July 29, 2025

Ley must be saved from drowning over net zero

When Napoleon remarked that one should never interrupt an enemy when it was making a mistake, he was referring to the way the enemy was disposing of his troops, not about the policies and programs with which he proposed to govern. Like all the countries arrayed against him, (even, effectively, England) Napoleon didn’t do elections.

August 14, 2025

Albanese is crying poor, but we’re losing billions a year from untaxed gas

It’s likely much will be said, but little done, at next week’s economic roundtable.

July 24, 2025

Change proposals risk relegating ANU to middle-ranking regional uni

Well known historian and long-time ANU staff member, Frank Bongiorno, says he has never seen, “such a lack of vision, such a vacuum of ideas, such general disorganisation, nor such cavalier decision-making about institutions and programs built up through hard work over decades” in all his years at ANU. He outlined his concerns in this submission to ANU management.

July 14, 2025

Antisemitism Plan sparks fierce debate over free speech, racism, and political agendas

At a press conference in Sydney on Wednesday 10 July 2025, the Special Envoy to combat antisemitism, Jillian Segal, together with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke launched the National Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism in order to address antisemitic hate, especially in the wake of intensified community tensions following the war in Gaza.

August 8, 2025

Australia needs better China coverage. This ABC story just gave us less

The South China Sea is complicated. The ABC made it simple – and not in a good way. When public media reduces regional disputes to black-and-white, it risks turning policy into performance.

July 17, 2025

Albanese can afford to ignore noises and focus on delivering goods for voters

Although few can fault the prime minister for trying to generate more imports and exports with our biggest trading partner, everyone — ranging from an obscure Chinese social media influencer wannabe to Australian opposition luminaries such as Barnaby Joyce — has an opinion about the visit, and everyone seems to be ready to offer the prime minister a wealth of warnings and free advice.

August 2, 2025

Trump trashes India, boosts Pakistan over oil – Asian Media Report

In Asian media this week: India and Russian are “dead economies”. Plus: Border clash ceasefire a test for ASEAN; Populist Right rising in Japan; Jakarta wants all nations to follow France’s Palestine lead; Pyongyang “not interested” in easing tensions; Kashmir pilgrimage a “river of humanity”

August 18, 2025

Has Labor abandoned major tax reform?

No policy area in Australia is in greater need of major reform than taxation.

August 7, 2025

Mike Burgess on the ASIO soapbox, again

Those with a regard for their welfare would do well not to get between ASIO chief, Mike Burgess, and a soapbox.

July 17, 2017

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Malcolm gazes at broad church

Just about the last thing Malcolm Turnbull did before leaving Australia last week was to inveigh against his colleagues navel gazing.

August 17, 2025

Environment: 18th century vicar describes controlled burning in English countryside

English farmers used controlled burns of gorse 300 years ago. Too hot and dry even for cacti. Urbanisation induces genetic evolution in birds. China powering ahead with the roll out of wind and solar.

July 18, 2025

Round up the usual Chinese suspects

It’s a big week for headlines – and an even bigger week for fear. With Prime Minister Albanese landing in China, our media wasted no time rounding up their usual suspects.

July 23, 2025

Vale John Deeble - an architect of Medicare

Following John Menadue’s refection on 50 years of Medicare this week, many have raised the contribution of John Deeble. Below is an edited version of a 2018 tribute to the man without whom the scheme would not have been possible.

August 12, 2025

The long hand of your country of origin

When the Soviet communist agent Vladimir Petrov was sent to Australia by a predecessor of the KGB in 1951, he was not tasked with stealing Australian and Western defence and diplomatic secrets.

August 9, 2025

Eighty years with the bomb: How long can our luck continue?

It cannot be said too often that it is only sheer dumb luck that has enabled the world to avoid for 80 years a repeat of the indescribable horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

August 1, 2025

Britain’s back, China’s the target. We’ll likely pay the price again

Britain’s HMS Prince of Wales has docked in Darwin, flanked by other warships and declarations.

August 6, 2025

Once Australia was important to Indonesia

Happy birthday, monster neighbour. Er, do we know you? We’re strangers here – our proper place is mid-Atlantic, ‘twixt the Old World and the New. However, we’re trying hard to cope by promoting trade and investment, while ignoring endemic _corruption_ and avoiding deep involvement.

July 28, 2025

An Australian pathway to productivity, resilience and budget sustainability

The wisdom of serious reform: The forthcoming August 2025 Government Roundtable seeks a better future for all Australians. And, indeed, our society has well-known and well documented lists of policies that can reliably deliver on that desired outcome.

July 12, 2025

Albanese’s China mission – managing a complex relationship in a world of shifting alliances

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese leaves for China on Saturday, confident most Australians back the government’s handling of relations with our most important economic partner and the leading strategic power in Asia.

July 19, 2025

Trump makes tariffs example of Korea, Japan – Asian Media Report

In Asian media this week: No trade deal exceptions for US allies. Plus: An expert in a government of flunkies; Sex-scandal monks had lives of status and privilege; Corruption stymies Myanmar earthquake recovery; Anwar’s leadership glow starting to fade; ‘Comrade’ is out-of-fashion in Communist China.

July 11, 2025

Every day is a bad day to visit China, apparently

Meeting the Chinese president is apparently now treason. At least, that’s what you’d think if you followed some of our media’s coverage of Anthony Albanese’s latest diplomatic sin: talking to Beijing.

August 10, 2025

Environment: Decisive action needed to avoid unmanageable climate tipping points

Global climate tipping points are getting closer, creating danger zones for the biosphere and human societies. Naturally regenerating forests must be left to grow for longer. The North Atlantic Ocean has swapped cod for nanoplastics.

August 4, 2025

The GST — past, present, future — and always tense

There’s little elegance in the way Australia approaches tax reform. It’s never a highway cruise.

July 22, 2025

Trump’s negotiation position diminishes as Albo sits him out

Anthony Albanese’s visit to China has exceeded everyone’s expectations, including mine, and arms him with extra weapons and arguments for when he meets President Donald Trump and United States officials, whenever that is to be. One can expect that Americans, and the advocates on The Australian will accuse him of weakening perceptions that Australia is firmly in the western camp. But he studiously said and did nothing that he has not said and done before, and one would have to parse each statement carefully to see evidence of any shift away from America, let alone movement towards the Chinese camp.

July 18, 2017

ALISON BROINOWSKI. Beware, armed response.

If Turnbulls plan becomes law and the prospects of the Opposition stopping anything to do with fighting terrorism are remote we can expect a terrorist attack to trigger an emergency response from the Special Operations Command, whose officers will have to be trained to shoot to kill other Australians.

July 27, 2025

Environment: Judge says advocate and protest to make government responsible for climate damage

Federal Court says Australian government not negligent in failing to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change. Human-induced climate change triples current European heatwave deaths but who is responsible for the harm and damage?

July 25, 2025

BREAKING: Albo doesn’t yell at Xi — (part of) nation panics

Albanese in China: 6 days, 1 panda, 0 shouting. (Some) media outrage level: critical.

August 16, 2025

Why Trump lashes India but holds back on China – Asian Media Report

In Asian media this week: US hopes Beijing might lean on Putin. Plus: Work starts on Xi-Trump summit in China; Former first lady jailed on gifts-for-influence charges; Japan looks to become regional weapons supplier; Indonesia deploys ballistic missile system; Hong Kong “suffering climate whiplash”.

August 11, 2025

Too late

President Donald Trump and his supporters have turned the US Government into a juggernaut that uses cruel and often immoral and illegal means to amass power and protect and increase the wealth of a select few, notably Trump himself.

July 16, 2025

The Global South’s AI moment

If the Global South acts now, it can help build a future where algorithms bridge divides instead of deepening them – where they enable peace, not war.

July 13, 2025

Environment: Ocean acidification has left the safe zone for humans

Seven of the nine planetary boundaries have now been crossed. Civil society calls for major reform of COP meetings. Big banks fund Australian deforestation. China leaving USA behind in the energy transition.

July 31, 2025

A violent Israeli settler and his Palestinian victim – only one is welcome in Trump's America

Relentless Israeli oppression and dismissive American policy embolden settlers and further degrade Palestinian life. As a friend of Palestinian teacher and human rights activist Adwah Hathaleen said of his killing, ‘This is how Israel erases us – one life at a time."

August 19, 2025

The economic reform roundtable and taxation

Taxation is on the agenda of the Economic Reform Roundtable and, despite Albanese’s reluctance to consider tax changes, it will be impossible to achieve Labor’s goals without reform to raise more revenue.

August 13, 2025

‘I entrust you with Palestine’: The final testament of Anas al-Sharif

Anas al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza, left behind a powerful farewell message – his final testament to his people, his family and the world.

July 20, 2025

Environment: Forget 1.5 degrees C, even 2 degrees C, while forests and peat disappear and natural gas booms

Peatlands are vital for human survival, but we are destroying the few that are left. Australia’s gas industry facing a volatile future. Chinese banks funding the destruction of tropical forests – not good for humans or tigers.

August 15, 2025

Breaking: Chilling ‘News Virus’ sweeps Australia

Chikungunya is a virus first identified in 1952 in what is now Tanzania, carried by mosquitoes, long since a globetrotter.

July 15, 2025

The politics of a police criminal organisation

In 1972, police at an Aboriginal settlement at Papunya, several hundred kilometres west of Alice Springs, closed down a travelling Slim Dusty concert after some of the young men somehow got access to alcohol and became drunk.

September 20, 2014

Secrecy and Propaganda.

Yesterday Richard Ackland in theGuardian.com highlighted the way that the media cooperated with the government in the propaganda about raids on potential Muslim terrorists in Sydney and Melbourne. Both the NSW and Commonwealth Governments spared no effort to highlight the raids. What a contrast this is to the secrecy of ‘on water matters’ in Operation Sovereign Borders.

Richard Ackland’s article can be found on the following link

John Menadue.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/19/sydney-dawn-counter-terrorism-raids-why-now-and-why-so-few-answers

July 19, 2017

ANDREW FARRAN. The Fall of Mosul and Raqqa opens the door for Australias exit from the Middle East

Now that ISIS has for all intents and purposes been driven out of Mosul and Raqqa the time has come for the Australian government to step back and review its diplomatic policies, and military commitments, in that region and focus back on the region of primary concern: East and Southeast Asia and the Southern Pacific**.** Whatever becomes of Trump himself there is little likelihood of the US reverting to the status quo ante as existing under the Bush and Obama administrations.

July 31, 2017

DUNCAN MACLAREN. The UK heads towards a cliff.

I_f Australia were the UK and heading for a suicidal plunge off an economic, social and cultural cliff-face, wouldnt you be worried?_

August 12, 2025

Hundreds arrested in London for opposing ban on nonviolent group Palestine Action

“Let us be under no illusion,” said one organiser. “The government is criminalising the people of Britain for standing up against the biggest genocide of the 21st century, as it’s live streamed from Gaza.”

July 26, 2025

Former UN Aid chief calls Gaza genocide 'Worst crime of the 21st century'

“I am absolutely convinced that what’s going on in Gaza is a genocide, because the thing speaks for itself,” said Martin Griffiths.

July 22, 2025

How Chalmers can square the budget circle despite stagnant productivity

As if Treasurer Jim Chalmers didn’t have a big enough problem trying to improve the economy’s productivity, we now know Treasury has privately reminded him he’ll need to find additional tax revenue and reduce government spending to keep the budget “sustainable” – that is, to stop the government’s debt getting a lot higher.

July 19, 2025

Common interests the basis for stronger China-Australia relations

Neither a port controversy nor any third-party interference cast a shadow over the trade and business focus of Albanese’s trip to China.

August 18, 2025

The US has changed. Australia hasn’t. It’s time to talk about where the relationship goes from here

Seven months after Donald Trump was inaugurated for a second term as US president, we are facing the most important moment in Australia’s foreign policy since the Iraq war. Australia needs to have a national conversation on the future of its alliance with the United States.

August 14, 2025

Israel bars entry of specialist medical teams into Gaza

As the world leaders produce yet more words and pass yet more resolutions on the genocide on Gaza, more than 12,000 children now are severely, dangerously malnourished as Israel continues to deny sufficient food into the Strip.

July 17, 2025

Federal Court rules Australian Government doesn’t have a duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change

The Federal Court has handed down its long-awaited judgment in a four-year climate case brought by Torres Strait Islanders.

August 16, 2025

A better and fairer school system? Just look to Canada

Ontario implemented needs-based funding a quarter of a century ago, and the benefits go beyond student achievement.

August 10, 2025

Justice for Palestine: Why Hamas must be involved

What next for Palestine? Gaza is a wasteland, a dystopian scene of devastation and starvation. The occupied West Bank is under siege from rampant Israeli settler gunmen.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal