July 3, 2025

The time has arrived for a comprehensive Middle East peace

The attack by Israel and the US on Iran had two significant effects.

June 2, 2025

Sea change in attitudes to Israel and Gaza

Profound changes in both public and elite opinion are often slow to occur but — once they start — they can shift dramatically and quickly.

May 23, 2025

Weaponisation of ‘antisemitism’ hides primitive savagery of Palestinian genocide

As expressed in the UN General Assembly, the vast majority of the world’s governments and peoples agree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and now the West Bank.

July 29, 2025

Guilty of the 'crime' of being Palestinian. Punishment: execution

My long solidarity with Palestine and Palestinians is well-known. I have written two books and countless articles on this topic, and have spoken publicly about it for years.

May 25, 2025

Gaza: Finally, waves upon the sea of silence

Those who purport to lead and speak for the Western world seem to be breaking their disgraceful silence 18 months after the onset of the Zionist state’s primitive savagery.

May 7, 2025

Brave new world

As Australia’s newly elected government seeks to navigate the shoals of President Donald Trump’s new world after the election on 3 May, it will behove us to think beyond our tariff concerns and AUKUS and focus on Southeast Asia.

May 2, 2025

A campaign with only one contender

Not since the conservative nostalgia of diminutive liberal Prime Minister Billy McMahon, whose timidity, wooden delivery and stolid conservatism was no match for the hope, energy, and optimism of Labor leader Gough Whitlam, has a Liberal election campaign been so poorly developed, so ineptly presented, and so badly run.

July 1, 2025

The superannuation system matures at 12% of wages

Tomorrow, thirty-four years after I nominated a 12% wage equivalent as the appropriate level of compulsory contribution into superannuation, the system finally matures.

June 15, 2025

Why Australia needs a defence minister

The Virgina class submarine has been repurposed since the Republicans took the White House. So, Australia’s biggest ever military project has entered another stratosphere of farce.

May 13, 2025

Chinese Australians’ rejection of the Liberal Party: Ten moments

The rejection of the Liberal Party by Chinese Australian communities in the election was comprehensive and unambiguous.

April 23, 2025

If I were the minister assisting the PM on the public service …

Before any new ministry is announced, the current minister, Katy Gallagher, or the shadow minister, Jane Hume, should provide early advice to the prime minister-elect on the structure of his ministry and the machinery of government.

June 20, 2025

Now is the time for humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza

Israel recently launched a brutal new offensive in Gaza, followed by an expanded ground offensive, killing and injuring thousands of beleaguered Palestinians.

May 3, 2025

The third Nakba in Israel’s war of genocide

Why does the Albanese Government shirk its responsibility?

June 25, 2025

The plan to bomb Iran

The war strategy towards Iran was published in a policy paper outlining how the United States could use Israel to fight the war against Iran, while justifying it with a false narrative of failed negotiations.

May 20, 2025

Husic is right – Albanese is too timid about the challenges ahead

Deposed Labor cabinet minister Ed Husic threw down the gauntlet to the Albanese Government last week when he challenged it to “burn through the timidity that has shackled us in the first term”.

July 6, 2025

Spiritual malpractice: The Vatican's dodgy saint-making business

Pope Leo rubberstamps the controversial canonisation of a multimillionaire Italian’s adolescent son.

April 27, 2025

When I'm 65...

The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines anyone over 65 as “old”. You don’t qualify for the means tested “old age pension” for two more years, and when politicians talk of ageing, they focus on nursing homes and care, dementia and falls. Ageing policy is confused and confusing.

May 19, 2025

Message from the editor

While most of the nation has reverted to paying little attention to federal politics, the town where I live (Canberra) has been soaking in it. Last week we witnessed three leadership contests (Greens, Nationals and Liberals) and one nasty stoush over the dumping of Cabinet ministers Ed Husic and Mark Dreyfus.

May 6, 2025

Pope Francis' parting gift to the Church: a messy conclave

Eighty-nine. That’s the magic number. It will take at least 89 cardinals to elect Pope Francis’ successor. [The author has returned to UCA News after a year away].

May 1, 2025

Aged care reform in 2025: An agenda for the next Australian Government

As the first of the baby boomers turn 80 this year, the major parties are on a unity ticket sharing an ideological commitment to the private market and a commitment to make older people pay more for their aged care. Neither party has the details right.

April 29, 2025

Six Easter days, 2025

Monday

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the man who became Pope Francis, died just after the Roman dawn. The news reached Australia as the evening newscasts began. His death dominated every bulletin. It seemed anomalous, a rent in time, even though rationally expected.

June 2, 2025

Fundraising June 2025

Thank you for supporting Pearls and Irritations.

May 15, 2025

It was supposed to be the cost-of-living election. But then Dutton showed up

Talk about the dog that didn’t bark. Cast your mind back to the distant days of the election campaign, and you’ll dimly remember how often we were told that polling revealed the only subject hard-pressed voters were interested in discussing was the cost of living.

June 26, 2025

Australia should not have endorsed the American bombing of Iran nor the Israeli position on nuclear weapons

The US bombing of Iran violated Article One of the ANZUS Treaty which states that members should refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. That rules out aggression.

June 17, 2025

A century later: a renewed open letter against the return of fascism

On May 1st 1925, with Mussolini already in power, a group of Italian intellectuals publicly denounced Mussolini’s fascist regime in an open letter.

May 26, 2025

Message from the editor

It has been difficult to focus on anything other than the escalating genocide in Palestine this week, as we witness, and document, a shift in opinion and coverage that has been far too long coming.

April 11, 2025

Zionist Federation lodges Federal Court complaint against journalist Mary Kostakidis

The Zionist Federation of Australia has filed a legal action with the Federal Court of Australia against renowned Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis relating to a complaint it first raised with the Australian Human Rights Commission in July 2024, claiming posts she made on social media platform X were antisemitic in nature.

April 7, 2025

A message from the editor

Nobel prize-winning economist and former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls the Trump tariffs the biggest trade shock in history. In the immediate aftermath, incredulity and shock was widespread. The size, and wildly different levels, were not expected. And there were clearly some howlers as well. Norfolk Island (population 2188 people) with no known exports to the US, copped 29%. The uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands in the Antarctic got 10%. Angry penguin cartoons sprouted up all over the place.

July 4, 2025

Creative Australia’s backflip on Venice Biennale representatives exposes deep governance failures

The reinstatement of artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s representatives for the 2026 Venice Biennale closes a bruising recent cultural episode and exposes the fragility of the systems meant to protect artistic freedom in Australia.

May 5, 2025

Message from the editor

Welcome to a new week, after an extraordinary election result, the extent of which was neither expected nor predicted.

June 8, 2025

‘Strategic clarity’ over Taiwan is just so much American bombast

Ally or not, no one with a decent sense of self-preservation can afford to take a security guarantee by the United States at face value nowadays.

June 5, 2025

'These could be our children': Israeli women opposing the war, an interview

Not only abroad, but also within his own country, Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is finally facing growing and substantial protests against his war in Gaza.

June 29, 2025

Three blows against Zionism in a single day

A court ruling in Australia, an election result in New York and a military setback for Israel, all coming last week, signalled a serious turn of events for Zionism and its supporters, writes Joe Lauria.

July 2, 2025

Gaza’s Hunger Games

Israel is weaponising starvation. The objective is to dismantle all remnants of civil society and reduce Palestinians to herds of desperate scavengers who can be driven from historic Palestine.

June 10, 2025

Six more giant gas projects could join Labor's latest carbon bomb

While Woodside’s North West Shelf gas plant approval has led to a chorus of protest, there are at least half a dozen more projects in the pipeline that could add to Australia’s emissions.

July 9, 2025

Freedom of speech and chants

“Death, death to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]” and “Death, death to the IOF [Israeli Occupying Force]”. Chants that some in the Palestinian support movement in Melbourne used last weekend.

July 7, 2025

Message from the editor

My sincere thanks to all who made a contribution to our June fundraising appeal with the terrific team at the Australian Cultural Fund.

June 12, 2025

Hugh White and our post-American future

In his new Quarterly Essay, Hard New World, Hugh White delivers a devastating attack on Australia’s current defence policies.

May 11, 2025

Dutton’s election campaign rout lets RBA off the hook

Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock must be breathing a quiet sigh of relief now the Albanese Government has been triumphantly returned to office. If you can’t think why she should be relieved, you’re helping make my point.

May 18, 2025

Accountability and war reporting

Most reporting of Western wars and conflict — as with current reporting of Palestine and early reporting of Vietnam 50 years ago — is missing context and interpretation.

April 10, 2025

If I was immigration minister, I would develop a population plan

If there is one thing politicians should have learnt in the last three years, it is that Australians expect them to manage long-term net migration and thus our rate of population growth.

April 17, 2025

Inspiring Australia?

With 48% of voters paying little or no attention to the campaign, according to an Essential poll, Senator Kim Carr, a former Labor minister, takes a look at how the two major parties have performed in what he describes as an uninspiring campaign.

May 28, 2025

Australia still doing little as the Gaza genocide gets worse

Australia doesn’t mind imposing sanctions on nations or groups it regards as being deserving of punishment for their nefarious activities, Russia, Iran and Zimbabwe to name a few.

June 9, 2025

Message from the editor

One of the things I love most about this job is the reading and listening (to radio).

May 31, 2025

'A big deal': Bowen says hosting COP31 will lift Australia’s standing and help accelerate renewables shift

Australia’s bid to co-host the United Nations COP31 climate talks in 2026 with Pacific nations has been described by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen as a “remarkable opportunity” to restore Australia’s international climate leadership and help shape the global clean energy conversation.

October 14, 2018

KIM WINGEREI. A Secular Nation

Australia is a secular nation. It is enshrined in our constitution, yet we have a Prime Minister and many others in Parliament who don’t quite seem to understand what that means. The Ruddock report reveals not only state laws in possible conflict with federal law, but with the constitution and the principles of secularism.

May 29, 2025

Diplomats prepare ground for June conference on two-state solution for Israel and Palestine

We know that 67% of Australians believe Israel should not be withholding food, water and medical aid from civilians in Gaza (You Gov poll May 2025). Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called it an outrage.

May 24, 2025

Diplomatic tsunami on Palestine

Europe begins to act against Israel’s “complete madness” in Gaza, in the wake of a wave of diplomatic incidents.

May 12, 2025

Message from the editor

Welcome to a new week, a new pope, a new cabinet and a new Opposition Leader. And for the first time, there are at least 57% women in the ALP caucus and record numbers of women across the federal Parliament.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal