October 3, 2016

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull's low road.

So much for Malcolm Turnbulls great fortnight in parliament, followed by his triumphant march through the marbled halls of New York and Washington.

His claque of supporters raved, of course, but the paying customers the voters remained resolutely unimpressed.

Newspoll, the bible on which our Prime Minister relied on when he made his grab for power, put his government behind on preferences, and the primary vote fell below 40 percent where The Australians Liberal spruiker Dennis Shanahan used to gleefully describe as the death zone when it involved Labor. Now he is more reticent, as is just about every other conservative.

April 8, 2016

David James. CommInsure expose proves spin doesn't always win.

One of the challenges facing business journalists in Australia is the wall of spin they face whenever they are trying to uncover an uncomfortable truth. The spin ranges from outright lying to being highly selective with the facts. Most journalists either struggle to get beyond the wall, decide it is to their benefit not to attempt to scale it, or are simply too busy to even contemplate its existence.

Consequently the spin, by and large, wins. Journalists always need sources to create stories it is essential to their careers and so are readily drawn into trade-offs: access to important sources in return for adhering to a certain line in the story.

July 18, 2019

DOUGLAS NEWTON. Fine phrases dark thoughts. Reflections on the Centenary of Peace Day, 19 July 1 919.

It is one hundred years since Peace Day, Saturday 19 July 1919. On that day, celebrations were held across the British Empire to toast the great victory that had been won supposedly crowned by the Treaty of Versailles. A hundred years later, shall we face up to some of the historic realities of the peacemaking in 1919, and of Australias role in the botched peace?

June 12, 2018

JOHN MENADUE The media are finding Chinese under most rocks.

The campaign run by some of our security agencies and people close to them about the alleged Chinese threat is getting great support from some journalists. The latest is Andrew Greene, the security and defence reporter at the ABC who breathtakingly reported last week that A Chinese vessel, believed to be a spy ship, docked next to HMAS Adelaide in Fiji. Good god!

August 24, 2017

ADAM BROINOWSKI. Picking up the pieces amid the U.S.North Korea nuclear stand-off

North Korea is often righteously condemned for being the only nation to have conducted five nuclear tests and a barrage of missile tests in the 21st century. Led by a young chubby dictator with a bad haircut, we have long been told that the paranoid hermit kingdom known for its undeniably bombastic, intensely patriotic and anachronistic rhetoric is evil, unhinged and dangerous.

September 17, 2018

MAUREEN DOWD. Trump Finally Makes a Friend (New York Times, 15.09.18)

The president may be shunned nearly everywhere but at the bottom of the world he has finally found a loyal mate.

May 28, 2018

JOHN MENADUE Our security agencies are not accountable.

The performance and integrity of our security services is a serious national problem. These are particular problems for agencies which operate in secret and with few public checks. We have seen that they are prepared to upstage ministers and undermine governments on key public issues like relations with China at the moment. There is no effective supervision in the public interest as the Hastie/Lewis mess illustrates. Governments must make our security services accountable. But they are frightened to do so. This is an urgent public issue. And the ALP has gone AWOL.

August 29, 2019

CATHY WILCOX. Standing by our trusted ally. (SMH 23.8.2019)

In the face of destabilising provocation.

January 7, 2016

Julianne Schultz. Tribute to Brian Johns.

Brian Johns: A critical Australian romantic

Brian had a gift for friendship. I first got to know him in the late 1970s; I know that many of you knew him for longer.

Over the years as some of his closest friends passed away, he made time to get to know others and share their dreams, ambitions and stories.

That speaks to his gift for friendship his curiosity and empathy drove him to make connections, to find the good in people. He used to say to me that the best structures and systems in the world wouldnt work without the right people irrespective of gender, creed, or background. Never underestimate the importance of people of quality to bring ideas to life, he would say.

July 6, 2018

TIM WOODRUFF. Health, Class Warfare, and Social Justice

Class warfare has been with us forever. It could be called a fight for social justice. Indeed, it would seem to be integral to the stepwise progress we have made over centuries as we have moved to a society which outlaws overt slavery, has a moderately progressive tax system, provides a wide range of public services, and has a variety of safety nets, all combining in the aim to be a civilised society.

September 6, 2017

GILES PARKINSON. Turnbull's abject capitulation to the coal lobby is now complete

The kindest thing to say about prime minister Malcolm Turnbulls absurd proposal to extend the life of the countrys oldest coal generator isthat he is playing politics.

August 24, 2018

JANE McADAM, JOHN CHURCH. Rising seas will displace millions of people and Australia must be ready

Sea-level rise is already threatening some communities around the world, particularly small island states, as it exacerbates disasters resulting from storm surges and flooding.

August 15, 2018

GEOFF MILLER. Trump and the World Trade Organisation.

Many US non-governmental trade experts describe the Trump Administrations actions in regard to tariffs and the WTO and its Appellate Body as illegal, and as threatening the WTOs continued existence.

July 5, 2017

DUNCAN MACLAREN. Scottish Independence: deferred not abandoned

Another referendum on Scottish independence has been deferred but not, to the chagrin of Scottish Unionists, abandoned. The shrieks and howls of protest from the three leaders of Scottish Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Parliament could be heard in their party HQs in London. They wanted their nemesis, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, to take a second independence referendum completely off the table so that Scots would have to accept the English-negotiated Brexit deal no matter how destructive it would be to Scottish society and the Scottish economy. As we say in Scotland when sarcastically negating something - aye right!

March 15, 2017

MACK WILLIAMS. Canberra wrong-footed in our region?

For Ms Bishop to be talking in Singapore about China and democracies, the Japanese big ship and rallying the claimants while pleading with the US to remain staunchly committed in the region certainly is risky. We could be exposed as being more hard line than the US might turn out to be and interpreted as Australia insensitively lecturing the claimants.

September 27, 2017

TIM LINDSEY. Watch out Indonesian democracy Islamism, communism and Jokowis Neo-New Order?

_On 16 September, police broke up an academic discussion at the offices of renowned activist NGO the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH). The topic was the killings of alleged leftists in 1965 and 1966 in the wake of the failed coup that brought former president Soeharto to powe_r.

March 13, 2013

Productivity and Skills. John Menadue

For months, the Business Council of Australia and senior business executives have been banging on about the need to increase labour productivity. To achieve this, they have emphasised the need to amend the industrial relations legislation, Fair Work Australia as essential to lift productivity. Many have seen it as an attempt by employers to rebalance the industrial relations framework in their favour and has little to do with productivity. Others would see it as political identification with the Coalition

August 27, 2017

IAN MCAULEY. Low wage growth: does the government understand how capitalism works?

Some on the far right may see stagnant or falling wages as a welcome boost to profits and competitiveness, but in both structural and political ways low wage growth and consequent widening inequality is undermining capitalism.

July 11, 2019

SUSAN CHENERY. A Repost: The Scribe: portrait of Graham Freudenberg, author of the speech that changed Australia (The Guardian 9 October 2018))

Legendary Labor speechwriter Graham Freudenberg was at the centre of power for more than 40 years. A new film sheds light on the man who wrote the script.

(This outstanding documentary will be telecast on the ABC on Sunday night July 14 ,2019 at 9.35 John Menadue)

May 4, 2019

DAVID LEITCH. We crunch the numbers and find costs of Labor's emissions target are not that big. RenewEconomy May 3 2019

ITK has looked at Labors emissions reduction target the 45% cut from 2005 levels by 2030 and we estimate the community wide costs to be less than $2 billion per year, as summarized in Figure 1.

October 30, 2016

MUNGO MacCALLUM. What worthwhile lawyer would want to work with George Brandis.

Our bumble-footed Attorney-General, George Brandis, has finally got something right. The resignation of the Solicitor-General, Justin Gleeson, was the proper course of action for him to have taken.

Indeed, it was inevitable: when the first and second law officers of the nation are irrevocably divided, one of them must give way and if the first wont, the second must.

October 15, 2020

Why the resistance to a national anti-corruption commission?

Scott Morrison and Christian Porter are insisting that a new federal integrity body could not look at old corruption. What is that about? Is it because there are skeletons in too many people’s closet? Is it the extent to which Alexander Downer and other senior officials benefitted financially from their activities during the Australian Government’s shenanigans on behalf of Woodside and others over oil and helium, which should always have been Timor-Leste’s, in the Timor Sea?

June 29, 2019

JOHN MENADUE. Ensuring the Future of Pearls and Irritations

Thanks to the many subscribers who have offered financial support to P & I in the future. I need to secure financial underwriting and arrange ‘back office’ support before we embark on fundraising. Thanks for your early response to this post. We will be in touch. John Menadue.

Susie and I are looking for organisational and financial support to ensure the future of P & I in ways that are consistent with the values and direction that we have pursued. Editorial independence is essential.

June 29, 2017

JOHN MENADUE. By accepting funding from weapons suppliers the Australian War Memorial demeans Australia's war dead.

I asked the director of the Australian War Memorial, Brendan Nelson, why the Memorial is accepting funding from weapons manufacturers like BAE Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. In response, Brendan Nelson, wrote back that “We regard it as entirely appropriate that defence contractors support the Memorial in its mission.”

September 19, 2017

CHRIS BONNOR. Gonski is back, but who noticed?

The Government has called for submissions into the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools aka the second Gonski review. Gonski was about money and equity, this review is about what schools should do.

November 9, 2017

PETER JOHNSTONE. An ill-informed plenary council for the Catholic Church.

Only those in blind denial could fail to realise that the Catholic Church in Australia is now in the midst of a massive and existential crisis. It is, above all, a crisis of governance. The Catholic bishops main response to this crisis in Australia has been to propose a Plenary Council for 2020. Archbishop Coleridge, appointed by his fellow bishops to guide the preparation for the council, has recently said that t__he Church is facing the biggest crisis in its history. Yet the planning for this plenary council is already suffering from the poor governance that it is supposed to address eventually in 2020. The bishops of Australia are not consulting the people of their own dioceses on the issues. Not surprisingly many Catholics continue to desert the Church as they witness the substantial problems of the Church being kicked down the road to 2020 with little prospect of solution.

June 11, 2020

South Korea and the G7 - some tricky issues

Recent months have seen little sign of any development in the US: DPRK relations but a lot has been happening in the peninsular - through piecing the jigsaw together continues to be challenging.

September 17, 2018

ERIN ODONNELL, AVRIL HORNE. Giving environmental water to drought-stricken farmers sounds straightforward, but its a bad idea (The Conversation, 18.09.18)

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack last week suggested the government would look at changing the law to allow water to be taken from the environment and given to farmers struggling with the drought.

August 24, 2018

RODNEY TIFFEN- How Turnbull shrank in the job

The most important date in the history of the Turnbull government was December 1, 2009. That was the day Tony Abbott defeated Malcolm Turnbull after a revolt by the right wing of the party defeated Turnbulls support for an Emissions Trading Scheme to address global warming.

November 27, 2016

CAVAN HOGUE. Has the alliance got us into more trouble than it has got us out of? Quo vadis series.

Quo vadis - Australian foreign policy and ANZUS.

Summary.Trump does give us an opportunity to do things we should have done long ago.

July 3, 2017

GILES PARKINSON. Coal on limited lifespan as CCS hopes go up in smoke

The coal industry is facing a new crisis point as a group of leading scientists call forthe construction of new coal generators tocease within three years, and as the industrys flagship clean coal and carbon capture and storage project went up in smoke in the US.

October 26, 2017

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND ...

February 14, 2019

CAVAN HOGUE. Comment on Hugh White's response to Paul Dibb on ANZUS and Taiwan.

Hugh White has made an effective rebuttal of Paul Dibb’s claim that we should join the US if China takes military action against Taiwan.

It is important to stress that ANZUS does not require us to join with the USA in defending Taiwan.

August 7, 2018

ALAN KOHLER. Another fine energy shambles (The Australian, 07/08/18)

Years of cat-herding by those who actually know and care about Australias electricity market will come to fruition this week with the meeting of COAG energy ministers to discuss the National Energy Guarantee, and possibly make a decision about it. Or maybe not.

September 21, 2019

PETER SAINSBURY. Sunday environmental round up, 22 September 2019

The worlds rich countries continue to pump US$64 billion per year into coal companies, with Japan leading the charge internationally and domestically. Unhealthy environments are responsible for almost a quarter of deaths globally, but maybe if your community is in an environmentally-challenged area its best to stop fighting the environment and move. And a shout-out for mangrove swamps.

June 27, 2018

MIKE SCRAFTON. What MQ-4C Triton reveals of strategic policy

Government decisions on major equipment acquisitions can signal the governments estimate of the future international environment and national strategic priorities. The governments justification of the MQ-4C Triton leaves important strategic policy questions unanswered.

September 14, 2017

BRIAN TOOHEY. PM walks with energy dinosaurs

The person known as Malcolm Turnbull who took over as Prime Minister is gone. Thats the one who declared immediately after getting the job that Australians have a wonderfully exciting future provided they recognise change is our friend, if we are agile and smart enough to take advantage of it.

August 17, 2017

JIM COOMBS. Electricity and Banks.

A belief, without foundation, that the market is the best way to deliver any product, has our politicians gibbering, when the provision of Public Goods (see my previous article) is properly to be determined by the principle of universal access, not some illusion of competition providing it.

August 24, 2017

PAUL BUDDE. The end of the Foxtel wars

The announcement of the proposed merger of Foxtel with Fox Sport Australia, combined with Telstras agreement to dilute its shareholding in the pay TV operator, paves the way for the end of the Foxtel war between News Corp Australia (formerly News Limited) and Telstra. The decline in revenue and subscriber numbers will most certainly have provided News Corp with the ammunition it needed to break the stranglehold that Telstra has held over Foxtel for more than 20 years.

June 27, 2017

SPENCER ZIFCAK. Three Ministers vs. Three Judges: Executive Government gets Flattened

In Victorias Court of Appeal last Friday, an encounter unprecedented in Australian legal and political history played itself out. Through the Commonwealth Solicitor-General (SG) three Commonwealth Government Ministers made an abject apology to the Court.

May 2, 2018

ERIC HODGENS. Pell and the course that took him to the top

Nothing if not always controversial, and some would say divisive, George Pell is now at a decisive fork in the road. One way could lead to gaol after being sent to trial on May 1st to face multiple charges of sexual abuse. In Pell, we see an ideologue in action. How did he get to here?

July 5, 2017

TIM COLEBATCH. One census, three stories

In the broad picture, the 2016 census has confirmed things we already knew about ourselves. But burrow down into the detail, and youll find much that will surprise you.

September 25, 2019

MARK BUCKLEY. Unknown Man Takes Over Country

_Scott Morrison was originally elevated to the Prime Ministership by pretending not to be a candidate, and then by swooping in on the prize when it came down to a choice between himself, and a man almost universally loathed by the electorate. Voters were actually relieved that it was won by Anyone But Dutton Morrison. He came through as the Steven Bradbury of the Liberal Party.

August 14, 2021

How Washington co-opts Hollywood and the news media

Latest expos of Pentagon documents show how Washington manipulates an ostensibly free and independent media industry.

June 26, 2017

Chris Bonnor Vale Bernie Shepherd

Every profession has them: those people with an extraordinary range of interests and talents who change the lives of others and sometimes the profession itself. Bernie Shepherd, who has just lost his battle against cancer, was one of these. He was a science teacher with great interest and ability in English and the arts, a school principal who established a different type of school, a consultant who carried a new method of assessing students across NSW and a retiree who pioneered analysis of our school system by tapping into the data behind the My School website.

April 23, 2018

IAN DUNLOP. Climate Change: The fiduciary responsibility of politicians & bureaucrats. Part 2 of 2.

Fiduciary: a person to whom power is entrusted for the benefit of another

Power is reposed in members of Parliament by the public for exercise in the interests of the public and not primarily for the interests of members or the parties to which they belong. The cry whatever it takes is not consistent with the performance of fiduciary duty__Sir Gerard Brennan AC, KBE, QC

After three decades of global inaction, none more so than in Australia, human-induced climate change is now an existential risk to humanity. That is, a risk posing large negative consequences which will be irreversible, resulting inter alia in major reductions in global and national population, species extinction, disruption of economies and social chaos, unless carbon emissions are reduced on an emergency basis. The risk is immediate in that it is being locked in today by our insistence on expanding the use of fossil fuels when the carbon budget to stay below sensible temperature increase limits is already exhausted.

April 14, 2019

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Our Leader remains, as so often, in Luddite denial.

According to ScoMo , electric cars are for wimps and latte sippers real Australians want more grunt. Oink oink, vroom vroom! Wheelies, doughnuts, burnouts!

January 31, 2019

MIKE SCRAFTON. The Intelligent use of Intelligence

The United States Intelligence Community presents an annual assessment of national security threats to Congress. President Trump and the US Intelligence agencies are at odds over the 2019 Report. Putting aside Trumps simplistic and intuitive understanding and his disregard for any evidence that contradicts his preconceptions, the enthusiasm with which Trumps antagonists have grasped the agencies judgements also raises an important question about the value and use of intelligence product.

September 1, 2019

ANDREW FARRAN. Brexit - Put not thy trust in constitutional convention

Had the English Settlement of 1688 been followed with a written Constitution Britain might not be in the pickle it is today. Then the tussle between King and Parliament had resulted in civil war. While the Royal Prerogative Powers have been formally retained by the Monarch they are now in reality in the hands of one, King Boris, who recently secured them without endorsement by Parliament or other formal anointment.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal