November 30, 2022

The Bell report: another mark against the APS leadership

_The APS needs leadership that acknowledges the failures of recent years and reminds everyone, from top to bottom, that it is there to serve not only the Government but also the Parliament and the Australian public.

February 13, 2024

Farewell democracy

Therell be a good indicator - if not a firm result - by the time most Australians go to bed tonight. Then well know if the ferociously ambitious Prabowo Subianto - Indonesias political psychopath - will be running the nation next door and booting out democracy.

January 26, 2024

ICJ stops short of ordering ceasefire in Gaza. Genocide will continue

The ICJ agreed to put Israel on trial for genocide and ruled that Israels military shall not commit acts forbidden by Article 2 of the Genocide Convention, but stopped short of ordering Israel to cease its military operation in Gaza.

November 12, 2023

Gaza: Israel is winning the battle but losing the war

As was to be expected, Israel is winning the battle for Gaza, albeit at an enormous cost in lives. But what are Israels and its backers plans for winning the peace, as without an enduring peace settlement the war can never be won. Is a US-led, UN mandated Trusteeship for Palestine the way forward?

March 7, 2023

If only our current PM said this...

Todays Sydney Morning Herald and The Age front page stories on Australias supposed war risk with China represents the most egregious and provocative news presentation of any newspaper I have witnessed in over fifty years of active public life.

October 21, 2022

What do we need from next weeks Budget? An increase in tax revenue

The biggest budgetary challenge is to correct the inadequate funding of essential services. Hopefully this Budget will help initiate the necessary national conversation to correct this fundamental defect. In short, a significant increase in tax revenue is required.

December 31, 2021

A call to contemplation coexists with a call to meaningful action

The longing for stability is real, whatever our political leanings. But there is another choice, brought about bya transformation of consciousness.

October 6, 2021

Wasting away: the Coalition governments poor management record

So much for superior economic stewardship from the Morrison team. Many services are underfunded while government mismanagement is resulting in a massive waste of money on other programs.

March 12, 2025

No apologies over fabricated terror plot from pollies or lobby groups

When it comes to antisemitism, politicians in this country are often quick to jump on the claim without waiting for evidence. With notable and laudable exceptions like the Greens and independents such as Tasmanian federal MP Andrew Wilkie, it seems any allegation will do when it comes to the opportunity to imply Arab Australians, the Muslim community and Palestinian supporters are trying to destroy the lives of the Jewish community.

February 5, 2025

Where is the real choice when it comes to the election?

In the upcoming federal election, there is no real choice. The Labor Party and the Liberal Party have become virtually indistinguishable, offering voters nothing, but well-rehearsed sound bites, nothing to believe in, nothing to fight for, and certainly nothing to get excited about.

February 4, 2025

Paul Keating says Trump may avoid a major war

Donald Trump’s “snatch-and-grab” foreign policy rejects the belief in US primacy and exception that was sliding towards a military confrontation with China.

January 14, 2025

Facts, alternative facts and Edward Said: Narrating a genocide

As Donald Trump is inaugurated as a second-term president, readers may recall the infamous expression “alternative facts” used by Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s senior counsellor, to defend the false statements of Sean Spicer, the White House Press Secretary. At the time, the media mocked Conway for describing Spicer’s falsehoods about attendance numbers at Trump’s 2017 inauguration as “alternative facts”.

December 28, 2024

The risk of a nuclear breakout by Iran has increased

The Donald Trump-JD Vance victory marks a repudiation of the post-Cold War neoconservative Washington playbook of militarised responses to foreign policy challenges. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence-designate, shares their anxiety over America’s addiction to intervening in foreign conflicts not of vital interest to the US, whose net effect has been to destabilise countries and entire regions.

March 14, 2024

History will record that Israel committed a holocaust

Its 8 pm in Gaza, Palestine right now, the end of my fourth day in Rafah and the first moment Ive had to sit in a quiet place to reflect.

March 6, 2024

Shock as Australian PM learns he is not above international law

Prime Ministers are too often monopolised by people telling them what they want to hear. Most political advisers cant see beyond the latest opinion poll and the Australian bureaucracy has become equally reluctant to offer frank and fearless advice. It appears that the Attorney General, Defence and Foreign Affairs and Trade Departments have each failed to alert the Prime Minister and his government to the risks inherent in ignoring international law when responding to the Gaza crisis.

January 28, 2024

Stark lessons for Australia in ICJ Genocide Ruling: But is anyone listening?

I doubt if any Australia political leader was watching the International Court of Justice President Judge, Joan E Donahue (United States of America) deliver the ruling in South Africas case alleging Israel has committed genocide on Palestinians in Gaza.

November 2, 2023

A briefing for Prime Minister Albanese for his discussion with President Xi

You will receive briefings from many of your advisors, including from the Office of National Intelligence. My experience is that intelligence agencies have a lot of information but they often have poor judgement. The framing of issues by our intelligence agencies very often reflects the views and habits of the US and the Anglosphere.

February 19, 2023

What Ukraine needs to learn from Afghanistan about proxy wars

The greatest enemy of economic development is war. If the world slips further into global conflict, our economic hopes and our very survival could go up in flames. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock to a mere 90 seconds to midnight.

October 20, 2022

Will the QUAD go the same way as SEATO and just become irrelevant?

After the election, Prime Minister Albanese hightailed it to Japan for a QUAD meeting with Jo Biden, Narendra Modi and Fumio Kishida to join them in anti-Chinese posturing.

March 28, 2022

War crimes and the traps in sanctions

Vladimir Putin would seem to fit the bill for war crimes in Ukraine. But what about the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq?

April 1, 2025

Labor’s in with a fighting chance, but must work around an unpopular leader

The Albanese Government has a fighting chance of winning the 2025 election, but will need to achieve in five weeks of campaigning what it hasn’t in three years in office. That is, work out a narrative explaining what it’s about and that can persuade Australians to back it for a second term.

March 24, 2025

A moral precipice challenge – Vote for humanity

Response to the latest Israeli/US slaughter in Gaza shows the world’s citizens looking into a moral precipice. How will they act? Will they ponder the principles of humanitarian law let alone ideals of a common humanity?

January 22, 2025

Marwan Barghouti - the world’s most important hostage - must be released

A litmus test of Israel’s commitment to abandon genocide and start down the road towards lasting peace is whether they choose to release the most important of all the hostages, Marwan Barghouti. During the past 22 years in Israeli prisons he has been beaten, tortured, sexually molested and had limbs broken. What hasn’t been broken is the spirit of the greatest living Palestinian - a symbol of his people’s ‘legendary steadfastness’ and determination to win freedom from occupation and resist the genocidal forces of the US, Israel and their Western enablers like Australia and New Zealand.

January 18, 2025

The ceasefire charade

Israel, going back decades, has played a duplicitous game. It signs a deal with the Palestinians that is to be implemented in phases. The first phase gives Israel what it wants — in this case the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza — but Israel habitually fails to implement subsequent phases that would lead to a just and equitable peace. It eventually provokes the Palestinians with indiscriminate armed assaults to retaliate, defines a Palestinian response as a provocation and abrogates the ceasefire deal to reignite the slaughter.

March 29, 2024

Pine Gap implicates Australia as complicit in Israels genocide in Gaza

A complaint concerning the Australian Signals Directorate to the Inspector General of Security and Intelligence.

March 19, 2024

Australia must recall its ambassador to Israel and condemn the horror of Gaza

We need much more than the Gaza Pose. Weve seen the furrowed brows and sorrowful looks. Weve heard the regretful tones, the exhortations, the warnings, the carefully studied words.

March 4, 2024

Podcast: A rapacious America and the loss of Australian sovereignty

John Menadue, Editor-in-Chief of Pearls and Irritations, interviews Dr Mike Gilligan on the challenge of building a self-reliant Australian defence force, dealing with a rapacious America intent on its own interests, avoiding a US-proxy war with China, and the loss of Australian sovereignty under the 2014 Force Posture Agreement (FPA).

February 6, 2024

Is there a problem with Australias approach to human rights in the PRC?

Human rights in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) are under increased threat. The PRC government ignores international representations. This begs the question: should Australia even attempt to intervene? What do we risk by doing so? The easy course would be to do the minimum and restrict our representations to cases where Australian citizens and interests are directly involved. This author argues that Australias approach to human rights should be recalibrated.

December 21, 2022

Repairing China-Australia ties helps meet expectation of fixing trade ties, pave way for easing China-US tension: expert

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wongs visit to China from Tuesday to Wednesday has given rise to great expectation from Australian business circle and the groups that hope recovery of the bilateral ties could boost economic recovery, with Chinese analysts saying China welcomes and encourages Australia to correct the mistakes made by the former government.

November 13, 2022

Behind closed doors: deciding which parliamentarians get what

How many staff should parliamentarians have? It depends whether they hold the balance of power.

March 4, 2022

Weekly roundup Saturday 5 March

Weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy.

October 22, 2021

A flawed argument for Australian nuclear deterrence

Hugh White’s book on Australian defence amounts to an advocacy of nuclear weapons. Some aspects of his arguments are reckless and reveal a sense of denial.

December 22, 2024

Unholiness reigns in the Holy Land, but its reign is faltering

Over the last fifteen months the world has watched in disbelief Israel’s horrifying military assault on the people of Gaza and its escalating use of force in the West Bank, Lebanon, and now Syria.

March 9, 2023

Capital city newspapers urge nuclear war by Australia against China: God help us

The Sydney Morning Heralds prominent series of provocations, urging Australia into a war with China, concluded its third instalment today.

December 7, 2022

A mediator's guide to peace in Ukraine

The Ukraine War is an extremely dangerous war between nuclear superpowers in a world desperately in need of peace and cooperation.

November 28, 2021

The prime ministers attack on the NSW ICAC is wholly unjustified

The Coalition’s proposal for a national integrity commission shows an arrogant and contemptuous disdain for community demands such a body.

October 4, 2021

AUKUS agreement threatens peace in Asia

The security pact between the US, UK and Australia is a troubling reminder that these Anglo-Saxon powers are stuck in a Cold War mindset.

March 13, 2025

How the West was lost

Europe’s panicked response to the shift in Washington’s priorities raises a number of intriguing questions, not least why its leadership was so ill-prepared for the second coming of Donald Trump.

January 28, 2025

The unravelling of Australian society

Australian society has never really been a cohesive entity. In the past its various socio-economic, religious, ethnic, cultural, and political factions have simply hung together largely through a sense of xenophobia about the outside world (read Asia) rather than a commitment to national unity based on shared values and mutually beneficial interests. But today xenophobia is compounding into fear and loathing on the campaign trail and in the interstices of a society that is in danger of unravelling.

December 23, 2024

Best of 2024: The Labor Party has lost its way

The Labor Party is a long way from done but at the moment it is mired in mediocrity. We need a Labor Party agenda in which the big issues are confronted, writes Bill Kelty.

December 28, 2023

Christ under the Rubble: "Silence is Complicity"

Let it be clear friends: silence is complicity. And empty calls for peace without a ceasefire and an end to the occupation, and the shallow words of empathy without direct action: all under the banner of complicity. So here is my message: Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world. If you are not appalled by what is happening in Gaza. If you are not shaken to your core, there is something wrong with your humanity. And if we as Christians are not outraged by the genocide; by the weaponization of the Bible to justify it; there is something wrong with our Christian witness, and we are compromising the credibility of Our Gospel message. If you fail to call this a genocide, it is on you. It is a sin and a Darkness you willingly embrace.

November 18, 2022

Australias China threat industry led by Sydney Morning Herald takes a hit

Above a picture of a tired looking Xi Jinping taken at the G20 the Sydney Morning Herald ran the headline: The Face of Capitulation. It was as banal as it was predictable. It was for a Peter Hartcher story that crowed at having slayed the dragon (sub-text: this was Hartchers personal victory).

October 26, 2021

Time is running out for Labor to show it deserves to win government

Labor needs a charismatic leader to win an election from opposition. But Anthony Albanese has eschewed the larrikin personality that got him to the top.

March 19, 2025

To recover Australia’s sovereignty, vote strategically

There is a democratic tool at our disposal which is poorly understood and generally used ineffectively. That tool is Preferential Voting.

February 26, 2025

The fragility of Australia’s security

This time it’s different. America has detailed plans for Australia to play a role in breaking China. Not unlike the role of Ukraine against Russia. Or countless other parallels. That’s what is in the pipeline for Australia. Decades of war at oscillating levels, designed to drain China, mounted largely by America’s friends in Asia, under supervision.

February 16, 2025

Trump and Christianity – Why it matters

Trump has created what he calls a ‘Faith Office’ within the White House and appointed a Pentecostal pastor from Florida, Paula White, to lead it. Ms White, widely described in mainstream Christianity as a heretic, teaches a transactional faith. In other words, faith is demonstrated in prosperity.

November 14, 2024

AUKUS, the China threat and Chinese-Australian communities

The recent election of Donald Trump to the US presidency has cast further doubt on the feasibility of the AUKUS trilateral security partnership, particularly Australia’s acquisition of nuclear submarines under Pillar I. Yet the AUKUS trilateral security partnership has become a fait accompli without the Australian public having expressed much in the way of opposition, or even a desire for more information about the program forecast to cost up to $368 billion, despite a lack of debate or public consultation by successive Australian governments.

February 28, 2023

We are not America

Australia is transitioning from our old colonial master to a self-selected new colonial master. We have those with power nostalgic for the glories of imperial Britain.

November 16, 2022

Pivotal Moment: Albanese and Xi in 2022 mirror Whitlam and Zhou in 1971

_The meeting between Anthony Albanese and Xi Jinping put me in mind of the public reaction in Australia when Whitlam met Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1971.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal