December 8, 2013

Does Tony Abbott believe in markets? John Menadue

We are already seeing a division opening up in the Abbott Government between wets and dries and a lot of confusion.

The Liberal Party and conservatives generally espouse the value of markets that governments should not interfere unless there is clear market failure or overwhelming reasons of public interest. This belief in markets is at the core of conservative philosophy The Liberal Party platform speaks expansively of enterprise and consumer choice. Ministers such as Joe Hockey, Andrew Robb and Malcolm Turnbull seem to hold to that belief. But Tony Abbott, along with Barnaby Joyce and the National Party, seem opposed to markets when key decisions have to be made. Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane seems to be having an arm wrestle with Cabinet over support for Holdens. Then what about support for Qantas?

February 10, 2016

Ian McAuley. The only unifying thread in the Liberal Party is a compulsion to keep Labor out of office.

There is a German saying The less the people know about how laws and sausages are made, the better they sleep at night.

In his book Credlin & Co (Black Inc 2016), an expos of the political relationship between Tony Abbott and his loyal Chief of Staff, Peta Credlin, Aaron Patrick of the Financial Review takes us inside Abbotts sausage factory.

At one level its a story thats been around for 500 years, which is when Machiavelli warned about the folly of the prince who surrounds himself with a protective guard to flatter him and protect him from his critics. When at Oxford Abbott must have skipped over that part of The Prince.

July 2, 2017

MICHAEL MULLINS. Cardinal Pell's preference for spin doctors over truth tellers

Cardinal Pell’s actions and attitudes towards the media over the years have demonstrated a lack of appreciation of its role in truth telling. If, as he stated , he is innocent of the ‘false’ charges laid against him, it is in his interest not to condemn the truth telling media but to trust and embrace it.

June 8, 2018

MICHAEL McKINLEY. Australias China policy: who rules, who governs and the SAS connection

Australias China policy in recent days has moved from being a subject of heated and understandable debate and controversy based on argument and evidence, to a target of bureaucratic and organisational guerrilla warfare. From within the state and parliamentary system, attacks of one type or another come without warning, raising questions about who is ruling and who is merely governing.

May 28, 2018

MUNGO MacCALLUM. After all the promises, dithering, the backflips and the bullshit, the unemployment rate has not actually fallen

There can be no real doubt that the timing of the by-elections for July 28 was mean and tricky. But who was the mean trickster?

August 20, 2018

WILL STEFFEN. A Fundamental Re-think of the Climate Change Challenge

Using a complex systems framework, we argue that a set of feedback processes intrinsic to the Earth System could form a planetary threshold which, if crossed, would not only speed up climate change, but also take the trajectory out of human control and propel the system irreversibly to a Hothouse Earth state.

August 29, 2019

QUENTIN DEMPSTER. Press Freedom - thank god for Annika Smethursts underwear drawer

Thank god for Annika Smethursts underwear drawer. thats all I can say. Never in the history of Australias battered democracy has the secret state and its understandably paranoid intelligence agencies been exposed by the undergarments of a Murdoch reptile.

July 2, 2018

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Shorten delivers a shock.

Bill Shortens decision last week was a real shock but it was the second decision, not the first, that was the surprising one.

November 5, 2019

MICHAEL KEATING- Scott Morrison and the 'Quiet Australians'

Prime Minister Morrison says that he will make sure that government services are reliable and responsive to the needs of those quiet Australians whose legitimate expectations are consistent with past practice and social conventions. What that means for the growing number of other Australians, who are less able to have a go and look after themselves, is apparently of no great concern.

July 5, 2017

How a regional nuclear-free-weapon zone can benefit Japan

More the half the word’s countries are parties to nuclear weapon-free zone treaties. A regional Northeast Asian nuclear weapon-free zone would quarantine the region from the real risks of nuclear war. It would delink regional tensions, disputes and conflicts from the geopolitical equations between the nuclear powers, and would aim to prevent any cross-contamination of regional and global quarrels.

June 30, 2019

MACK WILLIAMS. Iran : Coalition of the less than willing !

The spectacle of Prime Minister facing the full court press from President Trump and his team across the dinner table in Osaka starkly demonstrated how G20 Osaka was to be Morrisons real initiation to the global arena. As the Iran crisis threatened to intensify it was little surprise that this became a prime focus of Australian media interest - even more than Morrisons claim that he would be speaking squarely to both Trump and President Xi about the serious risks posed to the global economy by the US:China trade war.

September 23, 2019

BENEDICT SHEEHY. Bupas nursing home scandal is more evidence of a deep crisis in regulation (The Conversation 13-9-19)

British health-care conglomerate Bupa runs more nursing homes in Australia than anyone else. We now know its record in meeting basic standards of care is also worse than any other provider.

September 30, 2019

JAMES LAURENCESON. Morrisons visit to the US shows his common ground with China (AFR 25-9-19)

Scan the headlines generated by Scott Morrisons trip to the United States and you could get the impression that the Australian government is increasingly tilting towards supporting Washington in its economic war against Beijing.

November 27, 2016

ANDREW FARRAN. ANZUS - Reality check coming soon! Quo vadis series.

Quo vadis - Australian foreign policy and ANZUS.

Summary.We need diplomacy of the highest order, not military interventions which, as we have seen, generally make conflict situations worse.

August 17, 2018

JERRY ROBERTS. West Australian white ants move into interesting territory.

Putting aside the anonymous gutlessness of the West Australian Parliamentary Liberals and the colossal arrogance of The West Australian Newspaper, the campaign against Opposition Leader Mike Nahan has raised a useful question. Which is more influential in election campaigning conventional newspaper and television or the brave new world of Facebook and Twitter?

March 12, 2018

Trump Is Smart to Talk to Kim Jong Un

The problem is, the United States is nowhere near ready for this kind of high-stakes diplomacy. SUZANNE DIMAGGIO and JOEL WIT point out the risks

May 27, 2018

PETER MANNING. Public trust and the ABC, a landmine for Turnbull.

It’s a long-time ago now but in the early 1990s, just after Id finished my stint as head of ABC TV News and Current Affairs (and having a blue with first Bob Hawke and then David Hill over ABC TV coverage of the first Iraq war), I took over as General Manager of the ABCs Radio National.

July 16, 2019

HAJO DUKEN. Brexit, preservation of the UK union and a deep and special relationship with the EU - two out of thre e ain't bad (but far from certain)

Whenever we think that the level of absurdity in this drama cannot be exceeded, we are proven wrong. It appears that England (not the whole of the UK) has virtually decided that the earth is flat. Is a no-deal horror scenario now inevitable or is there a way out for the new Prime Minister?

July 19, 2018

RICHARD ECCLESTON. The housing divide

House prices may havefinally peaked, at least in Melbourne and Sydney. But a slight cooling in some overheated cities makes little difference to overall housing affordability in Australia, which hasdeclined significantly over the past two decades.We need a new, nationally coordinated approach to housing policy in order to ensure that the vast majority of Australians have access to the suitable, affordable and secure housing they deserve.

October 25, 2017

JOHN TULLOH. Seven days in Peking, 40 years ago.

Pearls and Irritations has printed memoirs of mine to mark the 50th anniversary of two notable news assignments: one was the Six-Day War, the other was a trip across the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. This one marks the 40th anniversary of my first trip to China - to Peking, as Beijing was still known in 1977. It was a couple of years before the great transformation into modern China began.

September 11, 2019

ANTHONY ALBANESE. Tribute to Graham Freudenberg (House of Representatives 10 Sep 2019)

Graham Freudenberg climbed inside the soul of the Australian Labor Party in search of the words that lay there. He came back to us with an entire language. When Freudy said the Labor Party was built on speeches, the identity of the master builder was never a mystery to the rest of us. He spoke to us in so many voices, but in each of them he spoke with clarity and power. He moved us, he persuaded us and, in a world where words barely outlast the moment in which they are spoken, he made us remember.

September 17, 2017

MICHAEL SAINSBURY. In defence of the tragic, impotent silence of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Can Pope Francis help with her effective silence over the Rohingya crisis being perpetrated by Myanmars military that is a measure of her governments helplessness?

September 7, 2017

JOHN Menadue. It is scandalous how infrastructure spending escapes proper scrutiny

The gathering infrastructure mess in Australia requires open public inquiries, starting with the Sydney Metro.

June 14, 2018

JOAN STAPLES. Foreign interference bills threaten civil society freedoms.

The governments urgent pursuit of foreign interference bills prior to the July by-elections aims to wedge Labor for short term electoral gain. However as Labor agrees to support the bills, yet more of our political freedoms are being destroyed at great loss to our democracy.

April 2, 2018

STEPHEN LEEDER. Morality And Health.

Writing last Thursday in the Conversation about the South African cricket scandal, Michelle Grattan pointed to politicians who would prefer to overlook awkward parallels with conduct in politics for instance the endemic tampering with the ball of truth.

March 10, 2015

Spencer Zifcak. Proportionality Lost: Australias New Counter-Terrorism Laws. Part 2

The Foreign Fighters Bill

The second tranche of counter-terrorism legislation introduced by the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, late last year was contained in the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill. This Bill (now passed into law) amended several Commonwealth Acts, most notably the Commonwealth Criminal Code. The primary purpose of these new laws is to enable the investigation, arrest, prosecution and punishment of people supporting foreign conflicts.

Foreign Incursion Offences

Each of the foreign incursion offences pivots upon the definition of to engage in hostile activity. A person engages in hostile activity in a foreign country if they engage in conduct intending to:

October 21, 2016

JENNY HOCKING. The Palace letters.

My name is Professor Jenny Hocking, I am a Monash University academic and Gough Whitlams biographer. I have launched an historic action against the National Archives of Australia to release the Palace letters’ relating to the dismissal of the Whitlam government, withheld from the Australian people at the behest of the Queen. (See https://chuffed.org/project/release-the-palace-lettersfor donation links.)

The Palace letters, secret correspondence between the Governor-General Sir John Kerr and the Queen at the time of the dismissal, arethe final missing piece in the puzzle on the most controversial episode in Australias political history.

November 18, 2014

Frank Brennan SJ. Women Priests in the Catholic Church - Can we at least talk about it?

There was an interesting exchange on CBS 60 Minutes here in the USA on Sunday night between Cardinal OMalley and Norah ODonnell

(See http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cardinal-sean-omalley-works-with-pope-francis-to-reform-catholic-church/). Here is part of the interview:

Norah O’Donnell: The church says it’s not open to the discussion about ordaining women. Why not?

Cardinal Sen O’Malley: Not everyone needs to be ordained to have an important role in the life of the church. Women run the Catholic charities, the Catholic schools, the development office for the archdiocese.

August 21, 2018

KIM WINGEREI. Vale the two-party system - long live democracy (Part 1)

On Monday the Fairfax-Ipsos poll showed that the combined support for Labour and the Liberal/National coalition was 68% - down almost 10% since the 2016 election. In other words, one third of voters prefer neither party. On Tuesday, we witnessed the unsavoury spectacle of yet another leadership spill in the Liberal Party; the sixth such spill in ten years within the major parties. The decline in support for the majors is closely linked to how they conduct their affairs and is at the heart of why trust in politicians is at an all-time low. But it is still a welcome development - the decline, not the spectre of Peter Dutton as PM.

November 1, 2015

Mark Gregory. The new PM and the NBN. 'An expensive lemon'

The National Broadband Network (NBN) is now delayed by between five and ten years and will cost significantly more over a 20 year lifetime due to the governments decision to shift from a Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) fixed access network to the Multi-Technology Mix (MTM) approach that includes Fibre to the Node (FTTN) and Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC).

The malaise that the telecommunications industry finds itself in has been exacerbated by the efforts of the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull who, as the Minister for Communications, spent two years doing very little whilst telling everyone that he was on the cusp of finding solutions for a variety of problems besetting the industry.

June 11, 2018

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Wishful thinking.

It may be sheer fantasy, wishful thinking. But in the last week the torpor of politics appeared to lift a little; there were signs that progress might not be stalled forever in the coalition party room in Canberra. Not that anything much has changed within the gaffe-prone cabinet of Malcolm Turnbull at least not yet. But perhaps the exit of the reactionary influence of Barnaby Joyce as deputy prime minister is providing a glimmer of hope for the handful of rational optimists who have been frustrated for so long by Turnbulls capitulation to Joyce and his rightist rump.

February 26, 2014

John Tulloh. The French at Gallipoli - Lest we not Forget

A popular myth is that the Gallipoli landings were all about the Australian and New Zealand troops - the Anzacs - with the British somewhere involved, having concocted the unfortunate military adventure.

But what is so often overlooked is the participation of France in the Gallipoli campaign. It may surprise a lot of people to learn that France suffered more deaths than Australia and New Zealand combined.

France contributed over 40,000 troops. About 15,000 were killed as against 8141 Australians and 2721 New Zealanders. France has its own war cemetery aptly named Morto Bay, meaning Death Bay. It has 3236 individual graves and several large ossuaries containing the unidentifiable remains of thousands of militaires. It is maintained with the same devotion and attention as the Commonwealth war graves.

January 24, 2016

The media, those agencies and the Data Retention Act

The medias attention this past week turned to the 61 fringe agencies trying to get access to our metadata. Many have missed the point that when Parliament passed the Data Retention Act the Government heralded the fact that it had cut the list of those able to access our private and personal information to the bare minimum. Most of the agencies asking to be added to the list now are precisely the ones that Senator Brandis told us didnt have sufficient justification, even though theyd historically had unfettered access.

February 24, 2025

A five-minute scroll

The BBC has bowed to pressure and removed the documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone”. An Israeli soldier shows affection to a Hamas fighter on release. The Jewish Council of Australia shares an excerpt from the interview between Dr Gabor Maté and Emeritus Professor Andrea Durbach about Zionism, trauma and the Palestinian experience. Owen Jones exposes leaflets dropped on Gaza.

August 20, 2019

BRUCE ROBERTSON. Federal government needs to stop the magical gas merry go round (Renew Economy 19-8-19)

Hearing the New South Wales government rush through two import gas terminals approvals is like revisiting the fantasy world of Mary Poppins.

November 10, 2016

RICHARD BUTLER. President Trump: Foreign Policy and the Alliance

Donald Trumps victory has shocked America and the world. America is deeply divided. Where he might take US foreign policy is unclear. We need to redefine the Alliance relationship.

The competition between Trump and Clinton was widely described as savage, to an unprecedented degree. It was also a competition between two candidates who polling showed they were the least liked of all time. Thus, a significant number of voters saw their decision as one of choosing between two evils.

These are important facts about the election and the state of the US polity, but of fundamental importance in determining the outcome was that it became an election about the state of affairs in middle America: economic hardship, glaring inequality, and despair about the ability and willingness of the conventional political process to fix things.

Significantly, these were in fact the realities to which Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren had called attention, but their potentiality as candidates was negated by the Clinton machine.

August 15, 2019

Time for the Coal Industry to Face Reality

The first priority of any government is the security of its people. The greatest threat to that security today is human-induced climate change. Because of the refusal of political and corporate leaders over the last two decades to take climate change seriously, it now represents a threat which will wipe out civilisation as we know it, unless we move to emergency action. We have left it too late to make a gradual transition to a low-carbon world.

December 17, 2013

Election aftermath - where to now on asylum seekers and refugees? John Menadue

Yesterday Sir William Deane launched a book Refugees and asylum seekers a better way. A link to the book can be found at

http://gallery.mailchimp.com/d2331cf87fedd353f6dada8de/files/Refugee_and_asylum_seeker_policy_Finding_a_better_way.pdf

The book includes a chapter I wrote Election aftermath where to now on asylum seekers and refugees. This chapter follows

Election aftermath- where to now on asylum seekers and refugees?

Since Tampa in 2001 asylum-seekers and refugees have become a divisive public issue. In that debate, boat arrivals have been the most contentious issue of all.

March 12, 2018

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Tariffs and Mateship.

Yet another triumph for our indefatigable Prime Minister. Now he has saved the nation maybe the world from the scourge of The Donalds dastardly tariffs on steel and aluminium.

January 26, 2017

THOMAS BABOR, DAVID JERNIGAN, CHRIS BROOKES. Alcohol marketing: the simple truth

According to the World Health Organization, there are 3.3 million deaths attributable to alcohol use worldwide each year. Alcohol marketing, promotion and sponsorship are widespread in most of the world today and marketers are moving increasingly to digital and social media, where efforts at regulation have fallen far behind industry innovations in producing audience engagement and brand ambassadorship.

June 21, 2017

JOAN STAPLES. NGOs and a clash of world views

Coalition Governments have been trying to stop NGO advocacy for 20 years. Current attacks on the sector are a clash between a neoliberal old world order dominated by fossil fuels and a world view based on sustainability and equity. Unfortunately, in the process our democratic freedoms are being trampled.

March 4, 2015

Cavan Hogue. Australia will not be safer.

Australia’s upping the ante in Iraq is a recipe for disaster. It is hard to see anything positive coming out of it.

Mr. Abbott said the request came from the Iraqi Government and the USA. As in the past, the request from the USA was almost certainly what it is all about plus the domestic need to show how hairy his chest is.

Did the Americans have to lean on Iraq to invite us this time as well?

July 3, 2017

DOUBTFUL OPTIMIST. The violent and dangerous religion in New Zealand

It is perhaps time to inquire whether the violence, both actual and ritual, the injuries and the cheating in rugby in any way help, lift or inspire the families, children and society in general in New Zealand.

March 25, 2018

JERRY ROBERTS The West Australian Liberals get serious

A weekend of elections lifted the spirits of the Liberal and Labor Parties while the Greens made another attempt to back-stab themselves out of existence. The most important political event was the one that received the least attention. It was a by-election held in Perths seaside suburb of Cottesloe.

July 2, 2017

STEPHEN LONG. Reserve Bank boss Philip Lowe urges workers to push for pay rises

It wasnt quite Karl Marx, but, for a central bank boss, it was heady stuff: The Reserve Bank governor, no less, exhorting workers to demand higher pay rises.

October 21, 2014

John Menadue. Some personal reflections a light has gone out.

Gough Whitlams death has prompted a quite remarkable bipartisan response in the parliament. And rightly so, for he was a great parliamentarian for over 26 years along with 70 years of public life. His forum was the parliament rather than the street or the protest march.

He had great respect for the parliament and that is why the subversion of the parliament in November 1975, when he had a clear majority in the House of Representatives, hurt him so deeply. But his bitterness was reserved for one person.

March 11, 2015

Julia Davison. It takes a nation to raise a child.

The week after Australia Day each year, around 260,000 five-year old Australians start school. Of those, almost 60,000 children 23 per cent will start school developmentally vulnerable in some way. Children who start school behind often stay behind, and are likely to finish school with skills and competencies that have not equipped them for the workforce or future life. The economic and social costs can be profound and long lasting.

March 12, 2018

DUNCAN GRAHAM Welcome Down Under, Mr President Widodo : An open letter

Later this week Indonesian leader Joko Jokowi Widodo is expected in Sydney with other heads of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for a special summit. The President recently told his ambassadors that while working overseas they should lift their nations status as a great country. Now Jokowi can do his bit.

January 5, 2018

JUDE McCULLOCH, JANEMAREE MAHER, KATE FITZ-GIBBON AND SANDRA WALKLATE. Finally, police are taking family violence as seriously as terrorism.

Victoria Policerecently announcedthat family violence perpetrators will be treated as seriously as terrorists and murderers. This strategy represents a major milestone in the evolving police approach to family violence. Though family violence results in far more death and injury, terrorism is nonetheless considered Australias leading security threat. The Victoria Police strategy represents an opportunity to reset security priorities by recognising family violence as the foremost contributor to the preventable death and injury of women and children.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal