October 17, 2024

A campaign to raise awareness of aged care star ratings is wasting public money

Last week the government launched a media campaign to “build awareness, trust, and use” of the system of aged care star ratings.

October 10, 2024

Australia should endorse and promote the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

Scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change is threatening life on this planet and that the root cause is the burning of fossil fuels. But what are we doing about it? More importantly, what are our so-called Leaders doing to address the threat?

January 22, 2024

Media must reform to restore public trust: Schmidt

We live in an age where there has never been greater access to information, nor greater doubt about its accuracy. An information explosion risks blowing apart the foundational workings of our democracy. Where we source our information from, who we listen to, who we trust, has changed.

October 12, 2023

Palestine: The right to defence of stolen land

PM Albanese supports indigenous Australians but not indigenous Palestinians, whose land has also been stolen from them. Why?

October 4, 2023

Labour market roadmap needs greater skills accuracy

Any roadmap to Australia’s future labour market must be based on an accurate analysis of skills. Sadly, the employment white paper reflects the slant imposed by the ‘tech is tops’ narrative.

January 10, 2023

Interpreting Treasury’s latest population statement (Part 1)

_ Treasury’s December 2022 Population Statement has received more media attention than any of its previous statements. This is predominantly due to Treasurer Jim Chalmers promoting the statement extensively in contrast to his predecessor who largely treated these statements as business as usual.

December 11, 2022

A chief advisor on higher education?

Australia has a Chief Scientist (as well as a Chief Economist, and Chief Meteorologist), why not something similar for higher education?

November 11, 2022

Pointless, petty regulations are a handbrake on Australia’s truck fleet

We all rely on trucks: they carry our fuel, tools, construction materials – and of course, food and parcels. While trains specialise in carrying bulk goods such as coal and grain, trucks carry nearly 80 per cent of the non-bulk items we use at work and home. But unfortunately, trucks also create carbon emissions, and pollution that damages people’s health.

October 25, 2021

The media hides the information we need about Julian Assange

Our mainstream media have treated Julian Assange as the bad guy for over a decade. Which is where the virus again raises its ugly head.

April 2, 2025

Public funding for government schools outstrips the rest: claim

Trevor Cobbold is well known in education circles for selectively presenting funding data to lead readers to a pre-conceived conclusion.

February 22, 2025

NSW and Qld public schools will lose billions if stand-off is not resolved

A stand-off between the Albanese Government and the NSW and Queensland Governments over public school funding has been going on for more than a year. The longer it lasts, the more public schools will lose. If it is not resolved, public schools in the two states could lose nearly $40 billion in funding over the next 10 years. Continuing under-funding of public schools will be catastrophic, particularly for disadvantaged students and schools in the two states.

January 29, 2025

How Europe is degrading Europe

The European Idea is anchored by the desire to banish war from the continent forever and foster collective development by creating a quasi-federated Europe. This idea is embodied in the step-by-step creation of the European Union (EU). That idea today looks exceptionally compromised, not least due to growing European divergence about how the EU’s best interests can be secured. Moreover, despite its fundamentally destabilising impact, American power ruthlessly shaping this outcome is compliantly welcomed by European elites. Any “Euro-tiger” image once projected by the EU in its prime has now vanished.

October 18, 2024

Pope Francis and practising what one preaches

Pope Francis has called upon Church authorities to cooperate with civil authorities in relation to child sexual abuse by Church personnel. When it comes to the Vatican cooperating, it is a different story.

October 9, 2024

Universities under attack

What are we to make of Peter Dutton’s outrageous demand that Mark Scott, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, should resign? It surely represents an assault on all universities, and on the very idea of a university education as a standard bearer for Australian culture.

January 21, 2024

Hallucinations and the endurance of unbearable torture

This article has been so difficult to write but I am convinced it needs to be said to open up discussion about how caring for the severely and progressively disabled proceeds in relation to any hallucinations that may come along as part of the disability. I am wanting to emphasize that treating and relating to people with severe and progressive disabilities means coming to terms with the very difficult issues of how our emotions, sub-conscious, conscious and related dreams and traumas are also caught up in very fluid chemical and bio-physical processes.

January 16, 2023

My dinner with Dr. Martin Luther King

It was 1967 in America. I was a student at Drew University and it was my role on the Student Council to invite speakers for the student forums. I wrote to Dr King. Would he come to speak to us? He wrote back to say he would.

January 15, 2023

Will engaging China in WTO multilateral trade discussions help reset relations?

The current WTO rules were negotiated during the Uruguay Round without China involved or even in mind. The expectation was that China would evolve into a market economy and WTO rules would apply. China has not evolved as expected; should China change its state-controlled economy, or should WTO rules be rewritten to accommodate China?

December 6, 2022

Chinese-Australian voters emerge, reject anti-Asian hatred stoked by right-wing politicians

Asian-Australians are becoming an increasingly influential bloc in steering and influencing federal and state elections. Their significance has been noted by aroused psephologists, surprised pundits and the chattering classes since Anthony Albanese won the federal election in May this year.

November 19, 2022

South Australia ignores Khashoggi murder, welcomes Saudi LIV Golf

Peter Malinauskas, the South Australian Premier, has been the latest convert to the LIV Golf circuit, showing little to no awareness that the lion’s share of the money is coming from a state responsible for the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

October 11, 2022

How the US, not just Russia, helped bring the world closer to nuclear war

The West has effectively been challenging Russia’s right to be a hegemonic power.

What if the proxy US campaign in Ukraine doesn’t lead to Russian regime downfall but instead to a desperate Putin using nuclear weapons?

February 28, 2022

It's time business recognised our tax base is not the only game in town

Will it ever be possible for Australia’s business lobby to engage in a debate about securing economic prosperity without focussing almost entirely on tax or contending lower corporate taxes is the solution for everything?

March 15, 2025

China flotilla reporting misses the obvious

The failure of media to ask obvious questions was on full display as three ships from the Chinese People Liberation Army-Navy completed their circumnavigation of Australia.

December 18, 2024

Cartoon commentary

December 7, 2024

Albo makes Dutton look electable

It is now abundantly clear that the Albanese Government is gutless. But what’s worse is that – as recent events demonstrate – it’s also politically incompetent.

October 18, 2023

Is the No victory another signal of voters’ distrust of democratic reps?

The high levels of loss of Yes voters to the No camp during the referendum campaign add indicators that the once social democratic contributions to governance are in trouble. Where once policies for fairness were seen as integral parts of good democracies, these have been replaced by neo liberal market models. This shows up too often as voters becoming customers, not citizens.

January 31, 2023

Timor-Leste shaping up for legislative elections

The Timor-Leste March 2022 Presidential elections gave a resounding win in the second round to Nobel Laureate Jose Ramos Horta, and this provided leverage for Xanana Gusmão in his efforts to wrest back the executive power he apologetically relinquished in February 2015.

January 20, 2023

Extremism and the sensible centre

The labelling of people as ‘extremists’ or ‘radicals’ – as abolitionists and women’s suffrage advocates were once called - is determined not by the soundness of the views expressed, but by the relative scarcity of the people expressing them in proportion to the amount of people holding different views in the ‘sensible centre’. Given the various noxious myths that have pervaded Australian politics for so many years, it is surely time for a dose of good new political radicalism_._

January 24, 2022

Could a knowledge commons unite and anchor our fractious, drifting humanity?

Imagine a world where the simple quest for knowledge united humanity and gave us a chance of peaceful coexistence.

November 16, 2021

Real reasons for submarine bid fiasco must come to the surface

The nuclear sleight-of-hand, the budgeted billions and the diplomatic debacle warrant deep examination — it’s time to bring it all out in to the open.

December 5, 2024

Why the Productivity Commission is kidding itself on childcare

A more robust analysis by the commission might have yielded different priorities or recommendations for childcare.

October 31, 2024

No Australian should swear loyalty to a foreign king

So Bridget McKenzie thinks Lidia Thorpe’s protest against King Charles raises some “quite tricky constitutional questions”. Yes it does, but not the ones she thinks.

January 24, 2024

Russia-Ukraine and a Chinese fear of aggressive Western containment

Ukraine is now being urged to make 2024 a year of consolidation of abilities before launching a new offensive in 2025. But the reality is that Ukraine will NOT force Russia out of its territory, and its time to draw some lessons in regard to the West’s aggressive policies toward China.

November 4, 2023

Taxes: Our civilization deficit - Weekly Roundup

A look at deficits in democracy and our common wealth; Why we’re working too hard; What women find in Australia; Gramsci and the right; The politics of Ben Ean Moselle, and the case for higher taxes. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic and political issues.

January 29, 2023

Why the Dutton Voice approach won’t work

Opinion polls suggest Peter Dutton and his media accomplices – both Murdoch and the Nine Newspapers - are having some initial success in confusing The Voice issue.

October 6, 2022

Nothing's more important than avoiding nuclear war

Avoiding nuclear war is the single most important agenda in the world. The single most important agenda in history. It is more important than your political faction. It is more important than how Vladimir Putin makes your feelings feel. It is more important than anything else.

November 5, 2021

COP26: An observer's view of the first few days

Duncan MacLaren joined the crowds to attend the first day of COP26. He recounts what he found when he got in.

October 21, 2021

A deaf ear to disadvantage: time to fix an Aboriginal health crisis

An ear condition that overwhelming affects Indigenous children can lead to social disadvantage. Yet it can be fixed with simple measures. So why doesn’t the government act?

January 26, 2024

The case for Australia Day

We need to celebrate our own National Day!

Good idea. What about 1st January? That’s the day when Australia actually became a Nation!

December 28, 2023

Protest against war at last

From the perspective of a 1960s and 1970s protester, the domestic and international scenario looks worse than grim. Following the 2016 US election cycle, a campaign worker for a moderately liberal Congressional candidate working from an upstate New York campaign headquarters told me after that candidate’s abysmal loss to a far right-wing Republican, “I refuse to be cynical.” Electoral politics in the US and elsewhere most often fuels the march toward cynicism with left parties and candidates often herded to the desert of oblivion, the so-called scapegoat.

December 12, 2023

Shiver runs up and breaks the Labor spine

There is never a bottom to Labor ministerial cowardice and incompetence when manipulated mob fury is at its height. On immigration policy, Labor has surrendered, and is dancing to Dutton’s tune.

November 7, 2023

“Consistency” in MBS policy – a further unlevelling of the playing field

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The Medical Benefits Schedule (MBS) Review Advisory Committee (MRAC) has been tasked with supporting “a continuous review framework that ensures the MBS is contemporary, sustainable, evidence- based, and supports universal access to high value care for all Australians. Good about time.

Action to address the inequity relating to sustainable access to primary health care through comparable funding of all health practitioners practising in that space is long overdue. Nurse practitioners (NPs), midwives and allied health practitioners have not received comparable funding for the same or similar items to their medical counterparts.

November 1, 2022

A plan for Australia worthy of our wartime heroes

In the desperation of WWII, Australia established a department of post-war reconstruction that drove far reaching change in how the country was governed. After the jolt of the pandemic, a similar department could be an engine room of a new type of government.

February 17, 2022

Election predictions: Mismatch between polls and pundits

Before voting in a May election, the public must expect commentator confusion, as in the contrast between predictions from polls and and the judgements of pundits.

November 25, 2021

Balancing diplomacy and direct action in 'Magnitsky Act' sanctions

Sponsored by a Labor senator and finessed by DFAT, a bill for a “Magnitsky Act” to sanction human rights abuses is poised to be tabled in Parliament.

November 19, 2021

The earth is now warming itself — it may be too late for humanity

Only the complete cessation of all human carbon emissions within this decade and removing carbon from the atmosphere will save us from immolation.

October 19, 2021

Idiocracy: how the decline in human intelligence is undermining democracy

_Science increasingly suspects the proliferation of harmful nerve toxins in recent decades is to blame for a downturn in our IQ levels — and this is threatening not just our health but our very system of governance.

October 12, 2021

The kindness of strangers is not an acceptable safety net

The pandemic brought out the best in some of us. But it’s also exposed the fault lines and inequality in our community more sharply than ever, and we shouldn’t let the government off the hook.

October 8, 2021

John Austen: Time to call time on Infrastructure Australia? It has failed

The latest Australian Infrastructure Plan avoids the key issue: Commonwealth (lack of) direction. It seems aimed at bureaucratic empire building and should herald the end of Infrastructure Australia.

September 26, 2021

Don't undermine the moral clarity of the fight against antisemitism

Giving the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition a special status it was never intended to have undermines the moral clarity of the fight against antisemitism.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal