February 2, 2023

Anticipating the Defence Strategic Review through ministerspeak

In anticipation of the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) it would be advisable to stock up on a numbing agent.

November 7, 2021

The larrikin: a symbol of our fractured political landscape

It is a matter of despair that Australian politics has become all about faux larrikinism, leaving much of the population marginalised by bad policy.

October 6, 2021

The plot to murder Julian Assange is being ignored by the mainstream media

The US government reportedly planned to kidnap and murder Julian Assange. And yet the Australian commentariat and media are silent. Why?

March 27, 2025

Great power diplomacy in the era of Trump 2.0

With Trump in the White House, geopolitics has returned to the realm of great power relations. _

January 26, 2025

Instead of noise and bluster, can January 26 be a day of loving awareness of those who are hurting?

I have been reading Stan Grant’s beautiful new book, Murriyang song of time (Bundyi: Sydney 2024). There is in it a sentence pertaining to the Uluru Statement of the Heart and the subsequent failed Referendum. Stan Grant says, poignantly, that ‘the Uluru Statement spoke from the afflicted to a nation that has never loved us.'

October 28, 2023

What happened to Indigenous Rights? The world will judge Australia harshly

The prolonged debate about the Voice to Parliament was dominated by the question about what rights should be accorded to our First Nations communities. It was, without doubt, the most potent argument advanced by proponents of the no case. By enshrining the Voice in the constitution, it was said, Aborigines and Islanders were to be given special rights not available to other Australians. It was, therefore, unfair and discriminatory and divided the nation. What is more it encouraged indigenous separatism which threatened national unity.

October 9, 2023

AUKUS submarine deal: the jungle ahead

The impressive US Congressional Research Service (CRS) has just released another batch of independent analyses of the daunting challenges the Pentagon - especially the US Navy - face in meeting the demands to upgrade significantly its force capabilities in the Indo Pacific. All of which is now confronted by the extraordinarily chaotic legislative environment occasioned by the Republican shenanigans over the House Speakers position.

January 16, 2022

The abusive relationship between Australia and the US

Australia’s uncritical and unstinting support of American hegemony makes it complicit in the Pentagon’s many war crimes.

November 30, 2021

For the prime minister, self-delusion now an ingrained tic

Scott Morrison isn’t the only chronic liar in politics. He might not even be the worst. But he’s doing further damage by refusing to admit any error.

November 11, 2021

Should we decriminalise drug use? The evidence is in

Community support for drug law reform is rising amid the success of health-based initiatives over law enforcement: it’s time for our politicians to take notice.

March 10, 2025

Sorry, the full Gonski won’t be enough

The media chorus says it all: the school funding wars are over, public schools will finally get justice, all the major combatants are onside and there will be peace throughout the land. And when all schools implement a suite of mandatory reforms, our levels of student achievement will make us the envy of the world.

December 28, 2024

Now, the New Year

In 2024 Democracy narrowly won the prelim on points. Now for the main bout. Its battlespace is the human mind where the contestants are truth and fantasy. If fantasy wins, our species will be decimated, our planet in danger of joining the dead worlds of useless gas and rock we glimpse in the universe around us. Victory for truth heralds a prospect that is truly inspiring – a future of extraordinary progress and achievement.

December 14, 2024

The Australian Public Service and the perils of Trumpism

“The first thing we’ll do is sack those 36000 public servants in Canberra” - David Littleproud, leader of Australia’s National Party.

October 26, 2024

Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity “extreme under any circumstances”

“The events since October 7 have been absolutely overwhelming. And that means they are overwhelming for everybody, but particularly for the people who are experiencing them, those who are suffering. The victims. It’s regularly said that October 7 represented the greatest killing of Jewish people since the Holocaust. And that’s correct. What’s said less frequently is that the killing of Palestinians since then represents the greatest Slaughter of Palestinians in their recorded history.”

December 27, 2023

US Foreign Policy is a scam built on corruption

It is the urgent task of the American people to overhaul a foreign policy that is so broken, corrupted, and deceitful that it is burying the government in debt while pushing the world closer to nuclear Armageddon.**

January 10, 2023

Shoving democracy aside in Brazil and elsewhere

The destruction of the Brazilian congress by supporters of the former, and now self-exiled, President Jair Bolsonaro is yet another example of the power and real consequences of misinformation and deceit peddled on the internet.

November 8, 2022

2022: Democracy takes a gap year, US hegemony is over

Nations holding their breath for democracy may suffocate. If the US is still the leader of the free world, its followers are dwindling, as several summits in November will show.

March 15, 2022

A tale of two hospitals in Iraq and Ukraine

_Until lions have their own historians, their history will be that of the hunters

January 17, 2025

Joe Biden’s legacy? The Palestinian genocide

American presidents are big on talking about what they believe to be their legacy, even if there is no substance to the claims they make. With Joe Biden, it is crystal clear what he can claim as his legacy: the genocide that has resulted in close to 70,000 Palestinian lives being snuffed out.

December 6, 2024

Misleading reports on antisemitic incidents by ECAJ

It is very unfortunate that the new Executive Council of Australian Jewry Report, Anti-Jewish Incidents in Australia 2024 is marred by fundamental flaws, accidental or otherwise. This problem is in line with other reports emerging from the pro-Israel lobby, reports that get considerable media coverage.

October 31, 2024

Peace in Gaza: Part 2

A sustainable peace settlement in Gaza needs to meet the legitimate demands of the key parties, but given their inability to negotiate such an agreement themselves it will need to be proposed and implemented by the US and the major Arab nations under UN auspices.

February 15, 2024

UK Labour could splinter Conservative politics for a decade in 2024

It is almost impossible to devise a scenario in which the Labour Party does not win the UK election in 2024. The biggest remaining question may well be whether the victory is sufficiently large to almost guarantee a second term and possibly splinter the Conservative side of UK politics for a decade or more.

January 26, 2024

26 January or thereabouts

Vox Pop illustrates that the most enthusiastic celebrants of Australia Day do not always know what happened on 26 January 1788 in Sydney Cove. Some think their holiday has to do with Captain Cook who had sailed past Sydney Harbour eighteen years earlier. Others run the event together with the creation of the Commonwealth from 1901 or wrap their flag patriotism around references to Gallipoli.

January 19, 2024

Why Indonesia is more monarchy than democracy

General Soeharto who ruled Indonesia for 32 years last century used to stage a Festival of Democracy every five years. This was export quality irony - the results were known before the poll papers were printed.

January 2, 2024

In Jimmy Lai's case, the West has put itself on trial

Jimmy Lai Chee-ying is now in the dock facing charges of colluding with foreign forces under the national security law and a separate one for sedition. It will be interesting to hear the evidence, but even before that, the Western press just wants to put Hong Kong on trial.

January 6, 2023

Russia warns Japan on openly unfriendly positions

Moscow has now warned that Japans openly unfriendly positions make delayed peace treaty talks impossible. Australia has some connections with those ‘unfriendly positions.

November 13, 2022

School education: designed to fail?

Education, more properly learning, has been subject to numerous inquiries and reforms. In Australia and elsewhere the policy debate is framed in the context of school and preparation for employment, a job. Intervention by governments over the last 50 years has been substantial and mostly unproductive.

January 7, 2022

What a shambles: a tangled net for Scott Morrison and Novak Djokovic

The debacle surrounding the tennis ace is good media fodder. Chiefly, it shows that Morrison’s right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.

November 23, 2021

Steady on ranters, Victoria is not descending into totalitarianism

The ‘‘crowd’’ has not spoken. Media interests, and the Coalition, have no sure instinct for what voters think about pandemic management.

November 1, 2021

No Mr Morrison, thats not a plan. This is a plan

Any government smart enough to set up an agency tasked with moving the economy into renewable energy could hold office for at least two decades.

February 15, 2025

Palestine, incredible, unbelievable

An Opening Salvo

Five hundred days into a war to achieve death and destruction which at a glance looked like organised slaughter where most casualties were women and children, a carnage is justified by claims that even newborn babies must be terrorists, hence a beyond belief horror movie beamed nightly on television screens.

Murder Unlimited

A cast of extras has included home grown journalists, aid workers, nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers, all targets for death by invaders loving their chance to kill, destroy, dress in women’s underwear and have the selfies sent home as military snap reminders of soldierly escapades marinated with bombast.

February 3, 2025

Hoaxes that gush for winners and trickle down for losers

What do Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and John Howard have in common with the Piltdown Man? They all managed to sell a hoax that lasted for decades, before it was exposed as completely false. But wait, their hoax is still central to transglobal neoliberal capitalism’s stranglehold on us all, whereas Charles Dawson’s 1912 forged ‘missing link’ skull from East Sussex became a lesson in how dangerous it is to let preconceptions override evidence.

January 21, 2024

Slovakia, Hungary criticise western values, halt support for Ukraine

Slovakia is the poor relation created when the former Czechoslovakia divided in 1993 into the Czech and Slovak Republics. The Czech Republic has hewn closely to EU and NATO policies over Ukraine. But despite NATO membership the Slovak Republic has decided to halt military aid to Ukraine. And its prime minister, Robert Fico, has now come out with a strong pro-Russian statement over the Ukraine conflict.

March 22, 2023

Critical Decade: is the government concerned about the future?

We all want a better future for our children, and our grandchildren. The Government however seems unconcerned whether there is going to be a future at all.

January 26, 2023

Democracy and the winning formula

The rallying call of the Western democracies to form a united front against those who dare to challenge their supremacy has always been common values. Our hearts burst with pride and gratitude to think that we have the freedom of speech, of assembly, of dissent and other such privileges that those in other systems do not enjoy. They set us apart from the others, be they communists, theocracies or autocracies.

October 30, 2022

On immigration integrity, the Labor government must not fail

The Australian Border Force was not created from a platform of honesty and transparency, quite the opposite. Double talk and trickery underlie the political slurs used to dehumanise and criminalise boat people resulting in needless deaths, agony and brokenness. Labor must return to truth.

October 21, 2022

Sixty percent of all claims sent to Medicare for payment are fraudulent!

Is $8 billion dollars a year being rorted from Medicare? This claim for almost universal fraudulent behaviour is a nonsense. The entire bill for Medicare funded GP services is only $12 billion.

December 1, 2021

Solomons intervention merely serves Australia's own Pacific interests

Australian resources assigned to curb Chinese expansion would be better used to counter vaccine hesitancy and lift supply.

February 14, 2025

Australian politicians are now just pathetic beyond measure

The depth of Australia’s slide into an irrelevant and untrustworthy minnow on the global stage was demonstrated when distinguished UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese described the Australian prime minister’s refusal to criticise Donald Trump’s plan to turn Gaza into a neo-colonial capitalist venture for the benefit of his family and friends, as “pathetic”.

February 13, 2025

Trump and foolish old men who redraw maps

It generally ends badly. An old tyrant embarks on an ill-considered project that involves redrawing maps. They are heedless to wise counsel and indifferent to indigenous interests or experience. Before they fail, are killed, deposed or otherwise disposed of, these vicious old men can cause immense harm.

January 3, 2025

25 years of reviews and policy statements: What do they reveal about Australia's R&D challenges?

Australia’s ability to harness the full potential of its research and development (R&D) capacity has been a subject of intense scrutiny for at least 25 years.

October 21, 2024

The soulless culture and breakfast of political champions

“Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit, and you reap a character. Sow a character, and you reap a destiny” (Charles Reade, 1814-84)

April 1, 2024

Who is supplying Israel with the oil it needs?

It’s no surprise that USA and Russia are supplying oil to Israel to fight its war. Nor that that some major international oil companies are keen to profit. But it seems odd that Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iraq and Egypt are involved.

February 7, 2024

Police debunk Pro-Israel NSW premiers false Gas the Jews claim

A lie travels around the world before the truth puts on its boots. 120 days since the Australian Jewish Association AJA, alleged pro-Palestine, antiwar protesters chanted Gas the Jews, the truth arrives with boots and all.

February 1, 2024

Israel and Gaza: Yesterday, today and tomorrow

Veterans of Middle East affairs say wryly that anyone who claims to understand the Israel-Palestine conflict has been misinformed. This paper reviews the complex and emotionally fraught history of the Conflict; looks at 10/7 and Israels war on Hamas in Gaza in retaliation, and then speculates on possible pathways to the conflicts resolution that could amount to more than another truce in the endless cycle of violence.

January 2, 2024

The legitimisation of evil will remain with Israelis long after the war in Gaza ends

At the end of this war, Israel will find itself in a worse situation than when the war began. Israel has become a pariah state.

November 23, 2023

The Di Sahn Duong case

As a member of the Chinese Australian community, the Di Sahn Duong trial is yet another one of those Here we go again! cases that disconcerts and exacerbates the subliminal anxiety we bear whenever Australias relationship with China sours.

November 14, 2023

Australia: Land of the persecuted whistleblower

In Australia, whistleblowers are feebly protected. They tend to muddy the narrative of perfect institutions, spoil the fun of having illusions, and give the game away. Despite recent amendments to the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 (Cth) regarding, for instance, the creation of a National Anti-Corruption Commission, public sector employees remain vulnerable to prosecution. The NACC, for one, already risks being hobbled by secrecy restrictions imposed by the Albanese government.

October 18, 2023

To my brothers and cousins, the Jewish community of Australia

Your fear is our fear, your safety is our safety, your blood is our blood, our blood is your blood, make no mistake. When I see a Jewish mother crying for her loss, I feel with her. I want you to feel with the thousands of Palestinian mothers that have been crying for years and years; make no mistake. Your future is our future, your freedom is our freedom; make no mistake. Dont let an Apartheid state speak in your name. If there was no ongoing occupation, there would be no violence_

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal