September 9, 2019

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Economy circles the drain.

That muffled gurgling sound you heard last week was either the remains of the governments economic credibility swirling around the plug hole, or the strangled sounds of ScoMo and his team attempting to put a positive spin over the disastrous national accounts figures.

Josh Frydenberg insists they are actually good news proof of the remarkable resilience of a basically sound economy preparing to turn the corner into a rebound the like of which you have never seen. Well, he would say that, wouldnt he? Irrational optimism, wishful thinking, is an essential part of his job description.

December 15, 2016

LUKE FRASER. Good, bad and ugly of congestion charging in Melbourne.

Attention to Stockholm’s congestion charging system should be seriously studied in Australian cities. … In roads, we have a pricing crisis rather than an infrastructure crisis.

August 21, 2017

PAUL COLLINS. Marriage equality - some thoughts for the perplexed.

Throughout human history all types of arrangements have evolved to nurture children, of which a common form is a reasonably stable relationship between woman and man. Whether or not this was seen as marriage varied widely. So, use of the term traditional marriage is a misnomer. What the Catholic hierarchy is presenting as traditional is really a romantic, bourgeois understanding of marriage.

February 27, 2017

NICOLE GURRAN and PETER PHIBBS. Housing policy is captive to property politics, so don't expect politicians to tackle affordability.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbulls recent warnings that house prices would fall steeply under a Labor government confirm the underlying politics of housing policy in Australia. The default position for politicians is to sound concerned about housing affordability, but do nothing.

September 26, 2017

MACK WILLIAMS. Muslim Mindanao: once more into a quagmire?

We need to be very careful in not overhyping the IS activity in Marawi and soliciting an invitation to military involvement without a comprehensive Australian review of the complex issues at stake in Mindanao and our wider relationship with the Philippines and the US.

May 23, 2017

JEAN-PIERRE LEHMANN. As China and US get closer, Japan is left in not so splendid isolation in Asia Pacific

Tokyo needs to make peace with its neighbours, especially those that were its former victim.

April 14, 2015

Ian Webster. On thin ICE.

If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start at the bottom of the pyramid: the addict in the street, and stop tilting quixotically for the higher-ups so-called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no junk traffic. As long as the junk need exists, someone will service it."

October 2, 2016

TONY KEVIN. Shipwreck tragedy raises broad issues of duty of care in border protection

Last week saw three days of hearings (reported in The Guardian by Ben Doherty),adjourned on Wednesday 28 September until Tuesday 4 October as plaintiffs await key documents from the 2012 WA Coroners Court inquest into the disaster which drowned 50 people on 21 December 2010, when a SIEV boat crashed in heavy seas into low jagged cliffs at Flying Fish Cove, Christmas Island. Township-dwellers watched horrified from above as Australian Navy and Customs rescue crews in inflatable motor vessels arrived too late to tow the breaking-up boat off the rocks. Despite valiant efforts they were only able to save 39 people from the water. The class action is on behalf of families of dead victims, traumatised survivors and traumatised people involved in the SIEV221 rescue operation.

November 1, 2016

JOHN MENADUE. White Mans Media A weekly column. This week: The US elections.

In this blog I propose to run a regular Wednesday column White Mans Media focusing on the derivative nature of our media and its failure to reflect our own region ..

I have in mind pieces of 100 -400 words. The longer pieces might focus on some of our complacent foreign affairs experts and their faulty analysis. There will also be opportunities to highlight omissions and draw attention to error strewn foreign reports.. Whilst I want to avoid gotcha type pieces some short and pithy pieces like the old SMH Granny would also be useful.

Contributions would be welcome . Please send to johnmenadue@staging-johnmenadue.kinsta.cloud

The US elections.

Our TV and radio are broadcasting twice as many items on the US election, as they broadcast on the most recent Australian election. Isentia Media tells us that in the same phases of the two election campaigns, Australian TV and radio ran 9,000 items on the Australian election. They ran 17,000 items on the current US election campaign.

November 20, 2016

IAN MACPHEE. Peter Dutton has it wrong on Malcolm Fraser.

The attack by Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, on Malcolm Fraser’s refugee policies is outrageous. We have had a succession of inadequate immigration ministers in recent years but Dutton is setting the standards even lower. Yet, Turnbull recently declared him to be “an outstanding immigration minister”. The Liberal Party has long ceased to be liberal.

Dutton’s attack on Fraser’s refugee policies grabbed headlines he had hoped for. The SMH headline was “Peter Dutton attacks Malcolm Fraser’s refugee legacy”. The Australian’s was: “Peter Dutton says Malcolm Fraser’s immigration policy to blame for crime gangs.” These were the headlines that Dutton must have wished for after his interview with the extremist Andrew Bolt on Sky News.

February 27, 2018

MICHAEL KEATING- Wages, Profits and Economic Growth.

This article summarises the analysis in a new book, Fair Share: Competing Claims and Australias Economic Future, which examines the interrelationship between the stagnant economic growth experienced by most developed countries over the last decade and the increasing inequality in the distribution of income.

January 15, 2017

DAVID JAMES.Wage inequality is a bigger threat to workers than robots

he issue of jobs cannot be seen as separate from wealth distribution. The problem is as Henry Ford understood when he paid his workers well so they could buy his cars that too much social inequality means insufficient demand for products and low economic growth. The issue is not whether or not there will be jobs it is most likely that there will be but how fair the wages system will be.

January 14, 2018

ANDREW GLIKSON. Climate change, droughts and wars: is there a nexus?

According to Al Gore during 2006 and 2010 some 60 percent of farms in Syria were destroyed and abandoned and some 80 percent of the livestock were killed during the most severe drought parts of the Middle East ever recorded[i]. Subsequently more than a million Syrians migrated into cities, along with refugees from the Iraq War, setting the stage for a civil war. Beginning with the Arab Spring demonstrations in Syria in January 2011 and a brutal crackdown by the regime, the conflict escalated since July 2011, killing over 450,000 and displacing more than 12 million Syrians[ii]. More than 4.8 million Syrians left the country.

July 25, 2019

CAROL SUMMERHAYES. Vale Graham Freudenberg.

Graham revealed in his memoir that he wrote his first speech in Brisbane in May 1945, aged 10, at the time of VE Day, and delivered it to his mother. In 1946 he scored a job with ABC Radio reading scripts of school broadcasts I learned a lot about the use of English written to be spoken. He didnt know then that this experience would be life-forming: his speeches over the years stand out as words meant to be heard as well as to be read, a different sort of writing altogether.

June 28, 2017

John Menadue talks to Jon Faine about Rupert Murdoch, the great rent-seeker (Repost)

The interview with Jon Faine was reported in The Guardian on 29 June 2017. News Corp is a ‘disgrace’ and should not get hands on Ten, former manager says.

Repost: In an interview on 22 June 2017 with Jon Faine of 774 ABC Melbourne Radio, John Menadue highlights how the Murdoch media attacks people like single mothers and dole ‘bludgers’ for wanting handouts from government, yet the Murdoch organisation depends heavily on government handouts and political favours. Right now it is seeking government favours for Sky television in the UK and Channel 10 in Australia. This has always been the Murdoch way. (See link to interview)

February 19, 2017

MICHAEL SAINSBURY. A shonky affair.

Here lies the exquisite dilemma for the Packer lobbyists: help push the Chinese side to get a better deal, perhaps an exchange program for their incarcerated staff, or strike another deal, leaving all those ill-gotten gains sloshing around Sydney and Melbourne and finding their way to the Packer gaming tables.

December 16, 2024

A five-minute scroll

We start the week with Prime Minister Albanese setting the record on Peter Dutton and nuclear power (and more) from Launceston. At the UN, the double standards for Gaza send a chilling message to the Global South, while in Gaza people follow the planes for the food drop and a young amputee adjusts to his new mobility. A senate hearing from six months ago reminds the ABC of their point of difference and Wesley Clark revealed he plan for Syria 20 years ago._

September 18, 2017

MUNGO MACCALLUM. With Turnbull, hope is all we've got.

Malcolm Turnbull is doing something about the energy crisis he has manufactured.

December 1, 2015

John Menadue. Rent-seekers in the motor industry.

We see it almost every day in the media; rent-seekers extracting benefits for themselves through political influence and lobbying at the expense of a broader community. It has very little to do with markets. It is about political favours for the powerful.

We have just learned that the Australian Motor Industry Federation and the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries have successfully lobbied the Australian government to continue restrictions on the imports of second-hand vehicles.

October 19, 2017

PETER RODGERS. Australia and capital punishment rhetoric and reality

In pursuing Australias ultimately successful bid for election to the UN Human Rights Council, Foreign Minister Bishop declared that Australia would be unrelenting in its efforts to abolish capital punishment globally. But Australias track record of selective outrage gives little hope for an energetic, universalist approach that goes beyond the rhetorical.

November 6, 2016

ROSS GARNAUT. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Part 1.

The Challenge of Globalisation.

I will be posting in two parts, extracts from an address which Professor Ross Garnaut gave to the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney, 7 September 2016. the full text of his address can be found on his website: https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/rossgarnaut/files/2015/12/Garnaut_CapitalismSocialismDemocracy_070916_3-2ei70mk.pdf

PART 1.THE PROBLEMS WE FACE WITH GLOBALISATION

In the twenty first century, modern economic growth is raising incomes in the new participantsmost of the worlds peoplemost emphatically in China and other countries which have passed the turning point in economic development. At the same time, it is placing downward pressure on living standards of ordinary people in the developed countries.

Largely due to these dynamics, income distribution has become more unequal in the developed countries and more equal in the world as a whole. Much has been made of the capture by the one percent of most of the increase in incomes in developed countries so far this century. The top one percent in the world as a whole has also done very well. Ordinary people in the big Asian developing countries have had even bigger percentage increases in incomes .

March 14, 2017

FRANCIS SULLIVAN. Where to from here?

I dont think anyone was prepared for the extent of the abuse and the appalling rate across male religious orders and within the priesthood.

The posturing and spin of years past has been seen for what is was an avoidance of the truth and a failed attempt to divert the public from the scale of the abuse and the depths to which Church officials had sunk as they tried to keep it hidden.

February 14, 2017

FRANK BRENNAN, TIM COSTELLO, ROBERT MANNE and JOHN MENADUE. We can stop the boats and also act decently, fairly and transparently

The only way forward in dealing with Manus Island and Nauru is for bipartisan commitment to keep the boats stopped while settling refugees in Australia.

October 30, 2013

A back-flip on the carbon tax. John Menadue

A number of my friends were impressed with the recent public debate between Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese. They told me that they had expressed an interest online to join or rejoin the ALP after many years absence. Without exception they now say that they will not pursue their membership enquiry until the parliamentary wing of the Labor Party decides to stick with the carbon tax. In short, they were all asking the same old question what does Labor stand for?

July 30, 2014

Noura Erakat. Five Israeli Talking Points on Gaza Debunked.

Five Israeli talking points on Gaza debunked. Why does the mainstream media keep repeating these false claims?

Israel has killed almost 800 Palestinians in the past twenty-one days in the Gaza Strip alone; its onslaught continues. The UN estimates that more than 74 percent of those killed are civilians. That is to be expected in a population of 1.8 million where the number of Hamas members is approximately 15,000. Israel does not deny that it killed those Palestinians using modern aerial technology and precise weaponry courtesy of the worlds only superpower. In fact, it does not even deny that they are civilians.

December 18, 2016

SPENCER ZIFCAK. The Federal Government Attacks its Watchers

In recent years, the Federal Government has made an art form of undermining the autonomy of independent statutory offices established to hold it to account. One by one, statutory offices have been subject to forceful governmental and media assaults.

March 27, 2017

Disadvantaged Students Denied Adequate Funding by Massive Tax Concessions for the Wealthy

The latest Tax Expenditures Statement shows that Australia can easily afford the Gonski funding plan to bring under-resourced public schools up to the national standard and reduce the large proportion of disadvantaged students not achieving expected benchmarks. It is simply a matter of reducing the tax privileges of the wealthy to support increased learning opportunities for the disadvantaged.

March 29, 2016

Ian Verrender. Turnbull will have a tough sell on economic policy

Malcolm Turnbull is hardly going to win votes by spruiking the economic record of his predecessor. And yet he hasn’t exactly made any headway on his own tax reform or budget repair agenda, writes Ian Verrender.

History, they say, is written by the victor.

Try telling that to vanquished former prime minister Tony Abbott, who appears to be taking great delight in reminding us at every opportunity that the Turnbull Government will go to the next election on the record of the Abbott administration.

August 21, 2017

MUNGO MACCALLUM. The good news.

The good news for Malcolm Turnbull is that his government is not in immediate danger of falling at least, not any more than usual.

July 4, 2018

LIZZIE O'SHEA. Witness K and foreign interference hypocrisy (Eureka Street 2/7/2018)

‘This Parliament will not allow interference in our elections or in our democratic processes,’ Senator Penny Wongdeclaredrecently. ‘We will not allow these to be subject to foreign interference, and we will not allow the covert subversion of our politics by foreign interests.’ It sounds like a perfectly reasonable aspiration, but not if you happen to be East Timor.

Over this last week, tworemarkably contradictory thingshappened in Canberra. The Australian Attorney-GeneralChristian Porter shepherded through Parliament some of the mostsignificant changesto foreign interference laws in recent times (the subject of Senator Wong’s speech). It was also reported that hesigned offon charges laid against Witness K, a former officer of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, and his lawyer, former ACT Attorney General Bernard Collaery.

February 15, 2017

CAVAN HOGUE. Australia did say no to the US on Vietnam in 1954.

Australia’s destiny was not so completely wrapped up with the United States as to support them in action which Australia regarded as wrong. (R.G.Casey)

November 1, 2024

A five-minute scroll

Bodies strewn in streets in Beit Lahia while IDF shoots at anyone who tries to help. It is the intent to destroy that defines a genocide says Francesca Albanese as her report to the UN is discussed across (independent) media channels. Arundhati Roy asks what can possibly justify what Israel is doing and the Publisher of Israel’s Ha’aretz speaks out for Palestine at their London conference. Journalist Bisan Owda shine a light on the lessons she has learned from the children of Gaza. At home, we are reminded of the reality of AUKUS by Paul Keating.

December 12, 2016

GARRY WOODARD. New series. We can say 'no' to the Americans.

We have said No to the Americans: Robert Menzies

Saying No to America was not an upfront characteristic of Menzies foreign policy, based as it was on supporting and attracting the support of great and powerful friends. Supplementing that was his politically profitable propaganda about threats from Asia.

March 5, 2013

Prejudice compounded by ignorance. John Menadue

The Scott Morrisons and Ray Hadleys of this world have had a field day vilifying one asylum seeker living in the community who came by boat. The prejudice is bad enough, but their ignorance is just as appalling.

In the last ten years, 65,000 asylum seekers came to Australia. 47,000, or 72% of them, came by air. The fact is that those 47,000 who came by air all went directly to living in the community on bridging visas. Scott Morrison and Ray Hadley showed not the slightest interest. There is no campaign against the much larger number of asylum seekers who have come by air although one would expect that some of them would have committed offences in the same way as offences occur in the general community.

October 27, 2014

Ian Verrender. Think Whitlam ruined our economy? Think again.

There has been much comment about Gough Whitlam’s performance as an economic manager. Ian Verrender, the Economics Editor at the ABC, presents an alternative view. See link below. John Menadue

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-27/verrender-think-whitlam-ruined-our-economy-think-again/5842866

October 23, 2024

A five-minute scroll

The profound impact the genocide in Gaza is having on children and families. The UN reaches Gaza city after five attempts, in the north people are trapped under rubble for days awaiting help, access denied. Proof uncovered that the IDF use Palestinians as human shields and Irish members of EU ask why patients being burned in their beds is not a red line. US media shut down interviews. A group of 44 climate scientists write an open letter about the collapse of the Atlantic Ocean circulation while in Australia a channel 10 weatherman gets it. Jon Faine talks republic in front of the first seat of parliament in Melbourne. Five minutes on X.

April 2, 2018

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Turnbull howls at the moon

Malcolm Turnbull spent the last week of the current parliament howling at the moon baying about just how wonderful his corporate tax cuts would be, the remorseless logic of the laws of supply and demand, the purity of Economics 101.

March 1, 2017

JAMES O'NEILL. Iran and the new multipolar world.

_During the last Presidential campaign, the Republican nominee Donald Trump made a variety of statements that suggested a changing focus in US foreign policy. He promised, inter alia, no more attempts at regime change, an effective fight against the terrorist organisation ISIS, and better relationships with Russia._Fine words, but as has been said before, dont listen to what we say, watch what we do.

May 24, 2017

KIERAN TAPSELL. 'The Attachment' by Ailsa Piper and Tony Doherty.

The subtitle to this book is Letters from a Most Unlikely Friendship, and it consists of a series of letters with some occasional background comment between a “lapsed” Catholic (although none of the authors use that word) turned “agnostic with pantheist leanings” and a well known Sydney Catholic priest, Tony Doherty.

September 1, 2013

Excluding the ABC. John Menadue

It is disappointing, at least to me that the ABC has not been the host of the election debates between Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott.

Instead it is has been left to Fox News, 50% owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is keen to buy the other 50% from Telstra. When will the Murdoch monopoly end?

The ABC is the most trusted media organisation in the country. It used to be the logical host for major political events. It has been out manoeuvred by the Liberal Party.

December 10, 2019

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March 2, 2017

KIERAN TAPSELL. Vatican Reform on Child Sexual Abuse in Disarray - Does Pope Francis get it?

Zero tolerance in a professional context almost invariably means dismissal, but Pope Franciss claim that the Church has a zero tolerance policy is not borne out by the figures he presented to the United Nations: only one quarter of all priests found to have sexually abused children have been dismissed. Thats a 75% tolerance not zero.

March 9, 2017

PAUL BARRATT. Howards War a continuation of politics by other means

For the discerning reader the Palazzo Report, the classified internal report on how we got into Iraq and how we fared, prepared by Army Historian Dr Albert Palazzo and now released in redacted form, is a remarkable document. Although heavily redacted in places, it offers a rich store of information about how the Howard Government conducted itself in the lead up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Governments intent, and the state of the Army it sent to war.

June 25, 2019

ANDREW PODGER. More Carefully Designed, a Stage Three Tax Measure Could Be a Responsible and Genuine Reform

At the time of last years budget, I wrote a [1] revealing how neither the Governments nor the Labor Partys then proposed tax changes would simplify the personal income tax system or offer genuine long-term reform. This was largely because of continuing misrepresentation of the tax scale and failure to take into account how the means-tested Low Income Tax Offset (LITO) and the new Low and Medium Income Tax Offset (LMITO) actually work. The same criticism can be made about the Governments of its legislated and proposed tax changes over the next five years.

January 21, 2014

Pope Francis - Message on Migrants and Refugees. January 2014

Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity.

They are children, women and men who leave or who are forced to leave their

homes for various reasons, who share a legitimate desire for knowing and having,

but above all for being more.

Contemporary movements of migration represent the largest movement of

Individuals, if not of peoples, in history.

As the Church accompanies migrants and refugees on their journey,

January 16, 2019

IAN McAULEY. Medicare under threat from Labor!

Last year Labor announced that if elected it would refer health funding, particularly private health insurance, to the Productivity Commission, it being 50 years since the value of PHI was last examined by government. It appears, however, that Labor is squibbing on its promise to subject PHI to economic scrutiny, abandoning its historical commitment to defend Medicare from being undermined by PHI.

June 26, 2018

DAVID P GOLDMAN. A tragedy in the making as the US confronts China (Asia Times)

The trade war is quickly moving to the next level of confrontation with suggestions that Trump has ‘betrayed China’

February 27, 2014

John Menadue. The Carbon Tax and Flat-Earthers.

Despite all the political rhetoric and hysteria, the evidence is mounting almost daily that the carbon tax is largely working as planned and that its impact on electricity prices is quite small, particularly compared with the network costs, the poles and wires, which have been the main drivers of increased electricity prices.

But the flat-earthers in the government and News Ltd refuse to face the facts. They have run one dishonest campaign after another on the carbon tax, then pink batts and then the education revolution. We are paying an extraordinarily heavy price for the abuse of power by the Murdoch media in the dishonest and partisan campaigns they run. Are they all as ignorant as Rupert Murdochs favourite editor Rebekah Brooks who told a London court this week that she didnt know that phone tapping was illegal!

October 22, 2014

Claire Higgins. International legal obligations once shaped our refugee policy

The refugee policy of the Fraser government is often invoked in debates about Australias current approach to asylum seekers. While the small number of boat arrivals between 1976 and 1981 cannot be compared to the many thousands who arrived between 2009 and 2013, the political difficulties in that era were far greater than simply the reception and processing of asylum seekers. By contrast with more recent policy, the Fraser government overcame these difficulties by choosing to fulfil Australias international legal obligations under the Refugee Convention and by explaining this imperative to the Australian community.

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