November 19, 2024

Labor, party of the comfortably housed, needs the Greens

Labor needs the Greens. It seems to calculate that the Greens have no choice about preferencing them. That might once have seemed logical, but it is by no means certain when Labor’s defence policies are anathema to many Greens, when Labor policies on refugees and immigration are indistinguishable from the coalition’s, and when their climate change and environment policies are deliberately constructed to be only a smidgeon more engaged than the opposition’s.

October 24, 2024

Gender equality? - Not our culture

Half the 280 million people in Indonesia are women, though not in the 48-member ministry; just five were drafted this week by the fresh president Prabowo Subianto. It’s a Cabinet fuelled more by testosterone than talent.

February 8, 2024

A nuclear armed Rogue State is threatening Asian peace and stability

Rogue State - noun. “A nation or state regarded as breaking international law and posing a threat to the security of other nations.” (Oxford English Dictionary).

January 24, 2024

Public education a case for all of us to work together

I write in relation to the article published in Pearls and Irritations on 23 January 2024, authored by John Frew. The writer appears to be questioning who should be working with children experiencing educational disadvantage, get funding to do it, and be responsible for their outcomes. He raises the example of The Smith Family, as a charity, and our involvement in education, and makes several assertions about our work supporting the education of children experiencing poverty.

March 23, 2022

When Catholic bishops play dirty nobody wins

_The Australian Catholic Church’s Plenary Council is heading for the rocks amid sharp recriminations. What was meant to be a showcase of genuine listening and walking together is unravelling with an unedifying lack of goodwill from the bishops.

February 24, 2022

Dogmatists shouting freedom: significant lessons from John Stuart Mill

_Democracy is eroded by selfish, untruthful, often violent individualism.

November 25, 2021

Voter ID another step on the road to US-style dysfunction

Requiring ID to vote has caused disenfranchisement in the US, and the government’s push for a similar law is aimed at suppressing the Labor vote.

October 31, 2021

Monthly digest on housing affordability and homelessness

_This is the latest monthly digest of articles, research reports, policy announcements and other material about housing stress/affordability and homelessness.

September 11, 2021

Doing the heavy lifting: Australians' obsession with a metaphor

_The Americans have been doing metaphorical heavy lifting since the 1930s. Before that heavy lifting was something done by people, such as wharfies or weight lifters, or machines, such as cranes.

March 25, 2025

'Never happened before': WMO finds past 10 years have been 10 hottest on record

“While a single year above 1.5°C of warming does not indicate that the long-term temperature goals of the Paris agreement are out of reach, it is a wake-up call,” wrote the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organisation.

January 10, 2025

Watch CN Live!: Nuked: The submarine fiasco that sank Australia’s sovereignty

In September 2021 the US, UK and Australia announced a joint project to build eight nuclear submarines for Australia at a cost of AU$368 billion. To conclude the deal, Australia had to scrap an already concluded agreement with France to build 12 conventional submarines for the Royal Australian Navy at a cost of AU$50 billion.

November 4, 2024

Private schools' opportunist attempt to lock-in over-funding

Private schools have seized on an opportunity provided by an Amendment Bill before the Parliament to attempt to lock-in billions in Commonwealth over-funding for years to come.

March 17, 2024

A university career is no longer the best way to channel a fine mind

A friend of mine resigned from her university job in February 2024 just weeks before term started. She couldnt face another year. She was old enough to retire but I had thought she might have a couple more years of teaching in her. The bureaucracy, the rules, lowering standards were too much. Another friend, an emeritus professor no less, saddened me when he confided he would not recommend a university career to someone starting out now. No longer was it the best way to channel a fine mind.

January 11, 2024

Proposed new Aged Care Act leaves gaps in rights

The current Aged Care Act, dating from the Howard Government era and infused with its neo-liberal ideology, is set to be repealed and replaced by a new one, purportedly incorporating a rights basis as recommended by the Royal Commission on Aged Care Quality and Safety which reported in 2021.

January 6, 2024

Malcolm Fraser would have agreed with Paul Keating on AUKUS

Like so many Australians, I am very worried by our commitment to AUKUS. I agree strongly with many other critics that we have been placed in peril by our governments submarine agreement with the US and the UK.

October 31, 2023

Racism: The unstated Australian agenda?

In the wake of the failed Voice referendum several topics are still attracting contentious debate. How significant was racism for the no case? Does the decisive defeat suggest that Australia remains chained to its heritage of White Australia? Many people think so.

February 21, 2023

A plan for human survival

Among the worlds many pressing needs, the most urgent of all is a plan for human survival. And Australia should be the country to lead its creation.

January 2, 2023

Media professional standards test falls short. Will the government act?

Treasury may consider the news media professional standards test is adequate, but hopefully the Communications Minister Michelle Rowland and her department think differently_._

December 13, 2022

Was there really a 'greenslide' in Victoria's election?

It is worthwhile to assess the true character of the performance of the Greens in the recent Victorian Legislative assembly election.

October 29, 2024

Vale Percy Allan AM

Percy Allan AM, a regular contributor to Pearls & Irritations, and a supporter of its role as a leading public policy voice, died on Tuesday (Oct. 22) after a battle with lymphoma.

October 12, 2023

Another brick laid building the new order

The recently concluded summit of the five member states of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) agreed to expand membership to include from next January Saudi Arabia, Iran, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the UAE. Western media and commentators responses have been a farrago of sneering at the unlikely hodgepodge of countries that will now be members, raising the spectre that this group is setting itself up in opposition to the G7, and is an anti-West alliance of Global South members.

February 19, 2023

An insurance mindset is vital for the future of the welfare state

Lifters and leaners; makers vs takers; strivers and the skivers. The language may be different but the pejorative sentiment around the welfare state is similar, be it in Australia, the United States or the United Kingdom.

February 1, 2023

Laura Tingle: the next ABC staff-elected director?

_So Laura Tingle, the ABCs 7.30 political editor, has nominated for the staff-elected director position on the ABC board._Interesting.

January 7, 2023

Don Bradman, Cricket, and the Counter-Revolution

It would not be an exaggeration to call Sir Donald Bradman, crickets most metronomic and gluttonous of batsman (runs wise), a counter revolutionary. On the surface, cricketers like to imagine themselves to be above politics and devotees of a game so complex it would lobotomise any darting political mind. In practice, cricket has invited the most political and acrimonious of debates, straddling arguments between amateurs and professionals, to the debate about World Series Cricket and the need for decent pay for its participants.

January 28, 2025

Will public servants become agents of the party rather than the state?

One of the strong points Anthony Albanese made before the last election was that Scott Morrison had virtually abandoned honest government, good government, accountable government and transparent government.

January 16, 2025

The US war on terror strikes home

Americans were shocked by two fatal events in the United States on New Year’s day 2025, and one was quickly called ‘Islamist terrorism’. Yet the US supports Muslim terrorist groups in Syria.

November 18, 2024

Australian regulators fail conflict of interest test

As reported in Pearls and Irritations on 11 November 2024, the ACCC executive members who had accepted membership to the QANTAS Chairman’s lounge should have divested themselves of that benefit before commencing the investigation into QANTAS or resigned. Following on from the ACCC issue, Australia at least at the Federal level, has a very serious issue involving gifts received by its regulatory agencies.

December 17, 2023

Is Albanese on track to deliver proposed net migration reductions?

After letting net migration blow out to around 518,000 in 2022-23, the Albanese Government has announced it wants to bring net migration down to 375,000 in 23-24 and 250,000 in 24-25

February 14, 2023

A maritime country needs a maritime defence industry

There are very sound strategic reasons to continuously build and maintain heavily automated missile frigates and Air Independent Propulsion conventional submarines in Australia, as an alternative to spending $150B-$200B on unmaintainable AUKUS Nuclear Submarines.

March 22, 2025

Will Walter Sofronoff be prosecuted?

Maybe what Lehrmann Board of Inquiry chair Walter Sofronoff KC did was “serious corrupt conduct”, as the ACT Integrity Commission alleges. Or perhaps that description is “overreach”, as former Law Council of Australia president Arthur Moses SC told The Australian.

November 26, 2024

Distorting elections: Australia’s professional politicians feather their own nests

The ALP is full of legends – of which many old party folk are defiantly proud – of political skullduggery. There have been stuffed ballot boxes, and mysteriously disappearing ones, and forged minutes of branch meetings.

October 23, 2024

On the gravy train: Venality and a misplaced sense of entitlement are corrupting democratic institutions in contemporary Australia

Crikey’s recent revelation that some 170 politicians and media commentators have had overseas trips fully or partly funded by particular interest groups, shines a spotlight on a deeply embedded problem in our political and media institutions. Coalition figures appear to be the most frequent beneficiaries of this duchessing.

February 22, 2024

Lifting the sense of ourselves

For anyone seeking an understanding of what Paul Keatings public life was all about, his acceptance speech on the occasion of his life membership of the Labor Party in 1999 is required reading.

February 20, 2024

Labors regional and rural housing blind spot

The Labor government has a blind spot when it comes to fixing the unique challenges of housing in regional Australia. The $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fundthe government’s signature housing policyhas completely ignored the specific problems in regional, rural and remote Australia and failed to guarantee dedicated funding. Regional Australians, who feel they will never have a stable place to live, deserve more.

February 3, 2024

The state of Israel: A critical Swedish assessment

Around two decades ago, the Swedish writer, Henning Mankell, took an increasingly close interest in the wretched condition of Palestinians living under punishing Israeli domination. What he saw convinced him that Israel was maintaining an apartheid state very like those he had previously visited, at length, in Southern Africa.

March 16, 2023

International Best Practice? Australia could do better

A couple of decades ago the phrase international best practice seemed to be on the lips of just about every business leader, business and economics journalists and the odd politician.

March 10, 2023

Wave of war propaganda Asian Media Report

In Asian media this week: War talk means uphill battle to mend ties with China. Plus: US avoids a truthful narrative; South Korea to pay for Japans wartime abuse; rich countries, energy giants throttle poor nations; new terms active non-alignment and coalition of unwilling; sorry now the easy word.

January 22, 2023

For the Australian Republic Movement, minimalism is history

Its time for the Australian Republic Movement to move on from the minimalist campaign of the 1990s and embrace reform of our archaic constitution.

January 11, 2022

Health officials' timidity to politicians has hampered pandemic response

If Morrison has his way with impression management, the pandemic is now simply a problem for the states, with the Commonwealth scarcely having a role.

September 18, 2021

Why journalists have a trust problem

If there was a time when journalists had great credibility with audiences, it’s less so today. In this speech delivered to a university media seminar, The Sydney Morning Herald_’s economics editor Ross Gittins explores why._

March 8, 2025

Vote for humanity: why genocide is a key election issue – hold politicians accountable

Public Meeting – Glebe Town Hall

Sunday 9 March,

7pm – 8.30pm

Bookings – via Eventbrite

March 1, 2024

Fight or flight response to Myanmar draft Asian Media Report

In Asian media this week: Conscription law sparking Thailand exodus. Plus: Rich West building fences against the Rest; Pakistan poll-rigging whistleblower arrested; Economist says Hong Kong glory days over; Indonesian election one of the darkest days; High price paid for saving the tiger.

October 19, 2023

Devastating Voice defeat, Labor backing Israeli genocide. Time for #LeftVoteStrike

If you are a critic of Anthony Albaneses Labor government, stop whining about it. Do something instead. You can find leverage in the political opportunity structure to pressure the Labor party on three key demands: recognising Palestine; withdrawing from the AUKUS submarine deal, and stopping new fossil fuel projects. Heres how.

February 7, 2023

Pearls and Irritations comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable

Pearls and Irritations comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.

December 18, 2022

New election study shows need for proportional representation

The recently completed 2022 election study by Australian National University and Griffith University political scientists clearly shows the need for an electoral system that will provide democratic opportunity for fair representation.

March 5, 2025

What happens if no party achieves a parliamentary majority?

This article is taken from Ian McAuley’s regular Saturday round-ups of links to writings, interviews and podcasts of Australian political and economic issues.

February 17, 2025

Who should take responsibility for youth crime?

A baby might be kicked into life as the result of a careless moment behind the woodshed or a romantic frolic in a grand four-poster bed. Either way, nine months later, that squirming mass of new life will enter the world – wanted or unwanted, prepared for or not.

January 17, 2025

Western media believe 24 Californians matter more than 46,000 Palestinians

Last week, news headlines heralded the disaster of 24 lives lost in Californian wildfires. Yet the same media outlets petered out the news of thousands more being killed by deliberate man-made bombing, starvation and destruction of homes and hospitals by Israel in Gaza.

December 19, 2023

Closing Loopholes Bill confronts the new realities of self-employment

Self-employment has changed in recent years. Its been both shrinking and becoming more precarious. Proportionately, there are fewer business owners and theres more gig work.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal