July 1, 2021

The "problem" with boat people

Why have successive governments shown disdain for refugees who come by boat? Kim Huynh contrasts the welcome he enjoyed 40 years ago with the hostility now confonting boat people.

May 4, 2021

Biden's speech to Congress - read his lips!

President Biden’s first address to Congress has provided a substantive and timely window into his ambitions for his term of office, but also the ideology which is driving him. Its central theme was “ We’re in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st Century”.

September 9, 2024

For Australia to meet emissions reduction targets, we don't need nuclear energy

The Federal Opposition’s energy policy includes the construction of nuclear power plants. Peter Dutton says that we need them because Australia’s emissions reduction target of 43 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030 is unachievable. Is this true? We argue that it is not – and especially if the Australian Government works with State and Territory Governments to stop native forest logging and land clearing.

April 23, 2023

National day of prayer for just peace in Mayanmar

After years of cruelty to their own people (whose safety it is their duty to protect), just after Easter, the Myanmar junta’s airforce dropped multiple bombs on a civilian gathering of several hundred people in Sagaing Region while attack helicopters strafed the crowd. Later the same day jet fighters returned to kill anyone left.

July 27, 2022

What made you stop trusting the international media?

Top cause was coverage of Hong Kong, followed by the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, say respondents to a social media tweet that quickly turned into a fast-growing discussion

May 16, 2024

Another road for “Made in Australia”

In spruiking their coming “Future Made in Australia” policies PM Albanese and Treasurer Chalmers have singled out for a possible government “helping hand” projects designed to promote our role in their hoped-for future renewable, green economy. But if government “helping hands” are thinkable they could be applied in other areas as well. One area crying out for attention is in establishing and supporting employment-creating projects and businesses in the Northern Territory.

May 10, 2024

77% of top Climate Scientists think 2.5°C of warming is coming - and they're horrified

“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the Global South,” one expert said.

June 27, 2023

The future of Australia’s universities under the AUKUS regime

In one of his last posts on this site Dennis Argall contributed an extraordinary insight which needs to be kept, explicitly and unapologetically, at the forefront of all discussions about AUKUS and its bastard child, the Defence Strategic Review. The title of his piece was: “The Defence Strategic Review is a claim to command civil society.”

June 3, 2023

$10 Million for consultants: a further step from reality

Last year the NSW Education Department paid almost $10 million to Deloitte Consultants for ‘expert’ advice, not to mention how much of tax-payers revenue went into the pockets of the disgraced PWC for similar nonsense. This reliance on outside know-how is a ‘logical’ step up from the failed policy of governments employing experts in leadership to head up their departments. What return did we get? After all this time, NSW school system is on life support evidenced by the abject failure of this experts’ approach.

September 23, 2021

The Australian Catholic Church’s angle of vanishing stability

Real leadership is needed at the Australian Catholic Church’s Plenary Council, to be held next month. Without it, the church risks sinking.

August 2, 2021

We aren't just laggards in Covid immunisation

_I recently watched the superb film “Jimmy Carter, Rock & Roll President”. It is available on SBS. It’s not about politics. It’s about the man. Watch it, enjoy the fabulous music and interviews with the music legends he befriended. Then weep. Weep for a time when honesty, integrity, self-effacement, and sincere humility were the consistent hallmarks of a fine political leader.

July 5, 2024

Restoring integrity to the Australian Public Service

The purpose of this paper is to help promote discussion about the ways in which the efficiency, effectiveness and capability of the Australian Public Service (APS) and its integrity can be improved, and the standing of the APS as a key institution in Australia’s democratic system can be restored.

April 17, 2024

Responding to tragedy

Much has already been said and written about the recent tragic stabbings at Bondi Junction. Daily, we are also exposed to stories about the ravages of war, hopefully neither suppressing nor being overwhelmed by them. As a funeral celebrant, I am familiar with, but never complacent about death and suffering - indeed, it is a privilege to stand with those who miss and celebrate the lives of their loved ones. How can we deal with all this death and suffering?

June 30, 2023

The UN’s anti-North Korea symposium

Japan’s deserves some slack for its sensitivities over its wartime guilt. Others bear some responsibility for that guilt. But for Australia, as much a victim of past Japanese war crimes as most, to have sponsored an UN anti-North Korea symposium today (Friday, June 30) called by Japan in an obvious attempt to justify, or at least obscure, some of those crimes, and prepare the groundwork for future Asian wars, is, well… extraordinary.

June 19, 2023

The taser! Useful tool or torture weapon?

Is a taser a tool, or a torture weapon?

August 17, 2021

Australia continues to ignore as Assange's trial intensifies

The relentless pursuit by the United States of Australian publisher Julian Assange continues with a legal argument last week about the scope of an appeal hearing in the UK Court of Appeal in October this year.

July 19, 2021

The wisdom of crowds during COVID-19. Really?

James Surowiecki made a convincing case in his book ‘The Wisdom of Crowds’ (2004) arguing that many of us usually make better decisions than do a few of us. However, some of us are now shaking our heads in disbelief at the collective stupidity of people during these COVID-19 days. What is going on here?

May 13, 2021

History lessons for critiques on Christianity

_Before we worry too much about school students, it’s the adults who need remedial history lessons if two recent articles are anything to go by.

March 20, 2020

SEAN INNIS. Economic thinking has driven policy making in the past, but will it in the future? Part 2

As discussed yesterday, the changing policy environment affects the role of economic thinking in policy determination. Against that background, Part 2 today discusses the key challenges that economic thinking needs to resolve to retain its policy relevance.

September 29, 2024

An open and free Indo-Pacific, or stability at home?

The Voice of America, in an article about why the Quad met in Washington this week, claims that the aims of the Quad are to create an open and free Indo-Pacific. Biden, in a prepared remark, suggested his Administration believes “Xi Jinping is looking to focus on domestic economic challenges and minimise the turbulence in China’s diplomatic relationships, and he’s also looking to buy himself some diplomatic space”.

August 7, 2024

Mood now upbeat in Australia, but downbeat in America - Monthly economic and market review

Two news items last week completely reversed the economic outlooks in Australia and America.

July 29, 2024

On Palestine, history shows the way: a comparison of Labor Foreign Policies

In handling the Israel-Palestine problem, the Albanese Government could learn much from how the Chifley Government navigated the Netherlands’ dispute with the Indonesian Republic in the 1940s.

July 9, 2023

Fallen potatoes-the failure of the Catholic Church

Cardinal George decided I was a potato. Yes, me and all the other talented committed women of the catholic church. My hope is that George Pell’s death spells the end of the misogyny, clericalism and conservatism within the Church and the fallen potatoes finally get a chance to lead a community with wisdom and kindness.

May 29, 2023

Thodey recommendations a year into Albanese’s watch

At his valedictory event, former APS Commissioner, Peter Woolcott, suggested that the Government and APS leadership were now pursuing ‘Thodey on steroids’. Some have endorsed that view referring to the partnership between Glyn David and Gordon de Brouwer as the ‘dream team’, now further consolidated by de Brouwer’s appointment as the new APS Commissioner.

August 19, 2022

Infrastructure Australia should be abolished

A review of Infrastructure Australia risks putting the cart in front of the horse. It should consider whether the organisation should exist.

August 25, 2021

Making sense of Afghanistan in fragments: part 2: the present and the future

The deluge of images carried by the mass media are in realty merely an overburden of a disaster foretold. Their precedents were freely available long before the Western forces entered Afghanistan but they were brought into sharp relief as soon as that happened. Albeit less drastically, the documentation since then - specifically, the voluminous, now declassified reports detailing the dimensions of already existing and future failure - underscored not only the inevitability of the eventual debacle, but also the probability that it will extend for some time to come.

June 8, 2021

The Stench of COVID Coverups.

Most of us who read Pearls and Irritations are not virologists, mainstream media journalists, Americans, or Chinese. As the nasty details about the pandemic emerge, that’s just as well, if we want the truth.

April 28, 2021

Hong Kong: British common law labelled as Chinese oppression

On 16 April 2021, a Hong Kong District Court sentenced 8 prominent “activists” to imprisonment. They had been convicted of organizing an unlawful assembly, and taking part in such assembly, under the Public Order Ordinance. This was a statute of the longstanding, dating way back to colonial times in Hong Kong.

October 13, 2020

Dying in a Leadership Vacuum in the US. (The New England Journal of Medicine Oct 8, 2020)

Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.

September 30, 2024

The media campaign against Julian Assange

The liberation of Australian journalist Julian Assange in late June ended an ordeal lasting 14 years. But it does not lessen the responsibility of his persecutors. Washington, London and Stockholm all acted with the complicity of an institution supposed to speak truth to power and to protect the innocent – the press, for once, were not very supportive of another journalist.

August 17, 2024

Buck-passing: Inside the murky arms trade

Australia bears ultimate responsibility for how Australian weapons are being used in conflict zones around the world.

August 6, 2024

My dream of America

I am not part of America, but America has always been a part of me. Like no other country, the mere name carries a special fascination for me, and despite all its contradictions and problems, I have always felt attracted to it. This presidential election, can America leave behind the narrow mindset of the old guard, shaped by the Cold War and by a dangerous superiority complex, which made some Americans believe that they have a God given right to rule the world?

May 15, 2024

Labor Budget 2024-25: $10b to support nuclear shipyards of ageing US/UK empires

Grassroots anti-AUKUS campaign, Labor Against War, has called on the Federal Labor Government to come clean about just how much it is pouring into US and UK coffers to rebuild their ageing nuclear shipyards, both of which build nuclear-armed submarines.

April 18, 2024

Australia and Japan should calm tensions in the South China Sea

Geopolitical tensions are rising again in the South China Sea. President Biden’s trilateral meeting with PM Kishida from Japan and President Marcos to discuss military strategy to contain China’s perceived “coercive policy” will not help calm the waters.

July 2, 2022

The sufferings of the North Korean people are a blot on the conscience and humanity of the West

_Just twenty years ago the world had the chance to put an end to this suffering. It said no, and allowed a Japanese leader, Abe Shinzo, to impose his sadistic will on that long traumatised nation.

August 20, 2021

A burger by any other name: The livestock industry's beef with plant-protein labelling

The increasing popularity of plant-based products has fuelled ongoing debate around how these products should be labelled. In Australia, it attracts visceral reactions from representatives across the meat and dairy industries, as well as from our political leaders.

July 13, 2021

Labor deaf to Chinese ethnic stirrings in Stretton Electorate in Queensland

There are murmurs that the Chinese in Stretton have had enough.

July 6, 2021

The axis of evil shaping our minds, on China and more

_If ever there is now an axis of evil it is surely the uncoordinated journey of fellow travellers ASPI, now reportedly replacing DFAT as strategic advisor to government; Adrian Zenz, conservative Catholic inventor of Xinjiang genocide, who wants to see the overthrow of the government of China, and the ABC team led by Stan Grant, who have taken propagandistic reporting to unprecedented levels.

June 22, 2021

Putin and Biden reshuffle the deck

The 16 June Geneva Summit had positive outcomes. In a rare moment of joint statesmanship, Presidents Biden and Putin reshuffled the deck of Russia-US relations. Where the new card game may go is uncertain: but Geneva offers present hope for a safer and more rational relationship between the world’s strongest nuclear weapon powers.

May 20, 2021

The Commonwealth Government is continually avoiding responsibility for quarantine

Even when States and private providers proposed to manage appropriate, fit-for-purpose quarantine facilities, the Morrison Government denied approval and refused to provide the funds. Absurdly, the Commonwealth accepts responsibility for biosecurity when it applies to plants and organisms, but not for humans. _

April 30, 2021

Monthly digest on housing affordability and homelessness: Mar/Apr 2021

The following is the latest instalment of a monthly digest of interesting articles, research reports, policy announcements and other material relevant to housing stress/affordability and homelessness – with hypertext links to the relevant source.

July 20, 2024

The media is silent on the climate war that must be won

The nuclear energy debate has not re-ignited the climate wars. The climate war that must be won has been ongoing for many years. This is not a war between Labor and the Coalition, it is a war between people who understand that tackling the climate emergency must be a top priority, and both Labor and the Coalition. Both parties of government are ignoring the science and endangering our national security with their ongoing support for coal and gas extraction.

September 13, 2023

Earth System Treaty: Towards a positive human future

It is easy to be pessimistic about prospects for our children, in the face of the climatic events that are now confronting humans everywhere. But there is also some very good news around the idea of developing a Global “Earth System Treaty” (EST) that could radically alter the trajectory we humans are currently on.

June 16, 2023

Time to right wrongs with much-needed media reform

Since I was elected, I have consistently called for media reform.

June 5, 2023

Here’s why I can no longer be a Labor Party member

I am the child of holocaust survivors. I cannot remain a member of a party which turns a blind eye to the ongoing persecution of millions of people who have a right to live in peace and freedom in the land of their ancestors.

April 30, 2023

Our human rights are fundamental to our chances of peace

Constitutional enshrinement of rights through a federal Human Rights Act is essential.

August 17, 2022

Industry policy for a changing world

The Biden administration’s ambitious new AUD 400 billion industrial policy initiative once again confronts Australia with the question of whether we want to be in the forefront of science and innovation, or way back in the slipstream.

June 28, 2022

With our dismal history of bombings in Iraq, Australia cannot take the high moral ground on Ukraine

From Malcolm Turnbull’s first day as Prime Minister in 2015, the bombings on Iraq increased. We all became responsible for killing great numbers of Muslims.

August 24, 2021

How Covid in NSW has revealed the differences and disadvantages of class, race, age and gender.

Gaming the virus in NSW: how fighting the last war will not win the next one.Premier Berejiklian is not listening.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal