February 10, 2021

Covid-19 has been a circuit breaker. Now we need to flip a different switch

A horror year, 2020 has brought some salutary lessons. But can we change our ways because of our trauma? Or will we: continue to ignore climate change; bring back overseas students and depend on their privileged place in universities; boost migration to support the housing price spiral; turn a blind eye to inequality and social injustice?

January 25, 2019

SATURDAYs GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND

A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts in other media

October 5, 2024

Resilience amongst ruin: 12 months of genocide and resistance in Gaza

Just weeks into Israel’s current genocide in Gaza, I spoke with my cousin as she watched the violence unfold from her home in Khan Yunis. She declared, “We are used to this; it is temporary and will pass.”

August 18, 2024

The Americanisation of Australia: how we’re rapidly losing our cultural sovereignty

Like a tsunami, America’s influence has been spreading to most regions of the globe. While some countries are willing to allow this and even welcome their own culture being subsumed, others are not so inclined.

July 12, 2024

Asia, say no to NATO: The Pacific has no need of the destructive militaristic culture of the Atlantic alliance

Something very dangerous happened when the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) held its meeting in Brussels. In its communique after the meeting on June 14, 2021, it identified China as a “systemic challenge” to areas “relevant to Alliance security”.

June 26, 2024

Freedom for Julian Assange but a history of injustice

After years in a top security British jail, Julian Assange has been freed provided he pleads guilty under an US Espionage Act to unlawfully obtaining and disseminating US defence information. That should be the last and long overdue chapter in a cruel, revengeful persecution of an Australian citizen, a whistleblower, journalist and publisher.

May 6, 2024

How Israel relies on up to 1,000 Australians and other foreign fighters to carry out its war crimes

Thousands of people from countries around the world have joined the war against Palestinians.

May 2, 2023

The coming war: Time to speak up

Silences filled with a consensus of propaganda contaminate almost everything we read, see and hear.War by media is now a key task of so-called mainstream journalism.

September 28, 2022

Who are the war criminals?

One of the few heartening things to come out of Russias war against Ukraine is the renewed emphasis on how its a crime for national leaders to start a war of aggression. Putin is not the only one who can reasonably be accused of committing war crimes. Most US president since World War II have done so. So have some Australian Prime Ministers.

August 25, 2021

White Man's Media: leaving the colonial mindset behind

For well over 100 years, the British colonial viewpoint was conveyed to and absorbed by Chinese living in Hong Kong. Fundamental to securing this outcome was the centrally dominant role of English in colonial life. The English media that mattered told a particular story of Hong Kong that the British and varied expatriates prioritized. This is the priority-legacy on which the global Western media draws today as it increasingly scowls in alarm at the rise of China.

July 11, 2021

Respect for the APS did not last long

Praise of the Australian Public Service for its COVID 19 efforts last year, and appearances of respecting its policy contribution, seem now to have disappeared. The PMs disdain of the public service as a key institution in our democracy, shown in his response to the Thodey Report in December 2019 and his earlier disparaging of its policy advising role, are apparent again in his departmental secretary appointments last week.

December 2, 2018

GARRY EVERETT. Who Is manipulating what?

Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney, reportedly said recently: What Synodal Fathers (Bishops) are wary of, I think, is the way synods might be manipulated today, swept up by the fashions of the age. He is further reported as being of the view that at the recent Synod on Young People, the young people in attendance hunted in a pack and that they played to a very particular script.

September 12, 2024

Sanctioning universities for failing to address antisemitism

Liberal MP Julian Leeser has accused Australian universities of “studied indifference to Jew hatred on our campuses". His solution is a Private Member’s Bill to establish a judicial inquiry into antisemitism at universities. The Commission of Inquiry will have the powers of a Royal Commission. The Bill constitutes a major assault on academic freedom, critical inquiry and the independence of universities.

April 15, 2024

Western powers never believed in a rules-based order

Liberal democracies remain shamefully complicit with Israel, despite its ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.

August 16, 2022

In the ever deteriorating relationship with China, the mainstream media have a lot to answer for

Australias mainstream media seem determined to scuttle a reset of Australia-China relations.

August 9, 2021

Morrison's QUAD ally with shared values; India's despot, Modi

_Scott Morrison loves to praise India as a wonderful democracy. The reality is that India under Prime Minister Narendra Modis Bharatiya Janata Party is a horror story.

August 2, 2021

Premiers, not Albanese, are throwing Morrison out the window

It has long been a fundamental article of Labor belief that the federal structure of the Australian nation, along with bicameral legislatures, were put into Australian constitutions to slow or frustrate radical change and Labor agendas.The Commonwealth system is increasingly sclerotic, the politicians less brave, or less focused on good policy, good government and the public interest.

July 14, 2021

After many years the Great Barrier Reef 'in danger' listing shouldn't come as a surprise.

Environment Minister Susan Ley says she was “blindsided” by UNESCOs recommendation to declare the Great Barrier Reef in danger. Prime Minister Morrison was “appalled”. Their responses reflect a concern that the Reefs political potency may be re-ignited. Then to top it off they blamed the Chinese.

February 17, 2021

People in glass houses should be careful about throwing stones

A group of Australian journalists in their never-ending hostility to China keep throwing stones at China for human rights breaches in Xinjiang, but largely ignore Australian and other breaches. Their ignorance of China explains a lot.

March 26, 2020

JOHN MENADUE.-Strengthening Pearls and Irritations.

From next week, we will be outsourcing the production, technical support and promotion of Pearls & Irritations.

July 27, 2024

Twenty thousand articles in Pearls and Irritations and counting

It was quite a surprise when I noticed last week that we had posted so many articles over 13 years.

July 3, 2024

The luxury of death

Do Gazans truly die when their body is not whole or cannot be found and when they cannot be properly grieved?

December 16, 2020

Deck stacked for dud super funds (AFR Dec 15, 2020)

Retirement rip-off The Your Super, Your Future package is designed by financial sector lobbyists to handcuff industry funds and give for-profit retail funds an easier run.

September 4, 2024

The Gaza conflict: Nothing comes out of the blue

The outcome of the latest conflagration pitting Israel against the indigenous population it has sought to displace, but failed to subdue since long before 1948, remains impossible to predict.

July 13, 2022

Remarks on the Australia-China divide at the AsiaLink launch of Happy Together, by David Walker and Li Yao.

The juxtaposition and interweaving of life stories from Australia and China make for endlessly fascinating reading.

June 9, 2021

Jobs versus climate

A debate between having a job and acting on climate change is painful for everyone involved and will not end well. Yet the absence of a clear narrative from our political leaders to clarify the issue is leaving many Australian communities in exactly that position.

December 28, 2020

The long-term global balance of power is favouring China

The twenty-first is likely to be Chinas century. Over the period since I first started visiting and living in China in the mid-1960s, the global balance of power has shifted enormously in Chinas favour. The US and the West have not declined, but China has grown more quickly, in economic, technological, infrastructure and political terms. This trend is likely to continue.

December 16, 2020

The medium-term budget outlook and its policy implications. Part 1

Instead of being back in the black this financial year, the budget outlook is for deficits continuing for the foreseeable future. The critical issue for policy is how should the budget deficit be wound back, how far and how quickly.

June 3, 2024

Neutrality would keep us out of a U.S. - China war

Neutrality offers Australia a foreign policy alternative which would keep us out of a U.S.-China war. Although this position is favoured by over two thirds of Australians, the presence of U.S. military bases on our soil and the government’s embrace of the AUKUS pact, block its adoption.

September 20, 2023

Australia must do more than pay lip service to nuclear disarmament

Speaking in New York on Tuesday during the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations, Foreign Minister Penny Wong called for negotiations to begin on a treaty that would halt the production of fissile material the basic ingredient for nuclear bombs. We all want a world without nuclear weapons, she said, and such a treaty is a precondition for that.

August 27, 2023

China: Perspectives beyond the mainstream media

China looms large in the Australian psyche. On a practical level, what happens in China largely determines the success of global action to deal with climate change, the profitability of our rural economy and the financing of our universities. Our national leaders are concerned about rising tensions in our region and the interplay of US-China relations. How are we to find our way through media doom and gloom and come to grips with the reality of China?

May 13, 2022

Wages and the cost of living

An increase in the wages of the lowest paid employees, so that they can keep pace with the cost of living, is unlikely to lead to higher unemployment. Instead, it may well help improve overall economic outcomes.

June 26, 2021

Sunday environmental round up.

Food farming is an important source of air pollution, no matter how much the industry denies it. Urgent measures needed to ensure that the energy transition has the metals it needs. Thirty years of climate change diplomacy doesnt seem to have achieved much.

September 2, 2024

End the private hospital blame game by exposing the cost of care

The federal Department of Health will soon finish a “ health check” of private hospital finances. Warnings of an emerging crisis sparked the review, with private hospital closures, claims that more hospitals are on the brink of collapse, and high-profile disputes between private hospital companies and health insurers.

August 31, 2024

‘They will tell me.’ Malcolm Fraser’s Cold War nuclear heterodoxy and Labor’s willed ignorance today

The United States Government doctrine of neither confirming nor denying the presence or absence of nuclear weapons on board US aircraft has been virtually unchanged in almost 70 years, with a very small number of exceptions.

August 8, 2024

The awesome power of the Israel lobby

There is abundant evidence that Israel is pursuing policies that are directly at odds with the Biden administration’s goals in the Middle East.

July 23, 2024

Israel’s border closures contribute to polio outbreak in Gaza

As the world’s media is mesmerised by political events in the USA and the findings by the ICJ of the illegal occupation by Israel of Gaza and the West Bank have slipped off the headlines, health officials in Gaza have found yet another potential catastrophic virus in the waste water, the poliovirus.

June 29, 2024

The Assange non-verdict: the threat remains

The champers toasting the release of Julian Assange was delightful after many years of struggle against his clearly unjust indictment and years of imprisonment. I am sure we all enjoyed sipping it. After the excitement and sweetness has assuaged however, a certain bitterness still remains, a cold realisation just what his plea bargaining signifies.

August 8, 2023

Merit is the forgotten fundamental APS value

It is dispiriting that the Public Service Act Amendment Bill now before the Parliament says so little about merit. Nothing about secretary appointments and terminations and only a minor grammatical change to clarify that ministers are not able to direct agency heads about individuals employment.

April 25, 2023

New Defence Review further enslaves Australia to US war agendas

The Australian government has released the declassified version of its highly anticipated 2023 Defence Strategic Review(DSR), and the war propagandists are delighted.

August 31, 2021

White Man's Media: How the Western media hegemony operates

In a formal democracy, particularly one with a global empire to uphold, public opinion is too important to be left to the people to think for themselves.

July 29, 2021

China grievances conflated into demands.

Peter Hartcher on the ABC presented China’s list of grievances as if they were some kind of official demarche made on the Australian Government. He intones repeatedly about these ‘demands’ as if they had the status of Martin Luthers 95 theses nailed to the chapel door at Wittenberg University which started the Reformation. That is a serious misreading

July 27, 2021

PMs focus on short-term fixes and politicisation of every conflict

Increasingly people realise that Morrison is full of bullshit, even (or especially) when he is being sincere.

February 11, 2021

Twelve points to help journalists and save democracy

Despite what the Government and some of the mainstream media will have us believe, the “News Media Bargaining Code” does nothing to protect or enhance quality journalism in Australia. There are better ways to achieve that.

December 31, 2020

How NSW lost control of the virus. Yet Scott Morrison said that NSW was the 'gold standard' in infection control.

When Covid was detected in Sydneys northern beaches area, the peninsula was locked down strongly by the Berejiklian government. While that cluster seems to have been contained, outbreaks elsewhere around Sydney have thrown some curious decisions into the limelight.

October 19, 2020

The lack of integration in Australia's health workforce. There are unconnected silos everywhere.

We urgently needed healthcare reforms :better workforce planning: more equitable workforce distribution,more efficient workforce utilisation,improved workforce productivity and financing reforms to sustain these changes. We call for the restoration of an independent health workforce agency to drive this essential work.

August 21, 2024

With more lawsuits potentially looming, should politicians be allowed to sue for defamation?

Western Australia Senator Linda Reynolds is already embroiled in a bruising defamation fight against her former staffer Brittany Higgins. Now, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is reportedly considering suing independent MP Zali Steggall after she told him to “stop being racist”.

August 7, 2024

China’s six unseen struggles, and triumphs

Western media analysts often fail to grasp the significance of the reforms initiated at the Third Plenary Session of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Beijing (CPC), which recently concluded in Beijing.

July 10, 2024

A win is a win, but clear lessons on Gaza from the UK election

The British Labour Party (BLP) won 32% of the vote but with First Past the Post voting it won 62% of the seats. That was the biggest gap on record between votes won and the number of seats.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal