April 16, 2019

IAN McAULEY. Surely Morrison isnt seriously asking us to trust him

Morrisons words are a plea to trust his government, but his tactics seem to be aimed at spreading mistrust, not only of Labor but also of democratic institutions more generally.

January 22, 2018

IAN McAULEY. Reframing public ideas Part 7: Capital

Former Science Minister Barry Jones complained that we tend to think of “capital” in terms of stuff that hurts when we drop it on our toes. It’s too easy to overlook other forms of capital human capital, social capital, institutional capital and environmental capital.

November 6, 2018

DEAN ASHENDEN. Dont mention the war (Inside Story, 05.11.18)

The Australian War Memorial and its embarrassing director Brendan Nelson are getting some of what they deserve, but only some. The AWMs (successful) bid for half a billion public dollars to house its tribute to those who have served and died in conflicts since the second world war has provoked hostile commentary, culminating in Jack Waterfords splendid takedown of Nelson, the AWM and its outrageous raid on the public purse in the Canberra Times. But with some exceptions (here, here, and here) this commentary, including Waterfords, has followed the AWM itself in missing the main point: the failure to recognise what are by any measure the most sustained, costly and disastrous of Australias wars, the so-called frontier wars, deadly conflicts between black and white that went on for well over a century.

September 18, 2017

MAX HAYTON. Jacindamania in NZ

_The New Zealand election campaign has produced a star but is it rising or setting or is it just a descending meteorite heading for early burnout? The polls on September 23 will give the answer. Current polls a week from Election Day are confused and confu_sing.

September 5, 2017

GILES PARKINSON. AEMO says fossil fuel failures, renewable delays biggest threat to grid

_The Australian Energy Market Operator has cited climate change, and the potential for large fossil fuel generators to fail in the summer heat-wave as the biggest threat to Australias electricity supplies in the coming y_ears.

July 18, 2019

RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Can Australia Defend Itself?

Since the advent of Donald Trump as United States president, the certainties that are said to underpin Australia’s defence doctrine are less than ever convincing. Trump’s cynicism about alliances underlines the fact that ANZUS is no longer (if it ever was) a guarantee of American military assistance. Neither Prime Minister Morrison posing on the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan during the latest Exercise Talisman Sabre in July 2019, nor the promise of a state dinner in Washington dispel the uncertainty, although they do increase pressure on Morrison to commit the ADF to join the US in a war against Iran or take a more robust stand against Chinese encroachment in the South China Sea, if asked, as he is likely to be.

July 5, 2018

The Attorney-General, the ASIS officer and his lawyer: the shameful Timor prosecution

Last week the Attorney-General, Christian Porter, announced that he had approved the prosecution of Witness K, a former ASIS operative and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery, a former Attorney-General of the ACT. They are to be prosecuted for a breach of s.39 of the Intelligence Services Act 2001 (Cth). The prosecution arises out of the involvement of Witness K and Collaery in legal disputation between the governments of Australia and Timor-Leste concerning their respective entitlements to revenues from oil and gas fields located in the Timor Sea.

December 26, 2017

IAN MCAULEY. Reframing public ideas

Our capacity to understand political and economic issues, and to shape better public policy, may be helped if we break out of established but no longer functional ways of looking at public policy re-framing in other words. Over January I will write eight articles about the way we frame public ideas. They will cover ideas of leadership, the role of government, economy and society, economy and environment, competition, jobs, capital and choice.

August 14, 2019

Brexit in the Antipodes

There is a growing air of desperation in the cross-party efforts to stymie British Prime Minister Boris Johnsons threat to by-pass parliament, and even to ignore a motion of no confidence against him and his government by the House of Commons, in order to force through a no-deal Brexit. It is remarkable that in all the analyses of this political rupture and how best to avert it, the one example of the successful use of the very strategy that Johnson has laid out has been entirely overlooked.

October 29, 2018

Time to ground Australia's China fear in facts (AFR 29.10.18)

As December draws near, thoughts turn to annual anniversaries and remembrances. This December marks the 51st anniversary of one of the more bizarre events in Australia’s political history. On December 17, 1967, then prime minister Harold Holt disappeared while swimming at Portsea beach. He was alone at the time and the surf was rough. He was a good swimmer and was familiar with conditions in the area. His body has never been found.

July 18, 2019

ANDREW FARRAN. Defence culture holding back balanced defence force

An analysis of Australias strategic culture, as distinct from posture, might have offered alternative or expanded answers to how we have got to where we are and how Australia should be defended in future - comment by Alan Behm on Hugh Whites How to Defend Australia.

August 27, 2018

SUSAN RYAN .When it comes to women, all Liberals are conservatives.

It was with a sense of irony that on Saturday August 25th, a few hours after the parliamentary Liberal party concluded days of ugly self-mutilation by electing Scott Morrison as Prime Minister and Josh Frydenberg as deputy liberal leader, I attended at Old Parliament House Canberra a government sponsored launch of an exhibition to honour 75 years of women in the federal parliament. In 1943 Enid Lyons, Liberal, was elected to the House of Representatives and Dorothy Tangney, Labor, from Western Australia became the first woman senator. Despite Lyons earlier history as a Labor party member, and her marriage to Joseph Lyons who entered federal parliament for Labor but ratted and became a liberal prime minister, modern liberals have taken great pride in owning the first woman in the House. Last week they could have provided themselves with further cause for self-congratulation. They could have elected Julie Bishop as the first female liberal prime minister.

February 19, 2019

LAURA TINGLE. Senior bureaucrats send a message to the Government and the Opposition (ABC 19.2.2019)

The political significance of his [Mr Pezzullo’s] interventions are twofold the first is that it makes clear the security establishment does not believe the legislative changes, of themselves, will spark a wave of new boat arrivals.

The second is that, just as Mr Lewis and Mr Pezzullo were sending a clear message to the Government to stop using their advice for political purposes, they are sending a message to Labor as the alternative new government that as long as they maintain a tough rhetorical and policy line on border protection, there is no reason to believe that Labor in government is a risk to border policy.

March 26, 2018

ROSS GITTINS. We have a bad case of misdirected compassion

Why do so many of us and the media, which so often merely reflect back the opinions of their audience feel sorrier for those who profess to be poor than for those who really are?

March 13, 2019

GREG BAILEY. The Coal Wars. Where next?

In writing on this subject I was initially going to focus on the manner in which a lobbying company funded by Glencore had undertaken a marketing campaign in support of coal and to plant doubts about the capacity of renewable energy to substitute for coal. If this might have represented the beginnings of a conflict between renewables and coal, it has now gone far beyond that, with a new war front opening up between the two wings of the coalition government.

September 7, 2017

CAVAN HOGUE. Sanctions and virtue.

Sanctions are a form of force but seem to be the only answer Western countries can come up with. There is no evidence that they are effective, probably because it is not the decision-makers who suffer from them. Pressure on China to do more does not take account of Chinese interests. China wants a buffer but not an out of control nuclear state in the DPRK. Kim is not suicidal but seems to understand the restrictions on outsiders better than some of them do. Negotiations seem like the only approach that would give Kim what he wants and lead to a loss of face by the USA.

October 2, 2019

RICHARD BUTLER. Trump's impeachment:By any decent standard?

The Republicans have ensured that there is no decent standard under Trump. They will need to think again or allow Trump to burn down their house as he seeks to save himself from impeachment.

June 8, 2018

JOHCHKA FISCHER. 'The U.S. President Is Destroying the American World Order'

In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer talks about the danger of war against Iran, the deterioration of trans-Atlantic relations under U.S. President Donald Trump and the serious need for Germany to invest massively in the European Union’s future.

September 25, 2018

PETER SMALL. National Party and Climate Change, Part 2.

If we accept the premise that humans are rational beings and have a reason for doing what they do, then in my first article I tried to throw some light on what motivated the National Party, and the Coalition, to have the policies they have or dont have on climate. In summary I suggested this was a result of the decline of membership and branch structure and the resultant decline of influence by the rank and file on policy. The belief in there being votes in differentiating their brand from the Greens and city lefties. The power of Canberra lobbyists and those who fund MPs’ re-election campaigns. And the social conservatives simplistic faith in their God and His capacity to fix planet Earth. Essentially policy is driven by money, power and a job. It is interesting to observe how National MHRs go soft on coal when they have new investment of renewables in their electorate!

July 3, 2018

JOHN AUSTEN. Bill Shorten and Western Sydney Rail.

Mr Shorten has the right intentions about Western Sydney Rail but he needs to read Pearls and Irritations more carefully!

September 9, 2018

STAN GRANT. Which idea of conservatism will Prime Minister Scott Morrison embrace?

Conservatives in Australia are up for a fight. They are determined to recapture their heartland, reclaim the political right from the progressive interlopers: they are marking out their territory and it is as much about identity as ideology.

November 2, 2017

GREG LOCKHART: Remembering the charge at Beersheba and forgetting the Balfour Declaration

This week, as our $600 million Great War centenary rolled on, the Australian Light Horse charge at Beersheba on 31 October 1917 has come out of the culture in a tsunami of centenary excitement at home and abroad.

Media enthusiasm for the charge has been unbounded in Australia, while talks in Tel Aviv between the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu on defence cooperation in industry, intelligence and cyber-strategy lent a business-like touch to proceedings. At the same time, 2,000 descendants of light horsemen, many aged and wearing period costume, gathered near the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Beersheba in Israels southern desert.

September 14, 2017

FRANK BRENNAN. We need a Bill of Rights

As Attorney General Lionel Bowen dedicated a lot of time and energy to a Bill of Rights. He introduced legislation which was doomed. But he outlined the principles for an Australian Human Rights Bill espousing the preconditions for the common good in contemporary Australia. He told Parliament:

November 8, 2017

ANDREW FARRAN. Parliamentary eligibility did the High Court get it wrong? (Part 2)

Prime Minister Turnbull now asserts that the onus is on individual Parliamentarians to prove their non-dual citizenship status (a status that previously did not disqualify). How can the onus of proof be put on them when that determination may be in the hands of an external authority?

October 29, 2018

KIM RICHARD NOSSAL. Canada and Huawei: Letting politics slip in.

Canada has decided not to join Australia and the United States in barring Huawei Technologies Ltd of Shenzen from participating in the development of Canadas 5G mobile networks. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau argued that his governments decision on Huawei is based on evidence and data, and in particular on recommendations from the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the federal agency that collects foreign signals intelligence and protects telecommunications networks.

August 20, 2018

IAN McAULEY. Turnbulls dead albatross: the National Party --Repost from 21 February 2018

Barnaby Joyces downfall has exposed the National Party as an outfit more concerned with dealing with corporate rent-seekers than with attending to the interests of its traditional rural base. It has also exposed Turnbulls lack of resolve in dealing with deep fissures in the political alliance between the Liberals and the Nationals.

August 29, 2018

STEPHANIE DOWRICK. Exposing the myths of "border protection" we will see the refugees as real people; and act accordingly.

On Thursday morning of the Liberals week of mayhem, facing front benches empty of ministers and with the days sitting of Parliament about to be shut down, ALP leader Bill Shorten said: The purpose of government is to uplift the nations vision. Hes right. We all know that hes right. But vision takes courage. And within the Liberal Party - whoever is leading it courage, like decency, has long been absent.

December 12, 2013

Flogging a dead horse at the Royal Commission on Sexual Abuse. Guest blogger: Kieran Tapsell

Whenever there has been an inquiry into the Catholic Churchs handling of child sex abuse by its clergy, the Church has claimed that child sex abuse was some sort of hidden problem that the whole world, including the Church, had only just discovered. It has done this in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and now in Australia.

The Victorian Church in its submission, Facing the Truth to the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry, and the Australian bishops September 2013 submission to the Royal Commission on Towards Healing make the claim that there was a developing awareness of child sexual abuse in the 1970s, implying that very little was known about it before. In the last 40 years a lot more attention was paid to the problem, and there is now a greater understanding of the damage done to children. But the Church keeps raising this as if this were an excuse for its behaviour in failing to report such crimes to the police and failing to dismiss the offending priests.

January 22, 2018

CERIDWEN DOVEY. The mapping of indigenous massacres in Australia [New Yorker]

From New York to Cape Town to Sydney, the bronze body doubles of the white men of empireColumbus, Rhodes, Cookhave lately been pelted with feces, sprayed with graffiti, had their hands painted red. Some have been toppled. The fate of these statuesand those representing white men of a different era, in Charlottesville and elsewherehas ignited debate about the political act of publicly memorializing historical figures responsible for atrocities. But when the statues come down, how might the atrocities themselves be publicly commemorated, rather than repressed?

September 24, 2018

MAX HAYTON. Climate change policy wins wide support in New Zealand

New Zealands coalition government under Jacinda Ardern has made dealing with climate change one of its highest priorities. It is planning dramatic new legislation and to the surprise of many observers, no doubt including some watching from Canberra, there is a high degree of cross party support and national consensus. While the issue helped to bring down Prime Ministers in Australia, across the Tasman it is stimulating deep thought about innovative legislation.

December 21, 2016

ERIC HODGENS. Christmas An Epiphany.

What he stands for is the real object of our celebration love of family and friends; love of enemies, too. He stands for peace, for fair consideration of everyone we deal with, for a world in which we work not only for our own good but for the good of others too.

February 8, 2016

John Menadue. The collapse of the Malaysian Arrangement has led to the depravity of Manus and Nauru.

Having done its best in Opposition to wreck the Malaysian Arrangement in 2011, the Turnbull government is now seeking the help of Malaysia over detainees in Manus and Nauru. For political cynicism, this is hard to beat.

In May 2011, the Australian and Malaysian governments announced an in principle arrangement that up to 800 boat arrivals would be transferred from Australia to Malaysia for their asylum claims to be heard. In response Australia would be prepared to accept 4,000 refugees from Malaysia. The arrangement with Malaysia was signed on 25 July 2011. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees gave it qualified support. At that period, boat arrivals were running at four to six per month.

June 25, 2018

PATRICIA EDGAR. The Circus that has been Government Policy on the ABC for Forty Years

The ABC has been an extraordinarily resilient organisation. It has withstood management and Board upheavals, survived remorseless budget cuts and harassment. But the current attacks on staff and on its role are as overt and vicious as they have ever been. Many of those who were imbued with ABC values have died or moved on. The biggest fear to friends of the ABC today is inertia. This current attack will not be solved by quiet negotiation. The Governments tactics are neither rational nor honest. This has to be a vocal public fight and once the dangers are understood the public will have to respond. What is there left to defend for our democracy to live on if the ABC is destroyed?

October 15, 2017

RAMESH THAKUR. Gorbachev: A voice of sanity from a past that has become a foreign country

Ramesh Thakur would welcome the shock and awe of PM Turnbull and Foreign Minister Bishop backing Gorbachevs plea for a summit to restore USRussia relations to normalcy and lining up with Iran, the Europeans, China and Russia in recommitting to the Iran nuclear deal as a rare triumph of diplomacy over warmongering.

August 10, 2018

MICHAEL McKINLEY. Whither Political Science?: Not dead but on life support a response to Roger Scott.

In a recent post Roger Scott asks an appropriate question but its anachronistic like asking why doesnt Elvis do live concert anymore? Political Science was always a bastard, left-handed, red-haired child of the turn to scientism by the social sciences in the late 19th Century and it never recovered, thanks to the domination of successive generations of third-rate positivists deriving chimerical insights from mathematics ill-suited to a decent understanding of their subject matter.

April 26, 2018

SAM BATEMAN. South China Sea Encounters

Australian and Chinese warships recently had what has been called a robust but polite encounter in the South China Sea. This was always likely and the Australian Government has been correct in not over-reacting. Rather than unnecessarily confronting China, Australia should be sensitive to the views of its Southeast Asian neighbours.

December 26, 2013

Japanese Prime Minister Abe and Yasukuni Shrine. Guest blogger: Walter Hamilton

Perhaps the most significant aspect of Prime Minister Shinzo Abes visit on Thursday to Yasukuni Shrine the place where Japanese venerate their war dead was its timing. Abe chose to go on the day that marked the first anniversary of his administration, in effect directly linking his government with this controversial establishment. He not only became the first serving prime minister to cross its threshold for seven years but, most unusually, he lent the visit an official stamp. (Notwithstanding that the Prime Ministers Office described it as a private affair, the media were forewarned, his visit was televised live and he signed the visitors book using his official title.)

October 29, 2018

DUNCAN GRAHAM. Putting the zing into statecraft

Foreign affairs (the political version, not dalliances abroad) is seldom a synonym for fun.

The standard photo has a line of suits trying - and failing - to look human.Their media statements, labelled communique to maintain the mystique, are triumphs of euphemism, so bland they make laundry lists sound like Hamlet.

Few would bother to read unless they got paid well for the pain.

September 9, 2018

JERRY ROBERTS. What is the issue?

Young Australian families are living in brand new suburbs on the outskirts of our cities. They now constitute a significant proportion of the nations population. A few years ago, these suburbs were sandhills and bush. They have no post-settlement history. Do they have a culture? What interests these young couples? In political terms, what is the issue?

August 26, 2019

NATASHA STOTT DESPOJA. Celebrating Women Humanitarians

On 19th August, World Humanitarian Day, events around the world paid tribute to the women who serve on the frontline of humanitarian responses to disasters. They are often the first to respond and the last to leave, and yet their voices and rights are often ignored. In Sydney, ActionAid Australia heard from women from Vanuatu and Fiji who are part of the Shifting the Power Coalition that promotes Pacific womens leadership in humanitarian action.

December 14, 2014

Cavan Hogue. Petroshenko visit.

President Petroshenko should be received courteously and his visit should be used to seek further trade with Ukraine. There is no reason to avoid cordial relations with Ukraine but our Government is going a lot further than that.

Ukraine is a distant European country where we have limited interests. The Prime Minister appears to be using it as an excuse to attack Russia. Mr Abbott was a successful Leader of the Opposition but he is finding that building is a lot harder than demolition. President Putin provides an enemy on whom he can exercise his attack dog skills and Mr Abbott has used the MH17 tragedy for domestic purposes. Creating foreign threats to draw attention away from domestic failures is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Australia is not a European country and should leave European problems to Europeans.

March 12, 2015

Tony Kevin. A Confused Military Endgame in Tikrit

In an effort to understand what is happening in the very important battle to retake the Sunni city of Tikrit in Iraq, now approaching its climax, I consulted yesterdays news and editorial coverage in the Washington Post, (Iraqi forces break militants hold on Tikrit in major battle against Islamic State),

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraqi-forces-battle-islamic-state-in-streets-of-strategic-tikrit/2015/03/11/a0dca5c0-c778-11e4-aa1a-86135599fb0f_story.html

CNN, (Battle for Tikrit: Despite billions in aid, Iraqi army relies on militia, and Iran),

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/03/11/middleeast/lister-iraq-iran/

Al Jazeera, (Why the US is sitting out Iraqs most important assault on ISIL),

January 26, 2018

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND ...

On Saturday Extra this 27th January Geraldine Doogue is discussing the cost of government consultants with Julian Hill, ALP member for Bruce and businessman Tony Shepherd; Changes to gambling laws with Charles Livingstone from Monash University and Sam Duncan from the Holmesglen Institute in Victoria; Supreme Court judge and author Michael Pembroke on his book Korea: Where the America Century began and A Foreign Affair discusses reforms in Saudi Arabia, diplomacy successes in South Korea, Vladimir Putin and the anniversary of the secret police and one hundred years since Woodrow Wilsons 14 point speech with Anthony Bubalo, Lowy Institute, Kyle Wilson, ANU and Lauren Richardson, ANU.

July 6, 2017

ANNE DUGGAN. The second Atlas of Healthcare Variation a guide to better practice

The recently-released second Australian Atlas of Healthcare Variation reveals marked variations in the rates of common procedures across the country. Its a valuable source of data to guide better allocation of health care resources through more appropriate, equitable and patient-centred care.

August 28, 2018

JOHN MENADUE & IAN McAULEY: A new leader, but no sight of leadership.

The Liberal Party has a new leader, but there is still a dearth of the leadership in the Liberal Party, which seems to be unable to deal with hard issues, such as meeting our emissions target and coping with the effects of climate change. And there are much harder problems of economic structure calling for political leadership.

December 7, 2016

DAVID PEETZ. The battle over the Building and Construction Commission isnt finished yet

Now that the ABCC will mostly be a mere shadow of its former self, the Building Code becomes an even more important point of distinction. … It is the identity and ideology of the Director of the ABCC that matters a lot more than the underpinning legislation.

December 7, 2017

GRAHAM HAND. No, Gladys, build it and they will not come

The NSW Government has announced it will knock down and rebuild Allianz Stadium at Moore Park at a cost of $700 million and the Olympic Stadium at Homebush, only 17 years old, at a cost of $1.6 billion. However, there is little business case evidence that new stadiums would make a material difference to attendances at football games, although Sports Minister, Stuart Ayres argues, With better quality facilities, more people will come and attend matches.

March 26, 2018

JOHN MENADUE. It is class warfare alright

The government is hoping to let its business mates back up their trucks to the Treasury for a windfall grab of $65 billion in company tax reductions. At the same time, the Governments Welfare Reform Bill contains, as Ross Gittins has pointed out, seventeen measures that will adversely affect the lives of thousands of the unemployed, single parents and women and children escaping domestic violence.

February 18, 2018

Has the ABC buckled to PM Malcolm Turnbull by removing critical analysis of the claimed benefits of corporate tax cuts?

The ABCs chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici stands by her analysis.Significantly the ABC, through Ms Albericis editorial superiors Gaven Morris, the director of ABC News, and Alan Sunderland, director of editorial policies, do not.In a promoted article posted on February 14 after the broadcast of an ABC News item reporting that many Australian companies did not pay any tax, Ms Alberici intro-ed her analysis with this sentence: There is no compelling evidence that giving the countrys biggest companies a tax cut sees that money passed on to workers in the form of higher wages.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal