March 20, 2024

Rent-seekers put their hands out as budget looms

Last week we got a reminder that, among its many functions, the federal budget is the repository of all the successful rent-seeking by the nations many business and other special interest groups. Unfortunately, it added to the evidence that the Albanese government knows what it should do to manage the economy better, but lacks the courage do more than a little.

November 7, 2022

Australia relies on controversial offsets to meet climate change targets. We might not get away with it in Egypt

Its small wonder a major fossil fuel producer like Australia has relied so heavily on carbon offsets. Plant new forests - or say you will avoid clearing old ones - and you can keep approving new gas and coal developments. This year, whistleblower Professor Andrew McIntosh claimed up to80% of these offsetswerent real. They didnt actually offset emissions.

January 8, 2025

Will bail in Victoria get a battering under Battin?

Our annual trip to Queenscliff is a quaint step back in time: ye olde shoppes and seaside fun from a simpler time.

December 10, 2024

A flicker of reform: Can Labor avoid political collapse?

As the Albanese government announces modest employment services reforms, it faces growing disillusionment and risks losing ground to Peter Dutton’s Trump-inspired exploitation of economic and cultural frustrations.

December 1, 2024

Cartoon commentary

November 2, 2024

Rescuing hospitals

The nation’s public hospital system is sicker than it looks. There are practical, affordable ways to make it better – but not if governments go on doing the same things.

February 20, 2024

Permanent and long-term movements continue at high levels

While it is highly likely net migration is now past its peak and declining, the data to this stage suggests it may only be falling gradually.

January 19, 2024

How the China panic in Canada was engineered by the Five Eyes and the Canadian security intelligence service

This report reveals how US intelligence agencies and CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) manufactured an inflated China Threat in 2018 that mutated over the next five years to become Canadas China Panic with far reaching implications.

October 24, 2023

The Australian Prime Ministers talking points for Washington

Prime Minister: You may wish to draw on the following in your meetings with President Biden, Vice-President Harris, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defence Austin.

September 30, 2023

The Port of Darwin national security furphy

It was OK with ASIO, the Defence Department, the Treasury Minister of the day (Scott Morrison) and it was definitely OK with the Northern Territory government to lease the Port of Darwin to a Chinese contractor. It was even OK with the Obama Administration who would have vetoed it for sure if they had a problem. But over the first 8 years of a 99-year lease, something changed.

March 2, 2023

The cost of the nations endless wars

Autocrats only understand one word: no, no, no. No you will not take my country, no you will not take my freedom, no you will not take my future A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never be able to ease the peoples love of liberty. Brutality will never grind down the will of the free.

President Biden

November 21, 2024

Bar hits out at Chief Justice

The ACT Bar Association has confronted Chief Justice (CJ) Lucy McCallum over her self-admitted controversial statements about juries in sexual-assault trials.

October 26, 2024

Monday mornings in Court Seven

Monday mornings in Court Seven, Southport Magistrate’s Court on Queensland’s Gold Coast, is where the rubber hits the road for the local traffic-offence recalcitrant.

February 22, 2024

The three tests Australias new Centre for Disease Control must pass

Earlier this month, Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock fronted journalists for a media conference. The opportunity to grill the Governor was new. Previously, the media could only divine the Banks views after each meeting by scrutinising its monetary policy statements.

January 24, 2024

How labelling is concealing common ground on climate, COVID and indigenous issues

Youre either a climate realist or youre a climate sceptic. Youre either pro COVID vaccines or youre a vaccine sceptic. You either voted no in the recent indigenous voice to parliament or yes. On too many issues, the labels that Australians are using are confrontational. Australians are being led to see just two camps and no common ground.

February 11, 2025

Antisemitism is fuelled by Israel and its lobby, not their opponents

It’s outrageous that leaders of Zionist-controlled Jewish organisations and the Israeli lobby blame Australians protesting Israeli war crimes for rising antisemitism.

December 31, 2024

The ICC war crimes arrest warrant against Netanyahu is not antisemitism

The arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Gallant sparked outrage in Israel and across the Jewish world. But the ICC’s decision is neither antisemitic nor a modern-day blood libel: it is a call for Jews not to sacrifice the universal ideal of justice on the altar of uncritically defending Israel.

December 4, 2023

Appointment of Home Affairs Secretary Foster not merit-based

On 1 November 2023 the Minister for the Public Service, Senator Gallagher said in the next stage of reforms to the public service the government would introduce requirements for the Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary to conduct merit-based appointment processes for Secretary roles to build rigor into the advice provided to the Prime Minister on candidates.

November 23, 2023

The Overthrow of Edward Gough Whitlam: A stain on Australias democracy - finale

Gough Whitlam was an Australian democrat. He passionately believed in our institutions; the supremacy of parliament, the independence and integrity of the judiciary and the separation of powers to curb possible abuses by the executive government. In the dismissal these institutions failed us. Those with responsibility deceived us. Tradition and conventions built over centuries were trashed. The damage to our public life goes far beyond the injustice done to Gough Whitlam. - John Menadue, Postscript, Pearls and Irritations

November 12, 2022

A harmonious future: In loving our faith, appreciating others

The number of conflicts finding a basis in religion is unfortunately long, with these conflicts bringing much suffering to our world.

November 8, 2021

Singapore to execute intellectually disabled and mentally ill man

If Singapore pushes ahead with a death sentence given to an intellectually disabled man on drug offences, it will be in breach of international law.

March 21, 2025

Gazan Ark: Reproductive violence and the right to life and death

While the biblical story of Noah’s Ark is certainly not the only ancient account of a devastating flood (the preceding Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, includes a story of the gods sending a great flood on earth), its basic plot of wrath, punishment, ethnic cleansing, and reproductive means of survival provides a compelling framework by which to reflect on Israel’s genocidal efforts in Gaza since at least 7 October 2023._

December 11, 2024

They destroyed what was inside us: The children of Gaza

From the day the war began, 15-year old Ghazal’s life was irreversibly changed. “They destroyed what was inside us,” she said. Her story is a window into the larger tragedy of how war has devastated children, especially those with disabilities.

March 6, 2024

Why are you so afraid to speak out??

The brilliant, compassionate peace scholar and activist Stuart Rees, a regular contributor to this publication, constantly searches for ways of jolting the consciences of journalists, the political class anyone in fact witnessing the horrors in Gaza.

February 15, 2025

OSCA’s quiet arrival: Rethinking how Australia defines work

Australia’s new job classification system, OSCA, replaces ANZSCO with little fanfare. Its streamlined approach raises questions about workforce planning, transparency, and the evolving definition of work.

March 15, 2024

Fully funding public schools is critical for the governments education agenda

The recent announcement by the Federal Minister for Education, Jason Clare, that the government wants to raise the percentage of young people achieving a tertiary education to 80% points to the huge stakes at issue in the current negotiations between the Federal and state governments on the next school funding agreements.

February 17, 2024

Israels original sin: The legacy of Yosef Weitz

Since 1948, Zionists have invoked the Holocaust to justify the forced expulsion of Arabs from Palestine to create a Jewish state, but the blueprint for ethnic cleansing was being drawn up years earlier by a Zionist zealot named Yosef Weitz.

December 28, 2023

Australia continues to passively abuse disadvantaged students

The recent Senate Interim Report on The issue of increasing disruption in Australian school classrooms has attracted the usual short-term media indignation followed by the ever-present indifference from our education leaders and politicians.

December 21, 2023

Antidotes against the allure of war: information and empathy

In the document drawn up by a top secret and high-level working group that met in Washington in September 1957, Mr Macmillan and President Eisenhower were left in no doubt about the need to assassinate the top men in Damascus.Documents show White House and No 10 conspired over oil-fuelled invasion plan, The Guardian, 27 Sept 2003

November 21, 2022

Australian Climate Councils weasel words demonstrates complete lack of understanding

It seems that the majority of participants in COP27, and indeed the directors of our own peak advisory body, have no comprehension that, if we want to avoid uncontrollable, runaway warming incompatible with life and society as we know it, our global carbon budget is already spent.

November 6, 2022

Nord Stream: Europes self destruction

_Unless you are given to parlour games that never end, it is nearly impossible to avoid concluding that the U.S. was either directly responsible for the Nord Stream I and II sabotage or supervised those who were.

January 27, 2025

What went wrong on the way to net zero

The atmosphere at a recent meeting to discuss the results of the 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change was glum, to say the least. It was the result of four delusions that doomed the effort from the start.

January 16, 2023

The biggest threat to Venezuelan democracy is the USA

The U.S. government believes that the only democratic institution in Venezuela is an assembly that has not met in seven years and whose term has expired, writes Vijay Prashad, an Indian historian, editor and journalist in a recent article from Consortium News.

November 1, 2022

The Strengthening Medicare Taskforce: Making everyone equal at the front door of the health system

Following the outcome of this years Federal Election, Health Minister Mark Butler convened the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce (SMT).

March 17, 2025

Smart appliances, smarter economy: Reviving China's growth through innovation

Describing my grandfather as frugal is an understatement. Over the years, I have watched him patch and mend, prolonging the life of everything from leaky kettles to threadbare armchairs. My attempts to convince him to part with aging household items were always met with the same stubborn reply: “It still works.”

March 12, 2025

Australia’s China diplomacy: Is it ready for a world without US certainty?

President Trump’s emerging foreign policy ideology is forcing US allies, including Australia, to reassess their strategic positions. As American leadership becomes increasingly transactional, Canberra must navigate a shifting global order by balancing security concerns with economic resilience, forging new regional partnerships, and maintaining strategic flexibility in an era of geopolitical uncertainty.

March 7, 2025

Resolving insolvency: Tariffs are key to Trump's solution

Donald Trump has resorted to tariffs, imposed against friend and foe alike. There are no compromises or special deals because it’s not about favours for friends, or compliance, or punishment. Tariffs are part of a desperate bid to stave off insolvency.

December 22, 2024

A Christmas message to the Catholic Diocesan Bishops of the local churches in Australia

Dear Diocesan Bishops, your collective inertia has been staggering.

December 5, 2024

Who wants a hung parliament?

Come the election (whenever) the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition will unite in warning voters against the perils of a hung parliament. Only Labor or the Coalition can form government, we will be told. We should choose one or the other.

April 3, 2024

Police chief hits out with compassion

ACT Chief Police Officer Neil Gaughan has expressed alarm at the severe constraints on front-line policing in Canberra while showing great sympathy for principles of drug decriminalisation and raising the age of criminal responsibility.

November 9, 2023

Cold War imperatives: Whitlam and the US National Security Council. Part 3

In July 1975, Malcolm Fraser spoke to US Ambassador Marshall Green about the Labor governments alleged desire for a non-aligned position in world affairs. In fact, he added, Whitlam and others may be trying to cause the US to take the lead in abandoning ANZUS.

November 28, 2022

Media go for drama on Victorian election - and miss the story

For the best part of two weeks, Victorian voters were told by the media that the election on November 26 might result in either ahung parliamentor aminority Labor government.

February 2, 2025

Time to explore Non-Anglo Theatre

There’s an abundance of interesting theatre out there in the non-Anglo worlds that could inspire, amuse and surprise Australian audiences. Yet, we seldom get to see those plays.

January 26, 2025

A Home For M

Grassroots support can help many refugees find their feet. Working with very stretched organisations to support refugees. Safety is a primary concern.

November 7, 2024

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: provoked by NATO, or Russian imperialism?

One zombie thesis about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that keeps resurfacing is the idea that it was provoked by NATO expansion. It doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

October 23, 2024

Could it happen here?

Inauguration Day for the new President in 2025 will mark the 90th anniversary of the publication of Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here.

October 16, 2024

Modi’s party suffers another setback in Kashmir polls

It is unlikely that even the biggest supporter of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expected his BJP party to win the recent election in the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) after the reverse Modi suffered in the national elections held earlier in the year.

October 8, 2024

Dangerous registers: The folly of Journalism Australia

The nature, and agenda, of Journalism Australia is clear. It will segregate the washed and unwashed, granting dispensations and protections to the approved while lessening the protections for lesser scribblers.

March 4, 2024

Is Dan Tehan confused about immigration levels?

In an interview on the Insiders program, Shadow Immigration Minister Dan Tehan was asked what Australias immigration intake should be. He said that 1.6 million over the next four years, implying that is the Albanese Governments plan, was too high. But is that really the Albanese Governments plan?

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal