March 13, 2021

How to tackle the dangerous epidemic of fake news and conspiracy theories.

The Macquarie Dictionary recently declared ‘fake news’ the word of the decade. While the epidemic of fake news and conspiracy theories shows no signs of abating, the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communications has made a significant contribution to the fight.

March 9, 2021

'Courageous move, Minister': WA Liberal leader's honesty a smart political move

A weakened, wounded bleeding WA Liberal Party is asking voters on Saturday to remember a first principle of democracy - a government needs an opposition. Policy is irrelevant. The only issue is whether a dominant Labor government is going to wipe out what is left of the conservatives in West Perth’s Parliament House.

February 14, 2018

ERIC WALSH. Down the Trump rabbit-hole; a review of "Trumpocracy" (David Frum) and "Fire and Fury" (Michael Wolff)

Donald Trump, no longer a tyro as the President of the United States, has already rated himself one of the most successful ever occupants of the esteemed office.

March 25, 2021

Light relief after a tawdry, desperate week: 'Floods prove weather's not broken'

Media coverage of “solo lewd acts’ diverted focus from the real game - was there a cover-up of the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins?; no apology from Scott Morrison for fabricating an harassment claim; and there’s always room for climate denialism in The Australian.

February 14, 2018

Private health insurance is a con job

You won’t believe it, but my birthday was on Tuesday and I got a present from the federal government. I also got a card from my state member, sending his “very best wishes” for reaching such an “important milestone” in my life.

August 12, 2022

My life with Friedreich's Ataxia - some autobiographical reflections

I can still remember some events quite well of my early life when I was seven. For example, let me tell you about trying to ride a bicycle. It took me a while and took me some time before I got to master it. It was no easy feat.

March 24, 2021

Have unions healed their racist past?

When Federation occurred in 1901 trade unions and conservative politicians were agreed on one thing keeping Australia white.

March 24, 2021

What 'On the Beach' tells us about COVID-19 in Australia

By world standards, Australia has achieved an enviable insularity from COVID-19, an effective and almost total community elimination protected by our island status, our placid and astonishingly well-behaved populace, and our location in an almost forgotten corner of the world. Yet there is a history of Australian survival in the face of universal annihilation, one that gives us insight into our present claustrophobic moment.

March 6, 2021

Do privileged cabinet ministers have any idea how the poorer people live?

As a child in the 1950s, our family moved to Port Kembla, and we lived on Hill 60, just above the rocks where a lot of people have drowned recently.

March 22, 2018

JIM COOMBS. MEMO to Kenneth Hayne: the four pillars of the system you are reviewing are NOT set in stone. As they crumble it is worth looking at what went before.

The present four pillars of the banking system are not a necessary evil or inevitable. History tells us why.

March 7, 2021

Why dental care was excluded from Medicare and why it should now be included (an edited repost)

In 1974, the Whitlam Government decided to exclude dental care from Medicare for two reasons. The first was cost. The second was political. Whitlam felt that combatting the doctors would be hard enough without having to combat dentists as well. Forty-six years later, with Australia much richer and the proven success of Medicare, it is now time for dental care to be progressively included in Medicare.

March 8, 2021

Rollercoaster ride: UK Budget a blueprint to tackle biggest decline in 300 years

UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Budget speech veered from generosity to menace, from sobriety to hyperbole, from statesmanlike caution to political recklessness. It was a masterclass in presentation from the governments best communicator.

March 13, 2021

'We need a people's vaccine, not a profit vaccine': Sanders urges Biden to support push to suspend Pharma patents

“Ending this pandemic requires collaboration, solidarity, and empathy. It requires a very different mindseta mindset that puts people over profits at every turn.”

March 6, 2021

JobSlayer: gas giants grab $300million subsidy then axe 3000 workers

The Government touts gas as being a key plank of JobMaker, its Covid-19 recession recovery plan. To help support jobs the government has given the gas industry $300 million of taxpayers money in subsidies. In return, the industry has cut about 3000 workers, more than 10% of it workforce, in a boom production year.

March 13, 2021

The death of coal-fired power is inevitable yet the government still has no plan to help its workforce

Yallourn power station Australiasoldest, dirtiest coal plant will close four years ahead of schedule in 2028.Announcing the movethis week, operator Energy Australia said it will build a giant energy storage battery on the site to make room for more renewables. This is a powerful statement about where our energy system is heading.

March 7, 2021

New Zealand state pension fund divests from Israeli banks

New Zealands $33 billion national pension fund has excluded fiveIsraeli banksfrom its portfolio because of their role in financing Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

March 18, 2018

MELISSA PARKE. Arms Export Goal Risks The Standing Of A Good International Citizen.

Five years ago Australia played a key role in drafting and negotiating the UN Arms Trade Treaty in order, as the government announced at the time, to reduce the impact of armed violence on communities around the world.

Five weeks ago Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced his vision for Australia to become one of the top ten weapons exporting countries in the world. Rather than visionary, it struck me as grotesque.

This regression from good global citizen to swaggering deputy sheriff reflects the contradictions at the heart of our foreign policy.

March 27, 2021

WHO Chief blasts 'Grotesque' vaccine inequality as rich nations block speedy end of global pandemic

As rich nations like the United States and pharmaceutical companies face sustained calls to share Covid-19 vaccine knowledge, the head of the World Health Organization on Monday decried the “grotesque” global inequality of vaccine distribution. “We have the means to avert this failure but it’s shocking how little has been done to avert it”, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

October 9, 2021

The return of the Taliban heightens India's security concerns

The revival of a Taliban government in Kabul is a setback for India.

The significant political, economic and security equities it had built up in Afghanistan over the past two decades have been wiped out. This includes the more than US$3 billion India invested in the country in the shape of several important infrastructure projects, the construction of the countrys parliament building and in the promotion of health and education.

March 15, 2021

Western Australia, the One Party State

Western Australias tourism slogan was once The Wildflower State. Then it became The State of Excitement to the amusement of Victorians. Now WA is the One Party State. After Saturdays election there is a government in the West without an opposition.

August 12, 2022

Avoiding a gas shortage is one thing, but whats needed is action on prices

The Albanese governmenthas acceptedthe Australian Competition and Consumer Commissions recommendation to initiate the first step to trigger the controversialAustralian Domestic Gas Security Mechanismto avert a supply crisis in eastern Australia.

January 3, 2018

Contracting out our foreign and defence policies - A Repost from 2 February 2017)

_The military and defence establishment and lobbies, both in Australia and the US are determining Australias foreign policy. The Minister for Foreign Affairs and her Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade are sidelined._Locked into the US defence complex with its addiction to never ending wars we are forfeiting our ability to act in our own interests.

March 8, 2021

BossKeeper: ports giant Qube bullies its way into JobKeeper and plush bonuses

Shipping group Qube Holdings will give back $17m in JobKeeper subsidies but pockets $13.5m and some fancy executive bonuses despite its revenue rising strongly. How did it pull this off? Callum Foote investigates how the Liberal Party-linked Qube gamed the Tax Office.

January 31, 2018

BRUCE THOM. King tides and extreme events

Summer has been awash with extreme ocean water levels reaching positions rarely seen in the past along the NSW coastline. On two occasions the tide gauge at Fort Denison reached levels only exceeded three times since the more accurate self-recording tide gauge was installed there in 1916. Such events raise questions as to why these summer king tides resulted in exceptionally high water level events, whether similar events will occur more frequently in the future, and what are the long-term consequences.

August 8, 2016

TONY KEVIN. Kevin Rudd and the UN

An exceptionally difficult UN Secretary-General selection process is set to continue

On 29 July, Malcolm Turnbull controversially announced that the Australian Government will not nominate Kevin Rudd for the UN Secretary-General position. Here in Australia, the focus of discussion on the Rudd candidacy has been on domestic political issues of precedent and loyalty to Team Australia.

Only Carl Ungerer and Geoff Raby, both strong Rudd supporters (see Farmer and Ungerer references below), touch on more basic questions of what outcome might now be best for the UN system, in an increasingly multipolar world that is impatient to break out of old power structures and private deals among the UN Security Council (UNSC) Permanent Members. This note seeks to further inform that discussion.

October 9, 2021

Does the Taliban's Kabul takeover mean back to the future for Pakistan?

The Pakistan government has responded to the return of the Taliban in Kabul with a mixture of caution and support. It will need to balance its domestic security with being a responsible international citizen.

March 20, 2021

Reflections from the '80s: the HIV epidemic in Myanmar

For the last three years off the fifteen I worked in the US my clinical life was consumed with setting up a unit at Yale University to study and treat patients with the mysterious Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the cause of which was eventually discovered to be a unique retro-virus called, logically enough, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, (HIV). In those early years all the patients I treated died from their infection. By the time I returned to Australia (1985), HIV had been established as the causative agent and the epidemic was spreading out of control in the US, Africa and much of Europe. Throughout Asia, however, there was a nonsensical apathy about AIDS as the belief spread that Asians must have natural immunity to the disease.

July 20, 2017

JAMES O'NEILL. Lessons from Mosul: Double Standards, War Crimes and Lack of Accountability

Lest week the Iraqi government announced that Mosul has been liberated from the control of ISIS. The major campaign for Mosuls liberation began in October 2016 when the US led coalition massively increased both bombing raids and artillery attacks that had in fact been going on since ISIS captured the city in 2014.

October 9, 2021

The new magazine publishing the best podcast interviews in print

Introducing The Podcast Reader_, a new magazine for the intellectually curious that features select transcripts from the worlds best long-form podcasts._

March 8, 2021

Australia could take a leaf from Indonesia's personalised approach to aged care

Our street in Indonesia has 70 households. Many are mixed-generation families. With few nursing homes or retirement villages, and those being far away, families have two options: The kids do the caring or employ a carer. Either way, Grandpa or Grandma stays home.

March 10, 2021

The gender bias of all-boys schools is obvious from the books they study in English

Fiction affects students social empathy. The English classroom canfoster inclusionanddevelop appreciation for gender equity. While our private school system must denounce the most conspicuous elements of misogyny, we must also contend with the profound role that classroom learning plays in affirming or challenging a culture of oppression.

February 6, 2018

GEORGE RENNIE. Why businesses want the ear of government and are willing to pay for it

Every February, the Australian Electoral Commission releases data on political donations for the previous financial year. The data routinely show that among the ffbiggest corporate political donors are mining, infrastructure and defence companies and groups.

March 12, 2021

Saturdays good reading and listening for the weekend

What people in other forums are saying about public policy

August 10, 2017

JIM COOMBS. "Just good business" or gun-running.

The Neo-liberal language speaks of arms sales as just good business, notwithstanding the concomitant death and destruction.

March 13, 2021

Rewriting the creation myth of Blue Poles as it approaches 70

Blue Poles didn’t just come out of the blue or the bottle for Jackson Pollock, contrary to the ‘creation myths’ that grew up when the NGA paid the then jaw-dropping sum of US$2.1 million for the work. It was at least five years in gestation.

August 10, 2017

From the Nuclear Non-proliferation to the UN Prohibition Treaty

There are currently no negotiations or discussions on arms control being conducted at all between any of the countries that possess nuclear weapons (China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, UK, USA)

January 25, 2019

MARILYN LAKE. Change the date to 1 January

Im with Jeff Kennett. I never thought I could say that, but I agree with him that Australia Day should be moved to 1 January - to commemorate the beginning of the Commonwealth of Australia, a new progressive nation, whose very name signified the ideals of collective commitment and communal wealth and a repudiation of old world aristocracies and inequalities. We didnt thereby become a republic, but the name, voted on by constitutional delegates in the 1890s had a distinctively republican ring as a number of disgruntled conservative constitutional delegates noted.

April 2, 2021

Saturdays good reading and listening for the weekend

What people in other forums are saying about public policy

March 26, 2021

Saturdays good reading and listening for the weekend

What people in other forums are saying about public policy

March 6, 2021

A better Biden approach in the South China Sea

President Joe Biden’s Defense Department has created a taskforce to review US military relations with China and recommend any necessary changes. But what needs to be changed?

March 19, 2021

Saturdays good reading and listening for the weekend

What people in other forums are saying about public policy

March 4, 2021

Poll shows Scott Morrison shares Trump's female problem

A new Guardian Essential poll (3 March 2021) indicates an emerging Morrison vulnerability he shares a female problem with Donald Trump. Well, not the major Trump one just the electoral one.

October 16, 2018

JOHN DWYER. The extraordinary determination of China to have the world embrace its Traditional Medicine. (Part one of three)

The child was six years old. His parents were struggling to manage his Diabetes. He had Type 1 diabetes, the most serious form of the disease caused by his own immune system destroying his pancreas. As a result he could no longer produce required amounts of Insulin to control his blood sugar levels. Regular injections of Insulin were keeping him alive. The heartbreaking tragedy that descended on this vulnerable child and caused his death involved the practice of paidalajin, an alternative Chinese medicine technique that involves slapping, pulling and stretching the skin until it bruises.

May 21, 2022

How Anthony Albanese as Prime Minister could rewrite the script

Below is a repost of articles which we posted earlier on guidance for a new government on important policies.

July 20, 2017

Aleppo and Fallujah. (Repost from 30 December 2016)

In light of the civilian disaster unfolding presently in Aleppo, it is timely to revisit the uncontradicted claims unwarranted action against civilians in Fallujah supervised by Australian military commander, Jim Molan. This piece was first published in 2008. If correct, the claims are an indictment on Australia’s military presence back then in Fallujah. What now passes for legitimate military action when civilians are so exposed? John Menadue.

The report from On Line Opinion, 4 August 2008, follows:

March 13, 2021

Why wouldn't Vietnam want US warships in their waters?

The myth that Vietnam supports a “free and open Indo-Pacific” is based on the false perception of Vietnam as the US’s deputy in South-East Asia. It is time we recognise Vietnam’s autonomy, and respect that they are just as pragmatic as the US or China.

August 8, 2016

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull and indigenous affairs.

If Malcolm Turnbull did not know it before, he certainly should now: before you stomp your way into Aboriginal politics, it is wise to first don the emu-feather sandals of a trained Kadaitcha man.

The area is fraught with uncertainty and sensitivities which are not always apparent to the outsider; whitefella politics are relatively straightforward compared to the Indigenous version.

June 26, 2013

Back from the brink of disaster. John Menadue

Many people and particularly women will be disappointed that our first female Prime Minister has been forced out. She has been most unfairly treated by the media. Things have been said about her by Tony Abbott and others that would not be said about a male Prime Minister.

But my view is that a change to Kevin Rudd was desirable for several reasons.

Under Julia Gillards leadership the electoral prospects for the ALP were catastrophic. Tony Abbotts majority could have been so large that it would take two and possibly three terms to turn it around.
The Australian public had stopped listening to Julia Gillard. Even excellent policy was not getting a hearing.
There will now be a real choice at the next election that will reassure many people who are genuinely concerned about the prospects of Tony Abbott as our next Prime Minister.
Kevin Rudd will be a much more effective opponent of Tony Abbott.

I said in a blog recently that the ALP was increasingly looking like a suicide cult rather than the most successful political party in Australias history. The ALP has turned back from the brink. The ALP caucus has behaved rationally in forcing a change. The 11th hour changes will at least minimize the governments losses at the next election.

July 31, 2016

MUNGO MacCALLUM. So much for Team Australia!

The term was always a bit suss indeed, when Tony Abbott coined it to claim solidarity against the war against terror, it quickly became obvious that membership of his side was to be strictly limited. Team Australia meant, in effect, Team Abbott: its participants were to be Captains picks, loyal not to the country but to the right wing causes he himself would select.

And it was perhaps prescient that one of his immediate s decisions was to barrack for team New Zealand he enthusiastically endorsed the former Kiwi prime minister Helen Clark as his choice for secretary-general of the United Nations over the former Oz prime minister Kevin Rudd. The precedent was set: the national interest would be disposable where party politics were concerned.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal