October 28, 2020

Morrison courts danger with his male supremacist budget

While many have described the 2020 budget as designed for men (Ross Gittins, Blokey budget reflects core values, SMH, 21 October 2020), it goes deeper than that. This budget was not crafted from thoughtlessness; its intimidating outcomes were intended.

July 8, 2023

Weekly Roundup: Linda Burney asks us to take the next step in reconciliation

Alan Finkel guides us on our national path to green energy; Linda Burney asks us to take the next step in reconciliation; and an introduction to our newly-minted National Anti-Corruption Commission. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy.

July 6, 2023

Another great example of English hypocrisy

Why oh why is anyone surprised by English reaction to the Bairstow stumping?

May 11, 2023

Is NSW education in for big changes? Let’s hope so

With the NSW election behind us the media is mulling over what Labor has in store for the premier state. The Sydney Morning Herald recently unpacked the agenda of education minister Prue Car. There is much to cheer about, but will she deal with deep-seated problems?

May 1, 2023

Should NSW proceed with a Drug Summit?

A very comprehensive review of drug policy in NSW completed in 2020 was largely ignored for two and a half years. The Commissioner of the Inquiry understandably believes further consideration is redundant. The newly elected NSW government intends to keep a commitment made before the election to conduct a Drug Summit. They are right to do so and for several reasons.

April 24, 2023

Buying and building Korean AIP submarines: a bargain for Australia

Australia has several very viable options for not buying AUKUS nuclear submarines. All of them are much cheaper in the medium to short term and vastly cheaper and much less political in the long term.

November 12, 2020

How Trump lost

If he’d governed as he ran in 2016, as an economic populist, he would likely have been reelected. Instead, he reverted to the same old Republican playbook.

March 2, 2020

MUNGO MACCALLUM. In the secret world, secrecy is always the default option.

The ASIO response was the same as all his predecessors,not to mention Oliver Twist: more, please.

August 19, 2024

Returning to a democracy where strength of conviction shapes policy

We may be beginning a return to the original Athenian democracy where strength of conviction and argumentation shaped policy rather than outdated party loyalty and subservience to a party machine.

September 23, 2023

Environment Minister resorts to ‘drug dealer's defence’ for coal mine approvals

The Environment Council of Central Queensland (ECoCeQ) has been in the Federal Court this week arguing that the Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek has acted irrationally and unlawfully in her risk assessment of the expansion of 2 very large coal mines in NSW. The proponents of these mines, the Mount Pleasant Optimisation coal mine expansion and the Narrabri Underground Mine Stage 3 Extension, joined the court case to also defend the Minister’s decisions.

May 27, 2023

Albo comes out as a Burkean conservative: The Weekly Roundup

Stan Grant’s ordeal; The public service has been enfeebled by Coalition governments; and Albo comes out as a Burkean conservative. 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 7, 2022

Environment: Electricity, extinctions and agroecology

Wind and solar generate a tenth of the world’s electricity but coal still dominates in Australia. Reptiles and marine species face high risk of extinction. Moving from agribusiness to agroecology.

June 25, 2024

Nuclear vibrations pose more threat to Albo than Dutton

If Labor permits the next election to be a referendum about nuclear power, there’s a very good chance that Peter Dutton would win handsomely. For one thing it will be on ground of the Opposition’s choosing. For another, it would not be a poll about nuclear power for very long, but an open-ended referendum about the merits of the Albanese government. That would be tapping a lot of disappointment as well as discontent.

April 23, 2024

Why Australia needs a national folklife centre

Twelve months since the launch of the Albanese Government’s new cultural policy, REVIVE, it’s time we promoted Australia’s heritage of folklife.

August 17, 2023

How Pearls and Irritations rectifies distortion

Pearls and Irritations has played a fundamental role in providing an internationally recognised and widely read platform where serious arguments can now challenge the shallow, rancorous Hong Kong denigration agenda advanced by the MWM.

May 23, 2023

Re-floating the Titanic won’t save Australian health care

Back in 2008, I had a book contract to describe the obvious failings in Australian health care. It was planned to challenge the national myth that our system was ‘exceptional’, literally ‘best in the world’. I didn’t persist as Prime Minister Rudd was promising sweeping national reforms and there was genuine community enthusiasm for a major revamp of Medicare.

April 17, 2023

The dark dark secret

Fascism is in the news again, with the nazi salute being banned. Fascism is much more insidious than a few extremist adherents. With careful rebadging it has begun to pervade some of our institutions._

April 25, 2021

Anzac Day and the frontier wars

Anzac Day in Hobart in 2019 did not turn out in the way that participants expected. The Hobart Mercury explained why the following morning. The front page was dominated by a large and arresting headline. ‘Battle Cry’ it declared and went on to explain that ‘Anzac Day Marchers Highlight Black War.’ Underneath the headline was a picture of a large black, red and yellow banner which read: ‘Lest We Forget The Frontier Wars.’

August 31, 2024

Advocacy group to launch national campaign on Sunday to ‘amplify’ Muslim political voice

The advocacy group Muslim Votes Matter has put together a high-profile speakers list to launch its national campaign in Melbourne on Sunday, which is aimed at leveraging its influence for the federal election.

July 31, 2024

Bad news for the media

The latest Reuters Institute and University of Oxford report on media in Australia and the world has been published – and it’s bad news for almost all the media – and to some extent the reading public.

July 25, 2024

Republican immigration policies foretell mass deportations, tent cities and razor wire

The Republican Party are intent on making immigration their key issue in the forthcoming US Election. The 2024 Republican Party platform and Trump’s nomination acceptance speech make that abundantly clear. But what would Donald Trump’s immigration policies look like in practice?

July 4, 2024

Peter Dutton: Australia’s MAGA rock star

Last month New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks interviewed self-described MAGA (Make America Great Again) War Room street fighter Steve Bannon about the rise of right-wing populism. Among the takeaways were Bannon’s view that the MAGA movement is moving further and faster to the right than Donald Trump, that the battles they’re fighting are essentially ‘unrestricted narrative warfare’ in the media and that a central tool for fighting the war is listening for the ‘signal’, not the ‘noise’.

May 31, 2024

Bugger the bush: the pauperisation of generations of people

_It has always seemed to me that the Northern Territory, and especially its Indigenous peoples, have been Australia’s ‘poor relation.’ Out of sight, inaccessible, incomprehensible, hostile, threatening.

October 3, 2024

Assange: ‘My naivete was believing in the Law’

Read all of Julian Assange’s remarks, including Q&A, in Strasbourg Tuesday morning, on the plea deal, WikiLeaks work, the Espionage Act, the C.I.A.’s retribution and more.

July 8, 2024

Where is Australia’s drug-fighting money going?

Australia’s drug budget heavily focuses on law enforcement over harm reduction and prevention, underscoring the need for more balanced, effective spending.

July 21, 2023

Cancelling strange British Empire legacy event just Aussie common sense

Elite sport is something of a sacred cow. To criticise it is to risk being considered unAustralian. So while Premier Andrews’ announcement that Victoria would not host the 2026 Commonwealth Games was not a wholesale critique of elite sport, I am happy to take up the baton.

July 17, 2023

Goodbye to consulting?

’You cannot serve God and mammon’. Make your choice.

June 19, 2023

Coles and Woolworths: The deadly duopoly

Bob Katter is not known for his searching socio-economic analysis, but when he rails in Parliament that it is an indictment of Australia’s banana republic economy that Coles and Woolworths have long toppled manufacturing companies as the largest private sector employers in Australia, it is hard to argue with his logic.

August 18, 2024

Birth rate down; attacks on marriage and family are counterproductive

Marriage as an institution has long been attacked as the bulwark of patriarchy, a formality, binding women into compulsory sexual obligations, economic dependence and unequal life chances and the seat of most domestic violence. It has been all that and more, but ‘family’ has been forgotten by many as the outcome of positive romantic attachment and mutual care ‘until death us do part’.

May 11, 2024

Students in rapturous joy over HECS changes - Weekly Roundup

A peek into the Reserve Bank’s fantasy world, a Labor-lite budget on its way, how the Liberal Party has moved to the left of Labor, students in rapturous joy over HECS changes. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic and political issues.

July 29, 2023

The RBA is transferring wealth to baby boomers: Weekly Roundup

The Reserve Bank is transferring wealth from working Australians to retired baby boomers; Liddell Power Station has closed; and, apart from Sussan Ley, who wants the Commonwealth Games? Read on for the Weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy.

August 27, 2021

Don't forget the plight of Afghans in Australia

Further to Stuart Rees’ _eloquent exposure_ of the Prime Minister’s cruelty toward those Afghans already in Australia on temporary visas, below is my letter to the Prime Minister arguing for a more humane and pragmatic asylum seeker policy. Pragmatic because times have changed – the boats are no longer coming – and because among those temporary protection visa holders are talented, resilient and determined young people.

August 16, 2021

ASSANGE: A Day in the Death of British Justice

I sat in Court 4 in the Royal Courts of Justice in London yesterday with Stella Moris, Julian Assange’s partner. I have known Stella for as long as I have known Julian. She, too, is a voice of freedom, coming from a family that fought the fascism of Apartheid. Today, her name was uttered in court by a barrister and a judge, forgettable people were it not for the power of their endowed privilege.

August 29, 2024

Why the Israeli ‘peace camp’ disappeared

It is primarily in the hands of Israelis to reject their settler colonial occupation, their apartheid laws, and their current government and nationalist parties. The alternative means the loss of their humanity.

August 9, 2024

Gambling Alliance is spot-on about disappointing ad ban

The Albanese Government’s apparent unwillingness to properly implement the recommendations of the Parliamentary inquiry into online gambling is, as the Alliance for Gambling Reform puts it, ‘bitterly disappointing’ in the view of St Vincent de Paul Society in Australia.

April 19, 2024

US assurance for Assange a fantasy

The United States Government’s assurance that Julian Assange would have all the protections of a US citizen in a US court is obviously a fantasy.

July 4, 2023

NSW ICAC findings sound warning to federal ministers

As the National Anti-Corruption Commission is opening for business, some ministers tend to believe that the mere fact of winning government gives them an unlimited licence to distribute public loot to their friends, constituents and major donors. The silence and complicity of senior public servants in response to such misgovernment is one of the great scandals of our age.

July 1, 2023

Weekly Roundup: $1 too much for PwC’s government consultancy business?

CPI data shows that Australia has gone from inflation to deflation; We’re not allowing immigrants to put their skills to best use; and, was $1 too much to pay for PwC’s government consultancy business? 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 18, 2023

Flood warning: upgrade gauging networks, focus on warning messages

Last Monday, Minister for the Environment Tanya Plibersek and Minister for Emergency Management Murray Watt announced an intended spending of $236 million to upgrade the nation’s flood warning gauge networks. This is welcome news, but it must also be recognised that for flood warning to be truly effective we will need to pay more attention to what is done with the information the gauges provide.

May 6, 2023

Reserve Bank: economic malice or misreading of inflation? Weekly Roundup

Calling for a Menzies to rescue the Liberal Party from Dutton; The Reserve Bank: was it economic malice, enslavement to a simple formula, or a misreading of inflation?; and, National Cabinet: is it the best way to handle federal matters? Read on for the Weekly Roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy.

April 29, 2021

Pro-independence parties heading for a landslide in Scottish elections

While the world’s nations have been struggling to extricate themselves from the pandemic, the Scots have also strengthened their desire to extricate themselves from an increasingly undemocratic Union. After a year of polling showing more than fifty per cent of Scottish voters in favour of self-determination, not even a nasty, public spat between the current SNP leader, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, and her predecessor, Alex Salmond, has not forestalled the pro-independence juggernaut.

April 9, 2021

Australia assists Big Pharma to stall vaccine roll out.

_As the Australian vaccine rollout languishes the Australian Government appears to value pharma profits over protecting people from Covid.

July 16, 2024

Trump is the old man most likely to win the US election

For most of the past year, Joe Biden has been calming panickers in the inner circles of the Democrat Party, persuading them that the campaign was under control, that things were moving his way, not least because of Donald Trump’s criminal law problems. The big reveal at the first presidential debate showed an emperor without clothes, incoherent in his own attack, seemingly almost incapable of taking the battle to the enemy. It accentuated any impulse to feel that he’s already a dud and would be worse if re-elected.

June 22, 2024

Why inflation should soon resume falling

Let’s not goad the Reserve Bank to fight higher underlying inflation that can be corrected by disciplined fiscal policy and a more open and competitive economy.

August 25, 2023

We won’t fix inflation while economists stay in denial about causes

Led on by crusading Reserve Bank governors, the nation’s economists are determined to protect us from the scourge of inflation, no matter the cost in jobs lost.

July 13, 2023

A Human Rights Act for Australia

In 2005 we commenced a campaign for a Human Rights Act for Australia. In 2009 as part of our campaign a Bill was drafted to ‘respect, protect and promote Human Rights for Australia’. This model Bill formed the core of our group’s submission to the National Human Rights Consultation, chaired by Frank Brennan SJ OA. Unfortunately the Rudd Government rejected the proposed Human Rights Act.

Will Attorney General Mark Dreyfus and the Albanese government once more take up the challenge of reform?

July 5, 2023

It’s not Cricket! Grounds for confining sledging to the history books

Elite sport has the potential to uplift, inspire and connect individuals and groups in a way that is unrivalled in our culture. It can represent the soaring ambition and capabilities of our species, as well as our innate capacities for collaboration and compassion. Sport can be an unmatched training ground for developing character and creating role models. But so often there are aspects of sport culture that undermine its value proposition and bring out the worst in us. Sledging in cricket is one of those aspects.

August 16, 2021

Biden's summit on democracy - briefing notes for Scott Morrison

There was a longstanding view nurtured in the 60s and 70s that Western liberalism would inevitably take hold and reform our regional totalitarian states as prosperity rose and the capitalist system encouraged greater individualism. This hasn’t happened.

April 28, 2021

What have our governments done to tackle rates of Indigenous custody?

From one perspective one could see the conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd as a triumph of the American justice system - a proof, somehow, that American police are accountable to the law, that bad police practice, having its roots in racism will be found out, and that the jury system will get things right.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal