September 24, 2023

Health impacts of sanctions deleted from UN declaration on universal health coverage (with Australian support)

In the lead up to the high-level UN meeting on universal health coverage (UHC) Australia has joined the US, UK and the EU in blocking any acknowledgement that unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) can have negative impacts on the achievement of universal health coverage.

August 14, 2022

Barilaro-State government overseas offices are waste of money

The States should stick to their knitting and stop deluding themselves about their overseas role.

April 26, 2022

Election opportunity to move from boofhead to smart diplomacy

Recent foreign policy experience shows bullying and belligerence dont work. Prime Minister Scott Morrison cares little about Australias foreign policy outcomes. Neither does he care for Australias international reputation. He cares least of all about our national interests. Indeed, he consistently damages them for his own political gain. The federal election offers Australia an opportunity for a reset.

August 18, 2021

Blood in the sand in Afghanistan.

For decades, the American political class has intervened relentlessly and recklessly in countries whose people they hold in contempt. And once again they are being aided by Americas credulous mass media, which is uniformly blaming the Taliban victory on Afghanistans incorrigible corruption.

July 15, 2021

Did China buy Cambridge?

The front cover of The Spectator magazine of 10 July 2021 reads, ‘How China bought Cambridge’ (framed by temptations to read stories such as ‘Is Boris becoming Prince Harry?’ and ‘The joy of streaking’). The Cambridge in question is the university, and an article by Ian Williams with the same title sets out the case for what looks like a serious allegation with important implications for the 800-year-old institution. However, the evidence Williams provides fails to substantiate the headline.

June 3, 2021

Why the 'Teflon' University is coming unstuck

Its often referred to as the Teflon phenomenon the capacity to withstand any amount of criticism and proceed as if nothing has changed. Accusations, damning evidence and reports of wrongdoing simply dont stick. Countless US presidents have been coated with this substance, as have entire Australian administrations, including the current Morrison government.

October 4, 2020

Clear-eyed responses as well as assessments needed on the PRC

Being clear-eyed about China under Xi Jinping is one thing. But managing the relationship effectively also requires Australia to be clear-eyed about the effectiveness of our policy options in response.

April 20, 2024

The impact of AI on the labour market and equality

In future AI is the new technology which is likely to have the greatest impact on our economy and our society. But how AI is used and developed is a choice, and so far AI has been predominantly focused on continuing the emphasis on automation. To realise the full potential of AI and minimise its harmful effects there needs to be more public consultation and regulation to determine the future direction of AI.

June 16, 2023

China giving up on Biden team Asian Media Report

In Asian Media this week: Chinese see Biden Admin as incompetent and ignorant. Plus: China ready to sign no-nuke zone treaty; spending on nuclear weapons surging; Beijing, Delhi expel each others journalists; ambassador slams Seouls foreign policy; China passes 50pc non-fossil fuel power supply

September 28, 2021

Kim Carr: We need answers on both subs deals

Now the governments scrapped its $90 billion contract with France to build diesel submarines, many unanswered questions about the new deal to acquire uncosted nuclear boats appear connected to the murky politics of the old one.

August 8, 2021

Belief in America as the "indispensable nation" is bullshit - and always has been

The United States has a war problem. And just about no one is keen to talk about it.

September 3, 2024

In August the market dived, but then revived on rate hopes – Monthly economic and market review

The All-Ords share price index plunged 5.8% in the first two trading days of August and then rebounded 5.8% by 30 August. It ended the month just 0.3% short of where it started.

June 6, 2024

Journey to lunar far side attests to China’s status as space power

China has yet again proved its spacefaring prowess with another successful touchdown on the moon.

September 11, 2023

Dutton has made himself the Voice target

It may be too late for supporters of the Yes cause at the referendum to retrieve their initially majority support among the population.

May 22, 2022

Next steps: governing well

The Prime Minister elect made a couple of important comments on Saturday night that indicate the early steps he plans to take to begin governing.

May 13, 2022

Environment: Forests, soil and peatlands disappearing

20 million hectares of tropical and boreal forests were lost in 2021. Climate change is destroying the soil crust in arid lands. Peatlands are disappearing globally. It doesnt have to be this way: action is possible.

September 8, 2021

A major revamp of health workforce planning and research infrastructure is necessary in Australia

How do we plan and deliver a healthcare workforce that is more responsive to population needs?

August 23, 2021

Making sense of Afghanistan: If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied.Part 1

_Whatever took place in the last several days in Afghanistan, be it the Talibans victory as insurgency or counter-counter-insurgency, it is a development that will not disclose its full consequences for some time.

June 22, 2021

Hong Kong, Apple Daily and freedom of the press

The arrest of the chief editor and chief executive of Hong Kongs Apple Daily newspaper signals the end to Hong Kongs free press, according to Western press reports like Austin Ramzy and Tiffany Mays article in the New York Times of 16 June. It is taken as an indication of Beijings growing stranglehold over Hong Kong and its disregard of the rights and norms guaranteed under the framework known as One Country Two Systems.

June 9, 2021

Liberal Party accusations on Premier Andrews' spinal injury

The Victorian Liberal Opposition has been clutching at straws for some time witness their landslide loss at the last election but now they are now sinking into desperate measures with this latest attack on Premier Daniel Andrews.

May 16, 2021

Lobbying: British ex-PM shows the way, Australia pretends there is no problem

Dont you pity David Cameron, the former Conservative Prime Minister of Great Britain, who led the charge (from the Opposition leadership) against the evils of lobbying, but discovered, after he ceased to be PM, that he could profit greatly from his former office by becoming a lobbyist?

February 7, 2021

Chinas vision of hegemony: the view from India - Vijay Gokhale

China speaks of the community of the shared future for mankind, and winwin cooperation; it plays balance-of-power politics and acts in ways that take advantage of others in adversity. Chinas aim is to establish its supremacy in areas of productive technology, trade networks and financing options in ways that shut out competition.

October 11, 2020

The Federal Budget: Return to Normal or Reform?

The budget delivered this week by the Federal government aims to get the economy back to normal. Is this the right goal? What if the old normal was deeply flawed, as its political economic critics have argued?

August 28, 2024

Evil fruit of seeds sown long ago – what makes Gaza genocide different?

These massacres bring us closer to the central questions that the inquiring mind might ask about the Gaza genocide.

June 9, 2024

What Western mainstream media won’t tell us about China

We might not like to read this, but here are a few things Western media completely forgot to tell you about Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang…

May 4, 2024

The Orwellian rules-based climate

“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake” James Joyce

April 12, 2024

On cognitive dissonance, and courage

I have flashes of climate grief, recognition in photographic bursts: Pakistani cotton farmers walking through knee-deep water trying to salvage a few white puffs of income off blackened plants; precious graves of ancestors being inundated by the sea in Fiji, the Torres Strait Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Samoa, the Marshall Islands; the view of fire-ravaged forests, white smoke sky and black trunks in Yosemite National Park, Namadgi National Park, so many places that should be verdant.

September 22, 2023

Little Crappy Ship: report excoriates ship building program behind USS Canberra

A new US investigative report has excoriated the controversial Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program which included the USS Canberra commissioned in very unusual circumstances with great fanfare by the US Navy recently in Sydney. Should its revelations about the manifest failures in the USNs procurement performance - with former officers describing the LCS class as like a box floating in the ocean - force the Australian government to rethink its reliance on hiring retired US admirals and senior Pentagon officials to advise us on our defence programs?

August 24, 2023

US economic policy and a great march backwards

There is a spectre haunting the world. It is the spectre of economic crisis. How the world responds will shape all of our futures. To borrow from Carl Clausewitz; war is the continuation of politics by other means. The famous military theorist might have added that economics is politics which is war by other means.

August 16, 2023

What do climate denialists say when the facts change?

John Maynard Keynes is widely believed to have said: Well, when the facts change I change my mind. What do you do? It was probably actually Paul Samuelson although Keynes did say something vaguely similar.

August 3, 2023

Unlike Indonesia we are outsourcing our defence to a foreign power

Did colonialism ever die? Distant major powers are making life-and-death decisions that will impact Indonesia, ironically on the eve of the Republics 17 August national day celebrating Soekarnos 1945 proclamation of independence from three centuries of Dutch rule.

July 2, 2023

US politics, climate change, and the Paris Finance Summit

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley and French President Emmanuel Macron invited world leaders to Paris on June 22-23 to reach a new global pact to finance the fight against poverty and human-induced climate change. All kudos for the ambition, yet few dollars were put on the table. To an important extent, the continuing global failure to finance the fight against poverty and climate change reflects the failings of US politics, since the US, at least for the moment, remains at the centre of the global financial system.

June 19, 2023

A profound failure to understand and accept strategic threats

The Defence Strategic Review reflects a profound failure of the Australian leadership to understand and accept the breadth and complexity of the range of strategic threats confronting Australia, the region, and the world. How can a realistic defence policy be determined without first understanding the risks it is supposed to address?

May 29, 2023

Senators call for peoples bank solution to regional branch closures

There is growing support for a government-owned peoples bank, like the original Commonwealth Bank, operating through post offices, which could provide full banking services to every community and force the Big Four private banks to truly compete.

July 27, 2022

The Ukraine conflict calls for sharper vision and bolder action

The Ukraine conflict is a sign of our dire predicament, potentially a taste of worse to come.

September 27, 2021

In competition between China and the US, Australian consumers choose China

Australias relationship with China involves many dimensions and Australia/China relations look a lot different from different perspectives.

August 1, 2021

A tale of two cities in the same pandemic.

The eastern suburbs of Sydney became the seeding event for Deltas entry to Australia. It was nurtured by a driver transferring infected airline personnel to quarantine at the nearby Kingsford Smith airport.

July 7, 2021

Public service must learn from robodebt fiasco

Justice Murphy of the Federal Court castigated the Commonwealth in unprecedented terms in his judgment approving settlement of the class action on behalf of those affected by Robodebt.

July 1, 2021

Is equity on the Federal Government's training agenda?

_Is equity on the Federal Government’s training agenda? As the Government continues to make changes to vocational education and training resulting from economic issues highlighted by the current pandemic, the question arises as to whether educational opportunities and funding are being equitably applied.

June 24, 2021

Breaking news: new leader for Labor for Coal

The Federal Member of Parliament for a coalmining seat in New South Wales has today been re-elected Leader of Labor for Coal (LfC). Asked what she thought was expected of her in the position, Ms Taken said that one of her first priorities will be to maintain the close political, philosophical and organisational relationship with the ALP.

June 20, 2021

Should procedural specialists be the highest earning doctors in the nation?

Data shows that procedural specialist doctors earn more per year than many other professionals in Australia and that the highest earning doctors in Australia are surgeons and anaesthetists, earning almost twice what general practitioners (GPs) earn. Why is this so and can it be justified?

June 14, 2021

The Tiananmen Square massacre: the one sided story

If you thought we knew everything about the Tiananmen Square Massacre of June 3-4, 1989, think again. Mysteries remain. Some are so significant we need to review our ideas about what was going on in China at that time.

May 13, 2021

Imagining an alternative world: Stories for justice*

In the 2019 Australian Federal election, Labor leader Bill Shorten offered diverse policies but never a narrative which could be remembered and shared. To speak about justice, a story could have been more effective than a recitation of policies.

May 6, 2021

American objectives in disrupting East Asia-economic catchup with China

American wars in the Middle East have been largely driven by oil hunger. The next generation of major conflict is about control of advanced semiconductor manufacture and disruption of supply chains between Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Mainland China. This is the reason for US provocation of hostility towards China and getting an even tighter grip on Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

April 20, 2021

Tudge on the bludge - new education minister offers nothing new

With few exceptions, federal education ministers have followed a well-worn path of school reform that looks easy, resonates well but rarely delivers, and ignores entrenched problems. Alan Tudge fits neatly into this mould.

September 18, 2024

Universities: dead, buried and cremated?

In the late nineties, the management of the Australian National University was attacking its academic staff. That may seem a little strange, until I note that acolytes of Prime Minister John Howard were trying to impose Labour Market Flexibility. However the staff resisted, and even went on strike more than once.

September 17, 2024

If Gaza carnage continues, then nobody is safe

The description of Armageddon may be (to some) a fictional drama of woe and horror, yet what we are witnessing in Gaza could surely fit the defining crescendo of anarchic violence as described in the book of Revelation. In the biblical story there is an unleashing of the beast who wreaks havoc on earth. The weak and vulnerable Palestinians and those unable to feed themselves, let alone defend themselves against weapons, bombing, cholera, polio and death, quite possibly feel a resemblance to the biblical hell on earth.

August 22, 2024

Accusations of US regime-change operations in Pakistan and Bangladesh warrant UN attention

The very strong evidence of the U.S. role in toppling the government of Imran Khan in Pakistan raises the likelihood that something similar may have occurred in Bangladesh.

July 25, 2024

The ICJ decision – where to from here?

The ICJ delivered its advisory opinion on 19 July regarding the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. Readers are by now familiar with the basic rulings of the Court, not from mainstream media, I might add. The ICJ’s judgment has been reported, but its consequences, and particularly for Australia, have barely raised a comment.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal