April 14, 2025

Message from the editor

One of the challenges for all of us right now is knowing where to look. Every minute a new set of tumultuous world events takes place. If you stop to focus on one you get trampled by 25 others. It is tempting to just pull up the doona – but then you would be letting them win.

June 8, 2025

Gaza conditions 'worse than hell on Earth': Red Cross chief

“We cannot continue to watch what is happening,” said Mirjana Spoljaric. “It’s surpassing any acceptable legal, moral, and humane standard.”

May 16, 2025

Fear, censorship and repression are keeping Israelis in the dark about Gaza

The public’s indifference to what Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip is not just the result of a lack of care, but the result of the war Israel is waging against the possibility of knowing.

May 10, 2025

Dreyfus leaves little legacy

In his term as attorney-general, Mark Dreyfus failed to address many big issues.

April 26, 2025

Why has there been no discussion of asylum-seekers in this campaign?

Despite it being a perennial topic during Elections this century, neither major party wants to talk about asylum seekers this time around.

April 22, 2025

Message from the editor

Today, pre-polling opens across the country. The shape of campaigns in Australia has changed radically in the recent past.

April 13, 2025

Good migration policy pays — this is what it looks like

Migration can continue to be a transformative benefit for Australia if it can look past the myths to develop policy that will pay off.

May 8, 2025

Mainstream media and distorted Palestine reporting

Australia’s mainstream media have ignored and distorted the genocide in Palestine. A recent Australians for Humanity forum, chaired by former SBS newsreader Mary Kostakidis, and featuring Margaret Reynolds, Stuart Rees and Peter Slezak, tackled the issues and discussed what needs to be done.

June 1, 2025

Bridging now to next – seeking to rise from the ashes of the Voice referendum

During this Reconciliation Week (27 May – 3 June), with the theme Bridging Now to Next, the nation is aware that there is still unfinished business on the national agenda when it comes to the due recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.

May 23, 2025

Time to end the silence

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

May 9, 2025

The climate won’t change for the Liberals without more women and fewer oldies

If the Liberals have any sense, they won’t waste too much time blaming their shocking election result on Peter Dutton, Donald Trump, Cyclone Alfred, the party secretariat, an unready shadow ministry or any other “proximate cause”, as economists say. Why not? Because none of these go to the heart of their party’s problem.

May 27, 2025

China’s calm response to US’ impulsive tariffs gets noticed

Shortly after China and the United States announced tariff adjustment measures in Geneva, Switzerland, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Aron Solomon argued in a Newsweek article that the US now has an administration that “governs not with strategy, but with impulse”.

June 16, 2025

Message from the editor

It has been a big couple of weeks at Pearls and Irritations, featuring some of the biggest issues we have pursued strongly in the past few years: the AUKUS defence deal and the genocide in Palestine, both reaching turning points.

April 16, 2025

Politics with Michelle Grattan: Hugh White on what the next PM should tell Trump and defending Australia – without the US

The Trump ascendancy has forced international economic issues and the future strategic outlook onto the Australian election agenda, even if they are at the margins.

July 8, 2025

When the helping hand holds a machine gun

There’s no precise number of how many Palestinians have been starved to death by Israel’s embargo on food entering Gaza.

June 27, 2025

Twisting biblical narratives to suit aggression

You have to hand it to Benjamin Netanyahu; he can tweet a biblical story. But Jesus’ words on forgiveness still stand.

July 10, 2025

Australia obstructed probe into deadly ‘Rainbow Warrior’ bombing

France’s ‘Operation Satanique’ bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, 40 years ago this month, was state-sponsored terrorism – and Australia had a part in helping French secret agents to escape.

May 17, 2025

Ferocity, fitness and fast bowling: how Virat Kohli revolutionised Indian cricket

Virat Kohli announced his retirement from Test cricket on Monday.

June 29, 2025

Environment: Australia declared climate change ‘rogue actor’

A new “water economics” needed to safeguard supplies of domestic water and make it a common good. Australia’s fossil fuels make it a rich “Climate Wrecker”. Carbon capture technologies fail to deliver.

June 11, 2025

Is the US on the path to becoming a failed state?

The deliberate undermining of democratic norms and the conflation of personal power with national interest are consistent with patterns seen in states that have tipped into authoritarian rule.

May 13, 2025

There is no Jewish vote in Australia nor is supporting Israel a vote winner

The election results show that a pro-Israel policy does not garner votes for the Liberal or Labor parties, a trend also evident in the 2022 election.

May 5, 2025

Election 2025: the Labor-Liberal waltz of irrelevance

Another federal election. Another Labor Government with a much enhanced majority. A campaign with no great convulsions, except for the Liberal debacle. An Opposition Leader conceding defeat with proper decorum. All must be well in the land of Oz. But all is not quite as it seems.

June 24, 2025

Is Albo reverting to compulsive secrecy?

Anthony Albanese is falling back into the sort of bad habits that could bring him down as Labor leader.

May 31, 2025

Brian Schmidt on securing Australia’s sovereign research capability

Brian Schmidt and Richard Holden addressed the National Press Club jointly this week. The following are full transcripts of the speeches.

Let me take you back to February 1940 to the University of Birmingham. World War II had just broken out, and 38-year-old Marc Oliphant, an Australian-born physicist, who went on later in life to found the ANU Physics department and the Australian Academy of Science, had just had his lab invent the modern microwave resonant cavity, that could create incredibly intense radio-waves in a device of a size such that you could hold it in your hands.

May 10, 2025

New pope faces limits on changes he can make to the Church

Cardinal Robert Prevost of the United States has been picked to be the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church; he will be known as Pope Leo XIV.

April 26, 2025

On ‘moral panic’ and the courage to speak: The West’s silence on Gaza

Palestinians do not have the luxury to allow Western moral panic to have its say or impact. Not caving in to this panic is one small, but important, step in building a global Palestine network that is urgently needed.

April 22, 2025

Home truths: Housing policies are for show, but one side at least gets the problem

If you think this sounds twisted, it is. The best thing about the two sides’ various promises to help young people afford to buy their first home is the way it has provoked the nation’s economists to rise in condemnation of those schemes’ wrongheadedness. They look like they’ll help, but most of them are more likely to end up making homes less affordable rather than more.

July 7, 2025

J’accuse (Part 2) – The Israel lobby

Readers may recall a piece published here on Pearls and Irritations (J’accuse!… the Jew who accuses his fellow Jews of being antisemites on 23 February, 2025 — in which I wrote about an offensive tweet Mark Leibler (lawyer and leader of AIJAC) posted on X — in which, amongst other things, he described those Jews criticising Israel as “vicious antisemites”.

July 5, 2025

Trump’s Big Ugly Bill is fascism in writing

It establishes an anti-immigrant police state in America, replete with a standing army of ICE agents and a gulag of detention facilities, and it was passed by a narrow margin despite popular opinion.

June 21, 2025

Thai Government in turmoil over embarrassing call – Asian Media Report

In Asian media this week: Party quits Thailand’s governing coalition. Plus: Cambodia named a global cyberscam hub; Japanese PM empty-handed after Trump meeting; US tariff regime a critical test for ASEAN; New efforts to ease two-Koreas tensions; Indonesia revises history of anti-Chinese riots.

May 4, 2025

Al Gore on climate and Trump – the whole speech

Readers may have seen mainstream media coverage of former US vice-president Al Gore's speech at San Francisco Climate Week on 21 April. We think it is worth reading in full.

June 8, 2025

Friday essay: let’s rethink Australia’s national security – and focus on fairness and climate action, not blind fealty to the US

The change in the US after Donald Trump returned to power should make us think deeply whether Washington’s aims and policies will offer us the security we need.

June 3, 2025

Conflation and controversy over antisemitism definition

Antisemitism did not spring up here as suddenly and as localised as a field of mushrooms. It is, above all, a by-product of Israel’s endless onslaught on the people of Gaza which one and all can watch as a daily horror show.

May 7, 2025

After its landslide win, Labor should have courage and confidence on security – and our alliance with the US

The re-election of the Albanese Labor Government by such a wide margin should not mean “business as usual” for Australia’s security policy.

May 18, 2025

How Myanmar’s devastating earthquake threatens to leave a lasting economic scar

The earthquake in central Myanmar poses serious risks to its fragile economy, with damages disrupting agriculture, trade and infrastructure.

April 7, 2025

Uncertainty and pessimism abound. Will fear be enough to push Dutton into office?

Tony Abbott was once unelectable. So were Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.

June 9, 2025

China takes a softly-softly approach to diplomacy in the US

China’s ambassador to Washington, Xie Feng has adopted a less assertive approach than some of his predecessors.

May 14, 2025

After the 2025 election: Energy transition and restoration of Australian growth

An historic election

Australia has had insecure governments looking over their shoulders at political threat for one and a half decades. None of the Gillard, Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison and first term Albanese Governments had substantial majorities in the House of Representatives. None ever stood so high in electoral standing that it felt able to take the risk of implementing policy reform in the public interest that could be distorted for their opposition’s political benefit. None had a chance to develop policies in the national interest that take years to mature and to win broadly based electoral support.

April 10, 2025

Where is Assad now? And why do the world's worst men get away with it?

Remember Bashar al-Assad? The man who crushed his own people under a mountain of rubble and fear? Who turned peaceful protests into mass graves, dropped barrel bombs on neighbourhoods, and used chemical weapons on children? _

June 7, 2025

Albanese should remember his childhood – and the rhymes he learnt

There is much wisdom to be had in what was learnt in the first years of life,

April 15, 2025

Looking for a fair wind: Reflections on Australia’s maritime security

Australians may miss out on opportunities to reinforce our regional security if they are over-concerned about Chinese aggression in the South Pacific and do not take the opportunity of engaging in regional dialogue to resolve common problems.

June 13, 2025

I have good news and bad about your superannuation

When the government wants to cut back the massive tax concessions the rich receive on their superannuation, the media is full of it for weeks.

June 17, 2025

Nuclear subs taking on water

There is every reason for Australia to jump on board the idea of having a review of its AUKUS defence policy.

May 3, 2025

How credible are the Coalition’s budget projections?

The Coalition’s costings finally reveal that in the next two years it will have a bigger deficit than Labor. In the second half of the four-year projection, the forecast net positive impact from the Coalition’s policy changes is questionable.

June 22, 2025

Environment: Murray-Darling Plan delivers profits, but not environmental improvement

Murray-Darling Plan has achieved five of seven economic goals but only 2 of 12 environmental ones. Will climate change be good or bad for the economy? Nations’ current emissions reduction policies unlikely to keep global warming under 2oC.

May 24, 2025

Ready for real education reform?

Funding and regulating schools in our federation is wildly duplicative and complicated.

June 15, 2025

Sanctioning Ben-Gvir and Smotrich is but a tiny, sad step in ending the Gaza massacre

Alas and alack! Woe be unto us, for we have sinned: Five countries have imposed sanctions on Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The war in Gaza will now stop immediately, and maybe the occupation, too, certainly the apartheid.

May 22, 2025

The band is breaking up: has the Coalition stopped making sense?

I remember seeing footage, several years ago, of a jubilant Malcolm Turnbull, then prime minister and Liberal leader, speaking in Tamworth to loyal members of the National Party.

June 27, 2025

Jeffrey Sachs interview on 'Breaking Points' Podcast: The US-Israel-Iran ceasefire

Columbia University economist and public policy analyst Professor Jeffrey Sachs in a wide ranging interview on the US “Breaking Points” program.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal