April 12, 2025

Is China really the main threat to Australia's security?

What are the nature of the security threats Australia faces? How valid are the assumptions that have informed our economic, foreign and defence policy?

May 29, 2025

Don’t let rich old men tell you the planned super tax is terribly bad

Would you want Australia to become more like America? How on Earth did so many Yanks vote to reinstall a crazy, destructive leader such as Mad King Donald?

May 21, 2025

The Russians are not coming to Indonesia

In Jakarta for his first overseas visit after the election, the prime minister was displaying his elevated obfuscation skills.

June 28, 2025

RFK Jr slammed for halting US support for global child vaccine program

“Kennedy is either misinformed or lying,” said one critical physician, “but either way, children will die as a result.”

May 25, 2025

Australia is forecast to fall 262,000 homes short of its housing target. We need bold action

Australia’s plan to build 1.2 million new homes by 2029 is in trouble. A new report by the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NHSAC) shows we are likely to miss this ambitious target by a huge margin.

April 28, 2025

Quite a remarkable election campaign

We still cannot feel confident in predicting the outcome of this 2025 election. But what we can confidently say is that it has been a quite remarkable campaign, shaped by external events in unpredictable ways.

April 29, 2025

Framing the future: Australia’s China policy in the lead-up to the 2025 election

In the lead-up to the Australia election, new research examines the ALP and Coalition messaging and policy on the People’s Republic of China.

June 25, 2025

As political violence rises in the US, only Americans can save themselves

The protests against Trump and his policies evoke memories of South Korea’s April Revolution, but no outside actors look likely to step in to help.

April 17, 2025

Faith and public policy

Easter is as good a time as any to be reminded that Christianity has a contribution in the formulation of public policy.

July 10, 2025

Israeli defence minister orders plan to build concentration camp for Gaza’s civilian population

Israel Katz says the so-called “humanitarian city” will be built on the ruins of Rafah.

July 6, 2025

Environment: Ken Henry and Xi Jinping agree nature is critical to productivity

Ken Henry says high-integrity environmental laws will be the government’s first test but new Labor MPs don’t agree. Great Barrier Reef still suffering from heat, agricultural run-off and overfishing. NATO to increase its spend and its emissions.

April 30, 2025

From welcome to jeering: How disrespect spreads

Norms do not sustain themselves. They are shaped, modelled, and sometimes destroyed – publicly, rhetorically, politically.

April 26, 2025

How is the US civil service responding to the Trump administration?

There is a perennial debate in all democracies about how responsive the civil service should be to the elected government and about the degree of independence implied by merit-based employment, professional competence, non-partisanship and impartiality.

April 13, 2025

Submarines are not instruments of peace: A Quaker’s response to Australia’s strategic obsession

Rear Admiral Peter Briggs’ recent defence of submarines offers a polished, strategic case for Australia’s continued investment in this kind of military hardware – especially nuclear-powered ones.

July 5, 2025

Flood management: Science, technology and people’s responses

To reduce the risks posed by floods requires both scientific input and appropriate community reaction. It is not always clear that both are in evidence.

June 19, 2025

Sudan: The horrors intensify as millions are abandoned

A woman survivor of the current conflict in Sudan between two rival militaries, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Force, each fighting for power since 2023, told UNICEF: “I could hear that little girl screaming and crying. They were raping her.”

April 7, 2025

Labor gains lead in post-budget Newspoll; would be one seat short of majority in YouGov MRP poll

Labor’s regaining of polling momentum has continued into the first week of the formal election campaign.

May 22, 2025

UN warns 14,000 Gaza babies could die in 48 hours unless Israeli blockade lifted

Aid allowed into besieged area described as “a trickle among a sea of need”.

May 17, 2025

Judge orders release of Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri from ICE detention

“My only ‘crimes’ making me a ’national security threat’ are my marriage to a United States citizen of Palestinian origin and my support for the Palestinian cause,” wrote Badar Khan Suri in an op-ed published on 13 May.

April 15, 2025

We have good reason to have hope at Easter

At least once in a lifetime, every human being is likely to experience pain of such calamitous proportion that it feels as if the world is coming to an end, but in truth it isn’t.

April 8, 2025

US LNG crippled as Australia seizes US$1.5b trade overnight

What happens when the world’s second-largest economy suddenly pulls the plug on billions of dollars in US energy exports without warning, without negotiation and without a single public signal? You get a global energy market in shock and Washington scrambling for answers._

July 3, 2025

UN report lists companies complicit in Israel’s ‘genocide’. Who are they?

The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) has released a new report mapping the corporations aiding Israel in the displacement of Palestinians and its genocidal war on Gaza, in breach of international law.

June 3, 2025

The Australian Government needs to take strong action regarding the dire situation in Gaza

Here are extracts from a letter sent by AJDS to Penny Wong, the Australian Foreign Minister today [26 May]. It will also appear on social media. It has been slightly edited for the sake of brevity.

April 17, 2025

Australia urgently needs to get serious about long-term climate policy – but there’s no sign of that in the election campaign

The federal election should be an earnest contest over the fundamentals of Australia’s climate and energy policies.

July 7, 2025

Gunning for the Greens over Gaza - Part 2

The Greens have been prominent in condemning Israel’s ongoing mass murder and destruction in Gaza. The federal Labor Government adamantly sits on its hands while condemning the Greens. Whence the absence of principle and courage on the government’s benches?

May 14, 2025

The US war on science

Sadly, largely due to the media’s lack of interest in science and the drop in the number of journalists able to cover such a round, one of the most important stories about science — the Trump destruction of science — is largely being neglected.

June 16, 2025

There's something about Jacqui Lambie

Jacqui Lambie is no Cameron Diaz but the title of one of Diaz’s most loved films, There’s Something about Mary, might be a useful way of thinking about her. There is, after all, definitely something about Jacqui.

April 30, 2025

Voters looking at the least bad option

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has a very big problem this coming Saturday, election day; he is the most distrusted political leader in Australia according to an April 2025 survey by Roy Morgan.

June 13, 2025

The murky world of lobbying and the North West Shelf

It’s hard to explain to a young person how the Albanese Government could possibly have approved the North West Shelf gas project expansion last week.

April 24, 2025

Censorship is getting louder: Meta’s fine is just the echo

When Turkey fined Meta for refusing to comply with content takedown orders following protests in March 2025, it wasn’t just a response to a tech company. It was a calculated move in a larger global playbook, one that’s being followed by governments far beyond Ankara.

April 16, 2025

The Thereafter

A few years ago, approaching Christmas, I received a phone call from a gentleman named Mark Feary. He was the curator of the Silvershot Gallery in Flinders Lane at the back of St Paul’s Cathedral in central Melbourne.

June 9, 2025

Palestinian genocide gets some big-screen time

Films and the internet are proving to be a valuable way for the message of the Palestinian struggle to be publicised.

July 8, 2025

China and renewable energy: The global impact

China’s _renewable energy program_ is not a local curiosity. It marks a tu__r__ning point in history with profound consequences for the rest of the globe.

May 2, 2025

Where has all the laughter gone?

In August, 1964, Norman Cousins, a former editor of the Saturday Review was diagnosed with a serious degenerative and painful disease of the connective tissue. He was given a one in five hundred chance of recovery.

May 28, 2025

I will always remember you, Ali Kazak!

I first met Ali Kazak soon after he arrived in Australia in the early ’70s when I was in my early twenties.

July 6, 2025

Mamdani’s magnificent primary win – What follows

People are asking about my reaction to Zohran Mamdani’s spectacular and decisive upset in the Democratic primary victory for Mayor of New York over ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo.

April 22, 2025

Trump versus a young man on a mission

Less than three months into the 48 that the world will have to endure his second presidency, Donald Trump is, on a charitable view, now pretty much a caricature of himself.

June 10, 2025

US unlikely to be able to hold its own against China

Were the US to come up against China in a war in the Pacific, indications are that Washington would have the worse of the exchanges.

May 11, 2025

At the ICJ, only US and Hungary back Israel starving Gaza

Thirty-seven states, the UN and international NGOs all condemned Israel’s denial of aid to the starving people of Gaza at the International Court of Justice in the first week of May.

June 30, 2025

Lattouf’s victory, our fight: Standing firm against intimidation

In April 2025, I posted a comment in The Age, sharing how, after 40 years in my Goldstein neighbourhood, I’d never felt unsafe until I was wrongly accused of antisemitism.

June 23, 2025

Trump most unpopular president in presidential polling history

Donald Trump is definitely exceptional – so exceptional that he is now the most unpopular president in the history of presidential polling.

June 21, 2025

Australia’s trade survival depends on beating Trump’s tariff contagion

How does Canberra cope in a world that threatens to spin off into competing blocs and help shape a world that preserves multilateralism, even if the United States is not a constructive part of it?

May 9, 2025

Aid to Gaza: Moral and political dilemmas for Australia

Amidst preparations for a renewed assault intended to allow permanent Israeli occupation of Gaza, Israel and the United States are also about to establish a mechanism through which humanitarian aid will henceforth be distributed exclusively by private firms protected by the Israeli military.

June 26, 2025

What the world thinks of Trump

It’s early days to find out what the world thinks of Trump and his war on Iran and then his ceasefire agreement – although, as would be expected, Israel and Australia have leapt to say they agree with it.

May 9, 2025

Exclusion of Ed Husic from the Albanese Ministry Statement

A showing of poor judgment, unfairness and diminished respect for the contribution of others.

October 15, 2018

LOGAN PAULEY. China stakes out a role for itself in post-war Syria.

As Syria’s civil war winds down, China is looking to establish itself as an economic, and possibly military, partner for the post-war period.

May 19, 2025

Pope Leo XIV and some unfinished business

In its 2017 Final Report, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended changes to canon law, the most important of which was the abolition of the pontifical secret over child sexual abuse by clergy.

June 4, 2025

Freedom flotilla sets sail for Gaza carrying aid and demands: 'End the blockade. End the genocide'

“No matter how dangerous this mission is, it’s nowhere near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the live-streamed genocide,” said climate activist Greta Thunberg, who is aboard the Madleen.

May 23, 2025

Can Murray Watt fix Australia’s broken nature laws? First stop, WA

New federal Environment Minister Murray Watt is in Western Australia this week to reboot nature law reform. Reform stalled in the Senate last term, following stiff opposition from the state’s Labor government and mining sector.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal