August 13, 2015

Trans Pacific Partnership and consumer rights.

The consumer magazine Choice has recently carried articles by Sarah Agar about the TPP and what might be traded away in terms of cheaper medicines, public interest laws and food labelling. This report was updated on 29 July, about a fortnight before Trade Minister Andrew Robb decided that he would walk away from the TPP negotiations. This article in Choice is a useful background on many of the key issues that were at stake. Fortunately the government has decided that the TPP was balanced too much in favour of corporate interests and at the expense of consumer interests. John Menadue.

May 31, 2016

EVAN WILLIAMS. Chasing Asylum. Film Review.

I rate it among the best Australian documentaries ever made

If you want to see Chasing Asylum, Eva Orners brilliant new Australian documentary, my advice is to hurry along. At last count it was showing on just two screens in Sydney, and when I went along to the Dendy in Newtown on a recent Sunday afternoon usually a good time for ticket sales I was directed upstairs to a little cinema at the end of a long corridor to find the place half full. The ads are promoting it as The film the Australian Government doesnt want you to see and that I can believe. But does anyone want us to see it? Not the distributors theres barely a mention in the ads. Not, apparently, the ABC or SBS, who should be seizing it with both hands for prime-time screening during the election campaign. Perhaps thats the problem the film is politically explosive, and everyone seems to be running scared, including, of course, our political masters.

June 24, 2014

Bill Van Esveld. Dispatches: What's in a Name? A lot, in the West Bank.

Is it occupied, disputed, or contested? Some are finding it hard to find the right words to describe the West Bank.

In a move widely seen as an effort to demonstrate its pro-Israel bona fides, Australias attorney general said on June 5 that the Australian government would stop referring to East Jerusalem which is part of the West Bank as occupied territory. Attorney General George Brandis explained the change was being made because the term is freighted with pejorative implications, relates to historical events, and is neither appropriate nor useful to describe areas of negotiations in the peace process. On Twitter, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu welcomedAustralias statement, calling eastern Jerusalem an area in dispute and condemning the chorus of hypocrisy and ignorance of history around the issue.

July 9, 2014

Turning the federation clock back to 1901.

The Commission of Audit has made many unhelpful suggestions about budgetary and economic issues. It seems to have been driven more by ideology than fact. See my blog of May 1 2014 The Commission of Audit and facing the wrong way.

One of its most unhelpful suggestions is that Australia returns to the 1901 intentions of the federation fathers and with clear lines of responsibility drawn between the commonwealth and the states as set out in Section 51 of the Constitution. The Abbott Governments terms of reference for its White Paper on Federalism also suggest that his government would like us to go back to the arguments about sovereignty. We are being urged to look back to 1901 rather than focus on the way our constitution has evolved to date and will need to evolve in the decades ahead.

February 3, 2016

John Menadue. Balance and the ABC

The ABC has a mistaken notion of media balance.

It has become clear that Nick Ross, a Senior Technology Editor at the ABC, could not publish a story critical of Malcolm Turnbulls NBN unless he also published an article critical of Labors NBN. To add to this bias by ABC management he was told that Labors plan was dead because Labor couldnt win the next election. The ABC management was desperate to be onside with the new Coalition government.

August 27, 2013

Japanese amnesia and the contrast with Germany. Guest blogger: Susan Menadue Chun

Our four Australian/Korean children were educated in Japanese primary schools.

Every summer holiday we struggled through the prescribed homework text- Natsu no Tomo (Summers friend). In the early August segment, there were assignments regarding WWII. They stated, talk to your parents about WWII and write a composition about the importance of peace. So, we talked to our children about their Korean grandfather, how he was conscripted from Korea into the Japanese army, how he fought in the savage battles on the Truk Island, was injured and was badly treated because he was not Japanese. In retrospect, writing about a Korean grandfather was probably off-limits as all Japanese children were expected to write the customary composition regarding how the Japanese had suffered as a result of the nuclear bomb and the importance of peace. Every following year in the _Natsu no Tomo_the topic never progressed past the nuclear bomb and a peace discussion. There was no mention of Japans hostile war of aggression. Because the nuclear bomb transformed Japan into a victim, education played the key role in creating what many Japan critics call collective amnesia.

July 28, 2015

David Holmes. Tony Abbott, Rupert Murdoch and coal.

As the latest State of the Climate report reaffirms 2014 to be the hottest on record, the NSW Liberal Party is pressing ahead with plans for a Carnival of Coal in August. The partys upper house whip, Peter Phelps, has appealed to members to download a sticker for MP office doors in support of the upcoming carbon love-in. It says:

I loved carbon before it was coal.

The Liberal paleo-love for coal, which Tony Abbott has declared good for humanity, is at least a point of differentiation with Labor. Labor does not promote such slogans at all even if, in Victoria, the Andrews Labor government is still issuing coal exploration licences.

September 2, 2018

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Tony Abbott - from a back bench rebel to a back bench envoy.

Our new, or at least our current, Prime Minister, has a plan to solve the Tony Abbott problem make him an envoy to his indigenous Australia.

Of course he would prefer to make the man an envoy to outer space, if not beyond; but politics remains the art of the possible. So the idea is to try and get him as far out of sight as is practicable, and hope that he shuts up in the process.

September 27, 2014

Andrew Kaldor. Are We Paying Too Much To Stop The Boats?

One of the claims that some commentators like to make about Australias asylum seeker policy is that it saves money. Its got to be cheaper to stop the boats than to have people coming to our shores that way to seek refuge. Right?

Wrong. It is not easy to find the actual total costs of Australias policy of mandatory detention and offshore processing across all agencies because no government has ever provided a total figure. But the National Commission of Audit recently released data which shines a light on the huge and rapidly increasing costs of our policies.

July 9, 2014

Rod Tiffen. 'The Australian' and tobacco consumption.

As the Australian approaches its 50th anniversary amid much self-congratulation, an insight into its editorial standards and how it conducts itself in controversies is provided by its recent reporting of competing claims over tobacco consumption.

Tobacco is still the largest preventable source of premature death in the world.

Despite the scale of its damage the Australians owner Rupert Murdoch has always had a curious attachment to the tobacco industry. He was on the Philip Morris Board for a decade, and members of that company have often been on the News Corp Board. Internal Philip Morris documents in the US described him as sympathetic to their position and his newspapers as our natural allies and noted that his papers rarely publish anti-smoking articles.

February 22, 2017

JOHN MENADUE. Medical specialists high fees and poor accountability.

So much of the public attention is on care in general practice, but specialist healthcare has some very serious problems. The first is excessive remuneration of many specialists. In some cases it could only be described as greed. The second is the lack of accountability for care by many specialists and the unwillingness of their organisations to tackle the problem.

August 15, 2017

ALISON BROINOWSKI. Existential threats

In a sequence of events that recall the Cuban missile crisis, the world has again come within a brain-snap of nuclear destruction. This is the moment Australia should have been ready to deal with properly and democratically, by having a parliamentary debate to decide whether and why we should or should not go to war. Instead, this most serious matter of national security is reduced to party rivalry and media sensationalism.

June 1, 2016

KAITLIN WALSH. The conundrum of engagement and ending the blame game. Any takers?

Political outsider Kaitlin Walsh, self-proclaimed ordinary person, rakes over the pallid entrails of our body politic. And considers what might shut Mathias Cormann up.

July 22, 2013

Zimmerman - race or gender? Guest blogger: Marcus Einfeld

Following their counterparts in the US, the attention of the international media has been attracted by the acquittal last Saturday by a Miami jury of 6 women of neighbourhood watch monitor George Zimmerman for shooting dead a young black teenager Trayvon Martin. My knowledge of the matter comes only from media reports but I have taken the trouble to seek out some of the more responsible outlets for these observations.

September 7, 2016

CHRIS BONNOR. Reports on schools: lift the bonnet and ration the petrol.

A couple of reports out on schools this week are urging policy shifts, but in different directions. The latest offering from the money-doesnt-matter brigade comes from the Productivity Commission in its draft report Lifting the bonnet on Australias schools. Meanwhile Jim McMorrow has completed an analysis which shows that when it comes to money, public schools and disadvantaged schools generally face a lean future.

The Commission wasnt crudely asked to investigate the alleged non-link between money and results but it was happy to throw around a few generalisations and the media reports certainly focused on this issue.

November 7, 2014

Antony Whitlam. Tribute to Gough Whitlam

The Honourable (Edward) Gough Whitlam, AC QC

State Memorial Service

The Honourable Antony Whitlam QC

Sydney Town Hall

5 November 2014

Auntie Millie Ingram gave a moving Welcome to Country. I also wish to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eoranation on whose land this notable building stands. I payrespect to Gadigal elders - past and present - and to so manyother indigenous Australians we are honoured to have joinwith us today, including members of Vincent Lingiaris family.

April 22, 2015

John Menadue. The price we are paying for the Greens.

The recent successes of the Greens in state elections in Victoria and NSW show us how populist nonsense can succeed at least in the short term. It has also shown the failure of the ALP to counter the threat of the Greens.

There are two major issues on which the policies of the Greens have brought disastrous results for Australia. When it really mattered on climate change and asylum seekers, they sided with Tony Abbott.

November 4, 2014

Hugh Cortazzi. Does right-wing extremism threaten Japans democracy?

In my blog of 29 May 2014 ‘Australia-Japan - friends should be frank’, I referred to the tipping point in Japanese domestic politics with the growing ultra nationalism being promoted by Prime Minister Abe. Sir Hugh Cortazzi, who served as Britain’s ambassador to Japan from 1980 to 1984 has expressed similar concerns about trends in Japan. In an opinion piece in the Japan Times on 3 November, he asked the question ‘Does right-wing extremism threaten Japan’s democracy?’ The link to this article is below. John Menadue.

July 15, 2015

Race Mathews. 'Let us now begin'

A local Labor journal Grassroots, has been advocating reform of the ALP to ’empower members, branches and communities’. With the ALP Federal Conference on July 24-26 I will be posting three articles on party reform ‘past, present and future’. I will also be re-posting an article on refugee policy. John Menadue.

The philosopher George Santayana wrote famously Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

A case in point is failure by the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to remain mindful of the circumstances and shortcomings that denied it office from the middle -1950s federally until 1972 and until 1982 in Victoria.

October 18, 2015

Robert Mickens. The Pope's Opposition.

It has been known for quite some time that a number of cardinals and bishops, both in Rome and abroad, are to put it mildly uncomfortable with the way Pope Francispontificate is unfolding.

Well, this week it all spilled out into the open when it was revealed that several cardinals including three top Vatican officials (Cardinals Pell, Mller and Sarah) wrote a letter to the Pope that basically criticized the way he is running the Synod of Bishops.

October 23, 2015

Derk Swieringa. Ka-ching - The interest of the Labor Party in poker machines in the ACT.

This article is prompted by the recent ABC program ‘Ka-Ching’ which details the subtle mechanisms that are programmed into poker machines to make them addictive. It reminded me of the clever engineers at VW who were able to program software into their cars to cheat pollution testing.

Let me also declare my personal experience of the havoc caused to families by poker machine addiction. My late mother in law blew her last $60,000 of retirement savings on mainly poker machine gambling. A close friend’s sister in law committed suicide after she gambled away her own daughters’ savings. Sadly, there are few families that have not been adversely affected by the curse of gambling addiction.

September 14, 2015

Ian McAuley. Refugees and German redemption.

Imagine if Australia were to open its doors to 240 000 refugees.

Thats twenty times our offer to take 12 000 Syrians, or around the same number as our total annual immigration in all categories.

Its what Angela Merkels offer of 800 000 places would come to if scaled to Australias population.

Although some may call Merkels offer a brave decision (a shorthand for suicidal political stupidity in the TV show Yes-Minister), it makes excellent sense on many criteria.

July 8, 2014

Warwick Elsche. I hope you know what you're doing, Tony!

Rum has never been my drink; two wipe-outs in youth. One nip - very nice, two too many, any more dangerous - positively confusing.

I suppose it was surprising then that I chose it as my companion as, with another million Australians, I settled in to hear the policy speech which would oust a dysfunctional Labor Government and make a Prime Minister of robust, forthright, Tony Abbott.

Perhaps I should admit to a strong pro-Liberal partisanship; a particular admiration for Tony and the direct brand of politics he represents. It was this quality which had bought his Party to the point of certain accession to Government.

October 15, 2014

The Italian solution.

Last night the ABC program, Foreign Correspondent, carried a remarkable and moving account of the work of the Italian Navy in rescuing ‘people fleeing conflict or economic despair in the Middle East and Africa’.

The Italian Admiral in charge of the operations in the Mediterranean said ‘We have the duty in these cases when we are at sea to intervene to save human life. If we are not at sea, then we can’t see what happens. We can close our eyes, turn off the lights and in that way, there’s no need to “turn back” the boats because they will die. We need to remember that International Rights exist. There are international laws that our countries have ratified’.

May 16, 2015

Parliament of Australia. Russia in the Region.

Current Affairs.

Beyond the attention assigned to the arrival of Russian naval vesselsin the Coral Sea coincident with the G20 meeting in Brisbane in November last year, there has been little public scrutiny of Russias recent activities in the Asia-Pacific, and particularly in Southeast Asia.

Russian engagement with Southeast Asia is certainly not a new phenomenon, with Presidents Putin and Medvedev clearly pursuing Asia-oriented foreign policies since the late 1990s. Recent efforts to expand relations with China have been teamed with attempts to expand links with Southeast Asia and promote investment in Russias Far East and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Over the last year or so Russian engagement with Southeast Asia has picked up markedlyin terms of overall economic cooperation, but notably in terms of strategic arrangements, nuclear energy discussions, and weapons sales.

January 13, 2015

David Timbs. The Synod of Bishops.

Catholic lay people face a very difficult task in attempting to influence the members of the 2015 Ordinary Synod of Bishops. Firstly, they will have a challenge in finding bishops to listen to them. Secondly, they will have a challenge in finding bishops ready to accept the risks associated with taking the Sensus Fidei Fidelium (or sense of faith of believers) seriously and then walking the road of Christ in solidarity with (syn-odos) their people. From long and painful experience, many Catholics who have worked for significant reform in the Church have learnt that there have been only a few bishops in Australia who take the laity seriously, show themselves ready to engage in conversation and to listen to what is said and to make it their own. The situation may now be changing.

February 23, 2017

RAMESH THAKUR. The nuclear deal with Iran was a triumph of global diplomacy, not a success of US sanctions

The deal (with Iran) is worth defending for three reasons: it is a good accommodation of each sides bottom lines; sanctions may not have been as decisive as the hawks seem to believe in explaining Irans signature; and unilateral US sanctions will prove even less effectual.

July 17, 2013

Don't race to the bottom on asylum seekers!

Kevin Rudd, in your review of asylum seeker policy please dont let Foreign Minister Carr lead you to a race to the bottom with Tony Abbott.

The media is clearly being briefed that in a revision of asylum policy, the Government is considering tougher new country assessments by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It is suggested by the Foreign Minister that this is necessary to exclude persons who are really economic migrants.

September 9, 2016

Defence & Australian Strategic Policy Institute - Joined at the Hip

Following on John Menadues recent item in which he dissected the funding of Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and the pervasive influence of the Australia/US Defence and Intelligence Complex of which ASPI is a part, he questioned whether ASPI as a supposedly independent source of strategic advice could provide the advice necessary to get the balance right for Australia between the US and China.

Andrew Farran argues that it is already too late because of the intertwining threads of our intelligence and military arrangements with the US, now inextricable. We have missed the opportunity to develop a force structure suited to our national strategic situation and interests at far less cost than will be incurred by partnering US strategic operations. In this regard ASPI has lost its original purpose and is not providing the independent strategic advice to government envisaged for it.

November 5, 2014

As the Berlin wall fell, checks on capitalism crumbled.

The Economics Editor of the Guardian, Larry Elliott, describes how capitalism is facing an increasing crisis. He says that after the fall of the Berlin wall, we have seen the dark side of the post-Cold War model. Instead of trickle-down, there has been a trickle-up. Instead of the triumph of democracy there has been the triumph of the elites. We are seeing this in so many ways - the avarice of bankers, growing inequality, executive salaries and greed. This article suggests that the Vatican may be right that markets must be underpinned by morality. For this interesting and challenging account, see the link below. John Menadue.

December 1, 2015

Luke Fraser. What the Australian Treasurer can do for roads.

or - How to stop pissing taxpayer money up against the wall!

Australias Treasurer Scott Morrison has signalled his reform priority:

Im interested in talking to people who have ideas how we can get spending under control. We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

There is plenty of money to be saved in roads. They cost Australians over $30 billion annually, but what does Australia see from all this spending? When major projects are independently assessed at all - which is infrequently - they often expose themselves as commercial and economic duds. As Dr Michael Keating and I explained in an earlier collaboration, this approach doesnt add to national productivity - it creates conditions where it can drain away[i].

January 24, 2016

John Menadue. Supporting Adam Goodes.

This blog is a repost from 1 August 2015.

Adam Goodes has been bullied and vilified because he has reminded us of our dark history and the discrimination that continues against him and many others in Australia today. We dont like being reminded of the dispossession, killing, poisoning and discrimination against our own indigenous people. We want to forget that 30,000 indigenous people were killed in the Frontier Wars by police and white settlers. Yet we have scarcely a memorial to the 30,000 who died defending their land. The Australian War Memorial turns its back on the Frontier Wars yet with the Australian Government is spending $700 million on the centenary of WW1.

April 5, 2013

Are most asylum seekers and refugees Muslims?

Well, as a matter of fact, most asylum seekers and refugees are not Muslims.

But I am sure that many commentators and a lot of the community believe that most are Muslim. The dog-whistlers like Scott Morrison feed on this assumption .According to Jane Cadzow in the Sun Herald he urged the Coalition parties to ramp up its questioning to capitalise on anti-Muslim sentiment.

Figures on this issue are extracted from the DIAC Settlement data base. One reason for the difficulty in analysing the figures is that a religious test is not applied to persons seeking refugee status, and neither should it. Ascertaining religious background often then depends on voluntary declarations.

June 14, 2016

PAUL BUDDE. The more fibre the better.

You cant turn the clock back and in the case of the NBN that means you cant undo those parts of the Multi-Technology-Mix (MtM) without immediately destructing billion of dollars. While it is a pity that the original plan providing fibre-to-the-home to 93% of the population - cant be continued the next best thing is to deliver fibre to as many premises as possible as that could avoid replacing the MtM in a few years time.

July 9, 2014

Tony Smith. Singing out for asylum seekers.

Recent poll results that show rising support for the Abbott Governments approach to border security are disturbing even if not entirely surprising. Asylum seekers have been detained offshore, out of general sight and conveniently out of mind for those Australians who prefer not to think about the issue, and the Labor Opposition has consistently failed to offer any decent alternative. Given that refugee advocates have had the better of the Government on details of truth and on virtually every moral and economic argument, they might well be wondering what they must do to convince Australians that our approach to asylum seekers is shameful and urgently in need of change.

April 22, 2016

Evan Williams. What Bill Shorten should say but wont

With Australias longest-ever election campaign now underway, politicians face a problem. How long can they go on repeating the same promises and slogans? According to usually reliable sources, Bill Shorten drafted a speech for his campaign launch which was immediately shredded by his close advisers. Leaked extracts are reproduced here by Evan Williams, who accepts no responsibility for their accuracy.

Men and women of Australia!

We all remember the words of my great predecessor Gough Whitlam when he launched his election campaign in 1972. Tonight, as we approach the centenary of his birth, I hope to draw some inspiration from his record and achievement. In the best Whitlam tradition, Im presenting an ambitious program for reform and renewal.

January 24, 2016

Stan Grant. The Australian Dream!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEOssW1rw0I

January 27, 2024

The ICJ could not order a general ceasefire. It ordered Israel to cease fire

The responses by U.S. main stream media to the ICJ judgment on Israel are moronic.

August 15, 2017

GREG LOCKHART. An old imperial reflex

Rawdon Dalrymples 4 August blog A personal link to World War One presents us with an automatic defence of the old imperial order.

June 24, 2014

Eric Hodgens. On a Wing and a Prayer A Personal Memoir.

As priests we were sent out on a mission to spread the Gospel and be pastors of the flock. But it was the secular world that formulated mission statements and pastoral care policies. We had the vocation, but it was the secular world that developed vocational training. We were good at the concepts but slow at the application. The nuances of Scholastic theology werent much help once we got out. The seminary had initiated us into the clerical class but we had to learn our task on the fast track of self-help launched on a wing and a prayer.

February 7, 2013

Sport and Markets. Guest blogger: Ian McAuley

We are all suitably shocked by Justice Minister Jason Clares announcement of the findings of the Australian Crime Commissions investigation into the use of prohibited substances and links to organized crime in sports. I heard his solemn announcement as I was driving home, past our local croquet club, and wondered if any code was exempt.

Sport in Australia has never been entirely clean. Most people of my age have enough stories from the racetracks to bore our dinner guests for hours. But we also recall an era when league football was an outlet for suburban tribalism, when a player for Collingwood or Port Adelaide actually lived in Collingwood or Port Adelaide, when white-clad cricketers played on green grounds surrounded by white fences, and when the only signs of commercialism were the vendors of Fourn Twenty or Adams Pies.

September 24, 2015

Michael Keating. Fiscal Repair - both Revenue and Expenditure.

With Federal Budget deficits projected to continue indefinitely, the one thing that is generally agreed is that fiscal repair and consolidation is absolutely necessary. Where there is debate, however, is about how much of the repair job must be achieved by expenditure savings and how much by increasing revenue.

In this regard, the new Treasurer Scott Morrison has declared that Australia has a spending problem not a revenue problem. Others including the Shadow Treasurer, Chris Bowen, and the esteemed former head of the Treasury, Ken Henry, have disagreed. Instead they consider that restoring the Budget to a modest surplus will require action on the revenue side as well as on the expenditure side of the budget.

July 2, 2014

Japan and comfort women.

In 1993 the Japanese government issued an apology to comfort women who had suffered sexual abuse by the Japanese military during WWII. This apology was called the ‘Kono Declaration’. Kono was the chief cabinet secretary.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been trying to undo the words of the Kono Declaration without officially withdrawing the declaration. In an article published in the Canberra Times on June 29 2014, see link below,Tessa Morris-Suzuki describes how Japan is going about ’the art of un-apologising’.

November 27, 2014

Peter Hughes. Reintroduction of Temporary Protection Visas -Time to Negotiate

In the last few days of the 2014 Parliament, the controversial Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment (Resolving the Asylum Legacy Caseload) Bill 2014 remains to be considered.

The Bill contains a wide range of proposed changes to the asylum system reflecting, amongst other things, concern by the government that the current system is too heavily weighted towards approving asylum claims a concern shared, but not acted on, by the previous government before losing office.

August 13, 2014

John Menadue. Missing in action when Kerry and Hagel come calling?

I can understand Tony Abbotts wish to direct attention away from the budget by going off to The Hague and London. But are Australias national and policy interests being served by his absence when John Kerry and Chuck Hegel visit us.

In my blog of July 31 Overplaying ones hand I quoted Tony Abbotts comments on MH370 in PNG. He said Satellite footage shows what could be debris from the missing airlines flight MH370. But he was wrong.

January 25, 2014

Michael Kelly SJ: Chaos reigns in Bangkok

The fear of many Thais is that the country will end up like the Philippines so laid back that nothing gets done, so corrupt that everyone stops trying, so mismanaged that there is misery for many just around the corner.

While things may not have reached the depths of Marcos era chaos, there are worry signs. Why? There seems now no way out of the circumstances the country finds itself in:

October 16, 2016

ANDREW FARRAN. The legal spat in Canberra - more serious than we may think.

Legal advice on a government decision to go to war.

The legal spat between the Commonwealth Solicitor-General and the Attorney- General is potentially more serious than it might appear.

It is not uncommon that certain actions or proposed actions by governments raise either constitutional or international legal issues of questionable validity. In this context the Governor-General, the Parliament, the bureaucracy, the military and others in the official sphere may seek assurance that what they or the country are being committed to do is legal. Should it not be legal there may be serious personal consequences for them.

September 20, 2015

Lynne Strong. Climate change and farming.

Farming in partnership with nature.

I live in a very special part of the world.The view from my front verandah has rolling green hills to the left, the ocean to the right and in front of me - the ocean.You can understand why I call it paradise. Our family has been farming in this region for over 180 years. Our family dairy farm is located in steep rainforest country at Jamberoo in NSW.

November 10, 2016

STEPHEN FITZGERALD. Donald Trump. Seizing the opportunity to strengthen relations with countries in Asia.

Kim Beazley, as shocked as anyone by the election result, has said: We do have one advantage going for us with a Trump presidency, and thats this. We are a member of the only American alliance that the Trump people unreservedly approve of. So at least weve got a basis of a discussion with them. Kim seems to believe this is some kind of plus. But I think it is frightening. The favoured client of the Trump people! If that is true, what does it say about us, and the expectations of us in regional and international affairs as the Trump presidency gets into stride?

Bob Carr said to his fellow panellists on ABC News 24 on Wednesday that they must stop normalising Trump, the Trump phenomenon and the coming Trump presidency, stop saying well weve had this kind of thing before, like Reagan for example. You can see this normalising already in the first responses of Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop. But as Bob said, you have to understand that Trumps win expresses a complete shift in the US political scene and its not going to change after Inauguration day.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal