July 30, 2019

ANDREW FARRAN. Boris will get his Brexit but at what cost?

Will PM Boris Johnson crash through and with what consequences if he does? He has set himself a wild challenge, on the level of do or die. Determined to achieve Brexit even without a deal, the likelihood at this stage is that he will get his Brexit but with consequences that will leave Britain anything but great; indeed relatively weaker (see: John McCarthy at: https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/john-mccarthy-enter-boris/ ).

November 2, 2018

SIMON SCHAMA. On the battle for America (Financial Times 2.11.2018)

Ten days before the midterm elections in America, murder came to the Tree of Life. Shouting all Jews need to die, a neo-Nazi gunman with an animus against the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society slaughtered 11 Jews gathered at their synagogue in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. Two days earlier, pipe bombs had been sent to 14 critics of Donald Trump by a man who had turned his van into a rust-bucket shrine to MAGA and its great apostle. One day previously, Gregory Bush, thwarted in his attempt to enter a black church in Louisville, Kentucky, had shot and killed two African-Americans at a local supermarket. Before he was arrested, he shouted whites dont kill whites. All three perpetrators believed they were engaged in saving white America.

June 21, 2017

JEAN-PIERRE LEHMANN. Great Britain: how low can it go?

When I am in Hong Kong, I normally stay at Causeway Bay. Evenings and weekends, I frequently take a stroll in Victoria Park where invariably I pass in front of the majestically imposing statue of Queen Victoria. This allows me to reflect upon the remarkable rise of the British Empire of which Hong Kong was more than just a symbolic hub. In many ways, the history of Hong Kong, colonised following the First Opium War, reflected the determination and brutality of British imperialism.

August 21, 2018

TIM COLEBATCH. A party too divided to rule.

The reckoning has arrived for a party and its Coalition partner riven by cultural fixations.

December 7, 2016

BOB KINNAIRD. Indian IT professionals on rock bottom 457 wages undermine Turnbulls innovation dream

The Coalitions cheap labour 457 visa wage policy is destroying jobs for young Australians lured into studying IT courses under the Turnbull governments high profile Innovation push… Indian 457 visa IT workers are being approved at much lower rates than experienced Australian IT professionals and even new IT graduates.

February 11, 2020

ELENA COLLINSON and JAMES LAURENCESON. China and the Coronavirus. (Australia-China Relations Institute 10.2.2020)

_Is China telling us everything it knows about Coronavirus?

October 17, 2017

JULIE BISHOP. Foreign policy in an uncertain world.

We have an independent foreign policy and we do not outsource our decisions to other countries_.Julie Bishop_

Yesterday, we posted a speech by Shadow Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, Engaging with China. Today we post a presentation by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to the Australian Institute of International Affairs, 2017 National Conference in Canberra.

December 14, 2014

Chris Bonnor. The public and private of school achievement.

Once again we are in the middle of the annual HSC result festival time to celebrate the winners amongst students and schools. Names of the top 100 schools are again paraded, seemingly to confirm a language about schools variously described as elite, high performing or prestigious. Everything else is out of sight. We read about the (well-deserved) success of particular students and hear from school principals about why their schools (apparently) did so well.

August 19, 2018

JOHN MENADUE. The failure of the National Party on rural poverty and rural health. Repost from 23 February 2018

Country electorates have the most disadvantaged people, the poorest health andinferior health services. But the National Party does very little about it. Does it care?

_The National Party record on climate change,NBN and irrigation is appalling._I have written previously on these subjects

Today I refer to its failure to address rural poverty and poor rural health

September 3, 2018

DEREK ABBOTT. The Way We Live Now.

In 1988, with the Hawke government successfully carrying through a program of profound economicreform while avoiding the social divisiveness that characterised Margaret Thatchers not dissimilar policies in Britain, and with John Howards toe in the water on a return to White Australia decisively rejected by his own party and the community at large, it was possible to envisage a future for Australia as a tolerant, socially inclusive, good international citizen.

January 22, 2018

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Captain Goodvibes Turnbull and political correctness.

So even if we ignore the bunyip in the room the invasion, the stealing of the land and the children, the destruction of the culture, the systematic trampling of the many nations which once made up the continent there are copious reasons to question whether our national festival of nationalism and booze is, to use one of Turnbulls favourite words, appropriate.

October 2, 2019

LAUREN RICHARDSON. Japans deepening diplomatic crisis with South Korea (East Asia Forum 15-9-19)

Japans relationship with South Korea is not amicable at the best of times. Yet in recent months it has entered a rapidly descending diplomatic spiral of unprecedented depth and scope. Mounting bilateral friction over the intractable history problems is steadily bleeding into the economic and security realms of the relationship. The result is a bilateral trade war with potential repercussions for the global supply chain of high-tech devices.

July 25, 2018

BOB DOUGLAS. What will it take to restore governance to its rightful owners?

_Around the world, and also here in Australia, voters are turning away from the political process, alarmed at the capture of political parties by vested interests, and alienated by the fact that the issues which concern and affect ordinary people, are being ignored. Our social and economic system is moving both funds and influence away from people in the lower 60% of incomes and wealth, to those in the upper 10%.

June 20, 2017

JEAN-PIERRE LEHMANN. Collapse of the Anglo-American Order - Implications for ASEAN and EU

The two architects of the post-World War 2 order were British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and America President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They met (for the first time) aboard the heavy cruiser USS Augusta in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland (Canada) and from there on 14 August 1941, two years after the outbreak of war, issued what came to be known as The Atlantic Charter.

March 21, 2018

SUSAN RYAN. Homelessness, Australias disgrace ignored.

The last few days have seen a media preoccupation with relentless attacks on a new federal Labor proposal to eliminate the payment of cash cheques to those who dont need their dividend imputation credits because they pay no tax. The media has channelled expressions of shock and rage, and accusations of robbery, from Coalition politicians and bodies who represent well-off retirees.

February 19, 2013

Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church

There is nothing on this earth as ugly as the Catholic Church

And nothing so beautiful (Cardinal John Henry Newman)

A letter to fellow members of St Mary Magdalenes Parish, Rose Bay

I have found great beauty in the Catholic Church. Inspired by the Eucharist, I joined the Catholic Church over 30 years ago. That inspiration remains. Despite its failures the Church remains for me the greatest influence for good in the world. I am grateful for its worldwide works of justice, mercy and charity. At the local parish level I have found wise and generous leadership along with a pulsing, lively and loving community of believers. I hold in highest affection the women and particularly the Sisters in the Church who day after day keep the show on the road. I will never leave this Church. But I am greatly disturbed by the state of affairs into which we have allowed the Church to drift.

September 14, 2017

ANDREW FARRAN. After North Korea: breakdown of regional non-proliferation?

The existence of a nuclear threat is not sufficient reason to go nuclear; if it were [these Asian states] would have nuclear arms by now. In each case, the reliability of the US security commitment is the dominant variable.

July 15, 2019

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison wants Wyatt to shut up on Indigenous Australians

Scott Morrison really likes quiet Australians as quiet as possible. So it was really no surprise that his response to his minister, Ken Wyatts modest and tentative proposal to consider reviving an Indigenous Voice through the Uluru Statement from the Heart was simple and direct: bloody well shut up and do what you are told.

July 19, 2018

CHRISTINA HO AND CHRIS BONNOR. 'Hubs of concentrated advantage': selective schools need a rethink

In the debate about selective schools personal stories and beliefs can drown out evidence, especially when that evidence challenges the status quo. So we hear plenty of anecdotes about the successes of selective school students, but relatively few about the students and schools they leave behind.

August 8, 2018

IAN McAULEY. Don't rush to endorse the National Energy Guarantee: There's an election in a few months.

The best outcome for electricity consumers would be for state governments to kill the National Energy Guarantee when the COAG energy council meets on Friday. Having gone nine years without a well-grounded energy policy we can wait a few months until the next election.

August 28, 2018

ANTONIO SPADARO SJ. The prosperity gospel-dangerous and different

SCOTT MORRISON is described as a devout Christian who worships at Shirelive, an American style Pentecostal Church in Sydney.. He formerly belonged to Hillsong. An essential feature of the prosperity gospel of Pentecostalists is that prosperity, success and good health is a sign of Gods favour. And the lack of faith leads to poverty and sickness. On this reckoning God does not care for the poor,the sick and refugees.

In the article below Antonio Spadaro describes the origin and spread of the prosperity gospel. These are extracts from an article in La Civilta Cattolica of 18 July 2018. The full article can be found here.John Menadue

September 7, 2017

GILES PARKINSON. AGL bought Liddell for nothing - what will it cost Turnbull?

One of the late billionaire Kerry Packers famous quotes about business was that you only get one Alan Bond in your lifetime, a reference tohis ability to sell the Nine Network to the late entrepreneur for a small fortune and then buy it back at a fraction of the price.

August 28, 2019

Is Pine Gap for Arms Control or the US fighting machine?

Labor governments surrendered Australian sovereignty in other ways by agreeing in 2008 to renew the lease on North West Cape without any conditions on how US nuclear attack submarines could use the base[i]. This could include undermining Chinas ability to deter a nuclear war.[ii] Labor subsequently agreed to let the US install long-range ground sensors at NWC to help conduct space warfare against Russia and China in violation of Australia’s support for a treaty outlawing the militarisation of space.[iii] The public were not told about the significance of these developments, nor about similar changes at the Pine Gap satellite base near Alice Springs.

June 22, 2017

MACK WILLIAMS. Mindanao call to the Caliphate !!

Media coverage of the claimed IS connections of the jihadists in Marawi have highlighted their call for a caliphate. The intractable scene in Mindanao indeed is concerning but it is born out a much longer and different history than elsewhere one where the US (and others) have long been involved. Australia needs to be very careful not to become militarily entangled.

August 3, 2018

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND

A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts covered in other media.

March 29, 2015

John Menadue. Improving health outside the health portfolio

Ministers for Health in Australia are seen very largely as ministers in charge of health services rather than health. The fact is that some major issues causing poor health or which could be the means to improve health are outside the normal health portfolio.

Major health problems are caused by junk food, alcohol and tobacco. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare tells us that tobacco smoking is the largest cause of preventable illness and death in Australia It estimated that in 2004/5 smoking related disease cost Australia $31.5 b. The AIHW also told us that in that year the consumption of alcohol was estimated to cost Australian society $15.3 b. The Director of the Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation said that the economic and social cost of alcohol was estimated to be $36 b p a. He added that about 30% of harm to children is caused by alcohol. The scourge of alcohol, smoking and junk food are best addressed through taxation and restrictions on advertising, particularly directed at children and not through the health portfolio. The action by the Rudd /Gillard governments on plain packaging of cigarettes was the most important health reform in years.
Health improvement is made very difficult when the major sponsors of sport in Australia are interests associated with alcohol and junk food. Channel Nines cricket coverage with slats, heals and tubby has saturation coverage of alcohol and junk food. Australian cricketers and footballers line their pockets with money from alcohol and junk food companies. There is not much leadership or role modelling here They are complicit in promoting bad health habits and undo a lot of the good work on prevention. How can our sporting codes discipline players for excessive alcohol consumption, when the main sponsors of the codes are liquor companies?
Improvement in the health of indigenous people will mainly occur outside the health portfolio in areas such as employment, better diet, housing and education of young people together with reduced consumption of alcohol and drugs.
We know that because of social and economic disadvantage, the death rate for those with the lowest socio-economic status is 13% higher than the Australian average, and for those living outside capital cities it is 8%. Poverty is the principal cause of poor health in Australia. And the health portfolio has only a limited role in the fight against poverty
Education, childcare, including pre-natal, spacial planning, housing, trade (particularly relating to intellectual property in pharmaceuticals), population, transport, particularly for country people, taxation and social security, employment, justice and the environment, all have direct impacts on the health of Australians.
We are coming to appreciate how electronic health and the national broadband network offer great opportunities for improved health services, particularly for people in remote areas. But the NBN is not within the health portfolio.

In short, the health Minister and his department must have expertise beyond health services and particularly economic expertise in a joined-up government approach. Unfortunately they usually rank well down the ministerial and public service ladder. There is reluctance by policy makers to look on healthcare as an industry and to apply the normal evaluative mechanisms which are applied to other industries. Such a blinkered view allows the development of an idea that health should be exempt from the normal economic considerations of efficiency and equity. Its a notion that pushes economic thinking to one side, in the erroneous belief that economics is intrinsically illiberal and dismissive of human welfare.

April 28, 2019

ABUL RIZVI: Government cuts permanent migration program but forecasts net migration to rise (Part 1)

Government has cut the migration program ceiling from 190,000 to 160,000 per annum but at the same time is forecasting net migration to rise from 241,700 in 2017 to 259,600 in 2018 and 271,700 in 2019. This was after it forecast a steady decline in net migration in the 2018 Budget. This is likely the result of changes to temporary skilled entry policy, working holiday makers and a continuing rise in visitors changing status after arrival including record numbers applying for asylum.

March 25, 2014

Graham Freudenberg on 'The Making of Australia - A Concise History' by Robert Murray

When I was a teenage Tory in Brisbane in the early Fifties, Bob Murray, a bright young spark from the Melbourne Argus was the most persuasive of my newspaper contemporaries who led me gently towards the light. In Sydney a couple of years later, at the end of 1954, in midnight to dawn sessions at the old Phillip Street Journalists Club, we debated the coming of the Labor Split, unwittingly laying the foundations for his classic account The Split Australian Labor in the Fifties (1970).

September 24, 2018

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison is thinking about retirement villages.

Under normal circumstances Australians do not spend much time thinking about aged care facilities.

July 29, 2019

JACK WATERFORD. When loyalty and duty are in conflict

How the new AFP chief juggled his role during an investigation that compromised his own superior

Reece Kershaw, the new Australian Federal Police Commissioner deserved to get the appointment via an open and independent appeal process. He might well have won it, and, assuming that he did, would be walking into the job in a few months confident that he was not facing the jealousies, innuendo and sabotage from colleagues who believe their merits were not considered, or that the selection was contaminated by politics.

November 27, 2016

RAMESH THAKUR. ANZUS in the time of Trump. Quo vadis series.

Quo vadis - Australian foreign policy and ANZUS.

_Summary._Trump has the potential to mark an inflection point in the evolution of Australia as a self-confident and independent Indo-Pacific actor.

January 27, 2014

John Menadue. Our lack of business and political skills in Asia.

The Business Council of Australia and business executives keep reminding us of the need to increase our productivity by up-skilling and better use of our labour resources. Unfortunately the business sector is spectacularly lagging in equipping itself for opportunities in Asia.

Last week The Australian Financial Review surveyed the schools and educational backgrounds of the CEOs of our top ASX100 firms. It found that one third of these CEOs went to secondary schools outside Australia. But not one of them had spent their formative schooling years in Asia.

October 25, 2017

JIM COOMBS. An energy crisis? My Hat!

The present energy crisis is symptomatic of our nations leaders to obfuscate the truth to avoid doing what should be done.

November 26, 2017

MACK WILLIAMS. 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper : An urgent case for genuine change management !

The White Paper provides a long overdue but commendable assessment of the extensive challenges and opportunities for Australian foreign policy. It should have formed the basis for considered parliamentary debate. Unfortunately, while acknowledging for the first time the extent and pace of change, it offers few new or fresh ideas on how it should be managed and is preoccupied with maintaining what it can of the status quo.

December 20, 2018

Trump abandons the cheese to escape the Syria mousetrap

Robert A. Lovett, Secretary of Defense (195153) in the Truman administration, advised that faced with political crises that carried great risks for small gains: Forget the cheese; lets get out of the trap. Since the end of the Cold War and the resulting upsurge of triumphalism and exceptionalism among US policymakers and public intellectuals, America has been serially mousetrapped by the cheesy allure of Pax Americana across North Africa and the Middle East. The era of grand delusions may be drawing to a close.

September 18, 2019

NICOLA NYMALM. Washingtons old Japan problem and the current China threat (East Asia Forum 11 Sep)

In April 2019, Kiron Skinner former directorof policy planning at the US State Department described Washingtons new China strategy as built on the understanding that the current clash with Beijing is a fight with a different civilization and a different ideology and the United States hasnt had that before. With China,Skinner proposes thatits the first time that [the United States] will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian. Her comments were widely interpreted as referring to Samuel Huntingtons Clash of Civilizations.

September 3, 2018

NICK KILVERT. Fossil record points to 'major transformation' of Australian ecosystems in next 100 years.

If the world continues on a “business-as-usual” trajectory on climate change, global ecosystems including Australia’s will undergo a “major transformation” over the next century.

January 1, 2017

WALTER HAMILTON. Japans New Blood

The Australian servicemen who left behind mixed-race children during the postwar Occupation of Japan set in motion changes that are chipping away at a nations stubborn myth of racial homogeneity.

September 24, 2019

GEORGE MONBIOT. For the sake of life on Earth, we must put a limit on wealth (Guardian 19-9-19)

It is not quite true thatbehind every great fortune lies a great crime. Musicians and novelists, for example, can become extremely rich by giving other people pleasure. But it does appear to be universally true that in front of every great fortune lies a great crime. Immense wealth translates automatically into immense environmental impacts, regardless of the intentions of those who possess it. The very wealthy, almost as a matter of definition, arecommitting ecocide.

July 18, 2020

Letters of an insecure and indiscreet John Kerr make a mockery of the claim that the Queen played 'no part'

The Palace letters have brought Kerrs extensive, even obsessive, reporting to the Queen into sharp relief, placing Kerr himself and his peculiar conception of his role as Governor-General under intense scrutiny.

August 7, 2019

CONNY LENNEBERG. Youth Foyer model, an education first approach to tackling homelessness

The challenge that youth homelessness represents to our community is not intractable. In Victoria, we are seeing positive outcomes and bipartisan support for a new solution in the Education First Youth Foyer model developed by the Brotherhood of St Laurence in partnership with Launch Housing. Not only are these foyers helping young people build capacity to lead more positive independent lives, but they have also been found to make economic sense.

April 9, 2019

KERRY O'BRIEN. We can't let ourselves off the hook (Part 1)

Part 1 of a speech delivered at The Walkley Fund for Journalism Dinner in Sydney on Friday April 5, 2019.

Forty-three years ago I went to the Philippines for the ABCs Four Corners, to cover a disaster storya tsunami that hit the island of Mindanao, killing 8,000 people. After witnessing close up the nature of President Ferdinand Marcoss brutal despotism, I stayed on to tell another story, of how Marcos had used martial law, which hed introduced ostensibly to deal with the threat of communist insurrection, to establish a dictatorship under which a powerful oligarchy of obscenely wealthy familiesthe so-called Marcos croniesdominated the country. Marcos was well on the way to becoming the richest of them all.

April 11, 2019

Monthly digest on housing affordability and homelessness Mar/Apr 2019

This is a monthly digest of interesting articles, research reports, policy announcements and other material relevant to housing stress/affordability and homelessness with hypertext links to the relevant source.

June 19, 2018

GEOFF RABY. How Kim Jong-un can bring his economy in from the cold.

In the early spring of 1990, Pyongyang was more prosperous than many foreign analysts, who had never been there, had thought. The CIA, for decades, had believed the country was on its knees, on the verge of economic collapse, although the Agency had not had any first-hand contact there.

May 25, 2018

MARTIN WOLF. Italys new rulers could shake the euro

Italy is not Greece. But not all the differences are encouraging. Its economy is 10-times bigger. Its 2.3tn public debt is seven-times bigger; it is the largest in the eurozone and fourth largest in the world. Italy is too big to fail and may be too big to save. The question is whether its new government will trigger such a crisis and, if so, what might follow?

October 10, 2017

MICHAEL KEATING. Trumps Economic Policies: Part 2 of 2

In Part 1 of this series of two articles, yesterday I examined the impact of President Trumps economic program on the American economy. Todays article discusses the impact of the Trump economic program on the rest of the world, and Australia in particular. The key danger is that Trump will further encourage a rise in protectionism, that will damage the foundations of the open economy that in the last seventy years has delivered the biggest rise in living standards in human history. However, continuing economic growth inevitably involves economic transformation, and maintaining support for the open economy will depend upon programs that better assist workers to adapt to structural adjustment pressures, from whatever source.

June 29, 2017

STEVE LEEDER. A welcome review of the Medicare Benefits Schedule

In 2015 Sussan Ley, then the Minister for Health, established a review of the schedule of fees for medical benefits. The review of the schedule’s 5700 items, involving a rigorous evidence-based process, is now around half way through. When completed it will provide an opportunity for more cost-effective health care and a saving of public revenue.

June 27, 2017

ALLAN PATIENCE. Anyone for disruption?

The ugly chickens of the neoliberal era in Australian public policy are relentlessly coming home to roost: stagnating wages, high unemployment (especially among young people), declining standards in public hospitals, schools, universities, and TAFE institutes, homelessness on the increase, more beggars on the streets, increased social conflict (crime, racist violence, domestic violence, home invasions, road rage, car-jackings, sexual harassment), the death of manufacturing, more and more people experiencing anger, despair, anxiety and depression, unprecedented growth in socio-economic inequality, big corporations bullying governments and the general public (big banks, mining companies, media organisations)

January 31, 2018

LAURIE PATTON. Supporting call for innovation push highlighting the need for a focussed approach including a national smart cities and communities strategy

We need our national innovation strategy to be targeted at solving identifiable problems and assessed according to its contribution to social benefit as well as economic outcomes.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal