June 5, 2017

ALISON BROINOWSKI. Agents of influence and affluence.

If energy and armaments are the agents behind Americas empire of bases and its empire of markets, how influential are they? On security, barely; on terrorism, hugely.

December 21, 2016

JOHN MENADUE. Seasonal favourites.

I would like to share with you some of my favourites at Christmas, a time of hope.

January 14, 2018

IAN WEBSTER. Policy failures in mental health

Mental health problems arising out of modern despair have to be tackled with insights gained from the day-to-day lives of societys outcasts and the social sciences. Matthew Fisher, (Australias policy failure on mental health, Pearls and Irritations, 14 December 2017) argues that Australian mental health policies have failed: (We) are subject to a deafening silence from politicians, organisations and the key individuals who shape Australias policy discourse and action on mental health". The ubiquitous mental health problems arising out of social conditions and chronically stressed lives are neglected: The social causes of mental illness and their impacts on populations, as something we might act on, are largely hidden.

February 20, 2017

ERIC HODGENS. The need for new Church Leadership.

While the Catholic population is increasing, active participation in parish life is steadily decreasing. This means that the pool of future lay leaders is steadily getting shallower. If this decline is to be reversed, now is the time to select lay leaders, train them to lead parishes and then formally appoint them as Parish Leaders.

March 1, 2017

JOHN DWYER. The parlous state of strategies to protect consumers from health care fraud. Part 1 of 3

Credible scientific evidence of clinical effectiveness should underpin the delivery of health care. Satisfactory health outcomes and cost effectiveness require this approach. In Australia however pseudoscience flourishes as regulatory bodies fail to protect consumers from health care fraud and a massive industry prospers as it convinces consumers to use expensive supplements they do not need. In this three part examination of the issue the extent of the problem is examined, as are the changes that would better protect consumers.

May 1, 2017

Making Housing Affordable Series. PETER PHIBBS. The politics of property and the role of urban planning

The narrative provided by the property industry and by some politicians is that the planning system creates large bottlenecks to more supply. Yet the reality is that we have been generating record levels of supply in Australia in recent years. While supply is undoubtedly important, it is not the key moderator of price that it is in some other markets.

September 23, 2015

Kieran Tapsell. The Royal Commission - Damning with faint understatement.

The reports issued by the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse at times seem quietly understated.

The Commission seems to invite readers to draw their own conclusions damning or otherwise from the facts the Commission has found.

This is particularly true of its report into its Case Study No 16, on the Melbourne Response.

For two years Bishop Geoffrey Robinson and his team developed Towards Healing, a national protocol for dealing with child sex abuse within the Church, in consultation with the Australian bishops, one of whom was George Pell, an auxiliary bishop and later Archbishop of Melbourne.

January 11, 2016

Peter Drysdale. Taiwan's Political Choice.

On Sunday, Taiwan will elect its next president, the successor to President Ma Ying-jeou from the Kuomintang (KMT) party who has been in power for the past eight years and is ineligible to run for another term. The vote will almost certainly record a decisive choice for political change.

In the run up to the election, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate, Tsai Ing-wen, appears to be heading towards a runaway victory with polls suggesting that she has about 45 per cent voter support. This puts her far ahead of the ruling KMT party candidate, Eric Chu, with around 20 per cent, and the smaller People First Party (PFP) candidate James Soong with 10 per cent. Around 25 per cent of voters remain undecided. With three-quarters of a million more voters this election than last time, the many young, first-time voters are likely to vote for non-mainstream parties or the DPP.

August 12, 2020

Victoria's gutted public service hasn't handled the coronavirus well

The scale of the coronavirus disaster in Victoria has been more than two decades in the making.

May 15, 2017

JAMES ONEILL. The Ongoing Disaster of Australias Policy in Afghanistan

According to a recent news report Australia is open to a request from the United States for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan. According to the report, Australian troops mostly work in a training and support role aimed at strengthening the Afghan forces ability to protect their own country. It is important, said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, that we work together to build up the capacity of Afghanistans own security forces so that they can keep that country secure from the threat of terrorism. (1)

June 30, 2014

Frank Brennan SJ. How the Bishop was forced to resign because he played too much for the local team

I have followed the Bishop Bill Morris saga closely. My one new insight from reading Bill’s book Benedict, Me and the Cardinals Three - is that he was sacked because he was too much a team player with his local church. By sacking their local leader, the Romans hoped to shatter the morale and direction of those who had planned the pastoral strategies of a country diocese stretched to the limits as a Eucharistic community soon to be deprived of priests in the Roman mould.

July 9, 2020

The Australian Government regards China as a strategic competitor, a revisionist power, and one that must be resisted.

_At last the contradiction that over the past four years has been at the heart of Australian foreign and security policy towards China has been resolved. In a series of important announcements, the Australian Government has now made it clear that it regards China as a strategic competitor, a revisionist power, and one that must be resisted.

October 21, 2013

Japan and the denial over comfort women. Guest blogger: Susan Menadue Chun

In a speech at the United Nations in September 2013, Prime Minister Abe conveyed Japans willingness to be involved in U.N security actions. He also emphasized Japans commitment to oppose sexual violence against women in war zones. Strangely, he didnt mention comfort women, also known as sexual slaves, women who were forced to provide sex to the Japanese Imperial Army in WWII. How many lies must be told to cover up the truth?

January 10, 2017

RICHARD TANTER. Fifty years on, Pine Gap should reform to better serve Australia.

Pine Gap has capabilities that could genuinely contribute to the defence of Australia. This would depend on the will and resolution of an Australian government capable of identifying these.

March 19, 2014

Kieran Tapsell. The best drama in town: the Royal Commission on the Ellis Case.

There is a veritable whodunit being played out at the Royal Commission into Sex Abuse. The Commission is inquiring into the treatment of John Ellis who lent his name to the so called Ellis defence, that confirmed that the Catholic Churchdoes not exist in law. If the sex abusing priest or the negligent bishop is dead or has no assets, there is no one else to sue.

John Ellis was an altar boy and was sexually abused by Fr Aidan Duggan from the age of 13. He subsequently suffered serious psychological problems, and approached the Church through its Towards Healing protocol in 2002. The Church organised an independent assessment in accordance with that protocol and the assessor found that on the balance of probabilities Ellis had in fact been abused by Duggan. An initial offer of $25,000 was made to Ellis, and it was increased to $30,000 after Ellis lost his job as a partner at a prestigious Sydney law firm. Ellis said that he would settle for $100,000. The Church rejected that. In the meantime, Ellis only had 3 years to apply for an extension of the limitation period, and that time was about to expire. So he instructed solicitors to make the application. At the time he filed it, Ellis offered to settle the case for $750,000, an offer that was rejected by the Church. It was this application for extension of time that eventually went to the New South Wales Court of Appeal and to the High Court.

April 2, 2017

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Free speech, Newscorp and Mark Latham.

What a craven capitulation to political correctness. What a surrender to the great values of Australian democracy, the most important of which, it needs hardly be said (although it has been incessantly by the free speakers of The Australian) is free speech.

March 7, 2017

OLIVER FRANKEL. Making housing affordable Drawing inspiration from India and Singapore

Not many of those following the housing affordability debate in Australia would think of looking to India and Singapore for inspiration, yet the experiences of each of these countries are inspiring in their scale and ambition (and in Singapores case, already proven success), and could provide useful lessons for us as we attempt to deal with the housing crisis afflicting many parts of Australia.

May 20, 2014

John Menadue. Think tanks, cash for comment and the corruption of public debate.

In recent months we have been partly appalled and partly amused by the urgers and spivs from both sides of politics that have been paraded in Sydney before the Independent Commission against Corruption. Most recently we have seen developers and others using fronts to launder money to hand on to political parties. Even the Young Liberals have decided to get into the act with their Black Ops.

But there are other more serious problems with think-tanks that receive large amounts of money, seldom disclose their sponsors or donors and then conduct overt political campaigns, invariably on behalf of business and the conservative side of politics. These cash for comment think-tanks hawk themselves around as independent! They are often nothing of the sort. They are propagandist fronts for the laundering of money for special interests. Yet organisations like the ABC give them remarkable free time to espouse the views of their secret funders.

April 25, 2013

The post-September struggle. Guest blogger: Red Pimpernel

As the Labor Party lurches to a blistering defeat in September there is a lot of work going on to reframe it as a democratic and progressive organisation. Those that seriously believe in the ALP as a 21st century social democracy have begun quietly. The reframers know they will run into internal conservative opposition.

It will be a debate that gives Labor members and supporters plenty to keep themselves busy as they contemplate the Abbott era.

July 27, 2018

PATRICIA EDGAR. The Nine Entertainment Cos takeover of Fairfax

The proposed Nine Entertainment Cos takeover of Fairfax would be a disaster for journalism and for Australia. Malcolm Turnbulls changes to the 30 year-old cross- media rule means one owner can control print, radio and television in one market. Of course this will result in serious loss of diversity in information. That it is Nine that will take control of Fairfax is spine chilling. It is a devastating outcome for those Fairfax journalists who have dedicated their careers to accurately informing readers who value objective professional reporting.

March 30, 2017

RAMESH THAKUR. Nuclear powers and umbrella states must engage with, not obstruct, the international community.

It is time for the so-called realists to get real about the existential dangers of a world brimming with nuclear weapons.

January 22, 2017

WALTER HAMILTON. Thank you, Mr. Trump

Friend or foe, ally or rival, it no longer seems to matter: hey, world, make way for the guy who pushes in at the checkout, double parks at the school gate, dumps his garbage in the park, talks through the movie, and calls in sick every Monday. The idea of American Exceptionalism was bad enough, but now comes American Entitlement.

May 25, 2017

GEOFF MILLER. One dance too many - a new quadrilateral defence grouping.

Recently Paul Keating, in launching Allan Gyngells book on Australian foreign policy, said that smart countries did not tie themselves too closely to fixed positions in foreign policy—rather, they danced around. He said this in the course of arguing that Australia should not be so overawed by its alliance with the United States that it felt it had to join in every US policy initiative; some havent been successful, he said, and we should decide on what we did based on our own interests and consideration.

October 2, 2016

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Cheering for East Timor.

It may sound unpatriotic, but I could not help cheering when the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague brought down its decision last week, and it was against Australia.

After more than 12 festering years, this finally brings to a head a shameful and shameless exhibition of browbeating and exploiting our newest and poorest neighbour, Timor LEste.

John Howard claimed much of the credit for defending the independence of the nation, and so he should; but it has to be said that his motives were not entirely altruistic.

November 20, 2016

PETER JOHNSTONE. The Royal Commission and the Catholic Churchs Dysfunctional Governance

In May 2016, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released Issues Paper 11 Catholic Church Final Hearing, inviting submissions for its final Catholic Church hearing scheduled for three weeks 6-24 February 2017. That hearing will review the horror of clerical child sexual abuse and the Churchs cover-up and protection of abusing clergy, including factors that may have affected the institutional response of the Catholic Church to child sexual abuse. The hearing will doubtless attempt to answer the question asked by many Catholics: How could the leadership of our Church behave in this way whilst continuing to espouse and teach Christian values?

February 15, 2017

FRANK BRENNAN SJ. The Catholic wrap-up at the Royal Commission

Last Monday, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse commenced its three-week examination of the causes of child sexual abuse and cover up in the Catholic Church in Australia over the last 60 years. The statistics were horrifying.

February 23, 2015

The economic potential of older people.

In the SMH on February 22, Susan Ryan, the Age Discrimination Commissioner, described how many older workers are being ignored , yet they could be making a more significant contribution to the economy and society. For article, see link below. John Menadue

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-economic-potential-of-older-people-is-being-ignored-20150222-13lfgt.html

August 23, 2018

JERRY ROBERTS. What was the plan?

Peter Dutton was set up to lose the next election and to lose it badly. That would have left the Liberals in an even more chaotic mess than they are in today. To whom should they turn for salvation? Why, of course, to Captain Chaos himself Tony Abbot. That was the plan.

March 12, 2017

LESLEY HUGHES. Angry summers are the new normal. Our climate is on steroids.

The occurrence of the extreme summer experienced in NSW, for example, was at least 50 times more likely than would have been the case without climate change.

October 27, 2016

JENNY HOCKING. The Palace Letters.

Release the Palace letters! Why I am taking a Federal Court action against the National Archives to release correspondence between Sir John Kerr and the Queen.

When the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, took the unprecedented and divisive action of dismissing the Whitlam government, he claimed to have acted alone, to have made up my mind on my own part. In this solo performance, as insistently and repeatedly presented by Kerr, he at no stage raised even the possibility of Whitlams dismissal with the Queen. By ensuring her ignorance, Kerr claimed, he had protected the Queen from getting involved. Nothing could be further from the truth.

March 27, 2014

David Isaacs. Impacts of detention on children.

I am a paediatrician. I specialise in paediatric infectious diseases but also work as a general paediatrician. For the last 10 years, I and my colleagues have run a Refugee Clinic at the Childrens Hospital at Westmead, where we assess child asylum seekers and refugees. The initial aim of this clinic was to screen children for treatable infectious diseases like tuberculosis and malaria and for other non-infectious conditions like rickets. However, the whole nature of the assessment has changed of late.

October 22, 2014

German model is ruinous for Germany and deadly for Europe.

In my blog of 16 October ‘Post-script from France’ I said ‘Like other Europeans [the President of France] hopes that the German economic engine will help power France and the rest of Europe, but the German economic engine has slowed down considerably.’

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in the London Telegraph paints a very discouraging account of Germany and its prospects. He says ‘France may look like the sick man of Europe, but Germany’s woes run deeper.’

March 23, 2017

BOB BIRRELL and BOB KINNAIRD. Migration policy; All about numbers

The permanent skilled migration program should be cut by nearly half, from 128,000 (primary and secondary applicants) to around 70,000. This includes migrants granted visas under the points test and those sponsored by employers.

January 30, 2017

GEOFF HISCOCK. Key Indian states go to the polls in February

While most of Asia-Pacific focuses on the beginning of the Trump presidency and Chinas prickly response so far, a substantial slice of the worlds biggest democracy, India, is about to enter a crucial round of state elections that will also have an impact on regional stability and economic growth. … in Indias most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, where 140 million of its 200 million people are on the electoral roll – more than the 130 million American citizens who cast votes in the US presidential election.

January 24, 2019

MICHAEL KEATING. Equality: What is it and Why is it important?

Inequality has risen in most of the advanced economies, including Australia. It is damaging both the fabric of our society and economic growth. The Government appears to acknowledge that it should pursue equality of opportunity, but not outcomes. However, the Government has done little that would improve the equality of opportunity, especially relative to the magnitude of this challenge today and in the future.

January 7, 2014

More on pink batts. Guest blogger: Dr Michael Keating

I would like to add a further comment to your post on 3 January on the Pink Batts.

First, I would further contest the evidence that this scheme was poorly conceived and badly implemented. On this point it should be noted that the Auditor Generals finding that 29 per cent of 13808 completed jobs had minor or serious problems was based on a departmental survey, which suggests that the government was following up. Furthermore the survey was not wholly random and as the Auditor General noted this particular finding constituted only weak evidence. Later evidence showed that of 44,300 inspections, again not randomly chosen, only 3215 led to rectifications being required a rate of around 7 per cent, which does not seem to me to be particularly high for the building industry.

February 16, 2015

Climate change - If only!

Last Saturday David Cameron, the British PM, Nick Clegg, the Deputy PM and Leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Ed Milliband, Leader of the British Labour Party, signed a joint pledge on climate change.

The three leaders agreed on three particular pledges

‘To seek a fair, strong, legally binding, global climate deal which limits temperature rises to below 2 degrees centigrade.’
‘To work together, across party lines to agree carbon budgets’
‘To accelerate the transition to a competitive, energy efficient low carbon economy and to end the use of unabated coal for power generation.’

If only Tony Abbott, Bill Shorten, Christine Milne and Clive Palmer could come to a similar deal!

February 14, 2017

STEVE GEORGAKIS and JADE WARD. The first week in February 2017: A Landmark for Womens Football Codes

Histories are silent on any real influence that women have had on their respective sport. This is because involvement in these sports have historically emerged from the connotations that such sports were about providing opportunities for men to develop a masculine character.

March 14, 2017

IAN McAULEY. The National Electricity Market: What happens when economists get involved with electricity

John Menadue has asked me to write about the National Electricity Market the NEM. I should be qualified to do that: my first degree and my first years of professional work were in electrical engineering and in my later professional work I taught public economics. Who could be better qualified? But let me apologise to the readers of Johns blog: Im not up to the task because I cannot make sense of the NEM.

February 7, 2017

RAMESH THAKUR. Will Donald Trumps persona destroy his administration?

Donald Trump swept through the primary and election campaigns like a disruptive force of nature to a victory that unsettled almost all conventional wisdom about modern American politics. A shocked Democratic Party and city-based cultural elites are still in denial about his victory.

December 12, 2016

JAMES CURRAN. New series. We can say 'no' to the Americans.

James Curran spoke to the National Press Club, Canberra, at the launch of his new book ‘Fighting with America’ on 8 December 2016.

The alliance is stronger and healthier for its disagreements.

May 24, 2017

RICHARD BUTLER. Trump Tour: Unbound Cynicism

President Trumps visit to Saudi Arabia and then Israel served entirely cynical international and domestic political purposes. All contentious issues were ignored. The great power competition in the Middle East: US/Saudi and Russia/Iran has deepened.

May 31, 2017

Manchester and terrorism. Part 3 of 3.

In this three-part article, Ramesh Thakur argues that the scale of the terrorist threat to Western societies must be kept in perspective, that Western actions in the Middle East may have fomented more terrorism than they have defeated, and that an attitude of denial regarding the potential for problems of large-scale Muslim immigration feeds mutual paranoia and hostility and is not conducive to social cohesion.

December 3, 2014

Ian McAuley. Pyne on education funding.

A good friend is someone who, when youve had too much to drink at a Christmas party, ignores your protests and takes your car keys to prevent you driving home sozzled. Youre surely grateful the next morning.

When he gets back to the Adelaides leafy eastern suburbs and has regained his composure, Christopher Pyne might realize that Senators Lambie, Lazurus, Wang and Xenophon, in rejecting his university reforms, have saved him and his government from something almost as bad as a DUI conviction. In a country where almost everyone aspires to a tertiary education for themselves or their children, deregulating fees after cutting public support for universities by 20 per cent is a sure election loser.

September 8, 2013

Dodging a bullet. Guest blogger: John Young

It was going to be as bad as 1996 (when Labor lost 31 seats), a sombre Stephen Smith gravely warned us at the beginning of the ABC election night coverage.

Smith ignored that a few months earlier Labor was facing its worst election defeat, at least as bad as the 2011 NSW State election.

How had this occurred when the Government was competent and economy was going well? The 2010 hung Parliament does not of itself provide the answer. The answer lies in the elusive concept of trust.

May 1, 2017

Making Housing Affordable Series. NED CUTCHER. Running the private rental market at a loss, for profit

Understanding how unaffordable housing affects renters is increasingly important, since more Australians can expect to rent for longer. How do negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount affect affordability, amenity and security for renters? Encouraging mums and dads to invest in the private rental market is not all its cracked up to be, and tenants advocates have been calling for reform.

November 6, 2024

A five-minute scroll

Record numbers step out to vote in the US election while PM Netanyahu fires his Defence Minister and protesters gather in Tel Aviv. Israel continues to bombard hospitals and schools in Gaza and homes in Southern Lebanon and Dr. Gabor Maté guides his audience on the truths of Oct 7. At home David Shoebridge asks questions about the guidance given to the government after the ICJ ruling while Prime Minister Albanese reminds the house of the previous coalition government’s spending.

August 10, 2014

Cavan Hogue. Russia boycott.

Anyone with any knowledge of Russia could have told the Prime Minister that his gratuitous public and personal attacks on Mr Putin and on Russia in general would lead to retaliation. Russia was left with no other option except humiliation and Russians are too proud and too sensitive to accept that. So the Australian Government must have known that banning of our exports was the most probable Russian response and therefore prepared contingency plans to deal with this event. So why all the panic now? Why has the National Party not protected the interests of its constituents simply so Mr Abbott can engage in a contest with Mr Putin to show who has the hairiest chest?

December 5, 2016

CHRIS BONNOR. Time for some ghost-busting in school funding by ALP.

The ALP seems to have missed many points about school funding, especially the need to establish Gonski’s schools resourcing body, a proposal which has been strongly supported by the Grattan Institute.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal