September 19, 2017

PAUL BUDDE. Smart energy or tilting at windmills

After more than 15 years of industry initiatives aimed at smart energy, the government has successfully frustrated and/or stopped such initiatives and is actively working against the solutions preferred by the industry (smart grids, gas, renewables, batteries).

June 27, 2018

ALAN BOYD. Asias millionaires leaving for safe havens, lower taxes.

Report says thousands of wealthy citizens are leaving Asia and the Middle East, mostly heading for new lives in Australasia, North America and Europe.

March 19, 2015

Rachel Wilson, Bronwen Dalton and Chris Baumann. Six ways Australia's education system is failing our kids.

Amid debates about budget cuts and the rising costs of schools and degrees, there is one debate receiving alarmingly little attention in Australia. Were facing a slow decline in most educational standards, and few are aware just how bad the situation is getting.

These are just six of the ways that Australias education system is seriously failing our kids.

1. Australian teens are falling behind, as others race ahead

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey tests the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students in more than 70 economies worldwide. And it showsthat Australian 15-year-olds’ scores on reading, maths and scientific literacy have recorded statistically significant declines since 2000, while other countries have shown improvement.

February 18, 2019

MICHAEL KEATING. National Security: How Professional is the Advice?

Prime Minister Morrison and Minister Dutton have launched a scare campaign over the Medivac Bill, alleging that 1000 refugees will arrive in Australia from Manus and Nauru in a matter of weeks, which will in turn start the boats coming again. In an effort to gain some credibility for this claim, the Government has cited the Security Agencies in support.

In this article I consider the capacity of the Security Agencies to make such judgements, and their professionalism in allowing themselves to be used in this way.

January 26, 2017

ROBERT BROWN. Financial advice reform - when will the journey end?

The financial advice industry is on a journey towards professionalism. While I cant say exactly what this tired assertion means, I can say that it is invariably offered as an impatient response to pesky commentators who dare to suggest that the latest round of reforms (responding to the latest round of financial services industry scandals) may not achieve the results that consumers deserve.

June 7, 2017

IAN MCAULEY. Australias finance sector: a bloated overhead?

Rather than capricious and populist measures such as the governments levy on the big five banks, we need a thorough and far-ranging consideration of the role of the finance sector in our economy. This sector, which should have benefited from productivity improvements to reduce its costs, has become an increasingly bloated overhead, whose growth has provided little if any real value.

August 30, 2018

JANE CADZOW. The watchman - Scott Morrison (Sun Herald, 3 November 2012)

Accused of inflaming racism, Scott Morrison insists people have the wrong idea about him. Jane Cadzow meets the Liberals immigration spokesman. This article was published in the Sun Herald on 3 November 2012 .

In his maiden speech in 2008 Scott Morrison said ‘From my faith, I derive the values of loving kindness, justice and righteousness’

November 10, 2016

IAN McAULEY. Mein Drumpf: Hitler, Donald Trump And A Shot Across The Bow For The Left

Were not sure who first said history doesnt repeat itself, but it does rhyme, but its an apt reminder of the similarities between the forces that have propelled Trump into the US presidency, and the forces that brought Germanys National Socialists to power in 1933.

Trump claims, correctly, to be part of an incredible and great movement.

There is indeed a great movement. As in the 1930s countries are turning to what may be loosely described as far-right populism, a movement embracing notions of national or racial exceptionalism, a rejection of globalization, and identification of a supposed conspiracy of internal enemies with a corrosive influence on public ideas.

January 6, 2014

The Revival of Misprision of Felony. Guest blogger: Kieran Tapsell

In the days before police forces, the State in the English speaking world relied on citizens to report serious crimes, called felonies. The posse in the Western movies is a reflection of the hue and cry that citizens were expected to raise. Failing to report a felony was itself a crime, called misprision of felony. The crime, according to Lord Denning in the 1962 House of Lords case, Sykes v The Director of Public Prosecutions, was more than 700 years old. It is so old that the word misprision, meaning concealment has disappeared from everyday use.

March 4, 2015

John Falzon Welfare reform but where are the jobs?

If by welfare we mean giving assistance to those who dont really need it and who are living off the public purse, then it is indeed time we had a comprehensive review of welfare.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, the McClure Welfare Review was given the task of cutting social expenditure to those who actually do need it. If only we devoted as much effort to welfare reform for the corporates and the rich as we do for the people who struggle! If only we were able to admit that our irrational spending on those who need it least has to stop. It’s time for a review of corporate welfare.

February 2, 2017

RICHARD BUTLER. Australia and the US: Truth Time.

There is an extraordinary amount of deception and lying around current US policy. The Republican establishment will need to work out where it stands on Trumps agenda. This is precisely the time for truthful discourse in Australia about our relationship with the US.

August 17, 2018

GREG BAILEY. Australia and Canada: Mirrors of each other

Australia and Canada have considerable similarities in a whole range of areas, and both share serious relations with the recalcitrant United States, becoming increasingly more erratic under the ideological sway of the Republican Party and its current leadership. Yet what do most Australians know about this country on the other side of the world, from which we might learn much, as a partial mirror of ourselves?

June 19, 2018

MICHAEL PASCOE. Liberals lurch to the right is straight out of Trump playbook

What federal council meeting? Oh, that federal council meeting privatising the ABC, following Trump on moving our embassy to Jerusalem? No, nothing to see here. Move along.

February 13, 2019

HUGH WHITE. The US shouldnt go to war with China over Taiwanand nor should Australia (ASPI: THE STRATEGIST, 13 Feb 2019)

Paul Dibb, in hisrecentStrategistpost, writes that Americas strategic position in Asia would be fatally undermined if it didnt go to war with China if China attacked Taiwan, and that Australias alliance with America would be fatally undermined if we didnt then go to war with China too. The conclusion he draws is that, in the event of an unprovoked Chinese attack on Taiwan, America should go to war with China, and so should Australia.

February 10, 2014

Mark Gregory. NBN - ageing copper network and structural separation.

The Australian telecommunication industry is in crisis and centre stage is an ageing copper network that some would have you believe is good for another hundred years and others argue it is time to move to an all fibre access network.

But the problems extend far beyond copper versus fibre and go to the heart of what an industry needs if it is to be a successful contributor to the Australian economy. As Australia struggles to find out how this sorry saga will end, questions should be asked of our politicians and telecommunication industry leaders why there is no plan for the future.

April 18, 2018

MICHAEL KEATING. Why Australia Needs A Stronger Revenue Base

Earlier this week the Australia Institute released an open letter signed by 48 eminent Australians calling for an increase in taxation. As we might have expected, the Treasurer, Scott Morrison, without any reflection, dismissed this call for higher taxes as a numpty of an idea, adding that The idea that you increase taxes to grow the economy is stupid. This article argues that instead it is the Treasurer who is wrong, and that full budget repair will not be possible over the medium term unless deliberate action is taken to increase government revenue.

September 27, 2018

ABUL RIZVI: Privatising visa processing the alarm bells are ringing (Part 2)

Major ICT transformation projects conducted in partnership with a big IT company are high risk. Privatisation of core government functions such as visa processing are also high risk, especially when undertaken under the cloak of commercial-in-confidence type secrecy. Doing the two together multiplies the risk big time. But that is exactly what the Home Affairs department is doing.

October 25, 2017

MICHAEL WOODS. Why reforming health care is integral for our economy

Australias productivity growth has been stagnant for over a decade and, according to a new report, our health policies and programs could be partly to blame. Released today, the Productivity Commission report also highlights how the health-care sector (among others) could play a starring role in improving productivity.

October 2, 2018

JAMES FERNYHOUGH Scott Morrison is either lying about carbon emissions, or just plain ignorant (the New Daily, 02.10.18)

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Australia is on track to meet its 2030 emissions reduction target in a canter. But itsnot, and Mr Morrison is either being blindly optimisticor he is an outright liar. More fake news from Scott Morrison.

August 23, 2018

TIM COLEBATCH. Let the voters decide (Inside Story, 23.08.18)

An early election is the only solution to the chaos in the Liberal party room.

September 29, 2019

LAURIE PATTON. How Malcolm Turnbull missed his chance to fix the NBN

Internet access is now the most complained about telco service in Australia according to the Telecommunications Ombudsmans latest report. While complaints about mobile phones have been on the decline recently, the state of our trouble-plagued NBN continues to see consumers heading to the authorities in the faint hope their broadband problems can be fixed. Alas, the future remains bleak for millions of NBN Co customers until the Government abandons a flawed set of technologies simply incapable of delivering 21st Century speeds.

April 29, 2018

JOHN MENADUE. The international press at Panmunjom for the KIm-Moon Summit were much more impressed than the Australian press.

I was struck by the response, amazement and obvious excitement of the international press at Panmunjom, near Seoul last Friday. See link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw8mROuQs44

But the media interest in Australia seemed remarkably low key and almost disinterested. At least our media was not as sulky and cynical as the Japanese media,

October 21, 2015

Ian Richards. The Submarine Menace

Way back in the 1980s, then Defence Minister Kim Beasley gave birth to the greatest industrial White Elephant in the history of our nation - the establishment of the submarine construction facility in Adelaide,South Australia. So much has been written and said about the Collins Class submarine construction project that I do not need to elaborate upon it. Suffice it to say that it was succinctly described in the media as a disaster. It would be hard to find many who would disagree.

December 10, 2014

Tilly Gunning. Children in detention.

The ‘Were Better Than This’ campaign was launched on the 26th of November 2014, its aim is to end the Australian Governments indeterminate detention of over 700 refugee children. Lots of influential Australians have come together to support the cause by participating in a choir song, the proceeds will go to charity. To listen to the song and view the video of support, click here. Visit the Were Better Than This website to discover figures regarding children in detention, and contribute to the organisation, and make a change.

December 20, 2024

A five-minute scroll

In our last five-minute scroll for the year, Peter Slezak speaks up at a Gaza rally, while Canadian politician Pierre Poilievre speaks up for Israel bombing Iran. Human Rights Watch has found that Israel has inflicted conditions of life in Gaza calculated to destroy the Palestinian population in Gaza and we give the last word of the year to Francesca Albanese.

June 19, 2017

BRIAN TOOHEY. Prevention better than cure when it comes to terror

We shouldn’t trash our own values to support harsh anti-terrorism policies that dont guarantee more security. There is a wealth of evidence about what does and what does not help to protect us from terrorism, and we’re doing too much of what doesn’t work.

August 17, 2018

MICHAEL PASCOE. Why Australias latest wages figures are worse than they look (the New Daily 16.08.18)

The June quarter wages index headlined a slight lift of 0.6 per cent for the quarter, making 2.1 per cent for the year.Dont be fooled the numbers are worse than they look.

June 21, 2017

CHRIS BONNOR AND BERNIE SHEPHERD. PART TWO: Losing the game? Do we now have another chance to lift school equity and achievement?

Amidst this weeks flurry of activity over the Gonski legislation we seem to have forgotten serious problems, both old and new. In this first of two parts Chris Bonnor and Bernie Shepherd consider the problems we still need to solve. In the second part theyll indicate the new emerging problems we dont even recognize. Losing the Game, their new publication with the Centre for Policy Development, has just been released.

August 23, 2017

DENNIS ARGALL. Pine Gap and national strategic independence.

For a long time people have focused concern on Pine Gap. But Pine Gap is but an element of our entanglement with United States strategic policy, which is the big thing to be addressed and turned around.

October 8, 2018

ROGER COHEN. Confirmed: an insidious presidency (the New York Times)

Trump believes that judges should be agents of those who appoint them. That would be the end of the rule of law.

November 18, 2014

Walter Hamilton. Japan: when in doubt, call an election

Japan, Australias second biggest export market, has fallen back into recession. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has reacted by calling a snap election for mid-December, a year ahead of schedule, claiming he needs a new mandate to tackle the nations economic problems. Trade deals or talk of trade deals between Australia and both China and India should not distract us from the fact that one of the regions great powers is sick and we are not immune.

May 6, 2019

MICHAEL SAINSBURY. Australian Catholic Church - reform or die.

Australia’s Catholic bishops appear to have ceded control of the direction of wholesale reform in the church, with the announcement of a sweeping and unprecedented review into the management of dioceses and parishes by a group whose six-members include just one member of the clergy and three women including a nun.

September 17, 2019

GEORGE GRUNDY. Already Gone

As the Democratic field narrows and the political commentariat speculate which candidate is best placed to defeat Donald Trump in 2020, Americas national conversation continues to ignore an elephant in the room the profound threat to democracy posed by this irascible, irrational president. Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are auditioning for a role they may never be allowed to play.

August 13, 2018

Why not commemorate the Frontier Wars in the Australian War Memorial?

As an Australian schoolchild I learnt the history of England, including a long list of English Kings, but nothing at all about the Frontier Wars here in Australia or indeed the history of our Indigenous, the oldest people on the planet.

July 5, 2018

MACK WILLIAMS. Korea: what should Australia be doing?

While the pace of media reports about the Korean Peninsular has slowed a little since the Singapore Summit there has been much going on in public and under wraps. Skepticism about the Norths commitment to the core issue of denuclearisation has grown but it is still clearly too early to form definite conclusions about where it may all end . The central negotiations remain between the United States and the DPRK but with the ROK closely connected there is a flourishing set of side talks between other key players and some without any direct US involvement. Foremost among the latter have been the intra-Korean talks in which both sides seem to be working quickly to take advantage of the present situation to speed up cooperative endeavours across a wide range of areas. China and Russia have also been encouraging the DPRK to follow the course by moving jointly to pressure the US to dilute the UN based sanctions all of which will be on the agenda for Trump when he meets Putin soon and talks with Xi as he seems frequently to do.

August 20, 2018

TONY BERG. To Close the Gaps, Deal with Alcohol Abuse.

For ten years our political leaders have talked about closing the gap. The harsh reality is that the gap in disadvantage suffered by indigenous Australians fails to close. Worse, there has been little discussion about why the gaps do not close despite all the money, the effort, the programs and the goodwill over the decade. Not only are the gaps obstinately immovable, but they are worse than they appear.

March 15, 2017

GEORGE BROWNING. The non-existent Australian government energy policy.

It has been clear for some time that the normal capitalist approach of privatising everything does not work in relation to energy.

September 2, 2018

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Tony Abbott from back bench rebel to back bench envoy.

Our new, or at least our current, Prime Minister, has a plan to solve the Tony Abbott problem make him an envoy to his indigenous Australia.

Of course he would prefer to make the man an envoy to outer space, if not beyond; but politics remains the art of the possible. So the idea is to try and get him as far out of sight as is practicable, and hope that he shuts up in the process.

October 4, 2017

MICHAEL KEATING. Contestability and Defence Advice

Major defence decisions have long been made with a minimum amount of consultation. That is certainly true of the recent decision to give the French Naval Group a monopoly over the design and build of Australias next submarine. The way this decision was made seems to reflect a long-standing view that civilians are not competent and cannot be allowed to question military expertise. This post suggests this is not good enough as many relevant considerations in defence planning and acquisitions range well beyond military expertise.

October 13, 2016

Catholic Bishops - It Is Time To Bring Them Here

Statement in support of offshore detainees By Archbishop Denis Hart, President, Australian Catholic Bishops Conference

One of the greatest crises of our day is the plight of people forced from their own countries by war, persecution or poverty and forced to live without a home, without safety and often separated from their families.

Pope Francis has called on Catholics to welcome such vulnerable people as our brothers and sisters. In Australia, we do not have to directly meet the responsibilities that many other nations bear. But we do bear the shame of the expulsion and harsh treatment of the people who sought our protection only to be detained on Nauru and Manus Island.

June 27, 2018

JERRY ROBERTS. A Win-Win Weekend for the Liberals.

Whichever way you look at it, Saturdays by-election in the hills of Perth was a heavy blow to the West Australian Government and Premier Mark McGowan and a corresponding boost for the Liberal Party.

May 7, 2018

Rescuing the Reef ... again.

There must be a federal election coming as the government has announced a rescue package for the Great Barrier Reef. Like a damsel (fish) in distress, the Reef has experienced many rescue packages. Asearly as the mid-1990s, the federal government introduced the Sugar Coast Environment Rescue Package which aimed to preserve important lowland habitats along the Reef coastline. Governments have been announcing rescue packages ever since.

March 16, 2016

Brian Toohey. The $50 b. submarine purchase.

Jon Stanford’s three-part series on the Turnbull governments determination to spend $50 billion on big new submarines is a welcome contribution to understanding what’s at stake at a time of cuts elsewhere. The decision risks repeating the Hawke government’s disastrous mistake of rejecting a proven design in favour of the bespoke Collins class subs. Stanfords depiction of the folly of trying to keep the decrepit Collins going until newly designed subs are ready is compelling. Contrary to the 2016 White Papers claim, there is no way Australia will have superior subs when it will still operate some of the Collins until around 2040.

January 1, 2017

Australias Death by Numbers

The dead refugee had a name. But even in death Australia did not want to humanize him. For years now he had been no more than a registration number BRF063 under the countrys cruel refugee deterrence system known as offshore processing.

July 6, 2017

Hidden in plain sight: Aboriginal massacre map should be no surprise

Lyndall Ryans work on mapping the massacres of Aboriginal Australians builds on earlier work which has been ignored or glossed over by settler Australians. Perhaps this time, finally, we can make the link between Indigenous dispossession and the position of Aboriginal people today.

July 2, 2017

Moral hazard in modern democratic politics

While all Western democracies accept the need for social safety nets, conservative governments point to moral hazard to justify less generous public provisions, while progressive parties prioritize more assistance to the needy over additional minor inconvenience to the better off

December 8, 2017

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND ...

Looming in the New Year is debate over the Governments anti-lobbying legislation, dressed up as a move against foreign influence. Fairfax journalist Peter Martin warns that if the Coalition gets its way, when the next election comes around charities would be prevented doing anything that may be seen as attempting to influence how people vote. (The Murdoch media, although it is foreign-owned, and the Minerals Council would still be fee to influence how people vote, because they are not charities.) ABC political reporter Anna Henderson comments on the governments appointment of former Keating-era Labor MP Gary Johns as the new charities commissioner, a staunch critic of charities that conduct public advocacy work.

August 13, 2019

The US-China trade relationship: Why Trump's policies are doomed to fail

Donald Trump is deluded if he thinks that raising tariffs will reduce the US trade deficit. That deficit represents the fact that the US is spending more than it earns. Unless this fact is altered and Trump has increased the fiscal deficit the increase in US tariffs will automatically be offset by an appreciation of the exchange rate. Back in the 1980s Australian farmers and miners understood this elementary fact, and that is why they successfully lobbied to reduce tariff protection of Australian manufacturing.

July 16, 2019

MIKE SCRAFTON. Im afraid of Americans

The opinions to which we should pay most critical attention are those of commentators best placed to influence government. Peter Jennings, Executive Director of ASPI, is one. Now he is claiming a new cold war with China is playing out in all but name.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal