February 12, 2020

HANNAH AULBY. Strangling Accountability.

The Centre for Public Integrity invites you to the inaugural National Integrity Forum: “Strangling Accountability”.

January 29, 2020

MIKE SCRAFTON. Mnuchin, Thunberg, Economics and Science

The comments of US Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin concerning Greta Thunberg were meant to be droll. However, they reveal a serious and dangerous cognitive dissonance affecting much of the world’s political elite.

September 12, 2021

Sunday environmental round up.

Small farmers and local, sustainable food production more likely to feed the world than multinational corporations supported by government subsidies. Health professionals come out fighting on climate change and Biden hears the roar. 2020 and the planet is in its worst shape ever.

February 14, 2020

RUCHIR SHARMA. How Technology Saved China's Economy(NYT 20.1.2020)

_Landing in Shanghai recently, I found myself in the middle of a tech revolution remarkable in its sweep.

January 31, 2020

GREGORY CLARK. Tokyo-Moscow Territorial Games.

_It’s not often that a world leader, or anyone else for that matter, gets unknowingly to celebrate the funeral for something dear and departed from him.

January 1, 2019

MICHAEL KEATING. The Best of 2018: Trickle down economics and the Emma Alberici article.

The ABC says that their decision to withdraw Emma Alberici’s article was because it represented an opinion for which there is allegedly no evidence. In fact there is plenty of evidence that increasing corporate profits will not lead to any increase in investment or employment and wages if aggregate demand continues to remain weak. Furthermore this evidence has been endorsed by the IMF, the OECD and others. Can the ABC cite anyone or provide evidence to the contrary, other than the ramblings of Scott Morrison and the Business Council?

February 18, 2020

MYRIAM ROBIN. The think tank behind Australia's changing view of China.(AFR 15.2.20200

On Tuesday in the Australian Senate, Labor’s Kim Carr rose to his feet, thundering about “hawks intent on fighting a new cold war”.

March 6, 2020

MARK BUCKLEY. Rita Hayworth via Graham Green

I started to cull my books recently. As old age approaches I routinely decide that I need to gain more space, and to really get rid of what I will never get around to reading, sort of like “use it, or lose it”.

December 10, 2020

The New English Puritans

The United Kingdom has been taken over by Puritans. A Uruguayan footballer was forced to apologise for writing a tweet to a friend who had congratulated him on his goal scoring, “Gracias, Negrito.” Negrito is a term of affection in South America.

March 16, 2020

IAN JOHNSON.-China bought the West time. The West squandered it.(NYT 14.3.2020)

_Why did so many countries watch the epidemic unfold for weeks as though it was none of their concern?

December 27, 2020

BBC HARDtalk interview: Has Covid-19 weakened the West?

Singaporean Diplomat Kishore Mahbubani discusses how the current pandemic has shifted the global balance.

February 3, 2020

ELEANOR FLYNN et al. Australian Catholic Women still listening for leadership from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference

As a group of women who seek the equality of Women in the Australian Church, Women’s Wisdom in the Church (WWITCH) are appalled by the recent abolition of the stand-alone Council for Australian Catholic Women, and the closure of the Office for the Participation of Women in the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC).

January 31, 2020

BARNEY FORAN. Its the economy stupid, but lets make it fit for purpose

Media rants on our summer firestorms blame the lack of fire preparedness or a tardy emissions policy. To nudge Australia out of harm’s way over the next fifty years requires systemic and harmonious change over six big areas: implementing local firecare systems, more taxes to pay for it, enacting the social contract to bring us all along, building in fire resistance, developing a fit-for-purpose economy and finally, driving the first five by more benign personal consumption patterns.

June 20, 2021

Oliver Stone on the US Military, Industrial, Money, Media and Security Complex with never ending wars and death (Video)

February 6, 2020

JONATHAN PAUL MARSHALL: Siemens and Adani

German company Siemens has decided to support the Adani Carmichael mine, by providing a signalling system for the rail line. However, their justification seem more about fulfilling their recently signed contract, than preserving a functional ecology, or discovering the problems with business deals in advance.

September 1, 2022

Terrorist-preoccupied Israel issues latest license for thuggery

While the world was distracted by brutalities in Ukraine, Yemen, Myanmar, Somalia and by a threatening US, China conflict, Israeli forces raided the offices of six Palestinian human rights organisations, and after stealing equipment and documents, soldiers welded doors shut.

April 11, 2021

Sunday environmental round up, 11 April 2021

Factions of the Liberal and National parties continue their coal wars in NSW. Scientists in the USA recommend solar geoengineering research but a community backlash delays experiments in Sweden. Health workers hold up the Adani’s mine development.

July 5, 2020

Drop the xenophobia and Cold War tactics - respect Shaoquett Moselmane's rights

A healthy civil and democratic society depends on citizens’ ability to weigh up diverse views, to re-frame issues and to consider the dangers when powerful people make claims without any obvious evidence.

April 3, 2020

HARSH MANDER. A pandemic in an unequal India (Hindu 1.4.20)

The irony is that a pandemic has been brought into India by people who can afford plane tickets, but while they will buy private health services, the virus will devastate the poor who they infect and who have little access to health care.

February 26, 2020

JOHN TULLOH. The agonising slow death of Syria.

An imminent anniversary will be a painful reminder for a man who grew up as a quiet and studious person and who once had looked forward to a comfortable life as an ophthalmologist. Instead he finds himself a reviled figure soaked in the blood of tens of thousands of his victims and the cause of ’the biggest humanitarian horror story of the 21st century’, as the UN put it.

May 17, 2022

Ending the war of attrition in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has degenerated into a savage war of attrition that each side believes it will win, but which in reality both sides will lose. Ukraine should intensify the search for a negotiated peace of the kind that was on the table in March, but which was abandoned following the Russian atrocities in Bucha.

February 28, 2020

Barnaby will never be PM

Many outstanding politicians are remembered for doing something special for their country, or perhaps for a lifetime of sustained effort for the country’s benefit. Barnaby Joyce was named “Australia’s best retail politician” by another politician - one Tony Abbott. Now that endorsement does muddy the waters somewhat, but a reference is a reference.

August 24, 2022

We need more than an Auditor-General’s report on COVID-19 vaccination

The _recent Auditor-General’s report on the COVID-19 vaccine rollout_ gave the Department of Health a C-minus – late starting work, not paying close attention to the curriculum, but scrambling to catch up and deliver an adequate but not wholly satisfactory performance. However, the aged care vaccine rollout raises a fundamental issue outside the scope of the audit.

July 19, 2020

The humbling of the Anglo-American world (AFR 12.7.20)

What separates the US and the UK from other democracies is extravagant self-belief.

July 22, 2022

Canberra wants a new arms race in Asia

Australia’s new defence minister has warned the region is facing a dangerous military build-up. His solution? Let’s arm to the teeth with America’s help.

February 21, 2021

Abortion: people want clear-cut answers but it's not that simple

For many religious and political conservatives, “pro-life” often becomes convenient rhetorical shorthand for avoiding the broad spectrum of urgent contemporary life issues.

February 12, 2020

JONATHAN PAUL MARSHALL. Barnaby Joyce and fantasies of Climate Technology

Fantasies about improved technologies, often seem to inhibit effective responses to climate change. This is illustrated through a brief commentary on Barnaby Joyce’s comments on climate policy after his closely failed challenge for leadership of the National Party.

September 30, 2022

Beijing ‘won’t be threatened’ into changing Taiwan plans, analysts say

China’s foreign ministry lodged ‘stern representations’ with the US after President Joe Biden again said American troops would defend the island if the PLA attacks.

April 2, 2020

SHIRO ARMSTRONG.- Is Australia trading too much with China (EAF 16.3.2020)

China accounts for close to a quarter of all of Australia’s international trade, and over a third of its exports, including both goods and services. Is Australia trading too much with China and too dependent on the Chinese economy, as a lot of the public commentary would have you believe?

November 30, 2017

DOUGLAS NEWTON. First World War Centenaries that really matter are looming

Centenary moments of huge significance are upon us: the centenary of the so-called ‘Lansdowne Peace Letter’ of 29 November 1917, and the centenary of the publication of the texts of the so-called ‘Secret Treaties’ in Britain, beginning on 12 December 1917. The possibility of peace was suddenly on the front page. Sensational diplomatic deals underpinning the war on the Allied side were exposed to the world. Will these centenaries be noticed in Australia? Or will we go on treating the centenary of the Great War as a chance to run again and again a kind of national ‘show-reel’ of battle honours?

April 2, 2020

MARY KELLY. Gaza must be given the right to fight the Covid-19 pandemic

Australia must call on Israel to lift the crippling blockade so that Gazans can be given a chance to fight Covid-19.

January 26, 2021

Trump’s presidency embodied the raw politics of US white supremacy

Throughout America’s history, the bigotry that fueled Donald Trump’s rise to power has never been far from the surface. Trump’s departure is an opportunity for a new beginning, not only in the deeply-wounded United States, but in multiethnic societies everywhere.

February 25, 2020

MIKE SCRAFTON. Is the US a normal country?

Remarks at the Munich Security Conference by _US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo_ and US Secretary of _Defense Mark Esper_ _are full of unconscious irony.

February 18, 2020

MARK BUCKLEY. Men of Australia Lift Your Game

_Recently I heard Phil Cleary speaking on the radio, which reminded me of an interview of his I heard four and a half years ago concerning family violence.

August 29, 2022

Canberra is a fashioned spear for the US against China.

_There is an overwhelming boisterous ignorance that characterises Australia’s foreign policy approach to China.

June 26, 2022

Dr Chris Brook: Courts getting science wrong: Again

Should forensic science be scientific? Seemingly not, if you ask the Victorian Court of Appeal.

March 13, 2020

GIDEON LEVY. The Israeli Army Doesn't Have Snipers on the Gaza Border. It Has Hunters (Haaretz.com 7.3.2020)

They’re the best of our boys. One is a “musician from a good high school,” another a “boy scout” who majored in theater.” They’re the snipers who have shot thousands of unarmed protesters along the Gaza border fence.

May 30, 2022

Scared to mention Palestinians lives and Israel brutalities: A challenge for new MPs

In six weeks of electioneering, and despite the election result, Australian politicians did not dare and appear unlikely to dare to condemn the Israeli government’s continued abuse of Palestinians. An Israeli sniper murdered the distinguished Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Israeli police attacked mourners at her funeral, but such brutalities make little impression on the Australian establishment. Regarding Palestine, their indifference and cowardice still runs deep.

December 1, 2020

"The most lamentable engineering disaster in Australia"...?

Echoes of one of the great public policy failures of this nation are starting to grow louder.

October 6, 2020

Smaller government has failed, but let’s cut taxes anyway (SMH Oct 5, 2020)

Think about this: despite a rocketing budget deficit, Scott Morrison is planning to press on with, and even bring forward, highly expensive tax cuts for high income-earners at just the time we’re realising that the 40-year pursuit of Smaller Government has been a disastrous failure.

April 27, 2021

Australia's runaway land price problem

The nation is set to break land price inflation records in three of the next five years, based on past land price growth averages. It is time to act on past tax inquiries.

March 18, 2020

HENRY BATEMAN. Trust in Wonderland

As the current pandemic takes hold, we would do well to remember that the Coronavirus is a mere stumble in comparison to the Climate Change crisis.

June 14, 2021

G7 support for pharma monopolies is putting millions of lives at risk

The self-interest of G7 countries is the biggest obstacle to ending the Covid-19 pandemic, a group of campaigning organizations said today. Ahead of the G7 Leaders’ Summit, the People’s Vaccine Alliance warned that G7 promises to vaccinate the world by 2022 will be impossible to fulfill, if governments continue blocking proposals to waive patents and share life-saving technology.

December 24, 2018

LISA NANDY. Let the people take back control of Brexit.

With 100 days to go until the United Kingdom officially leaves the European Union, the British government is in crisis, political parties are riven by deep divisions and Parliament is gridlocked. Without something to break the deadlock, caused by politicians who hold such different views on Brexit that we are unable to agree on any of the options available, we will leave the EU with no deal at all on 29 March 2019, and the economic consequences will be severe.

September 13, 2020

The Ideology Delusion: America’s Competition With China Is Not About Doctrine (Foreign Affairs Sep 4, 2020)

Early in the Cold War, the United States faced a similar crossroads. Some figures, such as President Dwight Eisenhower, took a tough line on the Soviet Union but counseled the need to be selective in confrontations, steering US foreign policy toward selectivity and what he called the “middle way”.

August 23, 2022

Jon Richardson: No, NATO expansion didn’t cause the war in Ukraine

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February has met with opprobrium in most quarters. At the same time, commentators of diverse stripes still argue that Western policies, particularly NATO expansion, should bear part or much of the blame for these events.

May 26, 2020

JIM COOMBS. Post-virus reconstruction - 'snap back or snap out of it?

_Wouldn’t it be nice to have a government that housed the homeless, fed the poor and had a high employment demand driven, suitably regulated, economy. I can dream.

December 27, 2020

This rabble of a government

“Jesus I am sick of this rabble of a government of ours – if it is not making an ass of itself in its handling of relations with our biggest trading partner it is attacking the little bloke’s Super – all of this is inspired by the twisted ideology of the IPA and the ASPI that leads it to think that we will all go to Heaven in the long run if we just follow Donald Trump and stamp out Communism and foreigners in general and anyone who does not contribute funds to the Liberal Party”

August 7, 2022

Sameed Basha: Australia needs better terms with China, yet refuses to meet Beijing halfway

Australia’s government has rejected China’s proposals for improving ties, claiming to be looking out for its own national interests. In reality, Canberra still views Beijing through the lens of the US-China great power game, which can only hurt its economy while boosting America’s.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal