January 20, 2025

Thanks Trump, for helping make China great again

Donald Trump’s second term may not be all bad for all nations, including and especially China. For many Chinese internet users, Trump’s policies have unwittingly strengthened their country. This is why he has earned the popular nickname “Chuan Jianguo,” which means “Make China Great.”

October 21, 2024

Yahya Sinwar - history will judge the living and the dead

The political and military leader of Hamas is dead. Some cheer. Some weep. History will judge the living and the dead. I wish Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar had appeared before an international tribunal of judges for their role in October 7th, rather than being murdered by the Israelis. All who committed crimes in the past year should face justice.

January 27, 2024

Ethics-free realism explains, but shouldn't justify, Western responses to Gaza

Only a commitment to the precepts of realism can explain the procrastination and distancing by politicians from the slaughter and destruction in Gaza. Only the realist logic could see the flood of crocodile tears from governments for the poor Palestinians, without ever condemning America as the arsenal of Israels war on women and children. Only this logic can explain the weak remonstrations against Israel and the failure to see the crimes in Ukraine and the crimes in Gaza as indistinguishable.

February 4, 2023

Silence over St Mary's Cathedral remembrance ribbon cutting

Following yesterday’s funeral of Cardinal George Pell, I was disturbed to read this from a Sydney Morning Herald letter writer: ‘I went to St Marys Cathedral to tie a ribbon on the iron fence for a friend who was raped by a priest when he was seven years old. My ribbons were cut off by men and women who were physically and verbally intimidating.’

November 23, 2022

COP27: Australia promotes fossil fuels as pathway to carbon neutrality

It seems the Australian media still has to be told: COP 27 was a disaster and the glaring flaws in Australias grab bag of climate change policies were there to be exposed - if any reporters cared to do so.

October 30, 2022

Russia's illegal attack on Ukraine breaches the 1994 Budapest Memorandum

However insensitive and provocative NATO members may or may not have been and whatever weasel words Putin dredges up to justify his invasion of Ukraine, there can be no doubt that Russia is in breach of an undertaking it took not to use force against Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

January 25, 2025

Reforms are needed to ensure an adequate retirement income

Australians now have access to significant superannuation balances, but if superannuation is going to meet its purpose of ensuring an adequate income in retirement, reforms are needed to provide better access to a superannuation pension.

December 30, 2024

Best of 2024: AUKUS: The worst defence and foreign policy decision our country has made

Defence Minister Marles’s love for the the US is so dewy-eyed as to defy parody. Foreign Minister Wong is far more beady-eyed, and instinctively wary of over-commitment to America’s view of itself, but has been unwilling to rock the boat.

November 8, 2024

Trumping Australia

John Menadue asked me what I thought Trump 2.0 could mean for Australia, but there are two similar, easier questions: what should and what will Trump mean for Australia?

February 2, 2024

The worst Australian public policy decision of the 21st century

I regard the changes made to the carve-up of GST revenues among the states and territories by the Morrison Government in 2019, with the support of the then Labor Opposition, and continued (indeed extended) by the Albanese Government, as possibly the worst Australian public policy decision of the 21st century thus far. But very few people understand it. This article is an attempt to correct that.

November 22, 2023

White Mans Media: The Chinese warship sonar incident

What a feast of anti-China stories we have had again from the Coalition and our media over the incident between HMAS Toowoomba and a Chinese PLA-N destroyer.

October 9, 2023

The Gaza breakout is like Vietnams 1968 Tet offensive

The Hamas attack on Israel was part jailbreak (from Gaza, the worlds largest prison since the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto) but more than that it was a revolt of the hopeless by the hopeless for the hopeless.

November 18, 2021

Australia shredded all decency in the persecution of Bernard Collaery.

Our spying against Timor-Leste and persecution of a whistleblower and his lawyer reads like a tawdry thriller that would embarrass James Bond.

November 11, 2021

Paul Keating's speech is a teaching moment in a fraught relationship with China

Former prime minister Paul Keating’s National Press Club address showed just how badly awry Australia’s policies on Asia have gone.

December 5, 2020

Reasons to be happy despite the media.

Journalists write about disasters because they sell more copy. A recent book tells us to look on the bright side.

February 12, 2025

Denigrating refugees: Media Watch is no exception

Australian citizens and residents who originally came to this country seeking asylum, as they are clearly entitled to do under international law, have been in the news recently, through no fault of their own and not in a good way. Sections of the media and some politicians have attacked them for doing what all citizens and residents have a right to do, that is to bring their partners and close relatives to Australia.

March 13, 2024

Tea for two: Preparing for talks with Chinas Foreign Minister

We shall never get anywhere with the Australia-China relationship if we are not pragmatic, as Bismarck famously said. While we must avoid over-ambitious goals, forthcoming official talks with Chinas top foreign affairs official Wang Yi will present a unique opportunity to test the governments relationship reset.

December 10, 2023

Hypocritical US vetoes UN ceasefire resolution, cowardly UK abstains

As the bloodbath in Gaza moves towards 18,000 casualties, 70% of whom are women and children, as a humanitarian catastrophe affecting a whole people persists, the rich and powerful US vetoes a U.N. Resolution calling for a ceasefire. The rich and powerful UK ducks for cover and abstains.

March 15, 2023

Keating exposes ministerial incompetence in Albanese Government

Speaking out strongly against AUKUS at the Press Club yesterday, Paul Keatings concern is that Australias security has been laid limp upon the altar of small target politics by the two key Ministers - Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles.

January 15, 2023

All warfare is based on deception

All warfare is based on deception. Sun Tzu, The Art of War

November 6, 2022

Prime Minister Albanese has little understanding of regional issues

It is puzzling that the Prime Minister would choose to make this presentation to Greg Sheridan the arch conservative writer of the Murdoch stable.

October 8, 2022

The Defence Strategic Review and the challenge of synchronising with foreign policy.

A reshaped foreign policy for Australia and the Defence Strategic Review are inextricably linked.

October 5, 2022

25 Years ago, I warned expanding NATO ranked with the errors that led to WWI and II

Expanding NATOs military demarcation point to the very borders of the former Soviet Union was an error which may rank with the strategic miscalculations which prevented Germany from taking its full place in the international system at the beginning of this century.

January 25, 2022

Replace celebration of January 26 with a lifetime of deep listening

The day is an abomination masquerading as inclusivity. Whatever we call it, there should be no link to the violence of the colonisers.

November 17, 2021

Under fire: Ita Buttrose goes into battle for ABC independence

For the current government the enemy appears to be anyone trying to hold that government to account and right now, that’s the ABC.

November 10, 2021

Dangerous liaisons: America's huge, little-known military footprint in Australia. Part 1

More than ever, Australia is a suitable piece of real estate for the US espionage and war-gaming. A detailed analysis by Richard Tanter.

August 21, 2021

Both Afghanistan and the US at an uncertain time

Its possible, and much to be hoped, that some of the worst fears for the Afghan people under the Taliban will not be realised. But the United States standing in the world has been damaged.

March 16, 2025

Sultanistic or neo-fascist? President Trump and 21st century ideology

In trying to understand US President Donald Trump, the proposition has been put that he is sultanistic. In many respects, Trump’s second presidency does appear to be “sultanistic”.

March 4, 2025

Why I signed an ad urging rejection of Trump's Gaza plan

In the swirl of horrendous news following the US president-elect’s taking his oath of office, there’s been one shining light. On 13 February, an ad boldly declaring “No to Ethnic Cleansing” appeared in the New York Times. More than 350 American rabbis, creatives and activists put their names to it, protesting against the president’s blithe announcement that Gaza could be changed from a pile of rubble to the Middle East’s “Riviera” – that is, if neighbouring countries would agree to accept the remaining Palestinian inhabitants who have managed, miraculously, to stay alive.

February 19, 2025

Europeans (and others) vs Trump

I am not suffering from what some of President Donald Trump’s more fervent supporters — both in the US and in Australia — like to call “Trump derangement syndrome”. That is, I’m not disputing that he won the presidential election held last November “fair and square”, as did the Republican Party in both the House and the Senate, and that together they have a mandate to implement the policies which they presented to the American people during the campaign which preceded those elections. (Whether they have a mandate to implement policies which they didn’t present to the people during the campaign, or indeed policies which President Trump explicitly distanced himself from during the campaign is another matter, but not one that I’m going to pursue here).

October 8, 2024

It is the lack of a two-state solution that most threatens Israel

As a result of its belligerence and intransigence, Israel is now almost completely ostracised by the international community, and also faces grave economic and military threats as the regional war expands.

November 28, 2023

A sinister, quiet, silencing of dissent

_This brief temporary ceasefire has given people in Gaza a small reprieve from the ferocious carpet bombing, murdering and destruction unleashed by Israel since Oct 7th. But in spite of the millions and millions of people taking to the streets across the world in protest at Israels war crimes, the killing of women and children in horrific numbers, the sinister quiet silencing of dissent both in Israel and across the world has not ceased.

November 26, 2023

Colonies of the US empire: Will the CocosIslandsbecome the new Diego Garcia?

The 2000 residentsof Diego Garcia were forcibly removed to make way for a giant US military base. Will the same happen to the Australian residentson the Cocos Islands that lies south of Sumatra in the Indian ocean?

January 19, 2023

The tale of the Rabbit and the Tiger: China 2023

The Lunar New Year comes early in 2023, and the incoming Year of the Rabbit offers possibilities of significant changes in personal and national fortunes. Those responsible for formulating Australias China policy are advised to watch developments carefully and be flexible in their responses.

December 8, 2022

Jeffrey Sachs: a negotiated end to fighting in Ukraine is the only real way to end the bloodshed

With the war in Ukraine now in its 10th month, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden have both expressed openness to peace talks to end the fighting, as have leaders in France, Germany and elsewhere. This comes as millions of Ukrainians brace for a winter without heat or electricity due to Russian strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. This war needs to end because its a disaster for everybody, a threat to the whole world, says economist and foreign policy scholar Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He says four major issues need to be addressed to end the war: Ukraines sovereignty and security,NATOenlargement, the fate of Crimea and the future of the Donbas region.

November 9, 2022

We are locked and loaded with our US partners against China

_It would require a microscope to discern any difference between this government’s foreign policy priorities and those of the last. The verbiage is cheap and empty. It’s not aligned with actions. Labor has done nothing to change the direction and momentum established by the previous government.

February 27, 2022

What motivates Putins invasion of Ukraine? Dont underestimate history and religion

_There is a theory that he has an almost mystical notion of Russia of which Ukraine and particularly Kiev are integral parts.

March 21, 2025

The Coalition MP who tried to stop the solar farm that will help save thousands of local jobs

If you ever need an example of the idiocy and the ignorance behind the Coalition and LNP campaign against renewable energy in Australia, a good place to start would be the federal MP for Flynn, Colin Boyce.

October 12, 2024

Australia, Israel and the United Nations

In 1949 Australia’s Dr H.V. Evatt was described as: “The most brilliant and effective voice of Small Powers - a leading statesman for the world’s conscience.” When will another Australian voice speak up in the name of humanity at the United Nations?

February 6, 2023

The US drive to war against China just got worse

General Mike Minahan, head of the United States Air Forces Air Mobility Command has sent a message to the world. It is blunt, threatening and sinister. My gut tells me we will fight in 2025. The General sent his message as a memorandum to the leadership of the 110,000 strong USAF, with the unambiguous title, February 2023 Orders in Preparation for The Next Fight.

March 8, 2022

US provocation of China over Taiwan

_On his visit to Taipei, Mike Pompeo, advocated on 28 February 2022 that the US government should immediately take necessary and long-overdue steps to do the right and obvious thing, that is to offer the Republic of China Americas diplomatic recognition as a free and sovereign country. .

February 23, 2025

J’accuse!... the Jew who accuses his fellow Jews of being antisemites

A rally on the steps of the Victorian Parliament under the banner of Jews for a Free Palestine was arranged for Sunday 9 February. At 11:11pm on the eve of that rally, Mark Leibler — lawyer, who claims to have a high profile and speak on behalf of Jews by the totally unelected organisation AIJAC — put out a tweet on X (and paid for an advertisement of the same posting) as follows:

January 8, 2025

Marching blindfolded into the new Cold War

Just before Christmas, the Albanese Government released the findings of a report into how much funding the federal government contributes to those institutions around the country that research and report on the contemporary challenges facing Australian strategic policy.

November 28, 2022

Morrisons self-appointment to administer six departments

Morrisons self-appointment to six portfolios says a lot about his contempt for the quality and integrity of decision making under his government. The response by PM&C officers, who were in the know, also raises questions about how adequately they exercised their responsibility for good government.

March 6, 2022

IPCC throws down the gauntlet on Australian institutional deficiencies on climate change.

Exposure and vulnerability of various natural and human systems to climate change are discussed at length in the latest IPPC report (6th Assessment Report on impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation).

February 20, 2022

War and fear mongering are Scott Morrison's best hope for winning the election

Youd think that after the Iraq Weapons of Mass destruction debacle the media would be just a little sceptical about US intelligence feeds.

December 21, 2024

Fear-mongering claims masquerading as facts protect AUKUS from parliament’s scrutiny

The battle is on to see which side of politics can boast of siphoning the most profits to the weapons industry - at the expense of health, education, climate and environmental action, and everything else we need – and of bowing more obsequiously before the US and its war machine.

February 20, 2024

Time to occupy Israel

Amid end time destruction, we must liberate Gaza, march to the security wall, and Occupy Israel.

December 4, 2022

We should ask for a refund on the F-35 fighter planes, not buy more

Despite the constant talk about how Australias strategic focus must be on the long distances our ships and planes have to cover, the Defence Strategy Review has recommended buying a fourth squadron of short range F-35 fighter planes.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal