September 30, 2024

How civilisation could end – an all-too-possible nuclear scenario

On 12 September, Vladimir Putin threatened retaliation, not excluding nuclear, against NATO countries if Washington allows Ukraine to attack targets inside Russia with US missiles. President Joe Biden backed off – for the moment. But the doomsday clock of the Atomic Scientists now stands at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to signalling Armageddon.

September 24, 2024

China solar giant Trina seeks approval for biggest battery project in Australia

The Chinese-based solar giant Trina Solar has submitted plans to build what would be the biggest battery storage facility in Australia, at Kemerton in an industrial zone south of Perth.

September 16, 2024

Aiding and abetting and war crimes

The participation of four Israeli arms companies in the Land Forces International Land Defence Exposition in Melbourne is a clear instance of the Australian Government aiding and abetting the commission of an ongoing war crime in Gaza.

April 6, 2024

The guiding criminal lie in economics

A criminal is one who seriously breaks the law. By that measure Albanese, Dutton and most pollies across Australia are criminals together with their supporters.

July 13, 2023

Accountability of the Public Service: The Robodebt Royal Commission highlights personal responsibilities

The Robodebt Royal Commission makes clear that the APS Value, accountability, is not just aspirational: individual public servants have duties and failing to meet them should have serious consequences.

June 29, 2023

Victoria and Lawyer X

There is something deeply troubling about a democracy when its police are able to get away with acting with complete disregard for the rule of law by adopting an ends justifies the means approach.

August 19, 2022

Stumbling Surveillance: The end of the COVIDSafe App

It took a few years of tolerable incompetence, caused fears about security, and was meant to be the great surveillance salvation to reassure us all. Instead, Australias COVIDSafe App only identified two positive cases of infection during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, and failed, in every sense of the term, to work.

June 22, 2022

Picking up the pieces in the cultural sector but where to put them?

The recent Federal election was greeted with much relief by the cultural sector, and understandably so. As Tony Burke said in his first speech as Arts Minister: The nine-year political attack on the arts and entertainment sector is now over. The neglect, the contempt and the sabotage of the previous government has ended. The culture wars are done, let the cultural policy work begin!

April 8, 2022

South Flows the Pearl Book launch speech about Chinese Australian voices

Chinese people have been in this country almost as long as the British. …Unfortunately, from the 1980s on, following an increase in immigration from Hong Kong, South-East Asia and mainland China, there have been new waves of racism, so that even today the Chinese community still feels marginalised.

August 27, 2024

Labor on the AUKUS battleground

One of Lyndon Johnson’s sage pieces of political advice was that one should never get into a piss fight with a skunk. Kamala Harris should take note. But so should Anthony Albanese, who is inadequately equipped for an argument over AUKUS and the submarine deal with his predecessor Paul Keating.

August 26, 2024

Universities chasing rankings makes Australia less inventive

The obsession of universities with growth through international rankings that attract fee-paying overseas students has let Australia fall behind in its ability to create new, breakthrough scientific knowledge. Universities talk about “punching above their weight” in publication output, but they have generated only four breakthrough discoveries in the past 25 years.

August 20, 2024

Labor makes industry by embracing its gambling mates

History has too stately a progress to be the guide to tactics. But those who make history that does not fit logically into a pattern of principle, consistency and good judgment are doomed to stumble in the short term and earn the contempt of its core followers.

June 25, 2024

Stoking the climate furnace...

Or “Honey, I Cooked the Kids.”

June 10, 2024

Extreme heat threatens health, jobs and democracy in India

As with any environmental disaster, the impact of heat stress hits the poorer harder than the privileged.

June 8, 2024

Sunak forgets, you cannot force people to love their country

Let’s face it: the purpose of the military is to kill. Conscripts learn ways of doing this efficiently and in keeping with the collective ethos. If the UK Tories were really concerned about the state of society, they could show it by agreeing to the demands of GPs and tax the rich to grant medical officers the 35% pay rise they need rather than attempting to reintroduce conscription.

September 29, 2023

New study shows what really happened in Hong Kong in 2019

The world is told a simplistic black and white tale about Hong Kongs troubles in 2019, with heroic pro-democracy activists crushed by Beijing. What really happened was very different and far more complex, says a detailed new book by top Hong Kong academic Daniel F. Vukovich.

September 7, 2023

AUKUS: transformations and losses

In matters of defence and national security strategy Australia has entered a period of great transformations. The AUKUS submarine project is the proximate cause: a vanity project born of fantasies so dense that, strategically speaking, it has created gravitational waves of a magnitude that warps everything it encounters. More precisely, it warps in ways that are above and beyond the almost normalized disfigurements within the conversations on national security which already existed.

September 2, 2023

AUKUS as morbid “Deterrence”

_There is a curious Chinese saying that cautions against “_calling a stag, a horse”. As the Qin empire disintegrated, the wily Prime Minister Zhao Gao fed the second Qin dynasty Emperor (221-206 BC) false reports of imperial military victories. Lining up all the ministers at court, Zhao showed them a stag and demanded that they swear the stag was a horse. Most agreed. The few who boldly refused were executed.

August 21, 2023

Anthony Albanese is paralysed and failing to grasp the moment

A good many people who worked hard for a Labor government are now astonished at its lack of ambition. More nagging for those who have dreamed of Labor in action has been the complete refusal to countenance any shift in national security policy, in human rights law, in planning aggression against China, and in a nuclear-powered submarine adventure that massively reduces this nations freedom of action in any regional conflict. Its time for Labor to recharge its batteries.

August 1, 2023

No ASEAN without Indonesia

Indonesia looks poised for an economic boom that can spur its quest for a higher international political profile. Many scholars, politicians, and corporate figures in Indonesia believe the nation has the attributes to become more than the regional power it is now.

May 8, 2023

Ex-politicians who go over to the enemy

It has been only in recent times that we have had former prime ministers taking up positions in foreign countries, even working for foreign governments. It ought to be regarded as deeply shameful, and more than somewhat disloyal. If our public stewards cannot be trusted to do the right thing, it becomes necessary to control them by law.

February 14, 2021

Australia's flawed push to make Big Tech pay for news (Nikkei Asia 12.2.21)

The experience of online life is one of information overload – it is not always easy to separate the signal from the noise. This problem has been made worse as advertising dollars have flowed away from traditional media organizations toward tech platforms.

December 8, 2020

The approaching crunch in US policy towards China

The Republican and Democrat leaders of the US Senate Intelligence Committee have issued a joint statement of intense hostility towards China. This posture is a threat to Australias national security and the world. An attempt to tear China down will be unsuccessful. To follow paths to antagonise China will eventually reap hostile responses and darken global affairs at a time when global cooperation is essential.

June 14, 2024

Can China save the world?

As the climate crisis accelerates and intensifies, it’s easy to despair about the possibility of any country taking the lead in ‘saving the planet’. And yet Xi Jinping at least says encouraging things. Should we take China seriously?

June 12, 2024

Backing the US house of cards

“The United States of America is in competition with China, but not ideologically. Who initiated the first agreements with China to outsource factories if not the United States of America themselves? They cannot tell us that it is a fight for freedom… It’s [ ] because China is becoming the world’s leading power, and from there, gradually, dollars will no longer be used as much as before to trade goods. Thus, the empire is hit at its core.”

May 6, 2024

The food industry can’t be trusted to make the rules

In 1964, the first US Surgeon-General’s report on smoking and health was published. The tobacco industry could veto the proposed members of the committee set up to write it. Today, the idea of giving the tobacco industry power over government processes would cause outrage. Likewise, the idea of big businesses or unions setting tax policy is absurd.

April 30, 2024

Silencing resistance

Those with a dedicated interest in maintaining the status quo fear education in the wrong hands. America’s current moment illuminates trends in Australia’s education: from the draconian repression of US student protests against the probable genocide taking place in Gaza to the Republican campaign to destroy public education, we must take note.

August 7, 2023

There is no legal impediment to Australias recognition of Palestine

At the Australian Labor Partys upcomingnational conference in Brisbane, recognition of a Palestinian state pursuant to Labors 2021 national platform that supports the recognition of Israel and Palestine as part of a two-state solution is on the agenda. Senior Labor party figures, including former Foreign MinistersBob CarrandGareth Evans, have already come out in support of recognition. They have made cogent moral and political cases for recognising Palestine but have not addressed the legal arguments in as much depth.

May 24, 2023

Imperial decline and the causes of polarisationin America

American society is going through a phase of polarisation unlike anything seen before, and so far, unparalleled in any other Western democracy. It has given rise to intense feuds among politicians, and makes governing difficult for the White House, most recently aggravated by yet another debt crisis. But why is this happening?

September 2, 2022

Climate laws for the environment and for people

A roadmap for reforming Australias climate laws and Chile rewrites its constitution with the environment and people to the fore. Greater warming where and when its coldest.

July 10, 2022

Asylum seekers in Indonesia-alive, but not living

In one of its nastier theological fabrications seemingly driven by schadenfreude, the Catholic Church invented purgatory - heavens waiting room where sins were cleansed oftentimes by fire. The medieval idea has been largely smothered by modern church teachings more in line with Christs compassion, but the worldly equivalent thrives next door through Australian indifference.

June 20, 2021

ASPI misses the mark on Ukraine

ASPI - Australian Strategic Policy Institute - claims to have some of Australias foremost strategic thinkers working for it. Number-two ASPI staffer, Mr Michael Shoebridge, appeared on a YouTube video some time back warning about Russian plans to attack Ukraine by moving troops to the Ukrainian border, and the measures to be taken by Ukraine, the US and UK together in response.

December 19, 2020

Brexit bluster exposes the waning of English power

I met pleased and gloomypeoplein the first half of last year when I travelled around the UK writing about the potential impact of Brexit. But by far the happiest of those I interviewed were veteranIrish republicansin Belfast, mostly present or past members of Sinn Fein, who had devoted their lives to opposing British rule.

November 25, 2020

Don't tar all our soldiers with the same brush

War in all its forms is awful, so lets support those who conduct it on our behalf and, when they come back, go easy on them. They were only doing our bidding.

June 25, 2024

Israel’s Moshe Feiglin repeats Hitler quote at AJA event

“I said on one of the Israeli channels… that he, Hitler, cannot live in the same world as long as one Jew still lives. This Islamo Nazism and the Jews cannot live together. Definitely, not in the same world, he [Hitler] said. But definitely not in the same country. That’s what I said. … And I said, from the river to the sea… it’s either you or me” - Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin at the Australian Jewish Association, June 19, 2024.

August 30, 2023

AUKUS and Israel-Palestine at the ALP National Conference

There was little to connect AUKUS and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the ALP National Conference except their shared victory in style over substance. AUKUS was locked into the party platform without meaningful debate. Revised wording on Israel/Palestine is worthy but will not make the slightest difference on the ground.

May 28, 2023

Dont forget the Nakba

With the passing of the 75th remembrance of the Nakba this May, Palestine and its Occupation can often be forgotten from one May to another.

September 14, 2021

A house divided against itself cannot tame the pandemic

St Matthew tells us that Jesus was at pains to teach his disciples that, A house divided against itself cannot stand. The truism comes to mind as one looks in vain for the United States of Australia, an entity essential for our taming of the Covid pandemic.

August 3, 2021

Jeffrey Sachs speech on the state of the world's "food system" that is rigged against the poor.

We have a world food system but we need a different system, one based on human rights and national sovereignty. The US won’t allow that. Consider the United Fruit Company in Honduras that was backed by the US government and the military and exploited the local population.The US doesn’t even care about it’s own poor. And don’t think that the US is going to help solve the problem through the private sector. We turned world food production over to the private sector 100 years ago in which the rights of poor people have been denied.

June 15, 2021

G7 declaration and WTO reform: war or peace?

Cordell Hull, winner of the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote removing trade barriers would go a long way toward eliminating war. More recently Donald Trump stated, trade wars are good, and easy to win. With a degeneration of the trading system and debilitating obstacles facing Australian exports to China, we are told the drums of war are beating. Does the G7 Declaration hold the solution to rising global trade tensions?

August 12, 2024

Is there any chance the U.S. elections will lead to better relations with China?

Tim Walz has, for a vice-presidential nominee, unusual knowledge and close relationship with China. He has spoken against regarding China as an adversary.

July 1, 2024

The Taiwan question of a disobedient child

The latest manifestation of the USA’s bad behaviour is what they call “The Taiwan-U.S. ‘Working Level Meeting’ on International Organisation Issues”, which was recently held in Taipei. This isn’t about international Organisation issues; it’s about giving more power to a Province of China.

May 17, 2024

We are silencing our young people

Western Australian Labor Senator Fatima Payman spoke for millions of Australians yesterday as she courageously and bravely broke the Federal Labor Parties code of silence and described in clear tones that Israel was committing genocide and that the Labor Party had to listen to the young of this country and take political action against Israel.

August 25, 2023

The intergenerational report - a climate fairy tale

The future is already upon us. The forty-year Intergenerational Report (IGR) is a divertissement.

August 14, 2023

Post-strategic ambiguity and Australia’s Taiwan problem

“What will Australia do in the event of a US-PRC war over Taiwan?” is now a question that must be openly and deliberately addressed. Across nine presidential administrations, “strategic ambiguity” promoted regional stability. The flip-flops of the current Biden Administration have cast doubt on the efficacy of “strategic ambiguity”, as the means of deterring war over Taiwan, as American pundits, generals and politicians loudly anticipate imminent conflict in the next three to five years.

August 10, 2023

Is there a place for an honest person in the mainstream media?

It is becoming increasingly unlikely. Julian Assange is in prison; the dissenting voices of Seymour Hersh, John Pilger, Glen Greenwald and Tucker Carlson have been excluded from the mainstream, moving into self-publishing; and Mick Hall has resigned from Radio New Zealand after it tightened control to safeguard the pro-American narrative.

July 27, 2023

Political Polarisation in the US- Part 3: Causes

One of the great claims for representative democracy and federations is that they provide a uniquely successful way of dynamically negotiating, rather than suppressing, social differences and tensions. So, when it appears to be failing to do that in one of the worlds oldest and most successful democracies it is worth asking why has this happened?

May 10, 2023

Demonisation and the US encirclement of China

“Its quite clear from recent policies that the US aims to curb Chinas economic development and encircle the country with military bases in unfriendly (from Chinas viewpoint) countries. Such demonisation only reinforces repressive trends in China and benefits security-obsessed hardliners in Chinas political system. Thats why de-demonisation can help those in China who favour a more open and humane social and political system. I have yet to meet a single academic, for example, who favours more rather than less censorship and de-demonisation can help to strengthen such forces”, says Daniel Bell in a recent interview with Alex Lo.

September 8, 2022

What can we expect following the Jobs and Skills Summit?

In contrast to the policy vacuum left by the previous Morrison Government, Labors Jobs and Skills Summit has paved the way for Australians to work constructively together on the challenges facing the labour market and the economy. For reasons of space, this present review focuses on the major policies announced at the Summit and their likely impact.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal