October 30, 2024

The banning of UNWRA: The situation could not be grimmer

Let us be abundantly clear. What Israel is intending is against its obligations under international law. What Israel is intending is against its moral obligations as fellow citizens of the human race.

March 4, 2024

Time for Australia and ASEAN to grasp the regional strategic initiative

Australia is hosting its second home-based summit with ASEAN leaders, aiming to strengthen its strategic economic strategy with Southeast Asia and underscore the association’s role in maintaining stability and growth in the region. The concept of ASEAN centrality, encompassing core economic and non-military security objectives, can be strengthened by elevating it into a strategic approach that addresses current economic, societal and environmental challenges, especially in light of increasing geopolitical tensions.

February 17, 2024

Leading oil and gas producers plan to keep pumping

USA plans to maintain high levels of oil and gas production until at least 2050 so it can export freedom. Healthy ecosystems require integrity, not just biodiversity. Endangered slug runs circles around arty rivals.

November 9, 2023

Albanese, Xi meet in the shadow of the Australia-China-US triangle

As Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Beijing in an attempt to improve relations, Elena Collinson warned that untangling Australia- China relations from China- U.S. relations would be difficult. Indeed, AustraliaChina relations remain deeply troubled. Because the dynamics and dangers in the relationship are still the same, it is worth revisiting a piece I wrote last year for Pearls and Irritations.

October 8, 2023

Battle at Lake Changjin: Will we choose pride, prejudice, propaganda or peace?

The second highest grossing film in the world in 2021 barely got a mention in the Australian press. It was co-directed by three acclaimed filmmakers, cost close to US$200 million to produce, made $1 billion, and was nearly three hours long with a sequel of equal length. It ran briefly at the Event Cinema in Sydney. But few in Australia saw or heard of it.

January 25, 2023

26 January echoes with torment of First Nation peoples' powerlessness

To assist the healing of our history, it is essential that Australia Day be some other day than 26 January.

January 15, 2023

Israels most right wing government: Who are they?

What do we know about the new Israeli government apart from the now much touted the most right wing government in Israel history? And what does this new government mean for Israel, Palestine and the so called two state solution?

December 9, 2022

"Opening the Australian mind": 50 years of Australia-China relations

Id like to offer a reflection on where we started out, Australia with China, and what I think we need to do now.

November 23, 2022

Australias fake coal emissions certificates rort major trading partners

Companies responsible for testing the quality of Australian coal altered 40-50 per cent of the certificates to make dirty coal look cleaner than it was and sell substandard products for higher profits to Australias export partners and underplay carbon emissions.

March 9, 2022

Justice for women, justice for All.

International Women’s Day celebrates how far women have come, and how far we have yet to go.

February 28, 2022

Investing in community health is the solution to our aged care crisis

The problems in residential aged care are a product of a much broader issue, namely the failure to fund publicly subsidised comprehensive multidisciplinary community care.

January 30, 2022

Multicultural Australia? How the mainstream media segregates us

Major media organisations have marginalised ethnic communities for example, the Chinese community is seen through the prism of “foreign influence”.

October 15, 2021

A new home for Saturday's good reading and listening guide

Ian McAuley’s guide to good reading and listening for the weekend has moved.

February 22, 2025

Koreas both fret over Trump-Putin power plays – Asian Media Report

In Asian media this week: Seoul, Pyongyang fear being ignored. Plus: India edges towards closer US connection; Domestic violence surges in South Korea; Beijing brings private sector back into the fold; Military making comeback in Indonesia; Kolkata’s yellow taxis taking last fares.

December 19, 2024

Zio-Judeo-Conflation? No Thanks!

Equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism and Judaism with Zionism are two dangerous misconceptions that play into the hands of those who are justifying apartheid and Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. They inhibit us from using our critical faculties to apply our findings with clarity and consistency.

December 10, 2024

Offshore people dumping by a spooked government

The Albanese Labor Government has been spooked by recent High Court decisions which protect the human rights of non-citizens who cannot be returned to their home country because they are owed protection obligations.

November 14, 2024

Is AUKUS safe under Trump?

Former Labor Foreign Minister Bob Carr joins Steve Cannane to discuss: is the country’s key strategic military agreement with the US under threat from a Trump presidency?

March 12, 2024

Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza

This will stop when the United States stops providing the munitions to Israel. It will not stop by any self-control in Israel. There is none in this government.

March 5, 2024

Deny them their daily bread

Last Thursday, February 29th. 2024, the Israeli Occupation Forces showed their true brutal inhumanity when they opened fire on desperate, starving Palestinian civilians, surrounding aid convoys coming into Gaza. The Israeli soldiers deliberately attacked and killed 118 Palestinians and injured over 1000. As per usual, Israeli spokes-persons denied that they opened fire. And when eye-witnesses and medical staff attested to the attack, the Israelis, again, as per usual, justified their fire by saying the mob was endangering the lives of our soldiers.

January 15, 2024

Taiwans January 13, 2024 election: The whole story

When Election Day ended in Taiwan the local and foreign media, pundits, and others almost in unison reported Vice President Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party won handily, democracy had prevailed, and China (which opposed Lai and interfered in the campaign) lost, and the scene might escalate into conflict and even war.

November 1, 2023

John Mearsheimer and the decline of US hegemony

It’s very important to understand that what’s happened is that the unipolar moment is in the rearview mirror. It’s gone. We are now in a multipolar world"

March 22, 2023

Guardian Essential Poll: AUKUS support collapses, 3-in-4 oppose

Reflecting the diminishing public support for the AUKUS deal, a new Guardian Essential Poll has found that only one quarter of Australians support paying the $368bn price tag to acquire nuclear submarines. For decades Australians were gung ho about going to war almost any war. Today despite the best efforts of the Nine Media (Peter Hartcher in particular) and other media they are now far more hesitant.

February 13, 2023

Foreign policy under Labor: beholden, bereft and befuddled

Labor came to office last May, replacing a government that had steered Australias relationship with the United States to new heights of servility. Our ties with China were in tatters. Many had hoped that the change of government would usher in a shift to a more imaginative and less subservient foreign policy. Nine months later such hopes are little more than idle fantasy.

March 27, 2022

The rot began with John Howard

The Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison does not have qualities of leadership. He is unable to act in a crisis, he fades in the face of fire and flood, he demonstrates poor judgement and when challenged he bullies.

November 8, 2021

'War on drugs' policies never have and never will work

It’s time to listen to the experts in making drugs policy rather than stick with a foolish prohibition strategy.

January 24, 2025

Marching in solidarity with Palestinians

Over the past 15 months, we rallied every week in solidarity with Palestinians. We rallied to protest the genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. We rallied to call on our government to cut military ties with Israel, impose sanctions and hold Israel accountable for its crimes. We rallied to prevent the normalisation of the unthinkable. And we rallied to help Palestinians retain hope in the midst of an apocalypse.

March 10, 2024

Peter Dutton sprinkles nuclear stardust into the climate policy vacuum

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is nailing nuclear energy for Australia to his economic renaissance mast. His earlier thought was that the electricity generating transition should be confined to SMRs (small modular reactors) conveniently placed in the basements of factories around Australia. He then expanded his concept to include the construction of large industrial reactors of 600 MW capacity and more built on sites occupied by former coal-fired generators.

January 23, 2024

Reviving Australian Citizenship: What the government needs to do

Australian Citizenship should be revived as a positive unifying element in a cohesive multicultural society. The Australia Day citizenship ceremony controversy is just a sideshow. The real issue is the completely unacceptable waiting times for processing Australian citizenship applications. The Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government trashed the good work of previous Coalition and Labor governments by pursuing regressive citizenship policies. There is a big restoration job to be done.

December 29, 2023

The American war on global capitalism

In January, 2023, Ezra Klein from the New York Times interviewed Yuen Yuen Ang. Professor Ang is a widely published, China scholar at Johns Hopkins University in the US. Towards the end of this long interview, Ang provided an acute summary of what US-China competition came down to. What matters most, she argued, is: Which of these two countries is going to make the best use of their political system to solve the problems of capitalism? Less than a year after Professor Ang laid out her concise test, America has verified that it is currently the one least able to measure up to this challenge.

December 23, 2023

Dear Santa, Victorians in particular really need your help

…our list is a genuine plea for you to bring us a greatly improved integrity-related system that addresses all the shortcomings in the current arrangements.

October 16, 2023

Rejected by the people who dispossessed and colonised them

This morning, I call to mind the Aboriginal woman who spoke at the end of a forum we held in Darwin on the Voice. She told us: A lot of my people dont understand all the law and politics about this Voice. All I know is that when they wake up on Sunday 15 October and if the answer is NO, they will think that they have been rejected once again by the people who dispossessed and colonised them without their consent. She wept.

February 1, 2023

2023: a make-or-break year for the global order

Many of the accounts we hear of the current Russia-NATO conflict are deeply flawed. and risk degenerating into pure farce a crude melodrama, in which an upright, democratic Ukrainian government headed by hero Zelensky is pitted against a corrupt and brutal autocracy led by the deluded ogre, Putin. What is really in question, is the unsustainable global security framework.

March 26, 2025

Budgets: black holes, black ink or black magic? Part 1 of 2

The Rockliff Government’s financial mess in Tasmania has been well explained by economist Saul Eslake, independent MLC Ruth Forrest, and others paying attention.

April 1, 2024

Clare ONeil dances to Duttons tune

Clare ONeil, minister for Home Affairs, was this week plaintively criticising the Greens for playing politics over draconian and ill-thought-out legislation designed by the government to anticipate its next refugee crisis. She was quite wrong. However inconvenient for her, the Greens have long had a consistent (and principled) policy on refugee matters, one that does not seem to change much for short-, medium- or long-term considerations.

January 23, 2023

Four dud PMs - geo-strategically barren, unable to identify Australias interests

The risks for Australia in joining another failed American war, this one contrived to crush China, are worse than even-money, and climbing. The consequences verge on existential.

December 2, 2022

The National Party has deserted country people on climate change, NBN, health services, and now the Voice

Farmers are the main sufferers from climate change- droughts, fires heavy rainfall and floods. The National Party has failed farmers and country people on numerous fronts. It has sold out to the miners.

November 3, 2022

Nord Stream: Urgent need for international investigations into crimes against the environment

The explosions at the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines on September 26 in the Baltic Sea have been deemed an act of sabotage but which nations or actors are responsible is yet to be known. Given the scale of the environmental crime, why are we not demanding the truth? What explains Western silence?

October 28, 2022

Weekly roundup Saturday 29 October

Labors radical idea; How two state government undermined Australias capacity to speak on human rights; and Britains warning for other democracies. Read on for the Weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy.

February 15, 2022

False flag meets fake news: The Ukrainian invasion that wasn't

Organisations like NATO never die, but reinvent themselves to keep growing.

January 17, 2022

Stormy seas for health sector: the Omicron wave is too damaging to 'let it rip'

The policy retreat from virus suppression to virtually no control has placed the nation’s pathology industry, and health services overall, under crippling pressure.

November 10, 2021

Diplomatic insanity: Canberra sacrifices China influence for US alliance

Australia continues to damage its most important trading relationship with China by supporting the US’s limitless ambition in the region.

October 19, 2021

The sneaky deal to have NSW Labor adopt controversial anti-Semitism definition

In a surprise move, the NSW Labor Party recently adopted a controversial definition of anti-Semitism without open debate after some last-minute changes to the agenda.

January 17, 2024

Independence of Journalism at risk: Antoinette Lattouf should be reinstated

The Lattouf story shows that the same level of white colonial supremacist attitudes that have forged the bond of western leaders on the Middle East issue permeates the leadership of public broadcasting.

November 7, 2023

Israel: mowing the grass in Gaza, again and again.

There will be no end to the occupation and death until there is a political settlement with justice for both Palestinians and Israelis.

October 19, 2023

Cheng Leis release a win for diplomacy

Make no mistake, had the Australian Government not changed last year, Chen Lei would still be languishing in her miserable detention cell, denied access to her children, relatives, and friends.

January 13, 2023

Cardinal George Pell

The media reaction to the death of Cardinal George Pell is extraordinary. But his contribution to Australian Catholicism is very much a mixed blessing.

December 23, 2022

Will the Labor government take our catastrophic biodiversity decline seriously?

Now is not the time to assume Australia is back in the global forefront of environmental rectitude. Sadly, we are in the dark ages in terms of our record on biodiversity.

October 25, 2022

Why the US is provoking war with China in Taiwan

US intelligence agencies do not say China is preparing for an invasion of Taiwan. Why? Taiwans role as the reverse great wall in US containment policy and Xis 2049 reunification deadline are missing from Western narratives. They explain why the US is provoking war with China in Taiwan, and why China refuses to be provoked.

January 3, 2022

Slow learner: ill-advised Morrison set to repeat end-of-year pratfalls

The holidays should be a chance for some contemplation about the Prime Minister’s strategy and tactics, as well as about urgent tasks of government.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal