February 20, 2020

IAN DUNLOP. Emergency action on climate change is imperative

The first Australian National Climate Emergency Summit was in Melbourne Town Hall, 14-15 February 2020 - there will be many more.

August 30, 2024

That time when Canada cancelled its nuclear submarine order

Back in 1987, when no one knew that the Cold War was just about to end, the Canadian Government signed up to build 10 nuclear-powered submarines. That submarine program lasted for all of two years before being cancelled in 1989. No nuclear Canadian sub ever even began construction, let alone getting put in the water.

May 23, 2023

On borrowed time: Pezzullo proves he does not understand immigration

In his opening statement to the recent Senate Estimates hearing, Department of Home Affairs (DHA) Secretary Mike Pezzullo again proved he does not understand immigration policy or administration.

April 13, 2023

Unemployed workers are tired of being the RBAs blunt instrument

The term jobseeker needs to be dropped it is Orwellian in nature and has no place in a civil society.

September 30, 2022

In The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses with the myth Aboriginal people didnt fight back

First Nations people please be advised this article mentions colonial violence towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

February 24, 2020

MUNGO MACALLUM. Avoid the problem by changing the subject.

Scott Morrison’s technology diversion remains a roadmap without a destination, without milestones or landmarks, without a recognisable path and without even a clearly defined starting point.

August 26, 2024

Failed Australian purchase of advanced missile technology raises questions over the Albanese Government

Failed Australian purchase of advanced missile technology raises questions over the Albanese Government’s commitment to its sovereign defence plans, as China swoops in on the deal.

August 16, 2024

Vital for the functions of a real democracy

Long may P & I continue to add its perceptive voice to our national debate.

June 18, 2024

How Mike Baird's privatisation almost crippled the Newcastle container terminal

The terms of privatisation included an anti-competitive restriction on the development of a commercial-scale container terminal at Newcastle, primarily to boost the sale price of Port Botany.

May 23, 2024

What's wrong with carbon capture?

It sounds wonderful. Politicians and fossil fuel companies love it. But more often than not carbon capture and storage (CCS) is raised as a smokescreen for something that will harm the world.

September 23, 2023

Murdoch stepping down - Don't believe it!

_Rupert Murdoch is addicted to media and politics. He will be continually looking over Lachlan’s shoulder.

July 30, 2023

Students with authentic dysfunctional behaviour

In recent Pearls and Irritations essays there has been a difference of opinion between myself and Ross Fox, the Director of Catholic Education, Canberra and Goulburn. I believe this difference of opinion rests with the definition of students with severe behaviours and my assertion that private schools do not enrol them.

April 20, 2021

Vale Gary Johnston, founder and sponsor of the Submarines for Australia group

Gary Johnston sadly died after a short illness on 10 March 2021. Gary was the founder of the Submarines for Australia website and the generous sponsor of the associated research, submissions and reports published on the site.

March 2, 2021

China stands ready as the West fails its own test of moral leadership

Growing inequality, corruption and the monopolisation of power by a “rich-get-richer” self-serving elite have revealed democracy to be a sham. Meanwhile, China exports its vaccine to 27 overwhelmingly developing nations.From Covid to climate change to international trade and globalisation, Xi Jinping is trying to present China as a responsible global power.

January 30, 2021

Forked tongues: US duplicity on China revealed

For years, American officials have claimed the US wants China to succeed and prosper. A declassified document reveals that on the contrary, US policy was to implement a defence strategy capable of denying China sustained air and sea dominance.

March 8, 2020

CATHIE HULL. COVID-19 Infection, Isolation and Action

I was caught unawares by being exposed to COVID-19, despite thorough knowledge of the online medical research. I am now in home isolation. If I can be caught unawares, you can too.

September 27, 2023

Absence of systematic compensation for wrongful convictions compounds the injustice

Commentators have sought to predict what level of compensation Kathleen Folbigg will receive for her twenty years of wrongful imprisonment. None have asked a more important question: is it possible to adequately compensate a wrongfully convicted person for all the harms that are now known to ensue from prolonged incarceration?

July 27, 2023

400 years and counting: Your social status is determined by class

Due to the entrenched English class system, research has shown that the strong familial persistence of social status across generations has not changed in the UK across 400 years of accumulated data. With growing inequality and the emergence of ultra-wealthy and privileged classes in Australia - are we following the same path?

July 6, 2023

Australia needs to stop using the term VET Market

Education should not be seen as a buy and sell commodity.

May 29, 2023

Selling out our school system to profit multinationals

It was a shock but no real surprise to read that the multi-national company Inspired Education, which owns Reddam House school in the Sydneys eastern suburbs, now plans to set up more fully for-profit schools in other areas (Sydney Morning Herald, 27/5). Who thought it would come to this? Where the inexorable march of the privatisation of schooling in this country would reach a point where even schools in the private sector begin to sound the alarm.

May 8, 2023

Vale Allan Gyngell

A dear friend, amazing mentor and an invaluable China Matters board director who was instrumental to ensuring independent voices on China issues were still alive in Australia.

September 25, 2024

Australian politicians are playing NatCon politics

Peter Dutton’s campaign to make Palestinian refugees into figures of fear mirrors the provocations to the recent UK Islamophobic riots. These were inspired by politicians such as Nigel Farage as much as by far-right influencers. Both examples are connected to Donald Trump’s debate amplification of the far-right American lie that Haitian immigrants are eating the pets of people in Springfield, Ohio.

September 9, 2024

Next year’s US Taiwan policy: Trump versus Harris

Very much on the minds of the government as well as residents in Taiwan is the November election in the United States. The question is which candidate, Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, will oversee a more friendly policy toward Taiwan?

April 17, 2024

A new 60-day prescription policy may halve your visits to the GP and pharmacy

The changes will be particularly helpful for women living with conditions including epilepsy, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes, inflammatory bowel diseases and more.

September 2, 2023

Heading into trouble: Hazards of the Womens World Cup

Much of the health reform urgings I have presented over the years have emphasised the importance of prevention and the paucity of attention it receives. Less than 1.2% of our health budget is spent on preventing health problems. OK, but what has this to do with the Soccer world Cup?

August 24, 2023

A bonded approach to the education of skilled workers

Education Minister Jason Clares important review of education seems to have lost the plot. Secondary schoolers have been told for years that their aim should be university entrance. That approach has distorted the focus of secondary schooling toward achieving a high score in HSC while the technical side has been downgraded in both funding and status.

May 20, 2023

Primed for the ultimate AI disconnection

Time to leave for planet Zog. Thats what came to mind recently I as pondered an article about young Japanese men and female holograms.

April 9, 2023

Central Asia: USA high-level visits signal region's growing influence

Over the past two years, there has been an increasing global interest in Central Asia, which encompasses Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.

July 18, 2020

Why India and Russia Are Going to Stay Friends (Foreign Affairs 8.7.20)

Conventional wisdom holds that New Delhi will turn to Washington as it increases competition with Beijing. But Moscows importance cannot be ignored.

January 30, 2020

'Trump's 'Peace Plan', A Concoction of Humiliation, Cruelty, Illegality'

The world is being asked to believe that cruelties and illegalities amount to a feasible Trump plan for peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

January 30, 2020

Audit exposes Government's trust deficit

_Trust is a crucial element of government, in two different but related ways.

June 13, 2018

ANDREW GLIKSON. Silence over the acceleration of global warming.

To ignore evil is to become an accomplice (Martin Luther King)

If there is a single critical issue science has ever conveyed, it is that altering the composition of the Earths atmosphere can on__ly bear fatal consequences for nature and humanity. It is estimated that, to date, some 150,000 to 400,000 people world-wide have perished each year due to the direct and indirect effects of global warming (https://newrepublic.com/article/121032/map-climate-change-kills-more-people-worldwide-terrorism; https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/global-warming-and-health/), including for example 1833 in New Orleans, possibly 5000 in Porto Rico, 6329 by typhoon Haiyan in the Philippine. The list goes on. While these events have been documented in detail, the silence in most of the mainstream media regarding the connection between global warming on the one hand and the rising spate of hurricanes, storms and fires on the other hand, is deafening.

August 28, 2024

There are alternatives to Anglo-American capitalism, however unlikely they may sound

It is becoming less and less controversial or eccentric to claim that endless economic expansion and consumption, of a sort that the United States has so successfully championed, is simply incompatible with life on a finite planet. [This is Part II of a two-part series; read Part I.]

August 3, 2024

When elected the Albanese Government inherited a federal public service rather like a semi-regurgitated dog’s breakfast

Attempts have been made to tidy things up but too much reliance has been place on administrative measures rather than the solidity of new or amended primary legislation. While some commendable things have been done, the overall program has been short on ambition and imagination, and progress has been oh so slow.

May 31, 2024

We don’t know what Australian Jews think about Gaza

Since October 2023, much has been said about what Jewish Australians think about Israel’s war in Gaza. If you’ve been reading the statistics quoted in media articles, you can be forgiven for thinking that the vast majority of Australian Jews support Israel’s war in Gaza and believe that the student protests on Australian University campuses constitute antisemitism and should be shut down. In reality, we have no idea what the majority of Australian Jews feel about either of these issues because there is no representative survey that has asked us.

May 3, 2024

Australian aid to Ukraine: False narratives and US hegemony

On Sunday 28 April, Defence Minister Richard Marles announced $100 million in military aid to Ukraine. It was said to raise Australia’s support to $1 billion in support of Ukraine’s attempt to counter “Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion”.

August 4, 2023

Australian Universities Accord lost in a mire of confusion about equity

The Australian Universities Accord Interim Report shows an echidna on its cover, in keeping, Education Minister Jason Clare acknowledges, with the spikey issues he is attempting to address in the education system. His goal is to reduce inequality in Australian society while improving the quality of education across the system.

September 8, 2024

A 'liberal Hawk' is a Hawk nonetheless. Time to focus less on the 'liberal', more on the 'Hawk'

On the liberal Left, we consider ourselves above judging people by their appearance. We don’t presume to know what a person will or won’t do because they are Black or a woman. But as we learned from the Obama presidency, where we all hoped he would bring the global war on terror to a close, he expanded it – and his successors have done nothing to change course.

July 28, 2024

Playing the Trump card

In the theatre of politics, Trump has always upstaged. Whether cast as hero or villain he insatiably dominates the spotlight. A diviner of public sentiment, throughout his various professional iterations, Trump has elevated his unique gift for performance into an artform. In his incarnation as a politician, he has perfected the knack of cannibalising American statesmanship into American showmanship.

April 11, 2024

There is no simple fix to residential aged care

Aged care staff are unhappy and many older people in residential aged care are unhappy. Certainly, the NSW Health Minister and the hospitals are unhappy because there are 600 people sitting in acute hospital beds who could be in aged care facilities.

August 11, 2023

Melissa Parke announced as ICAN Internationals new Executive Director

Melissa Parke has been announced as the new Executive Director of the ICAN international office in Geneva.

June 25, 2023

Elders the ideal government consultants

We have a lot to learn from the PWC debacle and Julian Cribbs paper Look out! Here Come the Elders.

May 30, 2023

Visiting the doctor in the age of AI

On 8 May, Four Corners (Artificial Intelligence Rising: the new reality of artificial life), portrayed an isolated man’s relationship to a robotic woman and a sex doll, and in another scenario, artificial memories were generated for family members to communicate with the long dead - weird stuff.

April 13, 2023

There is an irony in the Voice debate

There is a profound irony in the current Voice debate could Dutton be one of the Yes campaigns significant vote winners?

April 4, 2023

Exposing Israels violations upset the Israeli lobby

The main Israeli lobby operating under the name of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), a well-financed private group, is worried.

September 22, 2022

Ukraine: Western missteps lead to something much worse

When even our media of conscience lose interest in the details of emerging East West crises the results can be tragic.

October 4, 2024

The ABC’s racism review is scathing. Can Aunty find the strength of character to properly address it?

I am writing this because no one at the ABC — whose producers invited me onto their coronation coverage as a guest — has uttered one word of public support. Not one ABC executive has publicly refuted the lies written or spoken about me. I don’t hold any individual responsible; this is an institutional failure.

September 14, 2024

Desperate junta even more brutal – Asian Media Report

In Asia media this week: Myanmar recalls retired veterans. Plus: Race starts for Japan’s new PM; US Gaza stance an obstacle for AUKUS; Kolkata protests over gruesome rape-murder; China-Africa summit strengthens South-South ties; Pope’s Indonesia visit contradicts ‘clash of civilisations’.

August 8, 2024

The Olympic Games are not neutral and often used for non-sporting political and cultural purposes as the Paris Opening showed

I’ve never been a fan of the Olympics, although I occasionally check to see how Australia is going on the medal tally. I watched a bit of the opening extravaganza – it certainly wasn’t a “ceremony” – but got bored with Gallic self-importance, so I missed the Last Supper parody with a drag queen representing Jesus.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal