May 19, 2022

For the poorest 20% of Australian households, social security payments provide more than 70% of their income

My advice to an incoming government would be that once again Australia needs a comprehensive independent inquiry into the structure and purpose of the social security system.

April 23, 2022

Environment: IPCC lays out the gruesome climate facts

Three years to turn the carbon supertanker around. Fortress conservation of forests is killing local communities. Cats and foxes destroy 3 billion Australian native fauna every year.

April 16, 2022

Environment: Colonialism, chocolate, Krugman and climate change

The IPCC has accepted that colonialism causes climate change. Options for reducing beef-related emissions. Vastly different population trajectories around the world.

July 6, 2021

Afghanistan: An enterprise for the stupid

Viet Nam, Iraq and now Afghanistan demonstrate that our ally, the US, is flaky.

February 24, 2021

Three school education policies for Labor

It seems just months since the last one, but the next election is already highlighting interest in policy development. What school education policies might a progressive sort of party like the ALP develop? They would have to pass three simple tests: they must address something that urgently needs fixing, they mustnt scare the punters and they should be readily understood and agreed, including by those responsible for their promotion and, with luck, implementation.

December 1, 2020

That's all she wrote

I never thought Id say it, but I can no longer go on working.

September 24, 2024

Israel hates truth

Israel has continued its war on journalism with another attack on Al Jazeera, this time with a raid on the outlet’s office in the West Bank and an order to shut down for 45 days. The shuttering occurred despite the office being legally under Palestinian control per the Oslo Accords.

September 14, 2024

Albanese has a second chance with AUKUS

Australia is to spend mind-boggling money to weaken its own security. Minister RIchard Marles has released a National Defence Strategy which centres on what he calls “projection”. That is, Australian forces threatening China from China’s surrounding waters. The Albanese Government’s defence policy manufactures grievous risk for Australia. That risk must be understood by the government.

September 9, 2024

We are avoiding the truths set out on Gaza by the International Court of Justice

Our World gets worse and worse, reflected in inhumane, racist, behaviour. And what for us – Australians – is really bad is that we, as represented by our political leaders, and our media, are totally complicit in genocide.

July 7, 2024

Labor’s fall: fast forward to disaster

The black and white banners unfurled from the battlements of Parliament House on 4 July made us remember 2003 when ‘No War’ appeared in red paint on the top sail of the Opera House. They lifted the spirits of all who then opposed Australia joining the war in Iraq and all who now want action from Australia to end the war against the Palestinians.

September 21, 2022

The Defence Strategic Review: Rehash of US influenced orthodoxy?

Prime Minister Albanese is to be commended for announcing, so quickly after his election, the Defence Strategic Review but its real objective is too narrow, its timeline too short and its membership hardly independent as claimed.

May 13, 2021

How good is the 2021 Budget?

The 2021 Budget continues the Governments good work in minimising the impact of the Covid recession and promoting economic recovery. However, the Government could still do better in setting up Australia for the future and guaranteeing essential services.

March 1, 2021

The first law officer of the land must be beyond reproach

In the words of investigative journalist Michelle Fahy: Federal attorney general Christian Porter is the first law officer of the land. The role is a uniquely powerful position, one that is supposed to sit, unblemished and above the reach of vested interests. Yet as federal attorney general Porter has demonstrated a disturbing acquiescence to powerful corporate interests.

February 16, 2021

Porters IR bill: 'tearing a gaping hole in the award safety net'

The governmentsFair Work Amendment (Supporting Australias Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill before parliament was drafted at the end of a six-month consultative process that brought together employer and employee representatives to chart what the prime minister hoped would be a practical reform agenda, a job making agenda.

January 16, 2020

PATRICK COCKBURN.-Blundering intoWar(LRB 2.1.2020)

_What Trump doesnt know about Iran

September 1, 2024

Nuclear-capable B-52H Stratofortress bombers: a visual guide to identification

The primary aim of this Nautilus Special Report is to provide robust, authoritative and transparent information for use by governments and their publics in countries that host the B-52H Stratofortress bomber, as to which of the 76 B-52H aircraft in the current (as of mid- 2024) US Air Force active fleet are capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and which can deliver only conventional, non-nuclear weapons.

June 5, 2024

Hypocrisy and deceit Down Under: Australia is a Zionist stronghold

Opportunism, hypocrisy, manipulation, and deceit come quickly to mind when delving into the behaviour of politicians. Against this background, two Australian former prime ministers who have thrust themselves into the headlines over the genocide in Gaza, Julia Gillard and Scott Morrison, come to mind.

May 10, 2024

The West believes antisemitism is a more egregious problem than genocide

The loss of Western authority as a result of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza has merely sped up changes already underway for a generation.

May 3, 2024

Weeping for the children in Gaza

For the past seven months, life as I knew it has stopped. The enormity of the genocide in Gaza inhabits me. My short nights of interrupted sleep are bookended with hours at the computer combing the news of Gaza. Meal times are now brief moments to gulp tasteless food. A sentence or a photo triggers enormous pain. I feel there is a flood rushing towards me and all I have is a spoon. If this is how I feel, in my safe, comfortable home in Sydney, how do Palestinians cope?

August 21, 2023

Australias biggest AUKUS risk? America, our dangerous ally

The biggest enemy of AUKUS is not the resistance of ALP branches and unions but its own over-engineered grandiosity, its naive ambition.

April 19, 2022

Privatisation and the hollowing out of Medicare by the Morrison Government

The Coalition has for years been undermining Medicare. Bob Hawke was correct at the last election when he said that the Coalition was aiming to privatise Medicare. It was not a scare tactic as some unthinking journalists keep saying. The Coalition has been privatising by stealth for years our universal health care system.

September 9, 2021

Five Eyes on the Afghan collapse-one eyed or blind?

The catastrophic failure of US and coalition intelligence in Afghanistan offers serious food for thought about the extent to which Australia relies on the vaunted Five Eyes arrangements.

July 22, 2021

Gareth Evans versus the Surveillance State: application of the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme

See below a letter exchange between Assistant Secretary, Integrity and Security Division Attorney-Generals Department and ANU Professor Gareth Evans and former Foreign Minister regarding the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme.

Gareth Evans did not give his response to the media but did copy his reply to a number of former Cabinet, diplomatic and ANU colleagues, from which it found its way into yesterdays The Australian. Some of the story being out, he has now agreed to put the full exchange on the public record. His colleagues enthusiastically welcomed his robust response.Several have offered to visit him in prison.

June 6, 2021

Stalinist-style prosecutions of Witness K and Bernard Collaery

Following the Bernard Collaery and Witness K matters, occasionally there are little glimpses into the strange Stalinist world within which the Commonwealth beavers away to discredit two distinguished Australians. The Senate Estimates hearing on 29 May provided such an opportunity.

April 2, 2020

STEPHEN FITZGERALD supports Pearls and Irritations.

Pearls and Irritations provides quite the best daily analysis of issues in world affairs and Australia’s foreign relations of any media in Australia - traditional or online.

September 20, 2024

Rupert Murdoch’s real-life succession drama is underway in a Nevada courtroom. What might happen next?

A unique court case has begun in Nevada this week. At stake is the future of the Murdoch empire. The case, which began on 17 September local time, is scheduled to run (in secret) for two weeks, and sometime after that the Reno Nevada County Probate Commissioner will make what will probably be the biggest decision of their career.

August 22, 2024

Australia has always found a way to bring in people from conflict zones

Australia has always found a way to bring in people suffering in conflict zones – when it wants to. There are well-established procedures that have worked effectively for decades between the immigration authorities and ASIO to make it happen safely.

August 1, 2024

Labor’s immigration record and the zombie portfolio

Given the catastrophe they inherited from the Coalition Government, Labor’s immigration record over two years is actually quite good. Huge improvement is still required. They will remain seriously hampered by the Home Affairs portfolio construct and must eventually restore a freestanding Department of Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs. Andrew Giles has been unfairly criticised for his handling of a problem that was of Peter Dutton’s making.

June 28, 2024

WikiLeaks as a resistance to the US or any empire

In all liberal democracies, Australia included, national self-regard resists identification with the harsh implications of reliance on, or celebration of, military force – unless it can be viably represented as defence of freedom, just war, or wars against unspeakable Others.

May 27, 2024

Israel and Hamas: no moral equivalence

When asked to compare life in apartheid South Africa with conditions in occupied Palestine, Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s judgement ran counter to prevailing orthodoxy. People make the comparison, said Tutu, but life in Palestine is far more brutal and repressive than in apartheid South Africa.

September 25, 2023

Leadership from Paul Keating on recognition of Aboriginal dispossession -1992

“Nowhere in the world, I would venture, is the message more stark than it is in Australia. We simply cannot sweep injustice aside. … the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians. It begins, I think, with that act of recognition. … Down the years, there has been no shortage of guilt, but it has not produced the responses we need. Guilt is not a very constructive emotion. I think what we need to do is open our hearts a bit. All of us.”

July 6, 2022

Anthony Albanese on China What Next? Who started the trade war?

Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese is perpetuating the myth that Chinas action in 2020 to restrict Australian exports was a bolt out of the blue that was uncalled for.

May 11, 2022

What I would do if I were the Minister for Health and Ageing in the next government

A new minister in any portfolio has two tasks: fix the past and fix the future.

April 28, 2022

Jose Ramos-Horta wins presidential ballot in Timor-Leste but no congratulations from Scott Morrison

Jos Ramos-Horta will be the new President of Timor-Leste from May 20, 2022, following his decisive second round win on April 19.

April 5, 2022

Admiral Prune: Defending Australia. Part 1 of 4: What's going on?

In the Morrison Governments attempt to frame a khaki election, we have had a flurry of big announcements recently - nuclear powered submarines, new tanks, a new east coast submarine base, more people for the ADF and west coast dockyard infrastructure. Whats really going on?

February 9, 2021

Unaccountable leaders set the tone for all in public service

The decline of good government has not been an accident. Those in public service are probably of much the same calibre, idealism and intellectual capacity as ever. What they are not getting is leadership - by words or by deeds.

July 5, 2024

Summing up

The world and its people are facing serious local and global challenges. Climate change, economic instability, limits to free speech, threats to independent media reporting, and increasing social inequality all signal the breakdown of democratic systems across the world. Our political institutions and leaders are failing us with increasingly conservative policies that favour big business.

September 23, 2022

Asian Media this week, 24 September

In Asian media this week, Biden makes the Taiwan Strait more dangerous. Plus: Myanmar people flee tattered economy; political role key to Xis anti-corruption drive; regional grouping with global heft; AUKUS and longing for Western domination; Korea looks beyond K-pops success

August 3, 2021

Our Democracy Needs Serious Reform

The Australian Government may be right to express concerns about Chinas recent domestic and international behaviour under President Xi Jinping. But claims of having superior democratic values might have more credibility if the Government understood and genuinely upheld them.

June 1, 2021

Public servants as courtiers rather than stewards

Phil Gaetjens, former Treasury official, former boss of Scott Morrisons private office and now head of the Prime Ministers Department is an unusual public servant who seems to have accepted that he is never going to be regarded as any sort of detached public servant independent of the government of the day.

December 21, 2020

Labor could beat Morrison with a bit more mongrel

Some observers think that if the Morrison government were to fall apart over the next year, it would more likely be from bad luck, an own goal, or a resumption of internal Liberal bastardries than by a hostile act of the federal Labor Party.

December 6, 2020

NSW Cabinet responds to a Special Commission of Inquiry into the Drug Ice

Drug policy has fallen into a deep rut in Australia: a growing consensus recognises that current arrangements have failed abjectlywhile governments and oppositions are unwilling to support significant reform. In NSW this past week, Cabinet was deeply dividedabout how to respond to a strong report recommending some modest reform.

November 23, 2020

SAS officers failed their men and Australia

The Australian Defence Force is one of the most secretive forces in the world. If our experience with Afghanistan is any guide, such secrecy produces moral failure. And while the much-despised media long ago blew the whistle on the behaviour of some SAS soldiers, the reward was the prosecution of the leaker.

March 18, 2020

JOHN DWYER. There is still a lot more that needs to be done to minimise harm in Australia from COVID-19.

Australian governments are taking a measured approach to minimising the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic adding new tactics/restrictions as the numbers grow. Far better to use all available measures now to minimise that growth.

August 10, 2024

Desperate in our search for security from Asia we are becoming a US protectorate

In responding to comments made by me overnight in respect of AUKUS and defence arrangements with the United States, the Prime Minister says ‘the world has changed between 1996 and 2024’. He says, ‘the world is different’.

April 20, 2024

"Fragrant, methane-wrapped bullshit": NZ should steer clear of AUKUS

I don’t want to appall the diplomats present by using a vulgarism, but Pillar two [of AUKUS] is fragrant methane-wrapped bullshit. Australia and New Zealand are beautifully placed to nurture and defend a different model of relationships between the prevailing power [the US] and the rising power [China]: A different approach from the one that says war is inevitable, says former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr.

April 10, 2024

Stopping Israel's genocide

The order of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 28 March 2024 to stop genocide in Gaza is not a go-to-jail card for Israel. So Israel just ignored it. In so doing, it followed the example of the US which had ignored an ICJ decision against the US and in favour of Nicaragua in 1986 and, again, in 2004, in favour of Mexico.

September 16, 2022

The Defence Strategic Review: The Hollywood version of ANZUS

_It is highly unlikely that China would threaten Australian territory unless we become enmeshed in containment by the US.

May 4, 2021

Time to silence the drums of war

For many familiar with the excesses of Cold War rhetoric and the hyped-up fears used to justify our ill-fated interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the current China bashing is a case of dj-vu. But the latest bout of politically contrived anti-China hysteria is especially troubling.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal