November 22, 2014

John Menadue. Undiplomatic, politically partisan and wrong!

Julie Bishop has decided to take on the President of the United States over his comments to an audience at the University of Queensland on the state of the Great Barrier Reef.

It shows immaturity to jump in so quickly to defend what I think is the indefensible by attacking others without any real basis.

It is also an example of how the Liberal Party sees the alliance between us and the US, not as an alliance between our two countries, but as a special relationship between the Liberal Party of Australia and the Right Wing of the Republican Party in the US. Such behaviour does great damage to Australias long term relationship with the US

June 27, 2016

ALISON BROINOWSKI. Process or Policy

Three governments are currently consulting their constituents. Two are offering them a significant choice about future foreign policy: one is not. The US asks delegates to decide between a President Donald Trump who would expel Hispanics, bar entry to Muslims, and flatten parts of the Middle East, and a President Hillary Clinton who would take a tougher line against states which challenge the US. The UK has asked citizens to decide if Britain should separate from the European Union and, presumably, tie itself more tightly to the US. Australian leaders are asking voters almost nothing about what foreign policy initiatives would differentiate Prime Minister Turnbull from a Prime Minister Shorten.

August 26, 2015

Stuart Harris. Who are we backing in Syria?

It would be a serious mistake for Australia to respond positively to the US request, that we presumably invited, to join in airstrikes on Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Such action would probably be against international law, and in any case be ineffective, while increasing IS recruitment and failing to resolve the undoubted problem. Like US policies towards Syria, it also lacks clear strategic objectives. IS, while certainly brutal is the armed opposition to the also brutal and corrupt Assad government, the overthrow of which ostensibly remains the prime target of US effort. More importantly for Australia, the civil war raging in Syria, with its multiple competing domestic and international interests, has increasingly developed into an intense Sunni versus Shia sectarian civil war. Whose side are we backing? Despite political concerns about Australias domestic security, nothing could be worse for our multicultural society and its security than an action likely to stir a sectarian conflict among our Moslem citizens.

April 14, 2017

Trump is Ignorant of History and So is His Chump Sean Spicer

This article by Middle East expert, ROBERT FISK, was first published in The Independent on 12 April 2017.

Fisk comments ‘Gas, cruise missiles, barrel bombs, Hitler and the American media. Mix them all up and I suppose you get Trump’s new policy in the Middle East.’

October 2, 2024

A five-minute scroll

Today our five-minute scroll on X was filled with Julian Assange’s first public appearance before the PACE hearing, a parliamentary hearing on his detention and conviction on 1 October 2024.

October 12, 2016

ROBERT MANNE. Oh, No Jim, No Jim, No Jim, No

As readers of John Menadues blog might be aware, I believe that Australia ought, on the one hand, to find homes in the next months for the 1,700 or so refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island who we are allowing to be destroyed in body and spirit and, on the other, retain the policy of naval interception and return to point of departure so as to avoid a return to the situation of 2009-2013 when 50,000 asylum seekers reached Australia by boat and 1,000 or 1,200 drowned.

Accordingly, my position on the question of how Australia should now respond to the asylum seeker issue is close to Father Frank Brennans and, roughly speaking, equidistant between the position of two other panellists on Monday nights Q & A, the legal idealist Professor Jane McAdam, and the military realist, the architect of the Operation Sovereign Borders policy, General Jim Molan. While however I disagreed with several of Jane McAdams ideas, I was appalled and angered by both the tone and content of several of Jim Molans remarks.

December 2, 2014

John Menadue. The scholarship is the real issue.

Freya Newman has been placed on a two year good behaviour bond with no conviction recorded for accessing the computer system of the Whitehouse Institute of Design concerning a scholarship awarded to Francis Abbott.

Overwhelmingly the media coverage has been about Freya Newman and very little about the substantial issue, the scholarship.

The substantial issues seem quite clear. They have not been publicly disputed.

The Whitehouse Institute is a private tertiary body.
It awarded Francis Abbott, the then Opposition Leaders daughter, a scholarship which saved her family more than $60,000 in fees.
The scholarship was not advertised.
Its existence was never made public.
The Institute insists it was offered on the basis of academic merit, but has offered nothing to substantiate this claim.
The Institutes chairman was a substantial donor to the Liberal Party and has confirmed that he probably recommended Ms Abbott for the scholarship.
Tony Abbott did not disclose this benefit as part of his parliamentary obligations.

Just imagine if the daughter of Kevin Rudd or Bill Shorten had been awarded a $60,000 scholarship in such circumstances. The English language would not have been adequate to describe the criticism they would have received from Tony Abbott and Julia Bishop. The Murdoch media would have gone almost into meltdown over such a scholarship. The Australian would have called for either a judicial enquiry or a royal commission. It would have been as relentless as it was on Julia Gillards union connections.

February 18, 2015

Ian McAuley. The speech that Tony Abbott almost delivered to the National Press Club.

Was this a spoof?

There are ‘claims’ that the following speech appeared on the websites of the Liberal Party and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet on the day that Tony Abbott gave his speech to the National Press Club, but it was taken down as soon as it was found that the Prime Minister was delivering a different speech - presumably one prepared entirely in his own office.

September 30, 2016

Is there finally light at the end of the fibre-optic cable?

Over the past two weeks weve seen what many of us have been longing for signs the Government has realised its national broadband network strategy is not working out as planned.

November 3, 2016

JOHN TULLOH. U.S. finally starts to ease its Cold War punishment of Cuba

It is astonishing that an impoverished speck on the rump of the most powerful country in the world has managed to intimidate it for more than half a century. Cuba, only 144 kms off the coast of Florida, has had to suffer Uncle Sams unforgiving wrath because it became a Communist regime, locked up opponents and did not hold free elections. Tough trade and travel embargoes were imposed by Washington. Residents of the land of the free for decades have been banned from going there and woe betide if you were caught with one of Cubas famed cigars. But in recent years there has been some forgiveness. If Hillary Clinton becomes the next U.S. president, she has promised to end the embargo. However, the last word will not be hers. It is Congress which has that authority and it is showing no sign of softening its stance.

January 13, 2014

Asylum seekers - Tony Abbott and I share a Jesuit education. John O'Mara

Like many Australians, I look on the way the Abbott government is handling the matter of asylum seekers with ever increasing dismay. Tony Abbotts mantra stop the boats, is unprincipled, contrary to signed UN agreements and impractical. It is hard to erase the pre-election memory of the Western Sydney interviewee..Im going to vote for Abbott, because hell stop the boats .

What dismays me most is that Tony and I shared an educational experience at the hands of the Jesuits and then a friendship that reaches back almost 40 years.

March 30, 2013

Hazaras in peril. John Menadue

There are an estimated 50,000 persons of Hazara background living in Australia. Many of their relatives and friends are being intimidated and killed regularly in Pakistan. It is not surprising that they are fleeing and paying people smugglers to get to safety in Australia or elsewhere.

The Hazara are a Shia group who have traditionally been persecuted in Afghanistan. Their physical appearance also makes them different.

For decades, Hazaras have fled to Pakistan for safety and reside mainly in the Quetta area of NW Pakistan. That has now changed with the Hazara in Quetta being specifically targeted by militant Islamist groups.

November 3, 2016

BRUCE ARNOLD. Testing the body politic? Lobbying by the pathology industry.

Pathology testing in Australia is big business, getting bigger as the population ages and we rely on high-tech medicine for intractable ailments. Advocacy by commercial interests and government pathology service providers shapes public policy. It potentially affects elections rather than just the national budget. It matters. It is inadequately recognised and less understood.

What we know about lobbying by the pathology industry in the 2016 election is how little we know. Our ignorance matters, because it tells us something about the realities of a liberal democracy in 2016. It also matters because we need an informed public discourse about health policy and health costs.

September 23, 2015

Tom and Rosie support the Syrian Refugees.

Two young students from “Prouille” Dominican School at Wahroonga have raised nearly $4,500 for Syrian refugees. It started as a street stall in front of their house. It led to community support. It is a lovely story - worth reading. See link below. John Menadue

https://unhcrpersonalchallenge.everydayhero.com/au/help-the-syrian-refugees-with-tom-and-rosie

June 27, 2016

KAITLIN WALSH. Dont trust anyone over 30. The division that transcends race, gender and religion and why a #SSM plebiscite could become our #Brexit

The increasing vitriol between the Boomers and (mostly) Gen Y has singed more than a few nose hairs in recent years. Youd be well advised to approach any discussion between active combatants with full hazmat gear. And now the #Brexit has brought matters to a head.

March 1, 2015

We should expect more.

In this article in The Guardian, Richard Flanagan, the Booker Prize winner, refers to the increasing ugliness in Australian public life. He says ‘Writing my novel “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” I came to conclude that great crimes like the Death Railway did not begin with the first beating or murder on that grim line of horror in 1943. They began decades before with politicians, public figures and journalists promoting the idea of some people being less than people’. He makes the case that the brutality and cruelty we now see has been developing for years. I think it really began with the Howard Government in 1996. To read this article, see the link below. John Menadue

April 11, 2015

Alcohol is a bigger problem than ice.

In the Herald Sun on April 8, 2015, Jeff Kennett, the former premier of Victoria, said that it was time to stop the promotion of alcohol. See link to article below.

In this article he says ‘If it is good enough to ban the advertising of tobacco products, if it is good enough to make the wearing of seat belts compulsory, surely if the serious about family violence, the road toll, our crime rate, it is time to ban the promotion of alcohol. … The time has come to do what we have done for tobacco - ban all advertising of alcohol products and ban all sponsorships by alcohol companies.’

February 26, 2016

John Menadue. Our humanitarian program.

Some issues have no place in partisan politics, they may be topics that are politically charged, but they are not ideological battlegrounds they are about the personal and the human. Our stance on refugees and on protection is such an issue. It is an area that has been supported by the left and the right, and in darker moments, disowned by both. It is an issue that is deeply tied to our national psyche and yet heavily influenced by the words of our national leaders. Our treatment of refugees has revealed the best in us and defined some of our worst moments. Of late, it has come to be our Achilles heel, damaging our international reputation and corroding our national debates. But the voices of our better angels may again be gaining strength.

June 22, 2014

Cristian Martini Grimaldi. St Francis of the East

Cardinal John Henry Newman said ‘There is nothing on this earth as ugly as the Catholic Church and nothing so beautiful’. We have seen a lot of the ugliness recently. The following story tells us something about the beauty. John Menadue.

The prestigious Ho-Am Prize 2014, known as the Nobel Prize of South Korea, has been awarded to Father Vincenzo Bordo. This is the first time an Italian has received this accolade. A missionary with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Fr Bordo was honored for his services to the homeless, to elderly people living alone and young people on the street, through a series of programs he created.

April 20, 2016

John Austen. Grattan Institute on transport projects: a better mousetrap?

In Road to riches: better transport investment the respected Grattan Institute joined commentators, independent authorities and lobby groups in advancing ideas on transport investment. Like others it proposed publication of assessments for public spending; a better mousetrap to ensnare politically motivated proposals.

The report proposed a three stage process for government transport investment:

Spending only after publication, by tabling in parliament, of a benefit-cost assessment;
Spending on all proposals that pass such an assessment;
Independence of spending from Grants Commission processes.

There is merit in the ideas. There also are pitfalls.

November 3, 2016

JEFFREY SACHS. The fatal expense of American imperialism.

In this article, Jeffrey D. Sachs says

“the United States … is squandering vast sums and undermining national security. … today the United States has similarly over invested in the military and could follow a path to decline if it continues the wars in the Middle East and invites an arms race with China.”

See link to full article below.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/10/30/the-fatal-expense-american-imperialism/teXS2xwA1UJbYd10WJBHHM/story.html

Jeffrey Sachs is University Professor and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. This article was first published in the Boston Globe on October 30, 2016.

February 6, 2014

John Menadue. Cutting back government spending - does it include middle-class and corporate welfare?

Tony Abbott told his listeners recently at Davos that small government was the best form of government.

The Minister for Health, Peter Dutton, has said that waste must be reduced in our health sector.

The Minister for Social Services, Kevin Andrews, has told us that our welfare system is unsustainable and has appointed Patrick McClure to review welfare in Australia.

And the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, has established a Commission of Audit to look at ways to reduce big government with priority to reducing government outlays. He said that the age of entitlement had to end. But for whom! He said it is .. essential that the Commonwealth government lives within its means and begins to pay down its debt. We know of course that by any international measure we do not have a debt problem but let us pass on that for the moment.

June 17, 2016

GREG WOOD. FTAs and Australian democracy and future governance.

Andrew Robbs response to concerns that Australias recent spate of free trade agreements were being negotiated in secret was to claim that trade negotiations have always been conducted that way. That comment contains a splinter of truth but a plank of misinformation.

Once, not lately, trade ministers routinely informed Parliament on Australias aims, progress, and problems in important trade negotiations.

More importantly, trade negotiations were much narrower in scope, solely concerned with the tariffs and quotas affecting trade in physical goods. The international trade agenda expanded in the WTO Uruguay Round. The ambit of Australias FTAs is wider still and commonly includes commitments on our foreign investment policy, investor state dispute resolution (ISDS), labour mobility and intellectual property law. Their broad scope now goes to the heart of national policy, law, governance and culture, and carries far reaching legal and societal implications.

August 20, 2014

Michael Keating. Government Concedes and Declares Victory

For months the government and its various spokesmen in the Australian have been warning us that the nation faces a catastrophe if the Budget does not pass the Parliament intact. Essentially we were told that there was no alternative if economic progress and certainty were to be maintained. Indeed Paul Kelly, to the considerable delight of many in the business community, waxed eloquent in the Australian about how the country risked becoming ungovernable if the government did not get its way.

February 18, 2015

Peter Day. Life is sacred, but ....

The other" is no longer a brother or sister to be loved, but simply someone who disturbs my life and my comfort In this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others: it doesnt affect me; it doesnt concern me; its none of my business! (Pope Francis)

I had the misfortune recently of watching the Four Corners investigation into live-baiting in the greyhound industry trainers were filmed using live rabbits, piglets and possums to instil the blood lust in dogs in order to improve their chasing/racing skills.

September 17, 2015

Arja Keski-Nummi and Libby Lloyd. Resettling Syrian and Iraqi Refugees: A Program for Government-Community Action

Australia has one of the best refugee resettlement systems in the world. So said United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres some years back. We have achieved this reputation not by good luck but because successive Australian governments have understood that early intervention and support in the settlement process are fundamental to long term successful integration.

Australians have welcomed the announcement from our government that Australia will accept 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees with a focus on resettling women, children and families who have sought refuge and are in camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. This means that this coming year Australia will resettle 25,750 refugees, including these 12,000 additional refugees from Iraq and Syria.

September 23, 2015

Bob Kinnaird. China FTA and a diplomatic appointment.

As the governments exaggerated claims of economic benefit and job creation from ChAFTA are increasingly exposed, the lead DFAT negotiator on the China FTA is set to be appointed the next Australian Ambassador to China.

According to reports in the Australian Financial Review and Crikey, Ms Jan Adams DFAT Deputy Secretary was nominated before the ousting of Mr Abbott to take up the Beijing position this December. The reports say the new Prime Minister Mr Turnbull is likely to endorse the appointment of Ms Adams, who apparently has the backing of Foreign Minister Bishop and Trade Minister Robb.

November 3, 2017

RAMESH THAKUR. Australias gulag of shame

Manus Island detainees are back in the news. In this article published more than a year ago, in the Japan Times, Ramesh Thakur asks: Do Australian Cabinet ministers and departmental heads really value their jobs, and the power and perks that come with them, so much that they are prepared to be complicit by association in the torture of innocent children, facilitated by a policy of bribing and bullying Pacific neighbours? Has Australia really been reduced to this sorry state?

April 14, 2017

ANDREW HAMILTON. Labor Party reform through Catholic Social Teaching

It can be disconcerting to hear our family history told by a sympathetic but unaligned outsider. We may recognise the partisanship that coloured some of our past judgments and be led to reconsider them.

November 12, 2014

Ian McAuley. Is capitalism redeemable? Part 1: From markets to market societies

Republican victories in the US midterm elections have given conservatives a psychological boost, just days before the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. (For the record, the 1989 collapse of European communism was a victory for those Germans, Hungarians and others who risked all to stand up against tyranny, but it has been appropriated by American conservatives as a triumph of unfettered markets over government.)

Those celebrating the midterm results may be overlooking other recent developments, such as the resounding defeat of the Swedish centre-right coalition which had tried to privatize health and education. Even the midterms were less than a decisive endorsement of the Republicans free market agenda: several states voted to lift minimum wages, and by a quirk in the US electoral system there was a concentration of central and southern states going to the polls. These are the poorer states where the agenda is far more complex than traditional left/right conflicts.

June 1, 2016

JACQUELINE PEEL. Are the Coalition and Labor on the same page for emissions trading?

Climate change policy has been a noticeable absentee from political debate in the current Australian federal election campaign. Recent news reports, however, suggest this silence masks secret bipartisanship on the need for an emissions trading scheme or ETS to help bring down Australians emissions of greenhouse gases. Labors commitment to introduce an ETS if elected in July is well-known: the party has in fact pledged to establish two such schemes a specific ETS for the electricity sector and a wider economy ETS with emissions caps set in line with Australias international climate change commitments under the Kyoto Protocol and recent Paris Agreement. But the Coalition has steadfastly opposed any kind of carbon price. It repealed the Gillard governments Clean Energy legislation for a carbon tax and ETS, and replaced it with the Direct Action policy which channels government funding to emissions-reducing projects. Environment Minister Hunt has also repeatedly rejected the idea that the Coalition government plans to introduce an ETS. So why are some in the media claiming that the Turnbull government is introducing an ETS by stealth?

August 16, 2013

Hitting rock-bottom! John Menadue

Today Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison have announced draconian measures that will inflict enormous punishment on over 30,000 asylum seekers who have arrived in Australia over recent years by boat. These draconian policies will apply not just to future boat arrivals but will be applied retrospectively to over 30,000 asylum seekers who are already legally here.

We can imagine the widespread protests if any Australian government announced retrospective changes in taxation or other important policies, but some of the most vulnerable in the world are fair game in Australian politics.

June 17, 2016

LAURIE PATTON. Broadband: Its buggered in the bush

Last weeks Broadband for the Bush conference held in the rarefied atmosphere of Brisbanes State Library revealed just how disillusioned people living in rural, regional and remote Australia have become with the state of their telecommunications services. Chief among the concerns expressed by farmers, welfare agencies, government officials and Indigenous leaders was the limitations of their broadband access, or indeed the lack thereof.

November 3, 2016

MARK BEESON. WA provides a masterclass in what not to do with a resources boom.

It wouldnt be too unkind to suggest that Western Australia is not considered as the national benchmark of sophisticated public policy. Indeed, the state has recently attracted much attention and derision for the way its policy making elite squandered the wealth generated by the resources boom.True, we now have more sports facilities than you can poke a stick at, not to mention a major makeover of the city foreshore albeit noticeably empty of the promised high profile developments that were supposed to succumb to its irresistible allure. But you cant accuse the Barnett government of not having big ideas.

June 28, 2016

MICHAEL KEATING. Brexit What does it mean?

To the evident surprise of most of the pundits the UK has voted decisively to leave the European Union (EU). The question now is what follows next?

February 15, 2013

Minister! Let them work.

There is a growing number of asylum seekers living in the community who are not allowed to work. The new Minister, Brendan OConnor, could put his stamp on the portfolio by immediately making a decision to allow almost all asylum seekers to work. The present policy of denial of work is cruel, denies the dignity of people and does not deter future asylum seekers.

The number who are not allowed to work is growing as the government, quite rightly, is releasing from immigration detention and into the community, asylum seekers on bridging visas. There are presently about 7,000 asylum seekers in immigration detention, of whom about 5,000 are adult males. Potentially and hopefully many of these people will be released progressively into the community. In future as more boat people are released into the community so work rights will become more important.

January 31, 2015

Europe and the Greek elections.

The Greeks have been suffering for decades at the hands of a political and business oligarchy. Corruption and massive tax avoidance have been commonplace. It is not surprising that the Greek people rejected the mainstream parties and have thumbed their noses at the the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF. Europe looks to be headed into new territory. Leonid Bershidsky on ‘Bloomberg View’ has an interesting take on ‘Syriza, Le Pen and the Power of Big Ideas’. John Menadue.

April 14, 2017

GILES PARKINSON. Tide turns as solar, storage costs trump ideologues and incumbents

Looking at the machinations over the proposed Adani coal mine in Queenslands Galilee Basin this week, or seeing certain Coalition Senators howling at the moon over wind turbine emissions,or the Treasurer brandishing a lump of coal in parliament, it is hard to imagine that any sort of progress has been made in Australia in what all but a determined few accept is the inevitable clean energy transition.

February 24, 2015

Tessa Morris-Suzuki. Tony Abbott, What have you done for peace?

On 23 February, Prime Minister Tony Abbott in a major national security speech, chided Muslim leaders for showing insufficiently sincere commitment to peace. Ive often heard western leaders describe Islam as a religion of peace. I wish more Muslim leaders would say that more often, and mean it, he said. Abbott also called on immigrants to Australia to be as tolerant of others as we are of them.

The vast majority of Australians are appalled by the cruel and ultimately self-destructive violence of groups like ISIS, and by the crimes of the clearly deranged Martin Place gunman. They rightly applaud when leading Muslim figures speak up for peace, as the Grand Mufti of Australia and the Australian National Imams Council did in unequivocally condemning the Martin Place violence, and as the head of the Paris Mosque and other French Muslim leaders did in denouncing the odious crimes of the Charlie Hebdo attackers.

December 14, 2016

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. Julie Bishop - supporting bad policies.

The Foreign Minister’s outrage was highly selective … her speech was indeed strong on talk, but weak on effective action.

February 25, 2014

Daniel Brammall. Financial advisers and the conflict of interest.

In December last year the new government announced how it was going to make financial advice more affordable by amending the previous governments Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) proposals (1).

Recall that the FOFA legislation was introduced in response to hundreds of millions of dollars of Australians savings being lost in the corporate collapses of investments like Opes Prime and Westpoint, as well as financial planners like Storm Financial. These spectacular corporate implosions and the actions of incentivised planners largely took place between 2005 and 2007 – in what we now remember as the good times, before the GFC. Of the nearly $400m invested in the Westpoint group of companies, nearly half was recommended by financial planners (2).

May 10, 2019

Monthly digest on housing affordability and homelessness Apr/May 2019

This is a monthly digest of interesting articles, research reports, policy announcements and other material relevant to housing stress/affordability and homelessness with hypertext links to the relevant source.

February 28, 2016

Will Steffen. CSIRO and climate change: Making policy based on myths

The recently announced cuts to CSIRO climate science have stunned the Australian research community and sent shockwaves through the international climate research system. Claims and counter-claims are flying around the media, the cybersphere, Senate estimates, and elsewhere.

To cut through the claims that are being made in support of the CSIROs leadership to gut the Organizations climate research capacity, a good round of myth-busting is required.

Myth One: The science is settled and now we need to get on with the job of mitigation.

January 21, 2015

Brian Johnstone. The right to freedom of speech.

The recent murders perpetrated in France have been rightly condemned by all people who take seriously morality and human rights. However, the accompanying discussion of the right to freedom of speech has reflected different points of view. For some the right to freedom of speech means the claim to be free to say whatever one wants to say, whether this injures the rights of others or not. This view can justify any kind of remark from adolescent attempts to shock to the inane sledging in which our politicians so frequently indulge. The right to freedom of speech as a right has meaning only in the context of justice.

June 28, 2016

JENNY HOCKING. Parakeelia and Political Trust

If trust is at the centre of this election campaign, then journalists are looking for it in the strangest places. The 7.30s Leigh Sales finds it in the knifing by both leaders, Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull, of a former Prime Minister or, put more prosaically, that both supported a change of leadership and therefore of Prime Minister Shorten supporting first Gillard and then Rudd, and Turnbull supporting himself. Either way, knifing bears a tenuous connection to matters of political trust which, in the context of an election campaign, largely concern delivering on election promises. And yet the simplistic personal pejoratives of knifing, political assassination and lying, bolstered by the inanities of the gotcha moments that have peppered this campaign, have deflected from matters of substance that ought to be the subject of sustained investigative journalism.

June 28, 2013

Stopping the boats decently - can it be done? Guest blogger: Frank Brennan SJ

In this last financial year, 25,145 people have arrived on 394 boats - an average of over 70 people and more than a boat a day as Scott Morrison, Tony Abbotts Shadow Minister never tires of telling us. Except for Sri Lankans, most of those arriving by boat come not directly from their country of persecution but via various countries with Indonesia being their penultimate stop. There is an understandable bipartisan concern in the Australian parliament about the blowout of boat arrivals to 3,300 per month. An arrival rate of that sort (40,000 pa) puts at risk the whole offshore humanitarian program and distorts the migration and family reunion program.

June 26, 2014

Michael Kelly SJ. The banality of evil

Denial has many faces. Some of them are necessary. If any of us entertained what might befall us each day and the harm we could come to, we would never get out of bed. But denial also has corrosive and destructive effect if we deny the facts of our experience or refuse to be honest in questioning our own behavior.

Watching Scott Morrison behaving like an outdated school master in telling asylum seekers what their fate is to be, as reported with the original video in the The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/25/morrison-asylum-seekers-should-go-home-or-face-very-very-long-detention is about as complete an example of one human being bullying and brutalizing others as you need to see.

October 23, 2016

STEPHEN DUCKETT. Blood money: pathology cuts can reduce spending without compromisinghealth

In the coming weeks I will be posting articles on the high costs and corporate nature of pathology in Australian. The following article by Stephen Duckett in The Conversation, even though posted in February this year, helps set the scene. John Menadue

The Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) set the cat among the pathology pigeons late last year. One of the governments flagged changes, estimated to save around A$100 million a year, was to abolishthe bulk-billing incentive Labor introduced in 2009.

December 15, 2015

Brendan Mackey. How good is the Paris Agreement?

Finally, we have a new international climate change agreement to guide action post-2020. The Paris conference delivered on its promise thanks to skilful diplomacy by the French, a general sense of good will among nations, dedicated national delegates working through the night more often than not seeking consensus language on difficult issues, along with numerous high-level backroom machinations.

The question now of course is just how good an agreement is it and by what criteria should it be judged? The philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr warned against allowing sentimentality, naive thinking or plain stupidity to cloud our judgment on prospects for enlightened public policy to be sustained in the face of powerful vested interests especially those underpinned by hard line ideologies. We should therefore keep Niebuhrs advice in mind as we consider the Paris Agreement especially given the well-known influence of the fossil fuel industry on climate change matters and the reluctance of most governments to seriously address the issue.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal