September 19, 2024

Dependency or protectorate?

It is understandable that people around the world obsess about US elections given the cultural and political impact the country has on the rest of us.

August 12, 2024

Another dumbed down Australian promotion

Australia has come up with some absolute shockers when advertising agencies have been tasked with promoting the country around the world.

June 4, 2024

Please don’t pray for us

Next time you hear a news story on violence against women, please do not say we pray for victims of domestic violence. If you want change, here’s what to pray for instead.

May 28, 2024

Did a US funded biotechnology experiment ignite the worst pandemic of modern times?

In a momentous development, the US Government has suspended funding from the biotech company increasingly linked to the origins of the Covid pandemic that slew seven million people.

May 14, 2024

Corporatocracy

It’s time we reckoned with what it means to become a corporatocracy. Our governments exist to enact the desires of their corporate masters. Some of these politicians, like Madeleine King, appear to do so with alacrity, while others appear lost in the perceived demands of party and pressure groups. The end result will be an uninhabitable world.

May 9, 2024

Developer oriented development only worsens the housing crisis

A lobby group representing the $600 billion property industry is determining state housing policy in NSW.

June 24, 2023

Weekly Roundup: Signs of an impending recession

Reforming political donations – will Labor and the Coalition do a sweetheart deal to thwart independents?; Ten questions about the Voice answered; and Signs of an impending recession. Read on for the Weekly Roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy.

May 5, 2023

Cutting funding to the Independents: Insights from the Rugg case

Parliamentary representatives of all stripes deserve to have the necessary staffing and means to discharge their duties to constituents.

July 2, 2022

MEDEA BENJAMIN and NICOLAS J. S. DAVIES: NATO and a war foretold

As NATO holds its Summit in Madrid on June 28-30, the war in Ukraine is taking centre stage. During a pre-Summit June 22 talk with Politico, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg bragged about how well-prepared NATO was for this fight because, he said: “This was an invasion that was predicted, foreseen by our intelligence services.” Stoltenberg was talking about Western intelligence predictions in the months leading up to the February 24 invasion, when Russia insisted it was not going to attack. Stoltenberg, however, could well have been talking about predictions that went back not just months before the invasion, but decades.

January 2, 2021

James K. Galbraith Says More… (Project Syndicate Nov 17, 2020)

J This week in Say More, PS talks with James K. Galbraith, Professor of Government and Chair in Government/Business Relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

September 15, 2024

The mistaken conventional wisdom about nuclear energy <links>

Recently, three articles have appeared in P&I about nuclear energy, _one by Richard Broinowski on 29 August_,_ _one by Jim Coombs on 2 September__, and_ _a third by Joseph G. Davis on 3 September__. All of them are negative about nuclear energy. The negativity in each case is driven by a fundamentally mistaken but widespread belief about nuclear energy safety. I respond here to these articles with a more positive view of nuclear.__

August 15, 2024

How to fix poverty? Universal basic income

A single standard income payment, untaxed and unconditional to every person, will provide income security and the freedom to choose education, work and lifestyle. It would replace existing targeted welfare payments (not programs) and be integrated for administration purposes with the taxation system. Giving an equal payment to everyone would overcome poverty while boosting participation, skills, productivity and growth.

May 24, 2024

How the ACT Govt is making more people vulnerable

The ACT Labor-Greens coalition is widely seen as the most permissive and truly liberal government in the country.

August 31, 2023

Sixty-three per cent of Chinese-Australians report mental anguish from English-language media’s "biased reporting"

New survey results from the Australia-China Relations Institute at UTS find that 91% of Chinese-Australians are concerned by the Australian English-language media’s tendency to engage in speculation about war with China, because they believe such speculation could become a self-fulfilling prophecy; and about six in ten (63%) respondents reported feelings of emotional and mental anguish in response to the media’s “biased reporting” on PRC related issues.

August 24, 2023

NSW Legislative Council: “Justice delayed is justice denied” for Shaoquett Moselmane

“Extensive media coverage has suggested… that Mr [Shaoquett] Moselmane was a suspect in serious criminality. This was incorrect. … The committee does not form a view on the propriety or otherwise of the conduct of the AFP or sections of the media. However, in these circumstances, the committee urges the AFP to ensure sufficient resources are allocated to now resolve the matter speedily. Justice delayed is justice denied.”

June 23, 2023

Calvary Hospital acquisition may open new horizons

How different it might have been if the Catholic Church had kept out of it. If, instead of clergy expressing institutional male outrage, it had been Little Company of Mary Sisters (LCM), in the sensible attire of modern nuns, with SRN, and perhaps even, MBA and MBBS, after their names, saying, “This is our hospital. We have dedicated our lives to caring for our patients here, and we will not let you take it from us.” What would public opinion have said then?

August 5, 2021

What we might hope from the Catholic Plenary Council!

You are hopeless. You are not listening to me.

July 19, 2020

Issues with the Chinese diaspora’s political participation

Australia’s public diplomacy agenda does not seem to have translated into concrete policies in regard to the Chinese diaspora, argues this excerpt from a submission to a current Senate inquiry.

September 12, 2024

Australia’s colonised universities: in partibus infidelium*

Among a group of corporations which also includes Boeing and BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin is a particular target for this action. Though principled and consistent, it has proved to be a futile exercise in protest; worse, it is likely to remain so.

July 26, 2024

Succumbing to the Zionist Lobby: higher education institutions abandon ethics and integrity

Gaza Solidarity Encampments across the colony have exposed our corrupt, wage-theft-riddled, million-dollar-VC-run universities as the hypocritical institutions they are.

June 1, 2024

The militarist as milkman

ABC TV’s Landline programme has declared that “Australia’s dairy industry is licking its lips at the prospect of increased demand from Indonesia.”

April 26, 2024

The Israel dilemma

As a gentile with an historical association with Israel, I must admit to being greatly puzzled by the double standard that is evident in the destruction of Gaza.

September 16, 2023

With Universities in crisis, democracy is under threat

Gratifying it may be to see three of our top performing universities outranking Columbia and Johns Hopkins (with Melbourne even outranking Caltech and Yale (QS World University Rankings)), but as a sector our universities are in crisis. And such a crisis has dangerous implications for our democracy.

August 4, 2023

The VVV — Vietnam Veterans' Vigil, 3 August 2023

The 3 August Vietnam Veterans’ Vigil (VVV) is separate from the 18 August government-sponsored Commemorative Service on Vietnam Veterans’ Day.

July 30, 2023

Campbell's AUKUS appointment was probably justified

Criticism of Kathryn Campbell’s appointment a year ago to a $900,000 a year job to assist with implementation of the AUKUS agreement is mostly based on hindsight following the adverse comments about her performance in DHS and DSS by the Robodebt Royal Commission. To be fair to those who made that decision, it is important to disentangle the different issues involved and to consider what information was available to them at the time.

June 27, 2022

Where to next for the human world?

_Our new government is facing a profoundly difficult and complex world situation, with a string of ten catastrophic threats that are bearing down on humans everywhere.

April 12, 2021

When will Australian political parties professionalise their preselection processes?

The shocking ongoing revelations about men behaving badly in the Australian Parliament has exposed a number of individuals for their misogyny and antiquated attitudes to women generally and their female colleagues in particular. They are discredited dinosaurs who do not belong in any modern workplace ,let alone in the national forum for charting best practice in public policy development .

July 27, 2023

Robodebt – it could all too easily happen again

Those Australians watching the findings of the Robodebt Royal Commission might take comfort from the evidence it provides that our justice system has shown itself to have at least some capacity to hold unjust governments to account – eventually. But a justice system is only as good as the laws it has to work with.

June 30, 2023

Why propaganda works so well in Australia

The past five years of intensive anti-China propaganda, highly aligned as it is with government objectives, have been instrumental in propping up public support for AUKUS and the Australian government’s flawed foreign and defence policies. Why have Australians been so susceptible to the influence of that propaganda?

September 23, 2021

Star spangled propaganda: ASPI to open office in the US so as to be close to the military and business complex.

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light? It’s a new dawn for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) as it succumbs to the irrefutable truth it is nothing more than a vassal for American interests, opening a US office.

March 3, 2021

How a nurse saved the day. And nurses do it every day.

Sadly, the critical role that nurses and midwives play in keeping people (and the health system) safe is all too often unseen and unrecognised. Maybe it is that we are so familiar and numerous that our role is somewhat taken for granted.

September 2, 2024

Aiming for the messy truth: The first Australian journalist returns to China

Will Glasgow’s report from Beijing in the Weekend Australian of 24/25 August is cause for celebration. Since the last Australian journalist left China four years ago, reports on this most important neighbour and on matters of concern to both countries have been either second-hand or coming from non-Australian sources.

July 5, 2024

SOS - Save our scribes

As legacy media dies we seek its phoenix.

August 14, 2023

The ABC could improve political education greatly

The issue of the Voice referendum has again brought to light problems that have to do with a serious lack of understanding of governance systems in Australia and, even more seriously, where major problems exist, lacking a capacity to generate superior alternatives.

April 13, 2023

The incredible shrinking ASPI

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but has ASPI’s China-like propaganda model run its course?

August 19, 2021

Goodwill and good intentions: lessons from Ireland relevant to Israel-Palestine

Alf McCreary is an Irish author. In A Fund of Goodwill, McCreary tells the story of the success of the International Fund for Ireland. Established in 1986 its mission was to invest in projects that brought Irish Protestants and Catholics together.

October 23, 2020

IMF on global warming: impractical, naive and important

The response to global warming has to be at the same time political, science-based, and economically informed. Reading the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) 2020 World economic outlook: a long and difficult ascent, is instructive on this point.

December 20, 2018

ANDREW FARRAN. Brexit – Putting off the inevitable

The British Government is in total disarray, thrashing about for a way to minimise public outrage when the country crashes out of the EU without a deal on 29 March, which now appears inevitable. Its energies are now being devoted to planning for that catastrophe.

What is remarkable is how little understanding its Ministers and their MPs have shown of international trade law and practice, and options otherwise available to them in their predicament were they to open their minds to them.

August 24, 2024

Artificial cleverness is polluting the essence of our humanity

Fakes, deep fakes, disinformation, lies and rumours pollute the internet, the legacy media and conversations. Some of these are not new, but their power is growing. Now we have a new contender, so-called artificial intelligence, interfering in our human experience, and the technutters proudly claim it will get a million times worse within a decade or two. We are degrading an essence of our humanity. Can we have any conception of what that might do to us?

July 24, 2024

Writings from the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment

_This is Part One of a six-part series of articles from the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Apart from the Introduction by Emeritus Professor Tamara Jacka, all articles are written by student members of the encampment. To protect the authors against identification, we have kept them anonymous.

June 24, 2024

Exemptions in discrimination law: ‘safe spaces’ to act out prejudice towards LGBTIQ people

The denigration of the humanity and self-worth of a group of people is enabled by social and legal licensing of the expression of prejudice and hatred towards that group. Australian discrimination laws have been plated up like an episode of Masterchef, with optional extras for religious groups to act out their chosen prejudice. These are 21st Century witch-hunts against LGBTIQ people, sanctioned by governments.

September 17, 2023

Tenure and its troubles

Discussion of the tenure of senior officials in the Australian public service continues in P&I, with some former officials recently pointing to the difficulty of giving the fabled “frank and fearless” advice when contracts may not be renewed.

September 14, 2023

“Our last, best chance”: How our schools must change to help the most disadvantaged

Without reform, Australia’s schooling system threatens to create a lost generation of young people.

August 30, 2023

Toothless tiger: Human Rights Committee sits helplessly on the sidelines

In 2009, after receiving a report from prominent Catholic priest Frank Brennan which recommended it, the Rudd Labor government abandoned the quest for a national human rights act. Instead it established a parliamentary human rights committee which came into operation in 2011. But, as one might expect, this committee was dead on arrival. It is a toothless tiger with no capacity to hold governments to account for human rights. It has sat helplessly on the sidelines while governments and parliaments have continued to undermine fundamental rights in this nation.

April 20, 2023

The ‘climate change’ crisis bearing down on schools

Australian education can learn something from climate change. For a long time, people ignored the truth about the climate. We no longer can because the evidence is clear: there is a looming crisis, and we need big structural solutions to enable widespread change and action.

August 1, 2022

A Significant People’s Forum on Peace, not just in Ukraine

_Citizens in Australia speak of peace and show how to reach that goal. They do not trust politicians stifled into thinking that security means militarism, or think tanks funded to promote the idea that national defence and arms industry interests are the same.

May 11, 2022

The Western reactions to Ukraine and Solomon Islands events have something in common

It’s an ugly mistake called phenomenalism.

May 10, 2022

Natural targets: the intergenerational politics of climate change

Humans are not built for long-term thinking. Our daily routines, our social lives––and especially our electoral cycles––are all geared towards the here and now. The immediate problem. The quick thrill.

April 16, 2021

Are we more depressed or more diagnosed?

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5), which finds widespread use in Australia and across the world, by physicians, researchers, courts, and schools, lists more than 300 criteria for depression, which makes the meaning of a diagnosis so vague it can potentially cover every one of us. So, are we more depressed or more diagnosed?

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal