March 16, 2020

JOHN MENADUE.- Democratic Renewal

_Many Australians are sick and tired of politics and politicians .The situation is worsening .The community is deserting the major political parties in droves.

February 17, 2020

New Figures Show Huge Funding Increases for Private Schools & Cuts to Public Schools

_New figures show that government (Commonwealth and State) funding increases massively favoured private schools over public schools between 2009-10 and 2017-18.

April 2, 2020

JUDITH WHITE. Save the arts, save the nation

As the Federal Government rolls out one bailout package after another, the arts is being ignored. ‘Culture Heist’ author Judith White argues that saving the arts is integral to saving the nation.

March 10, 2020

DUNCAN GRAHAM Reporting from afar using mining models

_The Australian Associated Press closure in June will shut Australians out of much domestic journalism. Courts, councils and commissions whose workings underpin democracy will often go unreported.

October 7, 2020

Do US Intelligence Probes Against China Violate the 'International Order' ?

The U.S. stands accused of violating that ‘international order’ by flying military spy planes under civilian “false flags” of other countries while collecting intelligence on China’s defenses. The U.S. may not only be violating international norms but also undermining confidence that it will abide by any agreements it enters.

February 21, 2020

Monthly digest on housing affordability and homelessness – Jan/Feb 2020

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 12, 2020

A smart Indian response to China (East Asia Forum 5.7.20)

The Indian government is under massive pressure to retaliate for the deaths of Indian soldiers in a border clash with China. While some bilateral measures may be unavoidable, India’s broader interest is not to reduce its engagement with China.

March 11, 2020

JOHN DWYER. Understanding the public health imperatives required to minimise infections with the Corona virus. (Part One).

Providing communities with accurate, timely and logical information about the control measures required to minimise the harm associated with infectious diseases is essential to avoid both complacency and panic.

February 27, 2020

JACK WATERFORD. Most sex abuse occurs in the home

WHY does Peter Dutton and the Home Affairs Department need more high -tech powers when the real problem of sex abuse is in the home?

July 11, 2021

B-minus for Australia’s threatened species recovery efforts

Australia’s unique wildlife is under increasing threat, with legislation failing to provide adequate protection for species in crisis. Release of the new Threatened Species Strategy provides an opportunity for Australia to lift its game but will the current legislative opportunity also be seized?

March 24, 2020

JACK WATERFORD.-COVID-19 mapping must go beyond the sick to the well

Only mass screenings will tell us about the dynamics of the disease

October 13, 2020

LobbyLand. The politics of fossil fuels - the pits!

Fossil fuel lobbying is a cancer inflicting death, illness and misery on Australian society. How does it operate, what are its impacts and how can society allow this disabling condition to continue without treatment?

August 5, 2022

Gary Highland: Changing the parliament and changing the country

_Kerrynne Liddle had to wait a nail biting 25 days to be confirmed as the final Aboriginal person elected to the Federal Parliament at the May 21 election.

July 28, 2022

Waiting for Gonski: a response to Trevor Cobbold

Trevor Cobbold’s recent review of Waiting for Gonski, how Australia failed its schools, will resonate with many. He is generous in his praise, forthright in his criticisms, and remains focused on his preferred policy options for the future. But his critique side-steps the big problems facing Australia’s schools, and he fails to recognise the key ingredients in any solution to the inequality (and ineffectiveness) of Australia’s school system.

October 30, 2020

No power in the Lowy Asia Power Index 2020

The Lowy Asia Power Index 2020 reveals a misunderstanding of the concept of power, and some underlying subjectivity and biases, undermines its usefulness. This is illustrated in the measures used concerning technology, military power, and the impact of the pandemic….This enterprise is at least partly funded by the Australian government security agencies. The benefit to taxpayers is not self-evident.

March 9, 2020

CHRIS BONNOR. The pendulum swings (yet again) for NSW schools

_One thing we used to tell beginning teachers was to never punish the whole class because a few students were misbehaving.

May 13, 2021

Mike Pompeo and “The Xinjiang Genocide Determination”

On 19 January 2021, his last day in office, Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, issued a “determination” that “the PRC, under the direction and control of the CCP, has committed genocide against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang”. On taking office, Pompeo’s successor Antony Blinken immediately agreed with this view.

July 18, 2021

Sunday environmental round up.

Plants and growth: where to plant 60 billion trees in the USA; climate change destroying kelp forests; burning biomass destroys native forests and fuels climate change; and forbs disappearing from Victoria’s basalt plains. Plus degrowth, of the economy rather than vegetation.

March 25, 2020

CHRIS SIDOTI.- Archbishop Anthony saves the day.

I laughed so hard I could hard stop myself from crying. There’s no limit to the wonderful capacity of human beings to produce clowns to make us laugh our way through every crisis.

April 14, 2021

Morrison’s minders at the heart of his doldrums

_Perhaps a day will come when the champion rorters, liars, and conscious mis-managers of public resources are before a serious corruption commission and out on their ears.

August 27, 2022

Peter Sainsbury's Environment Report: Rewilding the USA’s west and saving the Amazon’s headwaters

Wolves and beavers could recreate the wild West. Indigenous communities fight for the Amazon’s sacred headwaters. Is your battery killing mine workers?

May 11, 2021

Armed Neutrality: an alternative, principled defence policy to safeguard an independent Australia, keep us out of wars and promote peace- Part 1

Australia’s defence policy has for decades been based on dependence on a foreign power with foreign policy subservience to it. This policy has led Australia into disastrous wars and with the establishment of their military bases on our soil, led to loss of our sovereignty. Would an alternative defence policy based on armed neutrality help us regain our national sovereignty, safeguard continental Australia and promote peace?

November 4, 2020

Is Trump the worst economic manager in almost a century?

As he has done with the property business built up by his father, Trump has squandered the economic inheritance from Obama by poor management.

May 9, 2021

Abusive Israeli policies constitute crimes of apartheid, persecution

Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The finding is based on an overarching Israeli government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians and grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem.

July 22, 2022

Orban's Australian sycophants

Australians welcoming the defeat of our nascent religious right in the May election need to pay attention to the echoes of the American right wing strategies looming ahead of their 2024 election, and the faction in Australia that shares those goals.

April 7, 2021

Morrison’s over-hyping of vaccine delivery

If the mass vaccination of Australians against the severe effects of Covid-19 proves to be a complete political debacle for the government, it seems likely at this moment that it will be more a consequence of its being over-hyped by the prime minister than of serious mismanagement of the program, or even the incompetence which is increasingly tending to accompany programs devised by new anti-public sector methods.

April 1, 2020

FRANK STILWELL.- Beyond the Global Coronavirus Crisis: Austerity of Recovery?

These are hard times. The twin crisis of public health and economic downturn has no simple solution.

March 3, 2020

GEOFF RABY COVID-19 is unlikely to be Xi’s Chernobyl moment(AFR 2.2.2020)

Cynicism is prevalent but is trumped by the CCP’s patriotic narrative and the government’s performance in delivering on people’s expectations.

April 3, 2020

STEPHEN DUCKETT, ANIKA STOBART, WILLMACKEY.- If coronavirus cases don’t grow any faster, our health system will probably cope (The Conversations 1.4.2020)

The growth in COVID-19 cases in Australia appears to have slowed across all states, through a combination of tighter border control and spatial distancing.

April 13, 2021

Lobby Land. The power of the health lobby. Health ministers may be in office but they are not in power. An update.

The major barrier to health reform is the power of providers- the health lobby. A succession of Australian health ministers Liberal and Labor for three decades have failed in any serious health reform. We have been going around in circles. It is very depressing. The new shadow minister Mark Butler could succeed as Minister if he can find a way to manage and neutralise the provider/lobbyists. But not otherwise. And don’t look the the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing for much help. It was State Premiers, State Health Ministers and State Health officials who drove the fight against the pandemic, not the Commonwealth and its agencies.

March 15, 2019

NOEL TURNBULL. A dangerous decline

It is symptomatic of much that is disturbing and dangerous about Australian political discourse that Australia’s continuing decline in international public sector corruption rankings is given so little attention.

June 26, 2022

John Brennan: UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, East Jerusalem & Israel

_The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, issues first report – June, 2022……..A WAY FORWARD. “The question, I believe, is not to devise a means for persisting on trying to separate them, but to see whether it is possible for them to live together as fairly and peacefully as possible” Edward Said, 1935-2003, born in the British protectorate of Mandatory Palestine; public intellectual, Professor of Literature and founder of the academic field of Postcolonial Studies.

May 25, 2021

Where next for private healthcare?

The future of private health in Australia – both private hospitals and private health insurance – is under challenge. The proportion of the population with insurance has declined over the past decade. The insured population is getting older, which is putting upward pressure on insurance premiums, which leads to more people dropping out, especially younger people, creating a death spiral. Statistics released by the insurance regulator last week confirm that trend continues.

March 23, 2020

IAN WEBSTER. Too many experts at a time of crisis.

This is a time when advice needs to be considered, balanced, respectful and well-founded.

February 7, 2020

GEOFF RABY. Australia-China:The year ahead (UTS/ACRI Forum5.2.2020)

Civil emergencies have marked the start of the New Year for both Canberra and Beijing. Each in its own way is likely to have some implications for foreign policy and how the bilateral relationship is managed.

June 14, 2022

Are Labor just coalition lite on climate?

Australian voters were ecstatic to be rid of the Coalition, but have we jumped out of the frying pan into the fire on climate?

May 18, 2022

What Ministers should do - Human Rights in the election

_Human rights experts have welcomed Labor’s plan to restore merit appointments to the Australian Human Rights Commission, and to appoint a global ambassador for human rights. Nine years of partisan ‘captain’s picks’ by the Coalition government have shredded the Commission’s impartiality and subdued its voice as a champion of the vulnerable. Its funding has also been decimated.

May 11, 2021

The devil in the detail of identity politics

If anyone was in any doubt about whether Australian politicians speak the same language, or swim in the same ocean, it would be worth thinking about labels of “identity politics.” Or “political correctness’’.

May 5, 2021

Tasmanian state election result has important lessons for Labor and Liberal parties

The headlines and bland media commentary about the island states weekend election indicates that the Tasmania’s Liberal Government won a major vote of confidence for its policies. But they may end up with just a one seta majority.

April 27, 2021

The Biden-Suga agreement shows the importance of the Western Pacific

The primary importance of the Biden-Suga summit is that Mr Suga was the first foreign leader to be received by President Biden in Washington. The second such visitor will be President Moon of South Korea - not Britain’s Boris Johnson or Germany’s Angela Merkel. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is nowhere in sight.

March 25, 2020

MIKE SCRAFTON. COVID-19: ‘Dirty hands’ and political leadership in a crisis

Normally, bringing ethics and crisis politics together in a crisis is like putting Siamese fighting fish in the same tank; only one is likely to survive.

June 10, 2021

Competition isn’t improving the aged care sector

A new study finds more competition isn’t associated with better quality of care or lower prices in aged care, prompting policy reform to address sources of market failures.

August 26, 2020

The world cannot afford a war between US and China

It is so obvious that the world cannot afford a war between US and China.

We have a very serious COVID pandemic with us. We have to try to feed the 7-8 billions global citizens around the world affected by this pandemic and keep them safe from illnesses and dying. We could be facing even a greater economic depression of 1930s in coming months and years.

April 26, 2021

Australia's cruelty to refugees: which legal 'straw' might break the camel's back?

_In April 2021, Australia’s harsh treatment of immigration detainees under a 1994 policy – whereby anyone without an entry visa who seeks asylum from persecution must be detained, potentially indefinitely – is facing two court challenges. Could either case end the regime’s systemic cruelty?

December 18, 2020

The Most Lethal Virus is Not COVID. It is War

My personal Oscar goes to Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald,whose unrelenting rousing drivel about the “existential threat” (of China/Russia, mostly China) was illustrated by a smiling Scott Morrison, the PR man who is Australia’s prime minister.

August 11, 2022

Diego Garcia: Stealing a nation and how 'international rules' don't apply if it is the US or UK

One of John Pilger’s most remarkable documentaries, bringing a little-known story to a wide audience, is Stealing a Nation, about how British governments ruthlessly expelled the population of the Chagos Islands, a crown colony in the Indian Ocean, in the late 1960s and early 70s to make way for an American military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island.

July 16, 2018

GAURAB SHUMSHER THAPA. China and Nepal reach across the Himalayan divide (Asia Times 6/7/2018)

_Nepalese Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s visit to China last month was closely watched by both domestic and international observers.

February 10, 2021

China does not like the coup in Myanmar

Since the military coup in Myanmar on 1 February 2021, there have been reports and allegations that China approves of or is able to spin the military takeover to its advantage. This is unlikely to be true.

May 3, 2022

Wrong way, not just kidding, on climate change

Ross Garnaut has said the leaders are “just kidding” on climate change in the election campaign. It’s worse than that. They are leading us the wrong way.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal