March 13, 2018

JOHN MENADUE. When will we wake up to the risks as well as the benefits of the US alliance? (Repost)

We are a nation in denial that we are joined at the hip to a dangerous ally. Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war; wars that we have often foolishly been drawn into. The US has subverted and overthrown numerous governments over two centuries. It has a military and business complex, almost a hidden state, that depends on war for influence and enrichment. It believes in its manifest destiny which brings with it an assumed moral superiority which it denies to others

. We are running great risks in committing so much of our future to the US. We must build our security in our own region and not depend so exclusively on a foreign protector.

Unfortunately many of our political,bureaucratic,business and media elites have been so long on an American drip feed that they find it hard to think of the world without an American focus.. We had a similar and dependant view of the UK in the past. That ended in tears in Singapore.

February 8, 2025

AUKUS SSN: A flawed plan heading for the wrong destination

The AUKUS agreement aims to increase US, UK and Australian submarine capability in the Indo Pacific and the deterrence impact they offer. The current plan will fail for four fundamental reasons.

November 28, 2024

If Tel Aviv was reduced to rubble like Gaza, the world would stop the war immediately

My mother survived the WW2 Nazi Auschwitz extermination camp, and she always asked why was the world silent? Why did they look away from the genocide of the Jews and do nothing? Today we know the answer as our government and media look away and do nothing for the Palestinians.

November 17, 2024

Leslie landscape prize attracts superb pictures

It’s astonishing enough that 403 landscapes by Australian artists were entered in this year’s John Leslie Art Prize. Even more surprising is the superb quality and diversity of the 52 shortlisted, which are exhibited in Sale’s Gippsland Art Gallery until 24 November.

January 24, 2024

It's on PM to make tax cuts fair

Anthony Albanese risks being the man who did what Scott Morrison couldnt easing the tax burden of the rich.

October 20, 2023

Indonesia, Malaysia blame and accuse Israel Asian Media Report

In Asian media this week: War is against the Palestinian people. Plus: Voice defeat undercuts regional stance; Indian court rejects same-sex marriage; Xi marks BRI anniversary with new funding; Democracy put to the test; Gaol and caning for rape.

February 9, 2023

The Medicare Review: how will its aspirations be achieved?

The Medicare Review contains welcome aspirations, but the instruments to achieve them are poorly delineated.

December 9, 2022

Weekly roundup: the Liberals' journey to oblivion

2023 will be busy as Australia catches up on a decade of policy neglect; Medicare needs a major re-fit; and the Liberals journey to oblivion. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy.

October 19, 2022

Western anxiety attacks intensify with the Chinese National Congress

_On October 16, President Xi Jinping delivered his report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC). During the weeks prior to this, we witnessed a conspicuous intensification of Sino-phobic censures from across the Mainstream Western Media, triggered by the approaching National Congress. Leading commentators and core Western politicians have been straining to make themselves heard above this recharged hullabaloo.

March 26, 2022

Julia Conley - the Afghan humanitarian disaster is caused by the United States

_‘This suffering is on the US government’

October 24, 2021

Why didn't we check in with our Pacific neighbours about AUKUS?

Pacific nations haves a long-standing reason to be wary of all things nuclear. Yet here is our government high-handedly joining a deal to send nuclear-powered submarines patrolling the region.

August 21, 2021

A new game in a new era: China is playing it right, the US is not

China and the United States are in a different game than the rising power/established power conflicts of the past. Most analyses of such rivalries are based on preWorld War II history and fail to notice that the game changed radically after World War II. Sometimes when alterations are made in the rules or implements of a game, the risks and the optimal strategies change.

March 28, 2025

Gove and the native title revolution

The High Court’s judgment in March 2025 in favour of the Gumatj people has reaffirmed the centrality of the Indigenous peoples of Gove in the Northern Territory in the native title revolution that was conceived in a case against mining company, Nabalco Ltd, in the 1960s and continued with the High Court’s Mabo and Wik judgements in the 1990s.

March 24, 2025

Dutton blames renewables for rising power prices, but bills would be much higher without them

Australia’s shift to wind, solar and battery storage has shielded households and businesses from much higher power bills than they would otherwise be paying, a new report has found, debunking Peter Dutton’s constantly repeated claim that renewables are to blame for rising electricity prices.

January 16, 2025

Seven truths on why Taiwan always will be China’s

Some Australian media recently provided a platform for false Taiwanese views about the one-China policy. Here are the reasons they are wrong.

December 19, 2023

Hope betrayed, arrays herself in bombs

While the speechless unite, in a silent accord. Australias Geopolitical Present and Future: Bethlehem through Poetry and Literature.

December 13, 2023

Journalism, propaganda and war

Journalism, whether practised in a proclaimed democracy or in a country controlled by politburo or despot, is fraught and contentious but it is meant to tell the public and the world what is really going on.

October 14, 2022

Alex Jones $1.5 billion loss reignites free speech debate

The AU$1.5 billion dollar payout that conspiracy-monger Alex Jones is being forced to pay to the families devastated by the Sandy Hook massacre is the check on free speech that we all need to discuss.

February 23, 2022

Ukraine on the boil.

So the inevitable has happened.

February 12, 2022

Sunday environmental round-up

Greenhouse gases explain the science of climate change but money, greed and deception explain our failure to tackle it.

January 9, 2022

Lessons on policy from a visionary public servant, and a thoughtful MP

The beginning of 2022 sees an urgent need for long-term thoughtfulness which diagnoses current threats to existence and creative ways to respond.

November 29, 2021

Lv Shun: The Chinese port where a new world order emerged

Before World War I, a Japanese victory over Russia in the Chinese port of Lv Shun was the first such victory by an Asian power over a European power.

October 23, 2021

Sunday environmental round up.

I know Scotty is a regular reader, so this week’s round up is a handy cheat sheet to help him as COP26 in Glasgow beckons.

November 19, 2024

A fighter for Palestinians’ freedom: Ali Kazak

Exceptional courage and commitment is needed to spend decades pursuing freedom for your people and to do so with few resources against considerable odds.

November 13, 2024

Two paramount human-made existential threats: Nuclear weapons and our climate

“I don’t see a pandemic finishing us off, and climate change itself would (to quote Keating) ‘do us slowly’. The one sure path to extinction is nuclear war.” - Professor Peter Doherty AC, Nobel Laureate, communication to the author, 9 Sep 2024.

January 9, 2024

What will Beijing do if Lai Ching-teh wins Taiwans Presidential Election?

Taiwan will hold its national presidential and legislative election on January 13. Vice President Lai Ching-teh, the pro independence candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party, leads in the polls and will likely be the next president.

December 28, 2023

In the Australia-China relationship, Australia will always follow the US-A repost from October 16,2023

From Chinas perspective, Australia will always follow the US no matter what. And the US is out to contain China there is nothing that China could do to change that. Australia has made relatively little effort to change this perception. This means for China, there is little point in putting much effort into dealing with Australia directly. The only way for the China-Australia relationship to be noticeably improved is for the China-US relationship to be improved first. This all sounds dismal. But in fact, nothing is inevitable. Both sides have agency to change those perceptions.

December 20, 2023

Psychological torture to children in Gaza is genocide priming

Is there is a tipping point in Gaza when genocide will be unstoppable? The answer is tied to how long massacres run amok, and how deeply torture saturates childrens minds and imaginations. Each day nations pontificate over a permanent ceasefire is a massacre-torture day in Gaza.

October 3, 2023

PwC: $1 Billion in penalties would be a fair settlement

Sooner or later many hope sooner people will decide that the scourging and self-flagellation of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the big consultancies has gone far enough. A few penances perhaps if the AFP are up to it, a few prosecutions and government departments can resume the business of outsourcing most of its thinking to former colleagues at about 10 times the cost of doing it themselves.

January 6, 2023

Medicare must be patient and not provider centred

When it was established in 1974, Medicare funded the way health services were delivered at that time. That delivery system has not been changed much at all since then. After fifty years the way we deliver health care needs substantial reform and updating. Our health delivery system is in a mess.

December 18, 2021

Sunday environmental round up

Most of Earths minerals need living organisms to form. Young people recommend consuming less: smartphones, meat and alcohol would be good starts.

December 2, 2024

The prescience of Corporal Hijack

A year ago, Mussa Hijazi, a stone-throwing young teenager of the first Intifada who became a long-serving Canberra lawyer, laid out three options on how the conflict in Gaza would end.

March 19, 2024

Australias moment of choice: illegal war on show in 2003 Cabinet papers

What has changed since 2003? Nothing, except for the worse. Australian governments continue to accept the US enemies as their own, and shoot whoever the sheriff says.

March 6, 2024

How do I download it from the cloud?

December 26, 2023

Holding Justice in contempt: Janet Albrechtsen and a new weapon for rape defendants

The contempts highlighted by Justice Michael Lee in the recent defamation case between Bruce Lehrmann and Channel 10 are minor compared with the blatant leaking of phone transcripts. During the Lehrmann case, police handed to Lehrmanns solicitors thousands of pages of texts and emails between the alleged victim and others, from nearly a year before the alleged rape to after it. Somebody passed on the unused phone records to Janet Albrechtsen, of the Australian. An advocate for Lehrmanns innocence, it is impossible that she could have obtained the material properly. There is no injured party with the capacity to push for an investigation. But there could be. Chief Justice Lucy McCallum has the power, if she wanted to exercise it, to follow the matter up.

October 8, 2023

The brave man

There was a time not so long ago, especially after the Vietnam War, when leaders in the advanced countries such as the United States, Britain, France and Germany gave us hope that the mistakes of the past had been learnt and that we were heading for a fairer and more ethical system: when Nelson Mandela led negotiations to end apartheid ended in South Africa; when the Soviet Union ended in 1991; and when Angela Merkel led Germany as Chancellor (2005 - 2021); and when China opened up its economy (1978) to the world.

March 27, 2023

Syria: the US as dog in the manger

Inexorably, the war on Syria is coming to a close.

March 10, 2023

Combating China is the real enemy, MSM saturation messaging

Over many months now, when talking to relatives, friends, acquaintances and strangers about the current, parlous state of geo-politics and how the world is moving ever closer to world war, and a possible, uncontrolled nuclear conflagration, the retort I often receive develops something along the following lines: Yes, we know the U.S. is a war-like country and a danger to world peace but, dont you think Australia needs to throw its lot in with them militarily, in order to counter the even more pressing threat from China which is an aggressive, imperialist power seeking to control Australias own backyard?

March 14, 2022

Morrison awaits his miracle

The faith that has sustained the morale of Scott Morrison through many a dark period of his life is in for some further testing over the few months that will bring an end to this term of government.

December 29, 2021

The United States empire is almost always at war

The US empire is addicted to a belief in its exceptionalism, grounded in aggression both at home and abroad, and finding it hard to admit mistakes.

December 8, 2021

Quad queers its pitch: champions of democracy fail to walk the talk

The much-touted alliance designed to provide a counterweight to China is backsliding on its professed liberal principles, writes Brian Toohey.

March 22, 2021

The Reserve Banks target for wage growth is difficult whilst the Government resists wage increases

The Reserve Bank has tied the future of monetary policy to the restoration of wage growth. But how likely is that, and what are the consequences?

March 25, 2025

The science of being absolutely wrong

Scientists, who generally wear white laboratory jackets so they are not confused with economists, have a canon of sacred texts. Pride of place is occupied by the journal Nature, which is now a collection of specialised magazines that cover scientific advances in most measurable phenomena. Of course, trades and professions also have their stable of news and reference works while the public have Fox, the Murdoch press and social media.

February 11, 2025

Did North Korean troops disappear in the fog of the Ukraine war?

On 30 January 2025, CNN carried a long, detailed article, accompanied by photographs entitled Suicidal tendencies and ’80s battlefield tactics: How North Korean soldiers are operating in Russia’s war on Ukraine. The article, by a team led by senior journalists Nick Paton Walsh and Rebecca Wright, offered an insight into “the brutal and near-suicidal tactics of North Korean soldiers” fighting the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian Kursk region.

February 11, 2025

Yes, let’s have an inquiry into the smelly Dural caravan affair

The Dural caravan affair stinks to high heaven. If I were Anthony Albanese, I would bow, with every appearance of reluctance, to Peter Dutton’s demands for an inquiry. Far from shrouding this inquiry with a cloud of secrecy of the sort so beloved by the Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and his department, I would opt for an open inquiry of the NSW ICAC type, if one that permitted the identity of security agents to be suppressed.

February 10, 2025

Labor goes weak on reform

When I very briefly and greenly worked for two right-wing members of the second Hawke administration, “pissant” was the faction’s put down of choice.

February 6, 2024

We cant rely on developers to fix the housing crisis

If you were running the state suffering the very worst of Australias housing disaster, a state where the number of public and community housing dwellings actually went backwards last financial year, you might want to grab any and every opportunity to ease the crisis but youre not running New South Wales.

January 10, 2024

Gaza: Australias obligations under the ATT and Genocide Convention

Australian governments talk a lot about our commitment to the rule of law and human rights. However Australias response - at glacial speed with grossly inadequate measures - to the unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Gaza following Hamass brutal October 7 attacks, are putting that commitment to the test. As a nation that has provided political and military support to Israel, we are not doing well.

March 5, 2023

The Murdoch pragmatists

Anyone who has worked closely with media mogul Rupert Murdoch comes away with two abiding impressions.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal