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.

August 1, 2025

Americans' support for Israel's Gaza war hits record low, poll shows

Just 8% of Democrats and 25% of independents now back Israel’s campaign in Gaza, compared to 71% of Republicans, marking the largest partisan divide Gallup has recorded on the issue.

July 31, 2025

Tax, productivity growth and equality

Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ upcoming economic summit has triggered renewed debate over the links between tax, productivity, growth and equity. And inevitably arguments between the right and the left – can we understand both and find a way through? I hope so.

August 28, 2025

We have arrested the development of our young

I hope you’re not among those silly people who concluded last week’s economic reform roundtable was just a talkfest that will lead to nothing concrete. Breaking news: we have to get together and talk about things before we agree on what our biggest problems are and what we will do about them.

August 11, 2025

The recession door opens

This past week was punctuated by a perfect storm of negative US economic reports and events.

September 6, 2025

Southeast Asia pragmatic on China's rise

In China this week, the former Australian foreign minister on the global power shifts changing the world, and regional responses.

August 23, 2025

Albanese's politics of patience: Democracy needs mature leadership

When the Voice referendum failed, political commentators and Opposition leaders demanded an immediate response from Anthony Albanese.

September 15, 2025

The UN turns 80

The most important agenda item for the United Nations General Assembly this month will be the future of Palestine. But Palestinian leaders will be unable to discuss it, because they will be absent.

September 7, 2025

Health workers in the US are demanding the resignation of Robert Kennedy Jr

When I worked in the US, I visited the Centre for Disease Control on a number of occasions. The faculty members were extraordinarily competent and influential, because of the universal and deserved respect for the CDC.

September 10, 2025

Albanese’s sliding doors moment on climate

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has just been handed an unflinching mirror at the Pacific Islands Forum.

August 27, 2025

The ABC's public comment guidelines: A 'crackdown' on management, not workers

The ABC’s new public comment guidelines, which replace its existing “personal use of social media” policy and follow the debacle of the Antoinette Lattouf affair, have been portrayed by rival media organisations as “a crackdown”, “a gag order”, “a hit” on ABC employees, and other such alarming epithets.

October 3, 2025

Jane Goodall, the gentle disrupter whose research on chimpanzees redefined what it meant to be human

Anyone proposing to offer a master class on changing the world for the better, without becoming negative, cynical, angry or narrow-minded in the process, could model their advice on the life and work of pioneering animal behaviour scholar Jane Goodall.

August 8, 2025

'Israel doesn't want journalists on the ground': CNN's Jeremy Diamond on the fight to enter Gaza

The foreign press corps in Israel has been battling — unsuccessfully — since the Gaza war began in October 2023 to be permitted access to the Strip in order to report on the conflict and the humanitarian situation there from the ground.

August 25, 2025

China’s critical minerals chokehold sparks Quad action

The global production of advanced technologies — from smartphones and electric vehicles to renewable energy and military systems — relies on rare earth elements such as neodymium and dysprosium, essential for permanent magnets.

August 2, 2025

New ethical multilateralism of the fraternal economy program of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences

We have arrived at a pivot of history. The world system that emerged at the end of World War II is over. The seeming truths of an earlier age have become dangerous illusions of our own age.

September 14, 2025

Gertrude Stein got famous lampooning celebrity culture – but not everyone got the joke

Today, modernist literary icon Gertrude Stein is famous for many reasons.

September 18, 2025

Gaza City under relentless bombardment as Israel launches ground invasion

UN chief calls situation in Gaza “horrendous” as a UN inquiry concludes that Israel’s nearly two-year war on Gaza amounts to genocide.

October 5, 2025

The press and the Dismissal – Part I

On the morning of 15 October 1975, most major newspapers advocated in their editorials that the Labor Government should go.

September 24, 2025

Albanese takes his usual each-way bet on climate change

After last week, Anthony Albanese and his Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen are entitled to a great sigh of relief.

September 20, 2025

Labor is taking Australia into a US war with China

The Albanese Labor Government is actively making plans to take Australia into a future US war with China.

September 25, 2025

UN at 80: Gaza – the deep stain on the UN’s collective conscience - Part 3

The deadly Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 provided the Netanyahu government with the pretext it needed to unleash a vicious war on the land and people of Gaza.

July 23, 2025

Stephen Colbert’s firing: the critical unanswered question

Why now? It was either pandering to Trump, management’s incompetence, or both.

July 15, 2025

Australian parliamentarians urgently need lessons in international law

As the new Parliament returns this month, it is timely to ask just how many Australian parliamentarians need urgent instruction in international law and how it impacts on government decision-making which complies with the United Nations rules-based order developed by the efforts of so many nations since 1945.

July 24, 2025

Famine expert: Israel's starvation of Gaza most 'Minutely designed and controlled' since WWII

“This is preventable starvation,” said Alex de Waal. “It is entirely man-made.”

July 20, 2025

Military operations seen through Gauguin, the Colosseum and responsibility

Public policy in general, and the military operations given the titles “Swords of Iron”, “Gideon’s Chariots” (by Israel) and “Midnight Hammer” (by the Pentagon), more specifically, need to be understood in terms that transcend the purely strategic and which can be dismissed only at the risk of condoning barbarism.

September 28, 2025

The world in 2050 is already here

Dr Mike Gilligan has reminded us that Australia’s defence and foreign policies are pulling in opposite directions: we preach “equilibrium” in the Pacific while binding ourselves ever more tightly to Washington’s war plans against China. His warning is timely, but we must go further.

September 11, 2025

Murdoch resolves succession drama – a win for Lachlan, a loss for public interest journalism

Rupert Murdoch has succeeded in securing his vision for the future of News Corporation, the global media empire he has always thought of as his family business.

August 9, 2025

How we at Physicians for Human Rights Israel decided that the Gaza war is a genocide

When examining all the factors together, we identify a clear pattern that indicates Israeli intent to kill Palestinians in Gaza. The systematic nature is the smoking gun.

July 29, 2025

'Everything beautiful in their lives is gone': US physicians read aloud the searing testimony of desperate doctors and patients in Gaza

“I have a cold. And in one hour, I’ll have finished a 24-hour shift, heartbroken again. I lost a cardiac patient because we had no medication.

August 21, 2025

The promised ceasefire and Gaza’s shattered hopes

Since the outbreak of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023, talk of a “nearby ceasefire” or an “imminent halt to hostilities” has never ceased.

September 2, 2025

Marking September 2: Lest we forget

This week marks 80 years since the end of World War II. While Europe celebrated the end of the war in May, hostilities dragged on for several months in the Far East until Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan on 15 August 1945 and this declaration was formalised on 2 September.

August 4, 2025

ALP members demand more from PM on Palestine

As the genocide in Palestine continues, pressure on governments grows across the globe. In Australia, ALP members are demanding more from Anthony Albanese.

July 12, 2025

Netanyahu leaves Washington without a Gaza ceasefire, just like he wanted

Benjamin Netanyahu is sabotaging talks, hoping Donald Trump will blame Hamas if negotiations fail.

August 24, 2025

Paper promises, real weapons: Transparency, accountability and arms transfer policy

_Australia will recognise_ Palestinian statehood in September, while at the same time continuing to supply critical components for the F-35 fighter jets used by Israel in its military operations in Gaza.

August 17, 2025

Fifty-five years on, Bertrand Russell's words are worth returning to

Believed to be one of the last things renowned philosopher, pacifist and public intellectual Bertrand Russell wrote, it is as relevant today as it was 55 years ago.

August 6, 2025

Australia should recognise Palestine. To not do so only rewards Israel’s crimes

Australia was among the first countries to recognise the state of Israel, but regrettably looks set to be among the last to recognise the state of Palestine.

July 18, 2025

Despite denials, Australia has exported F-35 parts to Israel

Leaked documents show Canberra has been supplying Israel with the means to maintain F-35 fighter jets so it can continue its genocidal campaign in Gaza, Peter Cronau and Kellie Tranter report.

September 29, 2025

The Chris Hedges Report: We are all antifa now

The designation of the amorphous group antifa as a terrorist organisation allows the state to brand all dissidents as supporters of antifa and prosecute them as terrorists.

October 4, 2025

China’s youth: Between collectivism and the new individualism

On a recent trip through China, I was struck by the contrast between its classrooms and its city streets.

July 13, 2025

Kostakidis to go before court, after judiciary recognises anti-Zionism is not antisemitism

Mary Kostakidis should hold her head up high right now, because of all the Australian journalists who are honestly calling out the holocaust that Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinians.

September 8, 2025

Trump and the post-American world

Donald Trump’s blatant campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize has a new claim for his resume – his “diplomacy” is contributing to a new world order.

August 15, 2025

Israeli officials reportedly held talks about displacing Palestinians to war-torn South Sudan

“If implemented, the plans would amount to transferring people from one war-ravaged land at risk of famine to another,” the Associated Press said.

August 30, 2025

What the UN could do now on Gaza

The UN has options, now, in Gaza, as long as members states support it, says Mark Seddon, director, Centre for UN Studies, University of Buckingham.

October 2, 2025

Peace without justice

We are told that Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan envisages a potential pathway to a future Palestinian state.

August 5, 2025

Tens of thousands join march over Sydney Harbour Bridge

Editor comment: Australians in their tens of thousands stood up over the weekend and delivered a very clear message to the Albanese Government and the global community – the killing in Palestine must end. Across the world the action did not go unnoticed. This report is from the Times of Israel.

July 30, 2025

Silencing the mandate: US sanctions on Francesca Albanese a symbol of international law’s twilight

Imagine a scene worthy of Orwell’s worst nightmare: a United Nations envoy, appointed to report on human rights violations, excellently performing in her job despite formidable difficulties, and met with sanctions by one of the world’s most powerful nations. But this isn’t satire; it’s July 2025.

July 21, 2025

From media darling to persona non Grata: Greta Thunberg’s journey

Alan MacLeod looks at how the Swedish climate activist widened her focus to the capitalist system and Israeli genocide in Gaza and lost the attention of the corporate press.

September 23, 2025

Israel must end its genocide in Gaza. But Australia must act too

Almost two years since Israel started its current campaign in the Gaza Strip, many governments are reluctant to call it what it is – genocide – simply because acknowledging it as such would incur legal obligations.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal