November 25, 2021

The Israeli lobby and the disturbing SBS board appointment

The Morrison government ignored the mandated independent appointment process to choose its own candidate who brings an aggressive pro-Israel agenda.

November 22, 2021

'Can do capitalism': An outdated, selfish narrative

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been promoting ‘can do capitalism’, when what Australia needs is policies that treat all citizens equally.

November 17, 2021

In Myanmar, oppression, disease and stymied aid tilt the crisis towards disaster

With the crisis in Myanmar intensifying this week, Ian Mannix, in a two-part report, looks at the conflict and how aid agencies are responding.

October 28, 2021

Labor's Tasmania split bedevils Albanese's poll hopes

Something rotten is happening to the ALP in the Apple Isle. Infighting among the Tasmanian branch threatens to spill into the federal election campaign.

October 26, 2021

Israel labels Palestinian civil society groups terrorists.

_Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz last week signed an order declaring six civil society groups in the West Bank as terrorist organisations.

October 21, 2021

Will NSW's opening up to international travel lead to internal borders closing down?

Returning travellers need clearer information on internal and international movement.

October 20, 2021

The speech the PM can use to wow his Glasgow audience

If Prime Minister Scott Morrison really wants to make an impression at COP26 in Glasgow, here is what he should say.

October 19, 2021

Murdoch's climate denialists must bear heavy responsibility for national failure

The insistence of denialists at The Australian that the 2050 emissions targets are beyond the world’s reach is damaging and flies in the face of science and technological progress.

October 14, 2021

The rise of the career politician: Ben Morton

Ben Mortons appointment to federal Cabinet has been explained correctly as the PM r__ewarding his supporters in the party. But what skills and experience does he bring to the job, and what does this tell us about the work of politics?

October 2, 2021

Chinas trade bid a chance to mend fences

Beijing cant be happy with where its Australian relations have ended up. But Canberra should be wary of overplaying its hand.

March 4, 2025

Bulk-billing incentives should be the start of something bigger

The federal government’s new $8.5 billion investment in general practice is a powerful painkiller. It will bring welcome relief to patients facing GP fees, and to a primary care system that’s under pressure. But it won’t cure the system’s underlying problems.

December 23, 2024

Israel's contradictory statecraft

When Prime Minister Netanyahu expressed his disdain for international law and his contempt for the leadership of the United Nations, he implicitly recalled an ancient tradition of the origins of Israel. He asserted that Modern Israel was not formed in 1948 by the United Nations, but by the Israeli war against the Arabs, in the settled region of Palestine, the Nakba (disaster). The very mention of the word Palestine had become an ideological affront to Israel.

December 20, 2024

Killing Russian general won't stop reality crashing in on Ukraine

States don’t tend to kill each other’s generals, not least because it invites reciprocal action. The bombing in Moscow this week, killing General Igor Kirillov, was a successful attack by Ukraine and its allies. The ongoing use of long-range missiles by the West to hit targets inside Russia is, I suggest, surprisingly similar. both are designed to provoke a reaction rather than to achieve anything militarily. They can’t alter battlefield realities. It says a lot about where we have got to in the Ukraine war.

March 2, 2024

Accountability demands putting it in writing

The APS Commissioner, Gordon de Brouwer, included some surprising comments when speaking at The Mandarins Rebuilding Trust and Integrity in the APS conference last week.

December 20, 2023

The Albanese Governments economic management and the cost-of-living crisis

The Albanese Governments economic management has been very competent, but unfortunately also marked by a lack of ambition in tackling the challenges facing Australia.

November 20, 2023

Australian peak bodies condemn allegations against UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese

Peak Palestinian advocacy organisations condemn allegations against visiting UN human rights expert.

October 3, 2023

Killing for Country: Another plank in truth-telling

At the heart of David Marrs new book, Killing for Country, is a crucial question. How should we deal with old, ugly secrets within our own families? Should we ignore them as excesses of the past, when and where things were done differently, or should we examine them closely for clues and lessons that might shape our behaviour now?

October 1, 2023

How has the Belt and Road Initiative changed the world?

The ten years of the Belt and Road Initiative has proven that the rise of China has not brought colonialism, disaster, war, refugees, and crises. Instead, it brought the world trade, commodities, tourists, infrastructure, economic growth and civilisation. No matter how Western politicians, media, and think tanks vilify the BRI, they cannot cover up a basic factthat is, when China is strong, it does not take the old path of aggression and expansion we see in the histories of Europe, the US, Japan, and others.

February 21, 2022

Rebuilding capability in the Australian Public Service - Part 1

In an article last December I commented on the final report of the Senate Public Administration and Finance References Committee inquiry into the current capability of the APS.

November 9, 2021

Selfishness emerges as the planet's greatest existential threat

Global policymakers’ selfishness could prove terminal, driving the relentless exploitation of the planet’s natural resources.

October 10, 2021

Maria Kalesnikova: Amazing courage for Belarus and beyond

In democracies, there are few risks in challenging abusive policies, though courage to do so is often missing. Yet in a brutal, dangerous country, young Belarusian leader Maria Kalesnikova is displaying that indispensable quality.

February 26, 2025

Explaining Trump’s foreign policy

When analysts seek to explain Donald Trump’s approach to government they inevitably focus on his personality: an unstable and capricious transactional negotiator with no fixed ideology who seems to be a narcissist and a pathological liar.

January 23, 2025

Whitewashing a dictator

Informed observers are amazed that the blackened legacy of Ferdinand E. Marcos has been sanitised to such an extent that his only son Bong Bong Marcos could become the 17th elected president of the Philippines in June 2022. Who on earth can take the Philippines seriously ever again?

January 15, 2025

UNRWA’s expulsion from Jerusalem will seal Israel’s illegal annexation

From Arab governments to the UN Secretary General, forces must mobilise to halt Israel’s detrimental expulsion of UNRWA, writes Chris Gunness.

November 19, 2022

Sending a 13-year-old Indonesian child to an Australian adult prison

Sentencing 13 year old children to adult jail is injustice of the highest order. On some lists Australians are world leaders in shame. Like locking up and brutalising children as Four Corners has shown and not only our own. Weve treated Indonesian kiddies just as badly.

November 7, 2022

G20 forecast: Bleak outlook, chances of thunder

Its the meeting season in Indonesia, but the chances of viable offspring are slim. Too much hate, too little harmony. Thats bad news for all.

October 28, 2022

Why a First Nations Voice should come first

Since the advent of European colonisation, the absence of an effective process for conducting dialogues between the broader community and First Nations people has been a festering sore at the heart of Australian society.

February 23, 2025

Environment: Australia’s exported greenhouse gas emissions are double our domestic emissions

Australia is the fourth largest exporter of fossil fuel emissions. The US should be bearing the largest financial responsibility for helping poorer nations cope with climate-related damage. There’s never been a global transition from one energy source to the next.

February 22, 2025

Ukraine isn’t invited to its own peace talks. History is full of such examples – and the results are devastating

Ukraine has not been invited to a key meeting between American and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia this week to decide what peace in the country might look like.

October 9, 2024

The American-Israeli genocide in Palestine: Twelve months on

The past twelve months have been the most catastrophic for Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba. Everything that is needed to sustain life in Gaza has been destroyed.

March 22, 2024

Democracy in decline in the West, not in Asia

Recently, Freedom House, a non-profit organisation that assesses democracy freedom, and human rights, reported that globally democracy has been in decline for the past 18 years. Moreover, this has been most evident in the West. According to a study published by Rand Corporation, a U.S. government supported think tank, Asia is the only place in the world where democracy scores have improved.

November 26, 2023

Living with the Sino nemesis

Chinas economy today is around 50 times larger, in real terms, than it was 50 years ago. A World Bank report in 2022 confirmed that during this period, China lifted at least 800 million people out of extreme poverty, contributing close to 75% of the total reduction in extreme poverty, globally.

March 12, 2023

Were are on the path to war! How do we stop it?

This is the title of a National Webinar organised by the Australian Anti-AUKUS Coalition in expectation of the release of three reports this month; one on AUKUS and the acquisition of nuclear powered submarines, one on the Inquiry into war powers reform and, although it may now be delayed until April, the Strategic Defence Review.

November 12, 2022

Better, not smaller government: confessions of an econocrat-watcher

Econocrats have spent too long struggling ineffectively to achieve smaller government, while doing little about what should be their real concern: not smaller government, but better government.

March 23, 2022

Quad in trouble in new cold war.

_For those in Australia clinging to the Indo-Pacific as the titular proof of a new regional zeitgeist, where India is concerned, they are relying on a strategic partner that simply does not exist.

March 20, 2022

NSW public schools face a funding crisis while private schools are over funded

Public schools in NSW face a funding crisis. Combined Commonwealth and NSW Government funding for private schools has increased by three times that for public schools since 2009-10. Projected funding estimates show that private schools will be over-funded by $2 billion for the rest of the decade while public schools will be under-funded by $21 billion.

March 29, 2025

What could we expect from a Dutton Government?

Peter Dutton’s budget reply Speech is full of distortions and many of the key polices are flawed or we cannot be sure they will work as intended. The Labor Party might be criticised as too cautious, but the Coalition is clearly not ready for government.

December 24, 2024

Ordinary Islamophobia, extraordinary Muslims

After having spent the last five weeks listening to Muslim representatives from across Australia, Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia, Aftab Malik, exclusively and frankly shares his initial reflections.

November 25, 2024

Obtuse China Policy and the "International Rules-Based Order" in a Trumpian world

In the ballyhooed, strident context of Trumpian change, if not, hysterical disruption, it is especially important to pinpoint and consider the real and the “factually alternative” content of Chinese foreign policy and international relations.

January 30, 2024

Toxic effects of censorship on Gaza

Doctors, Teachers, Journalists, Academics are being disciplined, hauled before disciplinary bodies and even sacked for criticising the slaughter in Gaza and, most heinous sin of all, for mentioning genocide. Arrayed against those professionals is a lobby promoting the notion that criticism of Israeli government policies is anti-Semitic, hence the need to censor commentary about the massacres in Gaza.

January 16, 2024

Diplomacy, morality and media have failed the people of Gaza

Imagine this headline: Brits bomb Belfast to obliterate IRA 24,000 dead, 50,000 injured, all hospitals flattened children limbless and starving.

January 11, 2024

Amidst preparations for long Ukraine war, peace may come quickly

It is possible now that peace could come to Ukraine rather faster than most Western analysts are predicting, but this will only be only on terms acceptable to Russia.

October 25, 2023

The razing of the Warsaw Ghetto: Are our leaders incapable of learning from history?

If we are looking for historical parallels to the current destruction in Palestine, then the razing of the Warsaw Ghetto by the Nazis is unfortunately one that comes readily to mind. While we would all agree that this was appalling, inhuman and unfathomable, is blowing women and children to pieces in Gaza any less so?

March 17, 2023

Penny Wong's faltering foreign policy

Little that was distinctive about Penny Wongs foreign policy has survived the signing of the AUKUS agreement.

February 19, 2023

Child poverty, $3.5 billion for tanks, and a government that does not care

The childs face in the Smith Family ad sums up all that is wrong with Australia. In this rich, first world nation, the Smith Family call us to sponsor a child so that she might go to school. A basic human right is being denied and in that denial our state and government stands condemned.

February 13, 2023

Overseas student policy: too important to get wrong

Overseas students are a key source of export income and a tool of Australias soft diplomacy. Whether for good or bad, they have also become a major funding source for university research.

November 14, 2022

Abuse of Australias asylum system grinds on

While we await a government decision on the 31,000 legacy boat arrivals in Australia, asylum applications from people arriving by air continued an inexorable rise to 1,448 in October 2022.

November 7, 2022

Australia's secret pacts militarise global warming

Australias secretive military pact with the US and UK (AUKUS) is an offensive Anglosphere war megamachine shield from growing human and political upheavals of global warming and expanding inequity in global governance. Climate change constitutes an existential threat to humanity and a peaceful world order.

February 7, 2022

West's bid to subvert others is no longer a secret

The US’s attempts to destabilise its perceived enemies and cling to global supremacy have been laid bare in a new book.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal