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Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal

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Letters
August 9, 2025

From Hiroshima to Gaza: Eighty years of failing to contain violence

Note from the editor: For months Refaat Ibrahim has been writing for P&I from the centre of Gaza in unimaginable conditions. Today I add the note he sent with the piece, so you can see the sacrifice he makes every day.

April 23, 2025

Pope Francis dies at 88 after final appeal for Gaza ceasefire

“Will the millions who will mourn his death these coming days respect this wish of his? Will they care for Gazans and Palestinians the way he did?”

July 28, 2025

Israeli Knesset hosts conference on plan to 'Occupy Gaza' and 'Relocate Gazans'

“There is a purpose to this war, and it’s a criminal one,” wrote Israeli journalist Gideon Levy in Haaretz this past weekend.

April 10, 2025

Federal election: Time to hold MPs accountable for stance on genocide

Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, and now its seizing of their land is the worst example of genocide since the horrors of the genocides of Darfur in Sudan in 2003 and Rwanda in the 1990s.

August 19, 2025

Saving Marwan Barghouti is our duty

Seeing video evidence this week of the physical and psychological mistreatment of the great Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti sickened me.

August 13, 2025

Tributes, condemnation pour in over slain Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza

Israel’s killing of five Al Jazeera staff in Gaza prompts global outrage and calls for accountability.

June 24, 2025

Regime change and blowback in Iran

According to US political scientist Chalmers Johnson, in the 1950s the CIA coined the term “blowback” to refer to “the unintended and unexpected negative consequences of covert special operations that have been kept secret from the American people and, in most cases, from their elected representatives".

July 7, 2025

National Anti-Corruption Commission is two years old – Has it restored integrity to federal government?

The  National Anti-Corruption Commission opened its doors two years ago this week amid much fanfare and high expectations.

May 12, 2025

Mark Leibler on his lobbying power

In a speech he delivered back in 2018, Mark Leibler lays out how he exerts influence, from trying to block Bob Carr’s efforts on recognition of a Palestinian State to “watching” ABC correspondent Sophie McNeill in order to change her coverage of the Middle East.

August 8, 2025

Layered perversion of Australia's defence policy

An amazing thing has happened. Our taxpayer-funded think-tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has commissioned analysis by Robert Macklin which shows that the public debate on Australia’s defence has been biased.

June 18, 2025

Australia: A sovereign continent not for Marles to gift away

Yesterday’s statement by Defence Minister Richard Marles that Australia’s geography and continent would be crucial to any United States prosecution of a war against China will go down as a dark moment in Australia’s history.

August 12, 2025

Why Western hegemony is over

The tariff truce between China and the United States is set to end in August. What do you forecast will happen after that? And what will happen to trade relations between China and the US for the rest of US President Donald Trump’s second term?

May 31, 2025

Gaza: The day of reckoning is coming

The attacks by Hamas on 7 October 2023 licensed the very worst psychopathic tendencies, both within Israel and among its uncritical supporters throughout the diaspora.

July 16, 2025

Is Australia finally coming to terms with East Asia?

Comedy and economic development have one thing in common: timing is everything.

May 16, 2025

Sussan Ley and gender politics

Apart from a slight uptick of hope when Malcolm Turnbull gained the leadership of the Liberal Party in September 2015, promising to bring “emotional intelligence” to the role, I have never wished the LNP anything but defeat and oblivion.

October 14, 2018

IPCC -The various risks from global warming.

This a graph from the new IPCC report that the Coalition tried to sabotage. The below graph depicts a range of impacts to a variety of systems of different global temperature outcomes, from white (undetectable) to yellow (detectable) to red (severe impacts) to purple (severe and irreversible impacts with little adaptability):

It suggests we should book that trip to the Great Barrier Reef soon.

June 22, 2025

Chalmers hints at more tax reform – What should we do first? Part 1

In the first of a two-part series Saul Eslake examines what the top tax reform priorities should be.

May 27, 2025

The cost of conscience in post-October 7 Australia

Over the past 18 months, it has become harder and harder to speak publicly in this country if you are Muslim, brown, and pro-Palestinian.

August 1, 2025

Humanitarian propaganda conceals the real famine in Gaza

I wrote this piece from the heart of the ongoing famine in Gaza and the chaos orchestrated by the Israeli occupation to make life in Gaza unbearable.

April 27, 2025

If I were defence minister...

On becoming Australia’s new defence minister, I will advise cabinet at its first meeting that our nation is at a perilous, strategic crossroad.

May 19, 2025

Vale Ali Kazak

On Sunday afternoon, we received the very sad news that Ali Kazak has died in Thailand, en route to Palestine. An extraordinary campaigner and shaper of the Palestinian cause for all his almost 80 years, his loss will be sorely felt. Stuart Rees wrote this tribute to Ali for Pearls and Irritations last November. More will follow in coming days.

July 19, 2025

Time for Foreign Minister Wong to put her foot down

In an ideal world, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) should be the government’s principal agency in seeing that relations with other countries best serve Australia’s interests.

June 26, 2025

Lattouf’s win over ABC a big victory for freedom of expression

Journalist and broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf’s win over the ABC in the Federal Court is a significant victory for freedom of expression.

May 10, 2025

'This isn't me': Israeli war and healthcare collapse leave Gaza child unrecognisable

Under a tightening Israeli siege, Palestinian girl Rahaf Ayyad struggles with physical and emotional changes, as her mother fights for answers.

August 5, 2025

Urgency of Palestinian recognition

Of course, Netanyahu is angry about talk of Palestinian recognition. He runs a narrative that Palestine and Palestinians do not exist.

June 17, 2025

The illegal attack on Iran

Israel’s consistent attacks on Iran since 2023 have all been illegal, violations of the United Nations Charter (1945).

August 6, 2025

Palestine recognised

We are approaching the end game. There is a movement towards recognition of Palestine by major Western nations, namely France, the UK and Canada, and including, possibly, Australia and New Zealand.

July 11, 2025

Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'

The report of the Albanese Government’s antisemitism envoy, Jillian Segal, contains recommendations that will lead to erosion of freedom of expression and the right to protest.

June 16, 2025

Australian society and the conflict for Palestine

Australia’s symbolic actions on Palestine may not change the course of the conflict, but they matter deeply at home.

July 23, 2025

Australia and Japan cannot accept America’s war on China

Japan and Australia together must induce the US to face the reality of what it is asking.

June 1, 2025

Israel-Gaza: Has Albo finally found his backbone?

Every day since 7 October 2023 Israel has killed, on average, 92 Palestinians. It has injured and maimed countless thousands more.

August 20, 2025

The city on a hill

Since President Trump’s inauguration, America’s friends and enemies — categories increasingly hard to define with precision — have been buffeted by the Administration’s policy vicissitudes.

May 6, 2025

Incoming immigration minister faces immense challenges

Whoever is appointed immigration minister in the second Albanese Government will face immense challenges from both a policy and political perspective.

July 21, 2025

Fifty years since that little green card came into being

Gough Whitlam had to do plenty of hard yakka to introduce an universal healthcare system. Today, it is central part of Australia life, and one of our great policy achievements.

June 13, 2025

AUKUS: America saving us from ourselves

The decision by the United States to initiate a review of the AUKUS agreement might very well be the moment Washington saves Australia from itself. Saving us from the most poorly conceived defence procurement program ever adopted by an Australian Government.

June 11, 2025

Go-ahead for new carbon bomb marks Australia as enemy of the region

In planning its future release of up to 80 billion tonnes of planet-heating carbon, Australia has committed itself to the destruction of nations and wrecking of big cities throughout the Indo-Pacific Region.

May 11, 2025

The New Pope – Leo XIV

I thought it might be third time lucky, but I was wrong again. I backed the wrong horse as pope!

May 8, 2025

An economic reform agenda for Labor

The recent election was won by looking ahead. But a better economic future requires an economic reform agenda, and getting agreement will not be easy. However, there are encouraging signs that the government is up to the task.

May 29, 2025

The Coalition splits, maybe not

If there was ever any question about the dire state of conservative politics in Australia after the Coalition’s comprehensive election rout, the self-indulgent posturing of the past week leaves no doubt.

May 3, 2025

'Never again' for Jews, Palestinians and all humanity

A picture is worth a thousand words.

June 27, 2025

Australia’s media myopia

Australia’s media establishment has a problem and it’s not just about declining revenues or shrinking newsrooms. It’s about a fundamental failure to understand where we live and what’s at stake in our own neighbourhood.

April 26, 2025

The legacy of a Jesuit pope

Francis was a pope prepared to blur the edges of doctrine, or at least its application, opening the doors of the Church to all those seeking love, mercy and forgiveness.

_

April 16, 2025

Easter, triumph of life over death

On 11 April, P&I published a wonderful Geoff Pryor cartoon showing “first semester exam results” for a self-satisfied Donald Trump lying back comfortably in a lounge chair.

April 15, 2025

If I were housing minister…

If I were housing minister in the next Parliament, and if I could secure the PM’s backing to squarely face up to the overdue need for fundamental housing reform, I would have a busy schedule ahead.

August 14, 2025

The great human brain fade

Evidence is piling up that the human brain can no longer keep up with the overshoot crisis which human greed has engendered.

May 15, 2025

Multiple Western press outlets have suddenly pivoted hard against Israel

After a year and a half of genocidal atrocities, the editorial boards of numerous British press outlets have suddenly come out hard against Israel’s genocidal onslaught in Gaza.

August 10, 2025

The occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza was always Netanyahu’s intention

On 19 December 2023, in Pearls and Irritations I wrote: “Hamas is the excuse for the Israeli attack on Gaza. It is not the reason. The real Israeli reason and objective in Gaza is to drive out the population and destroy infrastructure as part of a long-term plan to expel Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere. This settler colonisation has been ongoing since 1948, starting with the Nakba.”

July 25, 2025

On Jillian Segal’s report into combating antisemitism

_Several excellent critiques of Jillian Segal’s “Special Envoy’s Plan to Combat Antisemitism” have appeared, by Louise Adler (_The Guardian), Henry Reynolds (Pearls and Irritations), Nick Feik (Substack), Guy Rundle (Substack) and Jeffrey Loewenstein (Pearls and Irritations). I would like to add a few additional words.

July 15, 2025

Antisemitism in Australia: a 'pathology in our society'

There was much to read in the papers last Monday, the 7th of July. Three stories caught my attention.

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