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.

January 11, 2015

Allan Patience. Liberty or Narcissism?

On the Need for a Wider Debate about Charlie Hebdo

No one can justify the recent brutal murders of the French journalists and police in Paris. However, the belief that this act constitutes an attack on free speech and freedom of the press is in grave danger of being over-stated. What is missing in the debate so far is the understanding that there is a particularly fine line between satirizing peoples beliefs and values and insulting them.

December 16, 2014

Antony Ting. Australia eyes missing billions with very own 'Google tax'.

Joe Hockey has hinted he may introduce a Google tax as a new weapon to tackle profit shifting by multinational enterprises. The Treasurers suggestion is not only political as a counter to aggressive tax avoidance by multinationals, but also suggests the government may not have full confidence in a successful outcome of the G20/OECD work on base erosion profit shifting (BEPS).

The suggestion of a Google tax in Australia appears to be a coordinated action with the UK. Last week, the UK Treasury announced the introduction of a Diverted Profits Tax (commonly dubbed the Google tax). The tax will be imposed on profits artificially shifted from the UK at a rate of 25% from 1 April 2015. The tax is expected to generate more than 1 billion over the next five years.

October 4, 2016

GILES PARKINSON. Coalitions stunning hypocrisy and ignorance on renewable energy.

The Coalition appears to have abandoned all pretence that it supports renewable energy, now contradicting assurances by the grid owner and market operator and now the biggest generator in the country that the source of energy was not at fault for the massive blackout in South Australia last week.

After Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg used the opportunity to use the blackoutto try to force the Labor statestargets. They were joined by Industry, Science and Innovation Minister Greg Hunt on Monday.

In an opinion piece written for the Australian Financial Review, reported as the front page lead, SA blackout could have been avoided, Hunt claimed that a coal fired generator could have kept the lights on in Olympic Dam and Whyalla and avoided much of the damage. He also chastised the states for chasing unrealistic targets.

September 17, 2015

Walter Hamilton. Japanese Sleepwalking

Defying public protests and opinion polls that show most Japanese oppose the move, Prime Minister Shinzo Abes Liberal Democratic Party and Shin-Komeito ruling coalition are pressing ahead with legislation to nullify the nations constitutional ban on overseas military action.

The so-called right of collective defense law is being voted out of the committee stage of the Dietthus ending formal debateand will soon go to the full parliament where Abe has the numbers to push it through. There have been rowdy scenes in the corridors and chambers of parliament as angry Opposition members have tried to prevent the gag being applied.

April 14, 2017

ALLAN PATIENCE. Is it time to resurrect the Albury-Wodonga city plan?

The housing crisis, hitting young Australians in particular, is one of the cruelest consequences of economic rationalist policy making to which both our major political parties remain super-glued. Neither party has a clearly articulated, long-term solution to this ideologically generated and completely unnecessary crisis.

April 1, 2016

Michael Keating. The Turnbull Proposal for State Income Taxes

Prime Minister Turnbull says his proposal for the States to levy their own income tax is the most fundamental reform to the Federation in generations. Well maybe. It certainly would be a significant change, but reform? Furthermore, even if this proposal were ever implemented, it is hardly new. For example, the Fraser Government actually legislated to allow the States to raise their own income taxes, but none took up the opportunity.

March 3, 2014

Michael Sainsbury: Are Chinese leaders cleaning up or cracking down.

In April 2009 Dr Fan Yafeng was sacked from his job as a legal researcher at a prestigious think tank, China Academy of Social Sciences.

Its not that he was no good at his job to help the countrys government formulate its constitutional and religious policy.Rather, it was that he was an openly proselytising Christian, a member of a Protestant house church and signatory of Charter 08, a manifesto calling for fundamental changes in China including an independent legal system, freedom of association and the elimination of one-party rule.

August 9, 2013

Is something significant happening in our alignment to our region? John Menadue

It may be early days, but I sense that some significant change might be afoot. So much of our political dialogue historically has been about Australias relationship with the UK and then the US. John Howard spoke of Australia being the deputy sheriff for the Americans in our region. Tony Abbott talks about an Anglo sphere presumably linkages to English-speaking countries.

But so much of the discussion in recent weeks about asylum seekers has involved relationships with our own region. In a few short weeks we have seen some quite significant developments.

December 15, 2015

Kieran Tapsell. Finnigans Wake

When Dorothy Parker was told that President Calvin Coolidge had just died, she remarked: How can they tell? I was reminded of this while watching the moribund memory of Bishop Brian Finnigan when giving evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Finnigan showed all the tell-tale signs of being physically alive, but his performance in the witness box left his credibility dead in the water. The Royal Commission could tell. At the end of two days of evidence, Counsel Assisting the Commission, Angus Stewart SC accused Finnigan of consistently distancing himself from any knowledge of child sexual abuse by priests in Ballarat, in order to protect himself and the Church. Finnigan said he did not intend to create confusion, but the end result was just as confusing as the James Joyce novel.

November 18, 2015

Jon Stanford. The Pathway to Two Degrees: Should we ban New Coal Mines?

Leading up to this months major climate change conference in Paris, there has been a welcome increase worldwide in the commitment to address climate change generally and, in particular, to restrict global warming to two degrees Celsius. Although they are still insufficient to meet the two degree target, the initial national commitments to be taken to the conference are, perhaps, more ambitious than might have been expected a couple of years ago.

September 3, 2013

Boat arrivals are down. John Menadue

You would hardly know it if you read the Murdoch papers or listened to the Canberra bureau of the ABC but boat arrivals are dramatically down in recent weeks.

How ironic it would be if even before Tony Abbott becomes Prime Minister, that asylum seekers arriving by boat have been reduced to a trickle. It is early days, but the figures point to a significant decline.

A Department of Immigration official has been reported in one newspaper that I saw yesterday as advising that After 4236 asylum seekers arrived on 48 boats in July, the number for August dropped to 1585 on 25 boats. The number of arrivals in the last week of August was 71, the lowest weekly figure since February.

November 20, 2017

ROGER SCOTT. Carpet-baggers and sand-baggers: life Inside a marginal Brisbane electorate

The Scotts live in an affluent electorate where the longer-established residents have consistently manifested Liberal tendencies, occasionally tinged with green because of the presence of a university. A recent redistribution has expanded its boundaries, adding middle-class voters less enamoured of conservatives and suddenly our long-serving Liberal incumbent is looking decidedly shaky.

June 26, 2014

Tony Abbotts negotiating skills.

With the unpredictable and confusing state of the new Senate, Tony Abbott will have his negotiating skills tested. So far negotiating skills have not been part of his political success.

Thanks to the Palmer United Party and five other cross-benchers in the Senate from July 1, the situation could become even more chaotic than the House of Representatives was after the 2010 election- a situation that Tony Abbott did his best to make even more chaotic.

May 9, 2013

Curbing health costs starting with pathologists and radiologists. John Menadue

In discussing the looming budget deficits there has been focus on the rising costs of healthcare. And so there should be.

But before addressing some of the factors leading to increased costs, we should keep in mind that Australia spends about 9% of GDP in health. That compares with France 12%, Germany 12%, Canada 11%, New Zealand 10% and UK 10%. The OECD median is 9%. The US at 18% of GDP is off the charts largely due to private health insurance.

October 25, 2013

Honest Joe Hockey. John Menadue

At the G20 Summit in Washington a week ago Joe Hockey said People find it refreshing to hear that Aussie honesty. It is nice to think that other people see us that way but I wonder what Treasurers at the G20 would make of it if they had been listening to what Joe Hockey had been saying about the Australian economy over the last six years.

For years Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott have been warning us in quite shrill terms about our deficit and debts. We faced a budget emergency. It turned out to be phoney. Together with Tony Abbott, one could be excused for believing that the Australian economy was a smoking ruin.

April 18, 2023

Wong defines Australia's foreign policy ..all the way with the USA

At the National Press Club yesterday, Foreign Minister Penny Wong responded to her critics by laying out the role Australia must play in the world as she sees it, in order to help shape the future of our region.

October 28, 2015

Chris Bonnor. Educational opportunity in Australia.

Educational opportunity in Australia who succeeds and who misses out? This critical question about our schools is the title of a new report commissioned by the Mitchell Institute. It is a thorough, timely and outstanding contribution to our understanding of disadvantage in schooling. The report, produced by Victoria Universitys Centre for International Research on Education Systems, compiles data from a variety of sources to answer the who succeeds and who misses out question. And they do this by investigating four stages of education: beginning school, Year 7, senior school and at age 24.

April 14, 2017

JENNY HOCKING. Why was Malcolm Fraser Hidden at Yarralumla When Sir John Kerr Dismissed Gough Whitlam?

Revelations from the secret correspondence between the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, and the Queen in the months before the dismissal of the Whitlam government have shed new light on a persistent puzzle. When Kerr dismissed Gough Whitlam at 1pm on 11 November 1975 why was the leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser already there, secreted at the other end of the Yarralumla corridor with the Governor-Generals private secretary, David Smith?

February 1, 2013

Handle with Care. Guest blogger: Greg from Cottesloe

When I was a kid, the pictures on Saturday afternoons were a highlight of the week. Before the main feature, the cartoons and even the Pathe newsreel would come one of the top favourites, a government warning on the danger of keeping unexploded ammunition in homes. Mortar bombs often featured; unlike bullets and other aimed projectiles, they dont miss and they wound anyone thats exposed. These films had names like Not Worth Dying for and started with a picture of a mortar bomb on the mantelpiece, went to pipe smoking Dad accidentally knocking it over, the house going up with a roar, just the thing to put kids in the right frame of mind for the next episode of Gunsmoke.

February 3, 2015

Tony Smith. Bairds risk on asylum seekers

When New South Wales Premier Michael Baird told an Australia Day luncheon that we should be more accepting of asylum seekers, he was taking quite a risk. Bairds federal Liberal Party colleagues have espoused the hard policy of stopping the boats which the Abbott Government declares is its greatest achievement. It is not unknown for NSW Liberals to openly state their doubts about party policy. During the Howard Governments campaign against asylum seekers, which used inaccurate phrases such as illegal immigrants, queue jumpers and even sleeper terrorists, several backbenchers took principled stands against the more extreme aspects of government policy.

June 11, 2014

Persecution of Tamils.

Last weekend Tamil asylum seeker Leo Seemanpillai committed suicide in Geelong. His colleagues are bereft as a result. They believe that he feared deportation back to Sri Lanka and would suffer persecution. Tamil refugee advocate Aran Mylvaganam said ’the particular area where Leo is from you are automatically branded as a Tamil Tiger sympathasiser if you get deported back to Sri Lanka and Leo had genuine fears of being tortured by the Sri Lankan army and possibly even getting killed … if he was sent back to Sri Lanka'.

June 6, 2024

Breaking: Australian journalist attacked at violent Jerusalem Day march

Australian ABC TV journalist Alison Horne was attacked and she and her crew were verbally abused by Israelis participating in the Jerusalem Day march in what is the Muslim quarter, chanting “death to Arabs and singing songs about burning Arab villages down.”

May 31, 2024

Over 800 public servants condemn Australian Government complicity in Palestinian genocide

As public servants whose work is to serve our communities, it is our obligation to voice our deep concern that you are leading Australia to be complicit in an additional genocide, an additional colonial project, staining this nation with more war crimes – even more than it lays claim to already – and, in negligence of the public we serve, these war crimes are again in the service of foreign powers.

February 23, 2015

John Menadue. Is there intergenerational theft?

Yes there certainly is, but not in the ways that Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey suggest.

In his National Press Club speech on February 2, Tony Abbott said Reducing the deficit is the fair thing to do because it ends the intergenerational theft against our children and grand-children.

Joe Hockey has also been talking up issues of intergenerational theft in preparation for the release of the fourth Intergenerational Report (IGR). He says we will fall off our chairs when we see the numbers in the report. Apparently the government plans an advertising campaign to tell us how serious the problem is of our ageing population and the economic consequences.

February 14, 2015

Mercy, judgement, confession and reconciliation.

In the Australian Parliament debate concerning possible executions in Bali, Shadow Foreign Minister, Tanya Plibersek, spoke about the second chance that her husband had received. Her husband, Michael Coutts-Trotter, is now a senior NSW public servant. He had been a drug dealer in the early 1980s. Tany Plibersek commented ‘I imagine what would have happened if he had been caught in Thailand instead of Australia where the crime was committeed. … What would the world have missed out on? They would have missed out on the three most beautiful children we had together. They would have missed out on a man that spent the rest of his life making amends for the crime that he committed. ’ Her husband commented, ‘I was afforded a second chance by our Australian justice system. I remain grateful for that every day.’

July 6, 2015

Greek Crisis

See below links to two interesting articles.

The first is by Paul Krugman, ‘Ending Greece’s Bleeding’ in the New York Times.

The second is by Thomas Picketty ‘Germany has never repaid’ from the German newspaper Die Zeit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/06/opinion/paul-krugman-ending-greeces-bleeding.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpaul-krugman

https://medium.com/@gavinschalliol/thomas-piketty-germany-has-never-repaid-7b5e7add6fff

May 14, 2014

Ian McAuley. Ignored Budget issues.

Lobby groups and community organizations have provided their take on the Budget some with a whats in it for me approach, others with a more analytical line. My contribution from the stands is to draw attention to a few aspects which arent getting a great deal of attention.

Pension indexation.

Im surprised that this hasnt been the subject to outrage. Perhaps people dont appreciate the difference between indexation to average earnings and indexation to consumer prices.

October 3, 2013

A somersault - back to business as usual. Guest blogger: Arja Keski-Nummi

While in opposition Tony Abbot conducted a robust and aggressive policy on boats that effected Indonesia. But now he has done a somersault in order to put the Australian-Indonesian relationship back on a more even footing. As his speech at the official dinner portrays he has gone to the other extreme and engaged in rather sycophantic toadying.

Tony Abbotts robust approach to people smuggling and asylum issues in opposition reflected his focus on domestic politics where he was using this issue opportunistically in a volatile political environment and with one eye on the elections. As a result the foreign policy implications of his approach were held at a discount. In government this is no longer possible.

September 6, 2015

John Menadue. The death of Aylan Kurdi may not have been in vain.

In the last week our media has been extensively covering the plight of Syrian and Iraqi refugees fleeing into Europe. Their reception has been mixed but the governments of Germany and Austria, and their people, have been extending help and kindness.

I have posted three blogs in recent days on these issues: Mother Merkel and 800,000 refugees; Suffer the little children; Syrian and Iraqi refugees a time for a bipartisan and community response (Arja Keski-Nummi and Josef Szwarc).

November 28, 2013

There goes the neighbourhood. John Menadue

It used to be thought that the intrusion of new ethnic communities into established Anglo-areas was destroying the neighbourhood.

Now it is increasingly the excesses of wealth that are doing the damage.

James Packer spent millions to buy and then bulldoze three houses to make room for his Sydney fortress. In the three year process, he inflicted noise, congestion and dust over the local residents whilst he lived quietly elsewhere.

June 26, 2014

Patty Fawkner SGS. Permissible victims.

Permissible victims are defined as those whose life and dignity is violated with very little notice, outrage or public protest.

Only once have I been bumped off a plane. It was in the USA on a 6am domestic flight.

I recall the sequence of emotions: surprise, dismay then anger as I became acquainted first-hand with the airline practice of over-booking planes to guarantee full flights. The airline officials were regretful professionally so for any inconvenience that I might subsequently experience.

September 8, 2015

David Isaacs, Alanna Maycock, The Senate Report on Nauru.

On 31st August 2015, the Senate finally tabled its lengthy report on conditions at what is euphemistically called the Regional Processing Centre in Nauru (http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Regional_processing_Nauru/Regional_processing_Nauru/Final_Report). The RPC is in reality a prison camp where people live indefinitely in tents, their applications are not processed for over a year, and they are kept in ignorance of when if ever the applications will be processed. It is possible to appeal against a rejected application, but not against one which sits in limbo.

April 14, 2017

IAN VERRENDER. Distribution of debt poses new trigger to the property, housing market

The trigger has been cocked. Our attitude to property has changed. No longer is it merely a castle, a family retreat and a place in which to find shelter. It’s now a highly geared investment vehicle. It will take enormous skill and a huge degree of luck for our regulators to reset the safety catch.

March 18, 2015

John Quiggin. The Trans-Pacific partnership: it might be about trade, but it's far from free.

There can be few topics as eye-glazingly dull as international trade agreements. Endless hours of negotiation on such arcane topics as rules of origin and most favoured nation status combine with an alphabet soup of acronyms to produce a barely readable text hundreds of pages long. But unless you were actually involved in exporting or importing goods, or faced import competition, it used to be safe enough to leave the details to diplomats and trade bureaucrats.

February 11, 2015

Feathers ruffled in the Department of Immigration nest.

In the e-magazine, The Mandarin, Stephen Easton has reported that ‘highly experienced bureaucrats have vacated the Department of Immigration and Border Protection since its amalgamation with Customs began last year. … There are signs confidence in the Department is low among Immigration bureaucrats, including some of Australia’s most committed and experienced experts. Deputy secretaries Liz Cosson, Wendy Southern and Mark Cormack have all handed in their resignations. … At least two First Assistant Secretaries have also jumped ship.’ This story can be found by clicking on the link below.

March 18, 2014

John Menadue. An enormous financial heist is underway.

We saw the enormous power of the mining sector when the foreign-owned mining companies forced the Rudd government to ignominiously back down on its super profits tax. For less than $20 million in an advertising and public relations campaign the miners secured for themselves tax savings of over $60 billion. The public interest was surrendered to the mining lobby. Now the banking lobby is well on the way to pushing aside the public interest again.

July 4, 2015

Pearls and Irritations Policy Series

Link to Fairness, Opportunity and Security. Policy Series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal