October 3, 2023

Strengthening IBAC must be Victorian government's priority

Victoria’s integrity body, the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC), is a deeply flawed institution. It has been hobbled by the Liberal government that created it and in the too-limited reforms implemented by the Labor government that followed. It is clear that both major parties have been reluctant to give the body the teeth it requires to be effective. New Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan must approach reforming the body with an open mind if she is to begin rebuilding trust in the government’s integrity.

December 5, 2018

DAVID STEPHENS. If the Australian War Memorial holds "the soul of the nation" why is the Memorial Council so full of brass?

The Director of the Australian War Memorial, Dr Brendan Nelson, often tells us that in the Memorial can be found ‘the soul of the nation’. The Prime Minister said the same thing, just the other day. Accepting for the moment that this characterisation is correct, why is it that eight of the 13 members of the Memorial’s Council are serving or retired senior officers (Lieutenant Colonel/equivalent or above)? Does our national soul, if such it is, need that much military brass? Does a body containing that much brass make a particular sound? Should the Council look more like the rest of us?

January 30, 2024

On the precipice: The US pushes allies towards a Middle East war

Netanyahu and his supporters in Washington are playing for very high and dangerous stakes indeed as the Middle East war threatens to widen beyond Gaza.

April 1, 2023

Powerlessness and the Voice

Poverty is powerlessness. It is the incapacity to deal with one’s own issues. It is not addressed through charitable acts, but through empowerment. Responding to the presenting signs of poverty only through acts of charity is like dealing with a major physical ailment only with a pain killer. Indeed, addiction to the pain killer can become the biggest problem. Powerlessness can only be overcome with empowerment.

February 20, 2025

Trump's tariffs will not restore American manufacturing

The decline in manufacturing jobs is common to most developed economies and is not unique to the US. Further, Donald Trump is nothing if not delusional, and his tariffs will only damage both the US economy and others as well.

November 25, 2024

Exposing the layers of aviation industry greenwash

For the aviation industry as a whole, and, for that matter, our federal government too, ‘net zero 2050’ is just the latest layer of greenwash. The sector is a serial offender, having misrepresented its global warming impact for decades.

March 30, 2024

Coalition decides to re-name itself the Queensland Party - Weekly Roundup

Tasmanians show what they think of the old parties and the Coalition retreats to the deep north, inflation tumbles but the media hasn’t noticed, getting the climate change message across. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic and political issues.

March 16, 2024

Unmanned ships for RAN : Here we go again – idea without a concept !

There has been significant media discussion (including P&I) of Defence Minister Marles’ recent announcement of the Surface Ship Review for the RAN - a step towards remedying the Defence procurement shambles inherited by the Albanese government and conducted by yet another retired US admiral! But there has been scant attention to the rabbit out of the hat Marles produced to provide six large unmanned ships of an as yet undecided US design - let alone a concept of how they might best be deployed. All of which has been the subject of long and often acrimonious debate in the US.

February 7, 2024

What’s happening with covid visa holders?

The covid visa stream of sub-class 408 was introduced during the pandemic when international borders were closed. It enabled temporary entrants who were unable to leave Australia to maintain their lawful status and keep working. They could apply for a 12 month covid stream visa and then apply for another one if they wished.

December 7, 2023

Will the Productivity Commission wind back the WA GST deal?

Danielle Wood’s appointment as the Chair of the Productivity Commission is, in my opinion, an inspired choice, and I have no doubt that she will do an outstanding job, as she has done as CEO of the Grattan Institute.

February 27, 2023

Ohio Disaster - will those responsible be arrested?

According to Newsweek, a toxic chemical cloud has reached a radius of 100-miles around East Palestine, the scene of a devastating train crash and chemical burn-off. If true, the people of Cleveland, the State capital 90-miles away, are now at risk of exposure.

February 5, 2023

Australia needs a royal commission into immigration detention

Australia needs a Royal Commission into its heinous, wasteful, privatised immigration detention policy. This is imperative in order to uncover immigration detention’s secrets, racism and appalling costs, to change public attitudes and to explore humane alternatives.

December 12, 2022

Australian studies in China: the ways ahead

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the formal diplomatic relationship between our two countries. It heralds the start of a new and mature bilateral relationship. I firmly trust that Australian Studies in China will further expand and flourish in the years to come.

November 25, 2022

Robodebt: can you recall a greater failure of public administration?

Federal Court Justice Bernard Murphy described Robodebt as “a massive failure of public administration”. So far the Royal Commission has made little progress is establishing how it happened, given contrary legal advice and warnings from mid-level public servants of the policy dangers.

February 5, 2022

From our readers: Australia's heartbreaking 'let it rip' mentality

In letters to the editor: what letting Covid rip says about Australia’s leaders and its policies on climate change and Indigenous affairs.

December 4, 2021

The integrity vacuum in our federal politics — and how to fix it

The rejection of ethical and accountability standards that is undermining our political system has left voters cynical: here’s a package of reforms that will restore trust and protect our democracy.

February 25, 2025

Peace, both for Ukraine and North Korea too?

As President Trump seeks to bring an end to the Ukrainian conflict, at the Asian end of the Eurasian continent some similar but much less known peace-restoring movements are underway.

January 21, 2025

Laurel-less Biden limps for the exit. Will Albanese be next?

Joe Biden’s inaction and diffidence has made him a party to Israel’s atrocities.

March 3, 2024

Furious and fit: refugee virtual walk encircles Australia in half the time

Canberra-based Piume Kaneshan, a 19-year-old Tamil from Sri Lanka, is the youngest of 39 refugees who walked and cycled thousands of kilometres across Australia last year. She explains what prompted her 640km trek from Melbourne to Canberra with 21 other women.

March 13, 2023

Environment and the South Seas Bubble: “nature will demand payment”

Three hundred years ago, Britain narrowly escaped a disaster. Trapped inside a bubble, they needed radical changes to escape. There are parallels to our world today, where the logic of failure is woven into the very fabric of civilisation. We too, are trapped inside a bubble, but one is of far greater significance. The question is, can we avoid collapse? The first step is to accept that we have a problem.

February 3, 2023

The impact of the housing crisis on the mental and physical health of children

In Australia, we pride ourselves on our egalitarianism, yet now cannot even provide security of accommodation for everyone. How can this be, when older women who have lost their financial security from family break-up and illness, and even young women with small children, end up couch-surfing or sleeping in a car?

January 2, 2023

From outrage to opportunity: the missing perspectives of women in news

A groundbreaking new report From Outrage to Opportunity: How to Include The Missing Perspectives of Women of All Colours in News Leadership and Coverage has found that women continue to be significantly underrepresented in editorial leadership roles and news coverage worldwide - with their voices muted in a global news industry still dominated by men. Disappointing, but not altogether surprising.

January 18, 2025

The fragility of South Korean democracy

South Korea is in a dangerous political mess. President Yoon Suk-yeol has been arrested, but his dismissal and imprisonment are far from certain. His toxic ambition to eliminate ‘despicable pro-North Korean and anti-state forces’ has numerous supporters. As have his hostility towards China and his plans to develop nuclear weapons.

January 5, 2025

Best of 2024: What makes Chinese students so successful by international standards?

There is a belief widely held across the Western world: Chinese students are schooled through rote, passive learning – and an educational system like this can only produce docile workers who lack innovation or creativity. We argue this is far from true.

March 8, 2024

Illiberalism ascendant: The Dunkley by-election and the cost of doing business

The liberal international order has been responsible for a great many deaths. If the “anti-liberal internationale” becomes ascendant, however, we will see those numbers multiplied exponentially. It is not a stretch to say that the Liberal Party’s campaign in the Dunkley by-election places them firmly in the illiberal category. This is hardly surprising since several Liberal Party grandees and other strategists are firmly ensconced in the Hungarian President Viktor Orbán’s propaganda network, and he is the leader of that illiberal faction.

December 29, 2023

Hopeful pearls for peace

In these sad, anxious times, pearls of hope are rare and truly valuable. Thankfully, here are a couple to contemplate…

December 3, 2023

"EU has to learn to use the language of power" says Borrell

Proposals for Gaza by the EU’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell reflect long-standing European concerns, and show an aspiration to become more involved in a cooperative solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict. Can these European concerns and aspirations have some tangible bearing on Palestinian political prospects?

March 5, 2023

Brexit over; now for common sense

The Brexit saga has played itself to death with much relief all round except perhaps at Britain’s political margins.

March 19, 2025

The West’s 'international community' and the other 85% of humanity

“A leader leads by example, not by force.” Sun Tzu, The Art or War

March 11, 2025

If you bomb us, do we not bleed?

In 1997, the World Health Organisation invited me to be a short-term consultant to visit Iran and advise on HIV control among people who inject drugs and the spread from them to the large low-risk general population. At the time, HIV was spreading rapidly in Iran. I felt honoured to be invited to a country with such an ancient past.

December 11, 2024

Albo has to go

Anthony Albanese is not our best leader. He should go now.

October 22, 2024

ACT Labor holds on, but are wheels coming off the Albanese re-election campaign?

Albanese once said his purpose in life was to “fight Tories.” In government he has done little more than surrender to them.

March 5, 2024

Jerusalem Peace Prize Address: The most disastrous year for Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba

Receiving the Jerusalem Peace Prize is a great honour and I am overwhelmed and humbled indeed. It is particularly poignant at this time as Palestinians in both Occupied Gaza and West Bank are suffering unbelievable, horrific hardship and brutal violations of their basic human rights, for life, for shelter, water and food.

January 19, 2024

Summer: heat, cicadas and rising fees in private schools

Private school fee rises are as intrinsic to an Australian summer as the screech of cicadas. And instead of relaxing in the holiday heat, I find myself plagued with questions about whether or how to respond to the former. Do these fee rises even matter?

January 16, 2024

Secretive ADF Middle East deployments are putting Australia at risk

On Friday, 5 January 2024, Iraq’s Prime Minister Shia al-Sudani said he wanted all remaining US Coalition troops out of Iraq. He was speaking on the fourth anniversary of the US drone assassination of Iraqi and Iranian generals Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad Airport in January 2020.

October 18, 2021

Gunboat diplomacy: Joined at the hip to the war-addicted US

After 40 years of successful diplomacy with China, Australia has hitched itself to a permanently warlike, self-seeking United States. How on earth did it come to this?

March 14, 2024

Cartoon commentary

January 31, 2024

Time running out for Albanese Government to fix asylum system

Despite its $160 million package to better manage asylum seekers, time is running out for the Albanese Government to get on top of the asylum seeker issue prior to the 2025 election.

December 16, 2022

Defending ourselves from infiltration

The Age last year revealed that special forces veteran Ben Roberts-Smith wore the provocative symbol of a crusader cross on his breast over his uniform while on duty in Afghanistan. Apparently “quite a few” others wore it.

March 3, 2025

This upside-down world

What an amazing thing is the human spirit. What an amazing thing is human dignity. We, the Palestinians, despite everything this cruel world has dished out to us for over a century, could give the whole world a master-class on how to survive with dignity.

January 30, 2025

John Howard and British colonisation of Australia

Humphrey McQueen (Pearls and Irritations, ‘The lucky Aborigines’ 26 January 2025), has reminded us of John Howard’s opinion that “the luckiest thing that happened to this country was being colonised by the British. Not that they were perfect by any means, but they were infinitely more successful and beneficent than other European colonisers.”

December 4, 2024

When media and the state collude

It was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, a day meant to mark the start of a 16-day global campaign to end the scourge of gender-based violence against women. Yet, on this day of reflection and action, The Australian chose to publish a follow-up story to its sensationalised splash just two days earlier about criminalised woman, Jody Thomson.

November 13, 2024

One cheer for student loan changes

As you may have noticed, the Government has announced changes to student loans and debts, subject (eyeroll) to their re-election. Tick; even the Greens are taking credit.

March 9, 2024

Comment by caricature

December 23, 2023

Holding senior public servants to account

A central question the Joint Committee on Public Accountability and Audit is pursuing in its inquiry into probity and ethics in the Commonwealth public sector is how to hold individual public servants to account for the failures so often being found in ANAO reports and those of other inquiries. Must we have a Royal Commission before individuals are identified and held to account?

December 11, 2023

Misogyny’s last stand

The recent plan of Newington College to become co-educational has initiated an uproarious reaction from their old-boys as well as influential Head Masters of such schools. This ridiculous reaction is simply a response to girls being admitted into the exclusive masculine territory that once was Newington.

March 24, 2023

Sydney transport: formidable task ahead for NSW Labor?

In NSW, Labor is favoured to end the Coalition’s 12 years in office at the forthcoming election. If it wins it faces a formidable task.

March 22, 2023

Raising of Warragamba Dam ‘spun’ in New South Wales election campaign

An interesting comment was made this month about the New South Wales Coalition’s intention to raise Warragamba Dam in order to store floodwaters and thus mitigate the problem of flooding downstream. The comment as retailed by ABC Online came from the Liberal MP and candidate for the seat of Hawkesbury in the coming state election, Robyn Preston.

January 9, 2023

The Watchers – Directors of educational decline

A word that comes to mind when thinking about the plight of those left in NSW Public Schools is dystopia, the antonym of utopia.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal