December 1, 2020

Jeff Borland. New finding: boosting JobSeeker wouldn’t keep Australians away from paid work

Incentives, the Freakonomics author Steven Levitt once quipped, are the “ cornerstone of modern life”. To this I would add: only if the incentive is big enough.

June 18, 2024

Only shame can make integrity guardians do their duty

A predisposition to secrecy still handicaps integrity in Australian government.

April 15, 2024

Labor not tribal enough for three of its own

The ACT Labor-led Government might lead the nation in many worthy ways and it might, too, you might think, especially six months out from an election, be vigilant to avoid what many might see as an embarrassing own goal. But no…

April 12, 2024

Cartoon comment

August 28, 2023

What do we want? War! When do we want it? Continually!

Post 9/11 the US embarked on a series of wars to ‘make the world safe’ and more importantly settle old and new scores.

June 14, 2023

Paul Keating, Confucius and the CCP – understanding China

Misunderstanding China has a long and distinguished history. Much of that misunderstanding has been generated by western media going right back to the Qing dynasty.

September 10, 2022

Judging the National Anti-Corruption Commission

Next week the Government will unveil its long-anticipated National Anti-Corruption Commission (that’s now the official title) legislation. Experts and critics will be on hand to offer critiques based on comparisons with similar existing bodies in the States, with the Federal ICAC Bill tabled in the last Parliament by independent MP Helen Haines and with the promised but never delivered legislation of the Morrison government.

June 25, 2022

Environment: Can capitalism deliver the future we want?

We need to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions, not just CO2. Solar and wind slowly replacing coal as Australia’s source of electricity. Sydney and Canberra middle of the pack for sustainability.

May 16, 2022

Morrison loathes foreigners and foreign policy

_Morrison dislikes any one and any thing he can’t control. It is very fortunate for him that News Corp’s hatreds, prejudices, intolerances and racism correspond to his own.

September 1, 2021

US frozen beef exports to China surge at Australia's expense. Hardly protecting Australia’s back!

Australia’s frozen beef exports to China have plunged since April, but the United States’ exports keep rising — flipping the trade pattern seen a year ago.

April 16, 2021

The role of the ADF and its core business model

The core business of the ADF “will always be the application of lethal violence in the defence of our values, sovereignty and interests”, according to the newly installed Assistant Defence Minister, Andrew Hastie, speaking to military personnel. This statement is dangerous and wrong. The only person whose core business is the application of lethal violence is an executioner; a hangman. Thankfully, we don’t have hangmen anymore.

March 19, 2020

MICHAEL WEST. Too Big To Fail: Qantas, the corporate elite and the coronavirus (michaelwest.com.au 17.03.2020)

Alan Joyce is a canny operator. As the ravages of the coronavirus began to hit the airline hard, the Qantas boss announced he would take no salary for the rest of the year; no salary for the rest of the financial year that is. Who will the Government bail out? Michael West investigates Australia’s institutions that are Too Big To Fail.

August 6, 2024

A dissident challenge to the West’s narrative control

Pearls and Irritations has been a source of enlightenment since its foundation in 2013. It has progressively increased in importance.

June 7, 2024

A better service may be transmitted

The Indonesian government’s TVRI channel is supposed to have negotiated an MOU with the ABC to swap programmes. A great idea - benefits all. That’s the initial reaction.

September 27, 2023

Amidst the shattered remnants of an impartial public service

Will the Mike Pezzullo case be a line in the sand?

June 19, 2023

Is PWC Australia a criminal organisation?

Secrecy and the need to ensure natural justice for Peter Collins & other PWC Australia staff who received or used confidential information, prevents disclosure of the specific offences being investigated by the Australian Federal Police (AFP). But there will be no shortage of possible offences to investigate. They range from a breach of tax secrecy laws, making false or misleading statements, obtaining a financial advantage by deception, general dishonesty, to conspiracy to defraud the Commonwealth, and money laundering.

July 15, 2022

Complacency, wishful thinking and misinformation are all contributing to our lack of success in containing the spread of COVID-19

_I don’t read “The Australian” so I did not know until I received a barrage of emails from ‘anti-vaxxers’ lauding the wisdom therein, that on July 4 the paper had published an ‘Opinion’ piece criticising Australia’s response to the SARS virus. The article claimed that the incompetence involved warranted examination by a Royal Commission.

February 21, 2021

Feminism, Tanya and the ALP

As a long-term feminist I’m concerned that Second Wave radical goals of real gender equity, not just equality on masculine-established criteria, have still not been achieved. One area that requires serious change is to the criteria for leadership.

September 14, 2024

A foul formula: Zionism x Appeasement = Genocide

The capitulation by seemingly intelligent and decent-minded national leaders to the Holocaust Industry’s relentless campaign to validate any action by Israel in the current conflict in Palestine is seriously affecting the political landscape. It seems that the leaders of “the Western World” have learned nothing from nearly a century of calamitous events.

September 6, 2023

Opposing US-led wars: can Australia become independent and peaceful?

The narrative about the inevitability of a war with China began to dominate US strategic thinking in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

September 4, 2023

War fever and the military-industrial complex

In the wake of communist collapse we have been presented with a new paradigm in international affairs. No, it is not a tinkering with the standard communism versus democracy we have had to tolerate for more than half a century of war. By strange twist of fate it is democracy which is seen as creating the danger.

June 29, 2022

Plenary Council fails to embrace Pope Francis's social vision

_Many Catholics are concerned that the current Plenary Council is overly focused on internal Church matters and neglecting Pope Francis’s call to engage more vigorously with pressing social issues in dialogue and collaboration with all people of good will.

May 25, 2022

Time for change - the Attorney General and the AAT

Just before erstwhile Prime Minister Scott Morrison called Saturday’s election Senator Cash shamelessly appointed a number of Liberal and government members and staffers to the AAT where they will earn between around $190,000 to $380,000 a year. There was no attempt to hide this stacking of this quasi judicial body.

May 2, 2021

Sunday environmental round up.

Geopolitics and climate change combine to damage lives and environments in Iraq, but moves to make ecocide a crime. APRA invites comments on its guidance for the financial sector on climate change, while Scotty used emissions per person to mislead the world.

October 27, 2020

Morrison refuses to acknowledge Australian Nobel Peace prize winners

The Australian winners of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) are celebrating the ratification by 50 countries of The Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. However, the Morrison Government has refused to acknowledge the achievement just as they refuse to sign the treaty.

December 6, 2017

FRAN MARTIN. Overstating Chinese influence in Australian universities

Both Australia’s national government and its security agency ASIO have expressed concerns over the influence that the Chinese government exerts on Chinese student groups studying at Australian universities. They have also accused Beijing of using those groups to spy on Chinese students in Australia.

July 12, 2024

The predicament of climate scientists on the road to a supertropical earth

As temperatures in large parts of the Earth are soaring (cf. 52.3oC in Delhi), flames engulf large regions in California, tornadoes ravage the Gulf of Mexico states, severe drought starve populations in southern Africa and climate extremes continue to take over large parts of the Earth.

August 21, 2023

Real chance of Trump victory in the US election

There are some worrying signs in recent polling which raise the disturbing possibility that a third-party campaign by the Green Party may once again divert enough votes from the Democratic Party candidate, in this case almost certainly Joe Biden, to get Donald Trump over the line in some key states and thereby deliver another Trump victory.

July 25, 2023

Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Korean War – lest we forget

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The ‘end’ of the Korean War. Two anniversaries that almost intersect. At the end of WWII, a new order was imposed on the world. Today, as those anniversaries are marked, there is little to celebrate.

July 2, 2023

Dambusters

The famous World War II “Dambusters” raid in 1943 killed many more Ukrainians and other civilians than the collapse of the large Kakhovka dam in Ukraine in June.

August 16, 2022

Adrian Lipscomb: Aspirational ethics – the trojan horse of benchmarks?

I want to apologise for my actions. I’ve let my team down. I’ve let my family down. I’ve let the country down!”

July 12, 2022

South Australia and antisemitism

On October 17 last year Pearls & Irritations published a piece by me entitled “Labor’s British and Australian leaders are out of step with progressive opinion on Israel”. I mused, inter alia, over the ALP continuing, post-election, and if successful, “to tow the Israeli-lobby line”.

June 27, 2022

Restoring integrity to Commonwealth infrastructure spending

The new Parliament should take responsibility for dealing with pork barrelling – not pass the buck to an integrity commission.

August 26, 2021

Can China win the next war?

Lately there has been a lot of casual talk about the possibility of war with China, in some cases apparently encouraging such a war. This is against a background of Chinese threats to Taiwan, suppression of Islamic radicalism in Xinjiang and policies towards Hong Kong. Equally many people in China tell me that the Chinese military are excited by their new equipment and would welcome a “small war” to check out how effective it really is.

May 5, 2021

Human rights abuses on our doorstep but we say nothing.

We know this order will lead to more killing, more torture, more suffering of my people. The Speaker of the Indonesian House [of Representatives], Bambang Soesatyo, has urged the Government to “destroy them first. We will discuss human rights matters later”.

April 21, 2021

Will secrecy trump justice for murdered Afghans?

Thousands of Australian men and women fought in Afghanistan and Iraq without being in breach of any of the rules of warfare, but one can imagine that whatever pride they have in their personal and military accomplishment is muted by their knowledge that a small minority face credible charges of murdering civilians and other war crimes.

October 26, 2020

The dangers of excessive foreign policy zeal in dealing with China.

_We have displayed excessive zeal in embarking on wholesale policing of university agreements with foreign institutions, in the highly publicised raids on a third-tier Labor politician in Sydney who has no access to issues relevant to our national security, in the questioning of Chinese journalists here and, above all, in the much publicised attempt to spotlight China on the origins of Covid-19 at a time when global common cause in combatting the disease is crucial.

March 31, 2020

JOHN DWYER. Health care professionals want a lockdown now.

In sharper focus than ever this week is the danger health professionals experience in caring for seriously ill patients infected with COVID-19.

July 24, 2024

When will we treat Indonesia seriously?

Guarantee: This report is free of US political toxins. The contents are purely local.

July 21, 2024

Royal visits to Australia can be disaster magnets. In the first one, the prince barely made it out alive

It’s official: the royals are returning down under. King Charles and Queen Camilla are scheduled to visit Australia and Samoa in October, attending events in Canberra and New South Wales (with more details to come).

June 14, 2024

How to stop climate change

Bronwyn Kelly interviews prominent science writer and researcher Julian Cribb on key strategies that we will need for dealing with the significant environmental disasters we are facing in the age of climate change._

July 23, 2023

Australia’s immoral asylum policies

Whereas once upon a time Australia was regarded as a country of goodwill, tolerance and decency, it is now reputed, worldwide, to be the country with the most inhumane treatment towards refugees.

September 27, 2022

No guts, no glory in deposing the King

Right thinking Australians ought to want their nation to be a republic led by a president rather than by a protestant King or Queen of England. Even the local self-effacing should want it if only for international and national self-respect.

September 22, 2022

Anointed not appointed: reign not rule

It is somewhat disappointing that in the wall-to-wall coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth ll, there has been so little analysis of her faith which became the cornerstone for qualities that have been universally admired.

September 14, 2022

Will Russia join China in the Pacific?

‘For Russia, China is the key’ was a claim made for the recent Eastern Economic Forum held in Vladivostok annually, and attended by Russia’s President Putin.

June 28, 2022

Rising interest rates – will there be a soft landing?

Inflation is outside the target zone in all developed economies. Central banks are responding by increasing interest rates. But the critical question is whether monetary policy can bring inflation down without causing a recession.

July 12, 2021

Why is Australia still investing in a balanced defence force?

When the Prime Minister recently compared Australia’s strategic situation to that in 1939, he was right in two respects. Both in 1939 and in 2021, we have put too much trust in a ‘great and powerful friend’ to secure our independence. Australia’s problem is a Defence department that, simply put, lacks foresight, resourcefulness and innovation.

June 1, 2021

A warning against another Morrison government: an interview with Bruce Haigh

Protesters gathered at Sydney Town Hall on 16 May to mark 12 years since the Sri Lankan government perpetrated the 2009 Mullivaikkal massacre, which took the lives of an estimated 70,000 unarmed Tamil civilians.

May 4, 2021

The Tasmanian State Election in the rear view mirror

The Tasmanian election is over but it is far from over. The key questions of who will form Government and will it command a majority in Parliament have been settled. Liberal Premier Peter Gutwein has won and he will have a majority. Yet, a more fundamental question will hang in the air for some time – perhaps even until the next election. Was it worth it?

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal