March 30, 2020

The not-so-dirty secret the Covid-19 panel wants to hide Part 1

Officials are not independent. They are more loyal to ministers than the public need for information

June 4, 2018

CLAIRE JONES. Italy crisis poses dilemma for Draghi over ECBs next step.

Central bank hawks want to keep plan to end QE but market jitters could force rethink.

July 9, 2024

Half hearted housing policies ignore key role of public housing: Michael Pascoe

The housing crisis will not be solved for those who are suffering the most by the mish mash of half hearted, small steps, and policy responses currently favoured by governments. They lack the courage to commit to direct government intervention on a sufficient scale in the failed housing market in the form of publicly funded, developed and owned housing for the most vulnerable. _

June 14, 2024

Tyranny of proximity

The pundits are already in a tizz: What’ll happen to defence, AUKUS, trade and other relationships should Trump win in November? More pressing and certain is how we’ll cope when Indonesia’s President-elect Prabowo Subianto takes office in October.

April 16, 2024

Ok, Allah, we passed your test

There are five major and hundreds of minor religions in the world. But don’t worry - yours is the right one. - Anon

July 24, 2023

Prison hulks and river blades: fortress building in the climate-castrophe era

Britain has commissioned a prison hulk to house immigrants, in a cruel re-enactment of history. Meanwhile, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has implemented two strategies to stop immigrants crossing the Rio Grande into America: one is a floating barrier with razor wire and rolling motion that pulls people under the water; the other is an apparent order to push people into the river, including mothers holding small children.

July 8, 2024

American exceptionalism and the rule of law

There is an oft-quoted legal dictum known as “The Rule of Law” that posits that all people are equal before the law regardless of status or standing, and that all must obey the law. How then (one must ask) does such a widely-held principle conform to the recent ruling of the US Supreme Court that a President (such as Donald Trump) should be immune from prosecution for acts that would normally be considered to be illegal?

July 1, 2024

Australian universities’ leadership teams must cease intimidation and harassment: IPAN

The Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) denounced the decision of ANU to expel Beatrice Tucker and called on universities to disconnect their association with the military industrial complex.

May 28, 2024

Hacking’s victims fight back

Fresh revelations suggest that the scandalous behaviour at London-based Murdoch newspapers was wider and deeper than previously believed.

May 12, 2021

To Be or Not to Be? Revisiting the question of Tokyos Olympics

Three months ago (19 February), I wrote of the Troubled Games of the XXXll Olympiad in the context of the dual crises facing Japan: continuing, unresolved radiation emanating from the 2011 Fukushima quake/tsunami/meltdown on the one hand and the COVID 19 public health crisis on the other. The Games was supposed to represent their resolution, leading the world into a new era of recovery, hope and peace, but as the event itself approahes, both remain unresolved. Here I focus solely on the Olympics (and Paralympics).

March 29, 2020

KERRY BREEN and KERRY GOULSTON.- Further update: An apolitical approach to the Covid-19 crisis - hopes are fading.

In the eleven days since we first tried to make sense of the Federal Governments approach to the current health crisis, little has changed in its approach.

July 16, 2024

Legislating for homelessness

“To be good citizens means owning your own home. If you don’t, you’ve failed in some way” – Sophia Maalsen, University of Sydney.

May 10, 2024

Australia’s stunted mainstream defence and security imagination

With Australian defence writers now arguing for society to be reimagined as an ‘input to defence capability’, we are witnessing further incursions in the Democracy – Defence Nexus.

April 23, 2024

Lions lying down with the lambs

Rwanda is now a peaceful country which remembers each year, the awful genocide of 1994. People can blindly become killers if their leaders are successful in instilling enough fear into them. Learning from history is an antidote.

April 7, 2022

Jonathan Holmes: In real terms the ABC is still going backwards

Dave Sharma, the Liberal federal member for Wentworth in Sydneys Eastern Suburbs, is fighting for his political survival against independent candidate Allegra Spender, who supports a well-funded ABC.

July 11, 2021

The world is in a crisis of our own making - is it sowing the seeds of change?

The world is in a crisis. And many of our leaders are failing us. People are despondent, angry and sad, many unable to see their loved ones, many more not knowing how to cope. There is no end in sight, unless we look beyond the concreted corridors of power.

March 1, 2020

JOHN AUSTEN. Sydney Metro developments

Are recent developments with Sydneys Metro railway straws in the wind or embers heralding an infrastructure inferno?

September 30, 2024

Media complicit in the crimes of Israel

The pro-Israel bias in Western reporting makes the media utterly complicit in Israel’s war crimes, including when Israeli soldiers throw Palestinians off a roof.

August 25, 2024

Gongs and butterflies

Twice a year – on Australia Day and the King’s Birthday – Australia honours those among us who have gone the extra mile. And twice a year there is dismay and confusion in the press and social media that some of the awards have gone to people who are patently unworthy – party hacks of the right or left, shady businessmen or union officials who have channelled money or influence or votes to their side of politics, and so on.

June 17, 2024

Superficial coverage of Dutton’s nuclear policy does Australia a disservice

Noel Turnbull correctly writes that media coverage of the federal opposition’s nuclear power proposal is superficial. There is a very wide range of as yet unanswered issues.

May 23, 2024

UK’s legal process a form of ‘psychological torture’, as Assange battles US

John Shipton has been in London, observing his son Julian Assange’s appeal against extradition to the United States.

September 13, 2023

Biden in Hanoi: The Domino theory rises again

By chance, US president Bidens goodwill visit to Vietnams communist government in Hanoi came just 50 years after the notorious 1972 Christmas bombings.

May 4, 2021

Has the Governments economic strategy really changed, and what can we expect in future?

The Governments new focus on unemployment as the key target for budget policy is welcome. But it will need to spend more and therefore tax more, if Australia is to achieve its full economic potential and jobs growth.

March 2, 2020

Afghanistan is not a war without a purpose.

The Washington Post__has obtainedformerlysecret information about the Afghanistan\ war, collected from military leaders, diplomats and others. Their account strongly contradicts that of successive US administrations.__

August 31, 2023

Plea deal pitfalls for the worlds foremost political prisoner

Julian Assange could hardly be blamed for considering a possible plea deal that would alleviate the immense suffering he has endured since becoming the object of state persecution. Terms less brutal than those he potentially faces anywhere up to a 175-year prison sentence in the cell of a US supermax can only be seen as appealing.

July 11, 2020

'Haunted' Morrison adds more fuel to the Asia-Pacific fire

We now know a little more about the prime ministers fleeting, but significant references to the 1930s in his speech launching the defence update last week.

September 21, 2023

A climate of insanity

Inherent in the nature of insanity is the fact that those inflicted by it are unaware of their mental state.

July 8, 2022

Environment: Supreme Court gives the world a climate headache

US Supreme Court favours democracy over climate action. Overshooting 2oC of warming will be bad news for ecosystems. Space tourism preparing for launch.

August 6, 2024

Panic as Japan stocks take biggest dive since Black Monday, 1987

If it was panic last Friday, the Asahi Shimbun declared when the stock market fell more than 2,200 points, or 5.8 percent. It was double panic by this afternoon (Monday) when the market fell even more, by 3,800 points to the 31,000 mark.

June 15, 2024

BBC reporting on Ukraine

The BBC has a loose bolt somewhere. It has now begun a strange campaign saying it is dedicated to non-spin reporting.

August 7, 2023

Book review: The Next Civil War: dispatches from the American future

The United States is going through a profound transition to which there are only difficult and costly choices. In this latest book on Americas political chaos, we are taken deep into the future of an unacceptable but perhaps unavoidable breakup of the union.

July 12, 2023

Con job: Australian Sea Dumping Bill facilitates fossil fuel mining

Governments around the world are promoting and subsidising carbon capture and storage (CCUS) to facilitate an increase in fossil gas mining. This will dash any hope of controlling world emissions at a time when there are deep concerns for climate change becoming uncontrollable.

August 18, 2021

Transparency in the dark on foreign interference.

The Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act does nothing to enlighten us on who is exerting undue influence on Australias political or election processes

September 26, 2024

Israel’s true objectives in Gaza, and why it will fail

Never in its history of war, and military occupation, has Israel been so incapable of developing a coherent plan for its future, and the future of its victims.

September 12, 2024

Lessons from history: The urgent need for diplomacy in Ukraine

Two years ago, as the conflict in Ukraine escalated, I felt compelled to write about the parallels between this war and previous Western interventions, namely the Vietnam War and the Polish-Soviet War of the early 20th century. It seemed that the world had forgotten the lessons of my young adulthood – that there is a glaring difference between the values U.S. foreign policy espouses and its behaviour, and there is a great danger in escalating conflicts with Russia.

August 8, 2024

How to get good publicity? Ban journos

A tip for politicians worried about bothersome journos upsetting talking points with probing questions: Don’t invite peskies to your pressies.

May 27, 2023

The budget left the homeless, homeless

The housing problem is huge and complex but the plight of the homeless is growing and must be addressed urgently. To solve the problem, what are the practicalities of manufactured housing and their financing?

April 12, 2023

President Biden resorts to extortion

President Biden has resorted to extortion to destroy one of Chinas leading digital companies ByteDance, the owner of the highly successful social media group, TikTok.

April 5, 2023

The negative consequences of the Philippines choice of the US over China

The Philippines has clearly chosen the U.S. over China in their struggle for regional hegemony. The Marcos Jnr administration says that it is in its national interest to do so. But there will be significant negative consequences as well.

February 6, 2021

Challenges to the Political and Peace Settlement Process in Afghanistan

The past 12 months saw progress towards political and peace settlements in Afghanistan. However, this progress is conditional upon further developments in 2021, and attitudes range from cautious optimism to outright pessimism from both Afghan and international stakeholders.

July 11, 2024

Facts sacred, pacts not

It’s a hoary oldie publicity hook: Imagine something improbable, then feed off the controversy.

April 18, 2024

Apparition, Ghosthunter, Fallowhaunt – what our intelligence agencies do in the shadows

A recent intelligence controversy in New Zealand is a telling lesson about how little influence junior parties like New Zealand and Australia have over allied intelligence operations.

April 11, 2021

Superannuation is much more than one man's legacy

No one is as quick to defend Australias superannuation system, and the legislated plan to increase compulsory superannuation to 12 per cent of wages by 2025, as its architect, former Prime Minister Paul Keating. But as is often the case when fundamental assumptions are questioned and legacies are at stake, the rhetoric has become more heated and the analysis less careful.

October 5, 2024

Coups, covert ops, dirty tricks: how the US abused its power from 1947

“Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Carmel Offie, and Frank Wisner were the grand masters. If you were in a room with them you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell.”

July 14, 2024

Allies playing gods

Every generation, or thereabouts, has its moment of unlearning or forgetting two salutary lessons that should be indelibly imprinted on the memory and the consciousness with the advent of war: first, idiosyncrasies or hubris, or both, can overpower political leaders; second allies are not necessarily friends no matter how much they may seem like us, nor are we like them. The appearances are an illusion. Worse, assuming the identity of the ally is an appropriation unworthy of a sovereign, ethical people; indeed, it is an indictment.

September 18, 2023

Understanding the rules of the China debate

China wants to expand its sphere of influence; the West, thankfully, is devoid of such base instincts.

June 14, 2023

China warns: International organisations are not parks as US seeks UNESCO membership

London/Beijing China has called on the United States to shoulder its responsibilities and pay its arrears to the UNESCO after Washington’s plan to rejoin the United Nations’ cultural and scientific agency was announced on Monday.

May 13, 2021

Covid political stress testing

In July, 2020, Armend Bekaj, writing on the News Website of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), in Sweden, argued that those who are democracy practitioners and promoters are regrettably being drawn into a misguided debate about which political system is better at tackling the [Covid] pandemic, democracies or autocracies.He noted the already countless articles on this topic.

October 3, 2024

The impact of China's rising soft power

A recent article in the US journal Foreign Affairs, written by Daniel Mattingly of Yale University argues persuasively that: “ China’s Soft Sell of Autocracy is Working”.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal