018

The Philippine War and the Saviour syndrome

The American war against the Philippine Republic which began in 1898 and its subsequent colonisation of the Philippines teaches us many things about perennial American beliefs and actions. The concept that the US is saving somebody from something is a constant in American foreign policy. Some even believe they saved Europe from Hitler! We need to examine carefully the clash between manifest destiny and isolationism but mostly to look at the influence of the genuine belief amongst most Americans that they have a duty to save the less fortunate from something and bring them to accept truth, justice and the American Way. Combine this with ignorance of what others may want and a belief that force may be needed to save the heathen and you have a dangerous formula.

December 23, 2017

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND ...

Writing in the Fairfax Press, Andrew Norton of the Grattan Institute explains the government’s planned $ 2.2 billion cuts to university funding – cuts they can make without going through Parliament. He explains how they will have their greatest impact on resource-intensive courses such as engineering and education, while leaving courses such as law and business largely untouched.

“Under the influence of more than a century of relentless advertising and commercialisation its original significance as a religious holy-day has been submerged beneath an orgy of consumerism, materialism and over-indulgence” writes Ross Gittins in his Christmas message. He reminds us of the waste around our commercialised Christmas – food we don’t eat, clothes we don’t wear, unwanted gifts that we never use.

September 1, 2020

Under the proposed Foreign Relations Bill the states might be down but they are not out

If Mr Morrison wants to ride roughshod over certain state interests in the external sphere he had better be prepared to brief counsel at the High Court.

April 23, 2020

LIONEL ORCHARD. COVID-19 and the Role of Government

_The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the fragilities and inequalities in our economy and society. It has driven dramatic public policy responses careful not to disrupt the underlying economic balances. Will we be more willing to be bolder particularly about the role of government?

December 4, 2018

DAVID BROOKS. The return of chastened America (New York Times).

Who should run the United States next? I vote for experience and the learning from past mistakes.

May 7, 2020

GARETH EVANS supports Pearls and Irritations

Pearls and Irritations is perfectly named: lots of immensely thoughtful, insightful and often entertaining pieces mixed up with sometimes wildly contrarian, over-the-top or just plain nutty ones. But always stimulating, provocative and necessary daily reading.

June 11, 2020

Back to the good ol’ ways in Jakarta

Cities can snap-back from the Corona-19 crisis – though not necessarily to a New Normal. Jakarta shows how.

May 4, 2020

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Cook and the continuing culture wars.

He was also an 18th century Englishman, convinced of the innate superiority of his race, his culture and his class.

January 14, 2020

ABUL RIZVI: Dutton and Pezzullo’s Asylum Seeker Bungle – November Update

_David Crowe in the Sydney Morning Herald_ reports that Dutton’s Department received an average of 77 asylum applications per day in November 2019. That brings the total number of asylum applications in the last five and a half years to well over 100,000. But what is happening to those 100,000 people?

February 7, 2019

HARI KUNZRU. Fool Britannia (The New York Review of Books).

From the ill-conceived Brexit referendum onward, Britain’s governing class has embarrassed itself. The Remain campaign was complacent, the Leave campaign brazenly mendacious, and as soon as the result was known, most of the loudest advocates for severing ties with the European Union ran away like naughty schoolboys whose cricket ball had smashed a greenhouse window. Negotiations have revealed the pitiful intellectual limitations of a succession of blustering cabinet ministers, the leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition doesn’t appear to want to oppose, and the prime minister has engineered her own humiliation by starting the countdown to Brexit without a plan that could command wide support, resulting in the heaviest parliamentary defeat in history. Despite breaches of campaign finance limits and lingering questions over the source of the Leave campaign’s financing, not to mention growing evidence tying it to the same web of influence operations that promoted Trump’s candidacy, there is no equivalent to the Mueller inquiry to bolster public confidence that the organs of state are capable of warding off corruption.

August 21, 2020

The longer term consequences of the pandemic may be fewer citizens’ rights

When we require a bureaucrat’s permission to leave the country, or to cross our neighbourhood’s State border, one far removed from any known instance of a viral infection, our rights and liberties are indeed slipping. They are doing so right under our noses.

October 7, 2019

ROBERT MICKENS. A controversial synod and an unusual consistor. Pope Francis doubles down on reforming the Church and the Vatican

There’s a lot of commotion in and around the Vatican right now. It consists mostly of the angry rumblings of traditionalist Catholics who don’t particularly care for the way Pope Francis is leading the Church. Then there are the retaliatory rebukes of the pope’s most eager supporters. This has only increased the volume.

March 20, 2019

ANDREW FARRAN. PM May’s Brexit blind-sided by Parliamentary Speaker

Prime Minister May’s Brexit was on course to be delivered on 29th March as scheduled until the resubmission of the previously thwarted Withdrawal Agreement was blocked by the Speaker John Bercow, citing a 1604 convention last used in 1920 to the effect that legislation previously rejected cannot be resubmitted in the same Parliamentary session unless in a fundamentally different form.

March 12, 2019

PETER RYAN. CEDA urges Morrison Government to back Labor tax changes (ABC News).

An independent economic think tank is urging the Morrison Government to do the politically unthinkable ahead of an expected May election and back Labor’s plans to end unsustainable tax breaks.

June 8, 2020

PETER BROOKS, STEPHEN DUCKETT and BRIAN OLDENBURG. Telehealth and digital health navigators – a bright future.

Telehealth is not new in Australia but Covid -19 and the new Medicare item numbers have stimulated its rapid adoption across the country. It is clear patients like it. They do not need to expose themselves to potentially dangerous environments such as hospitals and clinics. It saves them time whether in rural or urban environments and it delivers care – and patient education, in their own environment.

April 10, 2020

MIKE SCRAFTON. COVID-19 and preparing for global warming

The COVID-19 crisis tells us some important things. The flaws in the neo-liberal model have been exposed. Democratic politics have been stressed to breaking point. The shocks to the economic, social and fiscal systems required to stop global warming are shown to be unfeasible.

September 30, 2020

Pope Francis on preparing a better future for humanity and our planet

Pope Francis is sharply challenging powerful sectional interests in his new social manifesto being released on 4 October. The new encyclical, Fratelli Tutti (All Brothers and Sisters), will outline his vision of a more just, peaceful and sustainable world, and call vigorously for a renewed commitment to universal wellbeing and solidarity.

June 5, 2018

ABHISHEK MOHANTY. India-Vietnam defense ties in spotlight with joint naval exercise

On May 21, within the framework of perpetual deployment of the Indian Navy’s Eastern Fleet to Southeast Asia and the Northwest Pacific region, three Indian naval ships en route to Guam and Hawaii for the multilateral Malabar and RIMPAC naval exercises made a port call at Tien Sa Port in Danang for India’s first joint naval exercise with Vietnam. To put this in perspective, this is analogous to the navies of China and Bangladesh exercising in the Bay of Bengal.

March 8, 2019

MARK BEESON. Global governance in the 21st century

Global governance is hard to define, difficult to achieve, but more necessary than ever.

March 29, 2018

TOM SWITZER. Skripal: the West escalates, but where is the proof?

Australia, the US, and several EU nations joined forces with Britain this week to expel Russian diplomats from their nations. The decision is based on the widespread view that the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin is responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England earlier this month.

January 22, 2020

BRUCE DOVER. The Foxification of the Murdoch media in Australia.

The ructions inside the Murdoch empire last week when youngest son, James made a very rare but very public criticism of the family companies news coverage of climate change in the wake of the Australian bushfires shines a revealing light on what is likely to be the continued ” Foxification” of our local media.

April 24, 2020

DAVID SOLOMON. Privacy should be protected

_If I thought my privacy would genuinely be protected, I would have little hesitation in downloading the coronavirus tracing app being developed for the national cabinet.

April 21, 2020

ABUL RIZVI.Who are the missing 473,000 temporary entrants?

Minister Tudge says there were 2.17 Million temporary entrants in Australia in early April 2020. He explains that 1.697 million of these are NZ citizens, students, tourists, working holiday makers and skilled temporary entrants. But who are the remaining 473,000?

March 15, 2019

ANDREW J BACEVICH. The US foreign policy establishment (The American Conservative).

The only way we’ll defeat the foreign policy establishment is if the Left and Right can be brought together.

May 6, 2020

YE YU. Triple-headed crisis calls for global cooperation (EAST ASIA FORUM 29.4.20)

COVID-19 is still raging around the planet without any signs of retreat. Worryingly, despite the belated commitment of G20 and G7 leaders to act together, in reality, every country is still only looking out for itself. Europe’s union is fractured now that it has been an epicentre of the epidemic and the embattled relationship between China and the United States has been further poisoned by COVID-19.

November 29, 2019

ANTHONY MILNER. Delicate diplomacy: Australia needs to understand its neighbours better (The Strategist, 26 November 2019)

Scott Morrison likes using the phrase ‘ delicate moment in time’ to describe the international dynamics Australia is now faced with. It’s a time to build friendships on many fronts, as the government understands well. But the task is challenging—even in the case of countries that we expect to be ‘natural partners’, such as India. The Australia–India Roundtable held in Melbourne this month highlighted the need for a sophisticated knowledge of the different players in our region—something which Australia still has to develop.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal