May 8, 2021

Sunday environmental round up.

Vast foreign debts hobble the efforts of poor countries to pursue climate action. Ways to reduce the embodied carbon emissions in buildings. Traditional owners fight back against Adani. German court forces government to take stronger climate action.

February 16, 2021

Diego Garcia: Rules for the powerful; bombs for the weak

In concert, the US and the UK in the 1960s seized the island of Diego Garcia, expelled its inhabitants and converted it into a massive airbase for the bombing of Middle Eastern and African targets. Both countries continue to defy a ruling by the International Court of Justice to transfer the island back to Mauritius. Compare that to Chinese action on uninhabited and adjacent islands.

February 4, 2021

Hong Kong's passports: London fixes mess created by imperialist push

The key acknowledgement behind the UK’s new immigrations scheme is that the UK no longer fears being swamped by Asians but on the contrary sees potential financial benefit from an influx of wealthy and well-educated Hong Kong families.

December 30, 2020

Surely pre-senile dementia is too high a price to pay for sporting glory

Watching 22-year-old cricketer Will Pucovski collapse after a rock-hard ball travelling at more than 100mph smashed into the side of his head was literally sickening. The ninth time he would be diagnosed as having concussion, the cumulative damage to his brain could be very serious.

April 26, 2024

Americans don’t understand: China is not afraid of the US

China knows that, if it has to, it can stand alone and that it can defend itself. It knows, too, that most nations of the world, other than America (which is, despite itself, somewhat conflicted), want to do business with it; to connect with its growing confidence and with its strengthening brand of non-threatening, non-coercive, non-evangelistic power. Clearly, the Chinese are not afraid of the Americans. Just as clearly, the Americans don’t understand this.

April 18, 2024

Scientists confirm a 4th global coral bleaching event

Scientists confirm a fourth global coral bleaching event, the second in the last ten years.

August 29, 2023

Muddled on the Middle Kingdom

Anthony Albanese needs to see for himself what the Chinese economic miracle looks like close up.

May 12, 2023

A competent budget that advances a Labor agenda

Labor has produced a responsible Budget that balances the need to advance traditional Labor priorities while also bringing inflation down. But there remains more to do.

April 23, 2023

Taiwan: two journeys, two roads, war or peace?

Despite all the determined, and well-funded, efforts of Greg Sheridan, his mates at ASPI and in the media to beat the war drums and the legal shenanigans around the role of the Governor General in declaring war, it is by no means inevitable that Australia will go to war against China.

June 4, 2022

The Trial of Julian Assange: A story of persecution

Nils Melzer was UN Special Rapporteur on Torture between 2016 and 2022. In 2019 he began investigating the case of Julian Assange. The English language edition of his book, The Trial of Julian Assange, is the most well-researched account of the legal ordeals suffered by the WikiLeaks founder. A brave and an important book, it corrects the mainstream narrative substantially.

April 8, 2022

Admiral Prune: Defending Australia Part 4 of 4:People and Process

After thirty years of hand wringing about our deteriorating strategic circumstances, Australians have a right to know from the new government how it will fix Australias military weakness, without waiting decades. They must start with The System.

September 29, 2021

The all-American coercive diplomacy: bullying by any other name

_China is repeatedly accused of coercion. But China is a minor player in the coercion game. The US is the grand master.

August 26, 2024

Fiddling while the world teeters on the brink

We need a no-holds-barred attack on corporate power to meet global threats.

July 5, 2024

Senator Payman, Palestine, and caucus solidarity

In the wake of Labor Senator Fatima Payman’s shock decision to cross the floor and vote with the Greens against her party I was bemused, to say the least, to see social media light up with valiant attempts to press Gough Whitlam into service as the arbiter of what the ‘correct’ labor response should be. ‘Whitlam would never have suspended her’ was a popular view, and a completely incorrect one. As our most reforming Prime Minister and an avowed moderniser of the Labor party and its policies, Whitlam’s attitude to Labor’s policy platform was nonetheless an ‘uncomplicated’ one: ‘Where I disagreed with it, I sought to change it; where I agreed with it, I sought to implement it’.

May 9, 2024

The Nakba never ended, the coloniser lied

_The blood is on your hands Biden. We can see it all, and fuck no, I’m not voting for you in the fall. It’s too late, we’ve seen the truth, we bear witness. Seen the rubble, the buildings, the mothers and the children. And all the men that you murdered.

April 19, 2024

If the US and UK have any shame, they will welcome Palestine as a UN member State

This week, the U.S. and U.K. have the chance to correct decades of their blatant geopolitical errors in the Israel-Palestine conflict by welcoming Palestine as the 194th United Nations member state. More than any other countries, the U.S. and U.K. have wrecked the Middle East through their non-stop meddling and imperial arrogance. This week they have the chance to make some amends.

June 8, 2023

Australia's real test

A few days after coming to power in 1972 Gough Whitlam declared that Australias real test as far as the rest of the world is concerned is the role we create for our own Aborigines. More than foreign aid programmes, more than any role the country plays in agreements or alliances, treatment of the Aborigines will be the thing upon which the rest of the world will judge Australia and Australians not just now but in the greater perspective of history.

May 6, 2021

Covid in India and racism in Australia

I_n Australia, since the infamous 2001 Tampa crisis the decline of the rule of law, often in the context of playing the race card, has been a disturbing feature of the political landscape. And the decision by the Morrison government to announce that it would use a draconian measure to fine and jail Australians who wish to return from Covid ridden India, marks a new low in that trend.

January 25, 2021

Morrison's private school funding model ignores the Bank of Mum and Dad

Private schools will receive $130 billion from the Federal Government over the next eight years. It constitutes massive over-funding by taxpayers because the Governments funding model ignores a major source of family income used to assess the financial need of private schools.

October 9, 2019

THE SOUTHERN CROSS (Adelaide). New Vietnamese church a blessing. Our Lady of the Boat People.

In what was a momentous occasion in its 40-year history in South Australia, the Church of Our Lady of The Boat People was dedicated by Apostolic Administrator Bishop Greg OKelly SJ, with an evening of Vietnamese celebrations to follow.

August 14, 2024

America is the most violent, aggressive country in the world

Of the international intelligence information that comes to Australian agencies from the Five Eyes, 90% comes from the CIA and related US intelligence agencies. So in effect we have the colonisation of our intelligence agencies These agencies dominate the advice to Ministers writes John Menadue.

July 17, 2024

Israel legislatively and militarily seeks to destroy UNRWA

As the Israeli military obliterates Gaza, massacres refugees living in tents in so called “safe zones” and slaughters 39,000 people including at least 16,000 children, its government works to “finish off” UNRWA.

May 1, 2024

Albo's continual failures

Thanks to Anthony Albanese’s prolonged refusal to change the Morrison government’s damaging policies that he has endorsed, Labor is struggling to stay around 30% in the opinion polls for the next election. One upshot is the latest OECD figures show low and middle income workers in Australia had the highest increase in personal income taxes in the developed world in 2023. The increase for singles below $67,000 (about 2/3 of average income) was was 17% higher than in 2022. Little wonder many voters complain about the cost of living. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Shane Wright points out that those on 167% of average earnings –around $166,000 –only suffered a 0.1% increase.

April 20, 2024

A state of Palestine? Outrage as US backs perpetual occupation and oppression

Readers will recall my article of 16 April, The end of occupation: A state of Palestine at the UN. It advised of an anticipated vote in the Security Council on April 18. The Security Council was sitting in New York. Because of the time difference, that was early in the morning of 19 April in Australia. So, what happened?

August 31, 2023

Albaneses fealty to America: Shouldnt we be white hot with rage?

Like Paul Keating, Australians should be angry. Australias security is at risk. No other nation is so foolish, so self- delusional, so divorced from the basics of statecraft, nor so feckless with its citizens’ security in pursuit of Americas objectives. Shouldnt we be white hot with rage at this governments abdication of sovereignty?

September 4, 2022

The Greens are at it again

_The Greens are threatening to block the referendum on the ‘Voice’ which promises to give effect to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

January 24, 2021

Sleepwalking into a fascist alliance

Those critically engaged in understanding and debating the future of Australian defence and national security strategies should pass two votes of thanks: the first is to former President Donald Trump; the second to the recent political-strategic proclamations of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

December 14, 2020

Disillusioned Aussie youth diss democracy

Young Australians now rank among the groups most dissatisfied with democracy in the world better than among others like Venezuela and the US but worse than Ghana and Peru.

December 3, 2020

Why Australia is on its own in its trade conflict with China (Australia-China Relations Institute Dec 2, 2020)

As China piles on the**trade pressure**, the reality of Australias economic place in the world has been laid bare: it is on its own.

October 7, 2020

Sports rorts and muddy waters

Last summer, just like much of the country, the federal political landscape was ablaze. Scott Morrison was caught out taking a secret holiday in Hawaii; and those who werent evacuating from bushfires were very angry about sports rorts.

October 3, 2024

The Earth is sick – and getting sicker

Planet Earth is sick - and getting sicker, according to a new Planetary Health Check.

July 21, 2024

Australia, complicit in Israel’s horror, has no option but to respect ICJ ruling

Unlike the US and Israel, Australia is a signatory of the Rome Statute. It has no option but to comply with the latest ICJ decision on 19 July that the UN Security Council, the General Assembly and all states have an obligation not to recognise Israel’s occupation as legal and not to give aid or support toward maintaining it, writes Alison Broinowski.

June 10, 2024

The real truth telling

If anybody in Australia is interested in real “Truth Telling” then look no further than the continued operation of Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre in Darwin, NT. Don Dale has, and continues to provide, the real truth for all to see as regards the disaster that is race relations in Australia and how distant the prospect is of ever achieving Reconciliation. Forget ‘Dreamtime at the G’, NAIDOC and Reconciliation Weeks, Sorry and Apology Days, Welcome to Countrys and Paying our Respect to Traditional Owners Past and Present.

May 26, 2024

Old trees are good trees

Big old trees are few in number but store lots of carbon. Loopholes found in Victoria’s ban on native tree logging. Great Barrier Reef bleaches for fifth time in eight years.

April 15, 2024

Access, undue influence and the Constitution

The sponsored pass system for lobbyists to access Parliament House opens the door to undue influence and potentially corrupt behaviour. Facilitating such opportunities is both unwise and inappropriate.

September 6, 2023

The Palestinian catastrophe: Occupation, Illegality and Apartheid

It is time for us to use the words Occupation, Illegality and Apartheid. We are applying these words to an occupying power truculent and implacable in its determination its occupation will never end, committed to a creeping annexation to deliver it a permanent hold over Palestinian land and Palestinian people. Twenty years ago it would have been unthinkable that Australias oldest and largest political party would endorse Palestinian recognition. Thats now taken for granted as the very least we can do in the face of a cruel and continuing catastrophe.

July 18, 2023

Ukraine: Putins war or proxy war?

The claim that Russias invasion of Ukraine is a proxy war is not borne out by recent history, nor supported by Russian democrats, Ukrainians of all stripes nor most Western Russia specialists. They mostly see its roots in an authoritarian Russian state and the revanchist views of Putin and his acolytes.

September 30, 2022

Finding a way on China ties

Beijing and Canberra remain deadlocked in a trade war. But there is a step-by-step means for both parties to climb down gracefully.

January 27, 2021

Brexit still not done and dusted?

The lies and misrepresentations spun by Brexiters (and the UK government) ever since the 2016 Referendum are coming home to roost. While niggles and irritations were expected, they were seen as transitional. But major consequences for the British economy are heaping up.

January 6, 2021

Old dogs can learn new tricks

QUIZ QUESTION: What does an aged public administration academic do when he is at a loss for words about Australian politics?

December 3, 2020

Mind-boggling waste revealed in the record rise in weapons spending (MWM Nov 30, 2020)

Australian governments and their defence leaders, with help from lobbyists, choose immensely complex, overpriced and overmanned weaponry. Wasteful spending has to end, writesBrian Toohey.

November 21, 2020

Ministerial war crimes

Those who will not be put on trial as a result of investigations into Australian operations in Afghanistan will be those most responsible the ministers who committed Australian troops to a protracted war where our forces could not readily distinguish friend from foe.

November 19, 2020

Media in the Asian Century. The past weeks regional diplomacy passed through the media in a blur.

Drop-catching in Canberra

Chinas embassy in Canberra has belatedly woken up to the way things are done in our capital, it seems, and got into the business of dropping newsworthy material into the laps of selected press gallery members.

September 28, 2024

Campus protests: A view from a seasoned observer

A letter sent by the author to Mark Scott, vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, after he apologised during a Senate hearing for not cracking down on alleged anti-Semitism during protests on the university campus in support of Palestinians in Gaza.

September 18, 2024

Australia: a very fine example of the ultimate vassal state

Australia currently has a Labor-Coalition political class which is committed to serving the interests of the United States as its highest priority, and within that frame the most significant conflicts that exist internally between the main factions of that class, Labor and Liberal — party labels which bear no relationship to the meaning of “labour” and “liberal” — are centred on base competition for favoured status in Washington.

August 17, 2024

Israel’s pattern of bombing schools and shelters in Gaza

American supplied Israel bombs killed at least 100 people as they stood while performing Fajr (dawn) prayers at the Al-Tabin school in the Daraj area of Gaza City on August 10th. This latest school massacre shredded many bodies to pieces, leaving them unrecognisable, resulting in civic defence workers collecting bundles of body parts.

June 17, 2024

Australian policymakers could take a more independent foreign policy stance

Since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took office in 2022, Australia has returned to a more rational path of seeking pragmatic cooperation with China. Despite starting from a low base, the relationship between China and Australia has improved significantly, said Mark Beeson (Beeson), an adjunct professor at the Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney, in an interview with Global Times.

May 23, 2024

Ghost shark

The Ghost Shark, a new underwater drone being developed for the Australian Navy, could kill off the deeply flawed plan to acquire eight nuclear submarines for a projected cost as much as $360 billion.

May 3, 2024

Climate security risks and Australia’s failure

You can’t solve a problem without talking about it, honestly. Take the impact of climate disruption on security.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal