March 22, 2025

Israel, not Hamas, Is derailing the Gaza ceasefire and preventing the hostages' return

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid the asking price for Itamar Ben-Gvir’s return to the government in advance. Not out of his own pocket, of course, but with the blood of the 59 hostages whose fate could be sealed by the resumption of the war, which has already sealed the fate of hundreds of Palestinians, including women and children.

March 10, 2025

This undemocratic law should be overturned

An unholy conspiracy between the Labor Party and the Liberal-National Coalition to preserve Australia’s century-old two-party system seems certain to fail. It is most unlikely to survive multiple challenges in the High Court. But in the unlikely event that if it does gain constitutional approval, it will be overturned by voters.

March 4, 2025

Australia must condemn Israel's genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians

The Australian Government must condemn Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza and its plans to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homelands. It is also the responsibility of the national broadcaster to hold Canberra to account, by demanding this condemnation of our ally Israel for its gross and indisputable violations of international law.

January 29, 2025

What is Dan Tehan and the Coalition offering on asylum seeker policy?

As the overall number of asylum seekers in Australia continues to rise and is now over 120,000, Shadow Immigration Spokesperson Dan Tehan regularly criticises the Labor Government for not doing enough to get control of asylum seeker numbers. But with a Federal Election just months away, we do not know what either the Coalition or Labor will do to get on top of the issue.

March 22, 2024

The campaign to destroy the GST

Australia’s system of GST distribution – despite some serious mutilation by WA – remains one of the most effective and fairest in the world. That’s why the NSW government wants to blow it up.

November 16, 2023

'Job-ready Graduates scheme' damaging Australian Higher Education

In January 2021, the Morrison government changed the way university fees are set with theJob-ready Graduates scheme.

February 27, 2023

Do China's COVID-19 numbers add up?

Now that China is opening up, it’s a good time to reflect on their pandemic response.

February 25, 2023

Some things dont change: the alarming attitude that still surfaces on the edges of Australian cricket

There was a bothersome moment on television late in last weeks first cricket Test between Australia and India in Nagpur.

February 23, 2023

Thinking differently about sovereignty and economy

While Governments often promote consensus views that disguise racism, domination of the less fortunate and an ages old acceptance that violence can sustain dominant interests, recent articles in P&I have begun to challenge this conformity.

March 29, 2021

The true intent and spirit of the Sino-British Joint Declaration concerning Hong Kong.

On 12 March this year the G7 group of nations published a statement saying that Beijings proposal to change the electoral arrangements for Hong Kongs legislature ( LegCo ) was, among other things, a breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration: the agreement signed 36 years ago to settle the question of Hong Kongs future, ending the era of colonial rule. Their accusation is driven, not by fact and logic, but by an underlying mindset fixed in the past; a mindset formed in the days of European imperialism that sees Hong Kong as a foreign concession within China.

March 13, 2025

Victoria's government and opposition put Grand Prix ahead of their citizens

With the nation’s worst state debt and the looming budget, we hear almost weekly of the Victorian Government’s desperate funding cuts to essential services. While, for example, our nurses, childcare and aged care workers and our police are very much valued and needed, they appear to come a poor second in financial support to the Grand Prix from the main political parties. Is this what Victorians want?

February 25, 2025

Climate 200's Mandela moment

“Donfather’s Bill’ is now law – a killer blow for Climate 200 and Community Independents, delivered on the 11th hour through an unholy alliance of the two mafia-like bosses, Albanese and Dutton. Will Simon Holmes a Court seize his Mandela Moment and remake our Parliamentary democracy to fit for purpose?

February 19, 2025

The fruits of American bishops’ failure

Five years ago, J.D. Vance, who is now the vice-president of the United States, received the Sacraments of Initiation at St Gertrude Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

November 19, 2024

Fighting coercive control: Why we can’t police our way to safety

Last week the state of South Australia moved another step closer to criminalising coercive control, with the bill passing through the House of Assembly on its way to the Legislative Council.

February 26, 2024

Our life support systems of climate, water and ecological services are in collective crisis

A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people. Franklin D. Roosevelt. We must educate and act urgently on these problems.

March 2, 2023

Discarding article 9 of the Japanese constitution is not inducive to peace in Asia Pacific

Those service personnel who died in WWII fighting against the Japanese would turn in their grave if they knew that their descendants were rearming Japan.There is no reason for any accelerated arm race or nuclear proliferation in the East Pacific. Why are we creating one?

February 5, 2025

No community can be blamed for the actions of a few individuals

Over the last few months, we have witnessed a stark increase in antisemitic hate crime: fire-bombings, and Nazi symbols painted on synagogues, houses, and schools, a statement from the Australian Jewish Democratic Society says.

December 10, 2024

Albo’s pre-emptive kowtow to an imagined Westminster

The Labor Party would like it to be understood that they would prefer that voters give their second preference to the Liberal Party or the National Party, ahead of any Greens, Independents or members of loose groupings such as the Teals. Elders of the party believe that the two-party system – which they consider to be fundamental to the Australian Westminster system – is otherwise in great danger and could, down the track collapse. Please, especially, do not vote Green.

March 24, 2023

Japan in diplomatic offensive Asian Media Report

In Asian Media this week: Japan woos Global South to counter China. Plus: Xis Moscow visit China plays it cool; Would Anglosphere nations welcome others in Aukus?; US Mid-East power waning; Sri Lanka gets aid, with conditions; media present differing views on China.

January 4, 2023

Australia disregards medical advice, introduces mandatory testing for Chinese arrivals

Australias Albanese government has taken the lead of countries in North America, Europe and Asia by introducing COVID-19 testing measures on arrivals from China. The decision was reached in variance to advice from the Commonwealths chief medical officer, Paul Kelly that there was no sufficient public health rationale for the measure_._

December 20, 2022

Dire union membership rates suppressing wages growth

Last week, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its biennial trade union membership statistics. The results were dire for unions, but they also have implications for further reform of the Fair Work Act.

December 5, 2021

Our migration program: many questions with no answers

Consultations with the public on immigration have been rendered meaningless, and Home Affairs appears unable to provide any detail on its plans.

February 9, 2025

From moral collapse to genocide: How the Israeli occupation silenced the world before destroying Gaza

Since the beginning of the genocide in the Gaza Strip, numerous scenes have repeatedly appeared before cameras and the eyes of the entire world, depicting blatant assaults on humanity and constituting brutal crimes that are unforgivable under any law, jurisdiction, or pretext.

January 25, 2025

Who feels unsafe and why?

When Parliament returns, the government will be pressed to enact a law making it a criminal offence to threaten violence against people or groups on racial or religious grounds, or to threaten them about gender identity or sexual orientation. Before February, we need to know more about what caused a recent spate of nasty incidents in Sydney.

December 6, 2024

Decency and dignity generate and earn respect

While Bob Menzies pumped the political scare campaign to the max, to help ensure his newly formed Liberal Party’s ongoing popularity between 1949-66, locals were often more relaxed about sharing community life with those they battled on election day.

October 29, 2024

Keeping the public in the dark: Is it time to scrap the NACC and start again?

The National Anti-Corruption Commission has recently issued its first substantial, if highly redacted report clearing a former Department of Home Affairs officer of any suspicion of corruption over a million dollars or more of payments from her son, himself a former home affairs officer who had obtained, without an open tender a contract to provide garrison services on Manus Island worth about $600 million. Nothing sus, says the NACC. The payments, the NACC has found, were to help her, and her boyfriend, another senior Home Affairs officer, with the purchase of a small flat and later a big one.

March 3, 2023

A time for leadership: winning the pandemic war first

In the early 1940s phony war, before Pearl Harbour in December 1941, many Australians were not interested in the ongoing European war, even given our troops in Greece and North Africa.

January 3, 2023

Antisemitism, mendacity & zionist propaganda in Australia

Propaganda is a dark and devious art. It exploits ignorance to peddle dogma. It violates truth, logic and right reason. It is the negation of philosophy and science.

November 30, 2022

A fusion of discontents and democracy's winter in Victoria

In Victoria, I came across she who had rhetorically embraced violence against the premier in the successful sniper’s image of red mist. A new dimension to analysing the discontented and their underlying social and economic situation.

October 26, 2022

Always opposing the last war but not the current one: notes from the edge of the narrative matrix

Those who hate Russia the most are the ones who embody everything they claim to hate about it: they’re all pro-war, pro-censorship, pro-propaganda, pro-trolling operations, and support Ukraine in banning political parties and opposition media. They are what they claim to hate.

October 10, 2020

Charity regulator is failing us.

_Charity scams are on a rocket trajectory. Since 2019 they have risen by a massive 70%. There have been more than 1000 charity scam reports since the beginning of this year.

February 1, 2025

The politics of women

It’s four years since the Women’s March 4 Justice thronged Parliament House in Canberra, and gathered at locations around Australia. But the issues that inspired us have not gone away; in fact, as the by-election for the seat of Prahran shows, they have never been more urgent.

March 11, 2024

UK/US: Time to end prosecution of Julian Assange, UN expert says

GENEVA (1 March 2024) A UN expert today expressed concern that the possible extradition and imminent prosecution in the United States of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could have serious implications for freedom of expression.

February 22, 2024

Stop Australian charitable donations to the Settler Movement in the Occupied Territories

Despite the strong words being used by Anthony Albanese in conjunction with the Canadian and NZ governments to indicate Australias deep concern against a devastating and catastrophic ground offensive in Rafah in Gaza, or the ongoing proceedings in the International Court of Justice, it is high time that Australia actually went beyond words, and start to impose sanctions against the Israeli government. Human rights must be considered in any relationship between Australia and Israel, and in particular, Australian monies must not be used to support the Occupation.

November 22, 2022

The biggest threat to capitalism? Purveyors of mistrust

If social trust is good for society, and for the economy overall, why is such a decline in trust occurring? The simple answer is because some businesses make money from distrust.

March 24, 2025

Questions to ask political candidates about peace

What does it take to build peace in Australia and the world today? This is a question that has occupied the minds of a group of peace practitioners and activists in the network “Raising Peace”. Concerned with a seemingly unstoppable acceptance of war and the downplaying of peace in public discourse, over the last few years Raising Peace has heard from dozens of people who work on peace from the political to the personal arenas.

December 11, 2024

Dutton scrambling on immigration levels

Having made bold promises to reduce immigration in his 2024-25 Budget reply speech and in a radio interview with 2GB’s Ben Fordham the next day, Peter Dutton is now scrambling to explain his position on immigration levels.

October 12, 2024

While you weren't looking: Meeting China in Sydney

While elsewhere the China discourse in the Australian media may have been on geopolitical tensions and defence and security concerns, community leaders, students and academics from seven universities in Australia and 15 universities in China and Taiwan met in Parramatta on the campus of Western Sydney University a few days ago.

March 21, 2024

Chinese universities want more Australian students: we should send them

Australia is trailing its neighbours in the race to acquire China knowledge and capability, which can only come from in-country experience, writes Louise Edwards.

February 18, 2024

The craft of journalism is dying: Can independent consortiums save it?

Back in the 1960s and 70s, the media was referred to as The Fourth Estate. The media played a role as a check and balance against government abuse of power, corruption, and overreach. The media was an integral part of any healthy democracy.

November 17, 2023

The RBA fails to convince anyone why it increased interest rates: Weekly Roundup

Labor is too nave in dealing with Dutton; how Canberra smooths the path for well-heeled lobbyists; how the cost of living obsession obscures serious social and economic fault lines; the RBA graded by an aged academic, and how to identify a conservative. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic and political issues.

October 2, 2023

This land cries out in final warning

We need an Indigenous Voice to parliament. We need any other voice that will offset the disastrous self-serving notions of the present fools that govern this country. We are all living under the shadows of the illusions of the colonised mind.

March 14, 2023

Time to change the story on war

Last week we witnessed some extraordinary interventions by two mainstream media mastheads, The Sydney Morning Herald__and__The Age in pursuit of both headlines and an agenda. The three part Red Alert series begins with a paragraph that could have been found in Edward Bernays book, Propaganda:

March 8, 2023

Will the Lake Eyre Basin be sacrificed on the altar of gas production?

The integrity of the ecology of the Lake Eyre Basin and its water supply from the Great Artesian Basin are threatened by oil and gas development and by ineffective state and federal administration.

February 22, 2023

Neurofeedback works for trauma – let’s use it!!!

Everyone who has suffered abuse as a child deserves the opportunity to live free of its detrimental effects.

January 18, 2023

Cricket Australias Afghanistan problem

In cancelling its scheduled March series of three one-day matches against Afghanistan, Australian Cricket takes us into familiarly problematic territory. It brings to mind the battle, fought for two decades against South Africas apartheid regime, where cricket and rugby boycotts played a significant role.

January 2, 2023

Reflecting on the Ratzinger papacy

Benedict XVIs life and papacy was a mixed blessing for Catholicism.

February 12, 2025

Australia's words on Gaza a far cry from its deeds

Last week, the Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW) wrote to Foreign Minister Wong expressing shock and outrage that Australia had not openly protested US President Trump’s 4 February statement of intent to erase Gaza.

January 16, 2025

Dutton’s contempt for migration law and policy detail

In his unofficial election policy launch this week, Peter Dutton re-announced his promise to cut the migration program and to cap overseas students at metropolitan universities. Without a hint of embarrassment, he also said he was a strong believer in the ‘rule of law’. His record shows he has little belief in the rules embodied in the Migration Act nor would he have the legal powers to implement these promises if elected.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal