July 21, 2015

Richard Butler. The Iran Nuclear Agreement: Safe if Implemented.

The Joint Cooperative Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed with Iran by the UN Security Councils five Permanent members, plus Germany and the EU, (Vienna, July 14th), is unprecedented. No comparable arms control plan has been as detailed or thorough. Above all, it is vastly preferable to any of the proposed alternative approaches, the main one of which has been war.

If the negotiation of this agreement had failed, there would have been further proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, in addition to whatever Iranian capability may have emerged. Israel already has them and Saudi Arabia has been contemplating them. Then, war with Iran, the preferred option in US Republican circles and Israel, would have almost certainly ensued with devastating and global effects, and, war would not have prevented Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability thereafter, for which it would have been given a massive incentive.

September 11, 2015

Ross Burns. Syria and Persecuted Minorities.

The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the international legal instrument to which Australia was an original signatory, contains a clause making clear that ‘The Contracting States shall apply the provisions of this Convention to refugees without discrimination as to race, religion or country of origin’.

It therefore seems curious that at least three Ministers, most notably the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, have made statements that echo the wording that Australia’s new program to take 12,000 Syrian refugees under UNHCR auspices announced on 9 September would give preference to ‘persecuted minorities’.

July 11, 2015

John Howard on political Royal Commissions.

Last September John Howard said

‘I am uneasy about the idea of having Royal Commissions or enquiries into essentially a political decision. … I don’t think you should ever begin to go down the American path of using the law for narrow targeted political purposes. I think the special prosecutions in the US are appalling.’

See link below to John Howard’s comments. John Menadue

http://gu.com/p/4xhj7/sbl

September 24, 2015

John Menadue. Transfield, Manus and Nauru

Transfield and its subcontractors are profiteering from lucrative contracts to run detention centres on behalf of the Australian government on Manus and Nauru. All the indications are that there is widespread abuse and oppression particularly on Nauru. It is a disgrace.

Present policies on Manus and Nauru are unsustainable yet Minister Dutton remains as Minister for Immigration and Border Protection.

If the government will not address the problems then shareholders and clients of Transfield have a duty to act on behalf of all people and particularly children and women that are being abused in our name.

December 28, 2014

Why Rupert Murdoch is forever in Twitter trouble.

In the ‘New Daily’ of December 17, 2014, Bruce Guthrie, a former editor-in-chief of ‘The Age’ and Murdoch’s ‘Herald Sun’ tells us what he thinks about Murdoch’s twittering ‘But here he was seemingly gloating over the outcome of the appalling Martin Place events as if the only thing that mattered was its news value and the profits that might bring. No wonder he was dubbed a “gleeful ghoul” for the tweet. 24 hours later, despite dozens of entreaties, he still hasn’t apologised for it.’

September 10, 2015

Peter Dixon and Maureen Rimmer. What's really at stake if the China FTA falls through.

Earlier this month Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott sounded a warning on the impact to Australias economy if the recently signed China-Australia Free Trade Agreement were to fail.

In a statement, Abbott said:

If Bill Shorten and the Labor Party try to reject the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement they will be sabotaging our economic future and they will be turning their back on one of the greatest opportunities our country has ever been offered.

July 23, 2015

John Menadue. The real problem is partisanship, not expenses.

I have yet to hear anyone who supports the spending by Bronwyn Bishop of $5,000 in taxpayers money for a helicopter ride from Melbourne to Geelong for a Liberal Party fundraiser. It is surprising however that, as a member of parliament, she attracts so much attention for this relatively small misuse of public money, but little mention is made of large scale indulgences of companies that provide private travel, yachts, holidays and entertainment for senior executives at the expense of the taxpayer..

September 21, 2015

Harold Levien. Solving our Housing Problem.

The new Turnbull Coalition has the opportunity to rewrite the economic policy, or lack of it, of the previous Abbott-Hockey Government. This greatly exacerbated Australias housing problem and was pushing Australia into recession. The Reserve Banks Governor Stevens recently explained that repeated interest rate reductions were attempting to stimulate the depressed economy. He suggested the Government could take advantage of record low interest rates to borrow for infrastructure spending to provide the much needed economic stimulus without further interest rate cuts. (Statistics show infrastructure spending had dramatically fallen since the Abbott Government came to Office.) There was no response.

February 26, 2025

A five-minute scroll

While questioning Penny Wong, Michaelia Cash advises the LNP under Peter Dutton will reject international law and the arrest of Netanyahu should he come to Australia. Penny Wong reminds her of the previous government’s hate speech. In the UN, Noa Argamani describes the moment when the building she was in collapsed under Israeli bombardment, while former peace negotiator and president of the US/Middle East project, Daniel Levy, speaks to all people being equal and says a minute of silence for the Bibas children would extend to 300 hours should it include the 18,000 children killed in Gaza. Meanwhile, Australia’s universities repress freedom of speech.

October 8, 2015

Cavan Hogue. Russia in Syria and Australian implications.

What are Australia’s objectives in the Middle East imbroglio? The simple answer is that it is about the American Alliance. We see ourselves as part of a global alliance led by the USA and generally supported by European powers: countries that “share our values”. We are there because they are. Therefore the fact that our military presence makes no difference to the situation in Syria or in defeating ISIS is not really relevant. Nor is it relevant that our military presence does nothing to discourage idealistic young Australians from joining ISIS and may even encourage them. Neither is it relevant that the US doesn’t really know what it is doing there. But of course domestic politics in Australia are always relevant.

August 5, 2015

Race Mathews. The ALP's not so secret ballots.

The ALP is leading in the federal polls, but internally it is a different story.

The party continues to incur significant reputational damage from the irresponsible and damaging conduct of its factions, and the disgraced appointees on whom in some instances they have conferred advancement.

Hopes that this year would prove to be the most important in the history of ALP reform and renewal since the intervention spearheaded by Gough Whitlam in 1970 that cleared the way for the election of the Whitlam, Hawke and Keating governments have so far largely been disappointed.

December 18, 2014

Eric Hodgens. Celibacy Icon of Clericalism.

The Catholic Church October synod was surprisingly successful. Unlike previous synods the discussion was open. The focus was pastoral rather than legal. Questions like Communion for divorcees, living together without being married, homosexual relationships, contraception are now on the table. The objective is to seek solutions to complications rather than repeat the rules that most Catholics do not accept. Common sense won over ideology.

For the first time in thirty five years the hierarchy are catching up on the rank and file who have been solving these dilemmas in practical terms for decades. The laity solved the contraception issue in the 70s. They decided that Paul VI was wrong about contraception and changed their behaviour accordingly. Papal authority was undermined, Mass attendance became more casual and confession became a thing of the past. Over recent years many ordinary Church members have become open to unmarried couples living together and see divorce and homosexuality as normal. Communion in these conditions is not an issue.

October 16, 2014

The Failure of the South Korean National Security State - The Sewol Tragedy.

Earlier this year, the Sewol ferry sank off Korea’s southern coast with 304 passengers drowned, mainly school children. An article by Jae-Jung Suh draws attention to an abdication of responsibility by the Korean Government and many others. He says ‘The whole tragedy serves as a reminder of how neoliberal deregulation and privatisation puts people’s safety and life at risk through a process of state collusion with business interests and how a powerful national security state may fail to protect its own people from internal dangers it helps create.’

November 17, 2014

Todays World Democracy, capitalism and Islam.

Mauricio Garca Villegas, El Espectador, Colombia, http://www.elespectador.com/opinion/elmundo-actual-columna-526496

The anniversary of two events that have marked out the course of our world has just been commemorated.

The first is the taking of the United States embassy in Teheran on 4 November 1979. Iran at the time was governed by the Shah, a monarch who wanted to turn the ancient Persian people into a Western nation, hell or high water. It set off a reaction from Islamic leaders, amongst them the Ayatollah Khomeini, who, from his exile in London, organized a revolution to overthrow the Shah, and to establish an Islamic theocracy. The taking of the embassy and the capture of 52 American hostages for 444 days is one of the culminating moments of that revolution.

July 17, 2014

An Alternative Budget Strategy by Michael Keating

In this blog in May this year I posted a five-part series by Michael Keating on the governments May budget and the economic and social consequences. There has been a great deal of discussion and confusion, particularly in the senate, over this budget. This has caused Joe Hockey only a few days ago to warn that he is ready to bypass parliament and force through new spending cuts if Labor and the Greens do not come to the table on millions of dollars of budget savings.

December 3, 2015

Travers McLeod. Relaxing airstrike rules is a recipe for disaster.

Tony Abbott has argued Australia and her allies should relax targeting rules for airstrikes to destroy the Islamic State.

At best, he is ignorant of the lessons of the military campaigns waged in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. At worst, he is willing to repeat mistakes to differentiate himself on national security and open a pathway to take his job back.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Abbott isn’t as narcissistic as the latter reading suggests. Let’s assume he was insufficiently briefed on recent military campaigns or has forgotten the lessons of our longest wars.

September 14, 2014

Michael Keating. The mining tax debacle

Tony Abbott has finally achieved another triumph with the end of the mining tax. Of course mining royalties continue, and have even been increased recently, and oil and gas are subject to a similar sort of resource rent tax that Abbott decried when it was applied to mining.

No doubt the mining industry, their largely foreign owners and the cheer squad in the Murdoch press are pleased, but what about the rest of the Australian community? After all it is we who are the actual owners of the resources, and we have now lost a useful source of revenue. And what does this sorry saga say about the chances of getting genuine tax reform in this country in the future?

December 8, 2014

Paul Collins. A wake for ABC Religion.

Last week I attended the funeral of long time religious broadcaster and colleague, Ronald Nichols at Sydneys Christ Church Saint Laurence. It was the day after a broad cross-section of religious leaders had written to the ABC Board and managing director Mark Scott, expressing concern about what was happening to the ABCs specialist focus on religion.

The letter pointed out that the position of Executive Producer TV Religion was already axed and that Compass had been placed under a commissioning editor with no expertise in religion. In radio Encounter (which has been on air for 49 years) was to be dropped from the Radio National schedule. It is proposed that the religion unit will lose 43% of its staff and over 50% of its budget. Eleven staff positions will be reduced to six.

December 22, 2015

Spencer Zifcak. Co-opting the Judiciary: Counter-Terrorism Laws at Work

Regrettably, one matter that has drifted to the sidelines in Australian debates about the operation of counter-terrorism laws is that these laws consistently marginalise and undermine the role of the judiciary. Judicial power, and hence the rule of law, is being incrementally distorted and diminished.

Counter-terrorism law continues to burst from the executive and the legislature. Just a few months ago, three enormous tranches of such law swept through the parliament. These were the National Security Legislation (Amendment) Act protecting and preventing disclosure of information about special intelligence operations; the Foreign Fighters Act; and the metadata legislation. (See my chapter on Counter-terrorism and human rights in this blog on 28/05/2015.)

December 25, 2023

Away in a manger---a repost

Republished with permission

August 28, 2015

Julianne Schultz. Why public broadcasting is worth saving.

In an age of global media abundance, the notion that public broadcasting is a mechanism to address market failure is beguiling. It is also fundamentally wrong.

Public broadcasters have a unique national responsibility to provide a public good to citizens, rather than the more narrowly defined and easily measured mission of commercial broadcasters, to engage consumers and maximise the return to shareholders.

Public broadcasters provide a return that is more complex to measure, but with the increasing sophistication of impact measurement, not impossible. The exact nature of the outputs and outcomes varies from one country to another, but includes providing platforms for news, entertainment and education that foster a shared sense of national coherence.

January 12, 2016

Evan Williams. Film Review: Paolo Sorrentino's 'Youth'

Written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino, Youth is a film for the young at heart or at least for those aspiring to that happy condition. The main characters are a couple of blokes on the wrong side of 70, and it was noticeable at my screening that most of the audience werent too far behind. Youth may not have been the best title. For all its undoubted charms, this isnt a film for the 18-to-24 demographic, much targeted these days by the major studios. That makes it something of a rarity and a pleasure.

June 23, 2014

The widening wealth gap

Oxfam Australia has just released a report Still the Lucky Country? which highlights the widening gap in wealth and incomes in Australia.

It found that the nine richest people in Australia have wealth that equates to the poorest 20% of the community. That 20% represents about 4.5 million people.

The nine richest people have a combined net worth of $67.7 billion. They are: Gina Rinehart, $17.7 billion; Anthony Pratt, $7 billion; James Packer, $6.6 billion; Ivan Glasenberg, $6.3 billion; Andrew Forrest, $5 billion; Frank Lowy, $4.6 billion; Harry Triguboff, $4.3 billion; John Gandel, $3.2 billion and Paul Ramsay (now deceased), $3 billion.

May 28, 2016

TRAVERS McLEOD, PETER HUGHES, SRIPRAPHA PETCHARAMESREE, STEVEN WONG, TRI NUKE PUDJIASTUTI: Rohingya refugees and building a regional framework to manage refugee flows.

Part 1. The Andaman Sea refugee crisis a year on: what happened and how did the region respond?

The Andaman Sea crisis a year ago catalysed important policy developments on forced migration in Southeast Asia. Part one recaps what happened, and how the region responded. In part two, we discuss whats happened since the crisis, and whats needed to avoid similar events in future.

Twelve months ago, events in the Andaman Sea exposed the grave reality of forced displacement in Southeast Asia. This culminated in a crisis meeting between governments in Thailand on May 29, 2015.

More than 25,000 people had fled Myanmar and Bangladesh by boat. Around 8,000 were stranded at sea. Around 370 are believed to have died.

The regional response was sorely inadequate. But, one year on, the region is showing signs it is determined to ensure similar crises are avoided.

One million outsiders

The Rohingya people have fled Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh by land and sea for decades. They are the largest-known group of stateless people in the world.

An estimated one million Rohingya live in Rakhine State in Myanmars west. They are denied basic rights and subject to persecution.

Bangladesh is home to between 300,000 and 500,000 Rohingya. But the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees considers only around 30,000 to be refugees.

Many of those fleeing have had no choice but to pay for their passage. In many cases this has led to exploitation at the hands of smugglers or traffickers. In recent years the scale and urgency of these movements have increased in response to growing oppression and violence.

What happened a year ago?

On May 1, 2015, a mass grave containing the remains of more than 30 bodies was discovered in the Sadao district of Thailand, a few hundred metres from the Malaysia border.

On May 5, three Thai officials and a Myanmar national were arrested in Thailand for suspected involvement in human trafficking. Two days later more than 50 Thai police officers were reprimanded and a clean-up of suspected camps around the country was ordered.

Interceptions of boats began. Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian authorities reportedly intercepted boats of asylum seekers and pushed them back out to sea. This led to smugglers and traffickers abandoning boatloads of people on the water.

An estimated 6,000 Rohingya and Bengalis were stranded by May 12, most without food or water. Amid ongoing boat pushbacks, around 3,000 people were rescued by Indonesian and Malaysian local officials and fishermen, or swam to shore.

On May 19, the Philippines offered assistance to the Rohingya and Bengali migrants.

The following day, foreign ministers from Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia met in Malaysia. The Indonesian and Malaysian ministers announced they would no longer push boats back out to sea. They agreed to offer temporary shelter, provided the international community resettled and repatriated the refugees within one year.

Thailand did not sign onto the deal. Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh and Myanmar conducted search-and-rescue operations for those still stranded at sea. Thailand deployed navy vessels as floating assistance platforms.

The international community, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Turkey, Gambia and the US, subsequently pledged financial support for relief, processing and resettlement. Some offered settlement places.

Australia pledged A$4.7 million to support populations in Myanmar and Bangladesh. When asked whether any of the refugees would be settled in Australia, then-prime minister Tony Abbott infamously pronounced:

Nope, nope, nope.

On May 26, Malaysian police found the remains of almost 140 bodies, believed to be migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh, in abandoned jungle camps near the Thai border. Police officials were detained on suspicion of being involved.

Finally, on May 29, the Thai government convened a special meeting. Fifteen countries and key international organisations participated. They offered an immediate commitment to protect those at sea, announced plans to develop a comprehensive plan to address irregular migration, and agreed to tackle root causes over the long term.

What the region has learned

The collective leadership of the Thai meeting during the Andaman Sea crisis was welcome. But a one-off meeting should not be the norm for managing mass displacement events.

Regional institutions and processes ASEAN, the Bali Process and the Jakarta Declaration were largely muted during the crisis. The lack of robust normative or policy frameworks to manage forced migration in the region was exposed. So too was a reticence to create pull factors, and the overall absence of protection-sensitive infrastructure.

Tellingly, the Bali Process did not have functioning mechanisms for senior officials across the region to respond. A culture of consensus and non-interference left ASEAN relatively hamstrung.

Bali Process ministers met in March 2016 for the first time since 2013. The outcome reached was significant. There will now be a formal review of the Andaman Sea crisis to draw on lessons learned and work to implement necessary improvements, including contingency planning and preparedness for potential large influxes.

Just as important, a new regional response mechanism has been created. This authorises senior officials to consult and convene meetings with affected and interested countries in response to irregular migration issues or future emergency situations.

Bali Process countries conceded individual and collective responses have been inadequate. The region is now in a position to broker more predictable and effective responses even preventative action to forced migration.

These reforms responded to collective disappointment over the failure to act last May. They drew on ideas generated by the Asia Dialogue on Forced Migration.

Importantly, reforms have also occurred in ASEAN, principally through its adoption of a Convention Against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, and its renewed commitment to share expertise and development capabilities on regional disaster response mechanisms. This will be vital as climate-induced migration becomes more prevalent.

There has been progress too albeit limited on root causes of the crisis. The election of the National League for Democracy as Myanmars ruling party has raised hopes the Rohingya people may eventually find a safer home in Rakhine State. And leadership from Indonesia in building schools there and continued pressure from the US continue to be vital.

Regional leaders have started making the right noises, but must continue to take concrete steps.

Part 2. The Andaman Sea refugee crisis a year on: is the region now better prepared.

If progress toward a fix on future forced displacement crises such as that which took place in the Andaman Sea a year ago was measured in the number of regional meetings that have taken place, it would be plentiful.

Since the temporary resolution of the crisis was announced on May 29, 2015, at the Special Meeting on Irregular Migration in the Indian Ocean in Bangkok, there have been an unprecedented number of meetings in the region.

Where has this left us?

Despite the promise of the Bali Process ministerial meeting outcome from March 2016, the sheer number of meetings hasnt translated to concerted action.

Meanwhile, not all commitments made during the Andaman Sea crisis have been honoured. And the global crisis shows no sign of abating.

A year ago Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to:

provide humanitarian assistance and temporary shelter to those 7,000 irregular migrants still at sea provided that the resettlement and repatriation process [would be completed] in one year by the international community.

A number of international donors assisted the two countries.

Between May 10 and July 30, 2015, more than 5,000 people who departed from Myanmar and Bangladesh managed to disembark in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand. Between September and December 2015 embarkations resumed. At least another 1,500 people left Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Of the arrivals, 2,646 Bangladeshis were returned to Bangladesh. Another 1,132 Myanmar Muslims from Rakhine State and Bangladeshis continue to be housed in detention and shelters in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. Of those still detained in Indonesia and Thailand, more than 95% are Rohingyas.

Indonesias partnership with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to verify the status of Rohingya and Bangladeshi arrivals in Aceh and Medan has been commended. So too has a draft presidential decree on handling asylum seekers, though this is still unsigned.

But there are unconfirmed reports that a sizeable number of the Rohingya people who were rescued later disappeared from temporary camps, headed to Malaysia.

Conditions in many detention facilities and shelters remain fraught. Tuberculosis infections in Malaysian facilities have prolonged processing. And earlier this week, Thai police reportedly shot and killed a Rohingya refugee who had fled the Phang Nga detention centre in southern Thailand with 20 other Rohingya men.

The Malaysian and Indonesian governments have yet to clarify the status of those who remain.

Progress on tackling the root causes of movement in Rakhine State has been continually frustrated despite glimmers of hope.

The leader of Myanmars ruling party, Aung San Suu Kyi, recently requested enough space to resolve the issue at a joint press conference with US Secretary of State John Kerry. Yet, earlier this month, she asked the US ambassador to Myanmar to stop using the term Rohingya. Perhaps what Suu Kyi desires is quiet diplomacy.

On the ground, few changes to the plight of the Rohingya are noticeable. So long as human rights violations in countries of origin and the root causes of forced migration are not solved, the flight and plight of those people will continue.

Same old plan

The plan agreed to in Bangkok last May, to prevent irregular migration, smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons, was hardly revolutionary.

Countries undertook, among other promises, to:

eradicate transnational organised crime smuggling and trafficking syndicates;
strengthen co-operation between law enforcement authorities and complementary data collection;
establish key national contact points; and
enhance legal, affordable and safe channels of migration.

There was also a commitment to form a:

mechanism or joint taskforce to administer and ensure necessary support, including resources as well as resettlement and repatriation options from the international community.

That taskforce has yet to be established, let alone convened, despite two follow-up meetings. Permanent resettlement places for those Rohingya who disembarked remain scarce.

Whats more, framing continues to focus on the irregularity or illegality of such movements, even though they are now routine. The focus cannot be fighting crime over developing protection-sensitive infrastructure. It can be both.

The most promising developments are the new consultation mechanism agreed by the Bali Process in March 2016, the creation of an ASEAN Regional Trust Fund to support victims of human trafficking, and the adoption in November 2015 of the ASEAN Convention Against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children.

A New York moment?

In September, US President Barack Obama and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will convene high-level summits in New York on refugees and migrants.

The recent Bali Process outcome, if used strategically, could provide a platform and framework for a more functional and enduring system to be put in place before the next crisis. As Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said:

This must not happen again.

Our region is now in a position to broker more predictable and effective responses even preventative action. Such promise must be translated into action.

Forced migration is now a global phenomenon, identified by the World Economic Forum as the top global risk in terms of likelihood, and the fourth in terms of impact.

Despite the many efforts and promises made, no comprehensive and systematic responses to irregular movements of people, especially those in need of international protection, have been instituted.

Much of the focus has been on the Middle East and Europe, but Asian displacement is similarly confronting. Overall numbers of those displaced in Asia rose by 31% in 2014. Afghanistan remains the worlds second-leading producer of refugees. Climate-induced migration is expected to accelerate.

Unless managed more effectively, forced migration will have permanent and intensifying negative impacts on countries in our region and globally.

Experts around the world have begun advancing ideas for new migration pathways for those in humanitarian need, in addition to refugees. By September, plans for more robust architecture on forced migration will need to be more advanced. Countries in our region must not rest on their laurels.

Travers McLeod,Honorary Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne

Peter HughesVisiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy and Visitor, Regnet School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University

Sriprapha Petcharamesree,Director of the International PhD Program in Human Rights and Peace Studies, Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies, Mahidol University

Steven Wong,Deputy Chief Executive, Institute of Strategic and International Studies

Tri Nuke Pudjiastuti,Researcher, Research Centre for Politics, Indonesian Institute of Sciences

August 15, 2016

MICHAEL KEATING. The Future Outlook for Economic Reform

In a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Ross Gittins pronounced that we are staring at the end of the era of economic reform. It has ended because it is seen by many voters as no more than a cover for advancing the interests of the rich and powerful at their expense.

Gittins then goes on to cite a lot of evidence that people are disaffected. Thus the size of the support for Trump in the US and Brexit in the UK, and to a lesser extent, the success of minor parties favouring more economic autarchy in Australia, all point to a threat to economic reforms aimed at deregulation and open markets. In addition, Gittins argues that the reform agenda has been captured by the supporters of small government bent on privatising those services that remain funded by government, often with what Gittins claims to be dubious results or worse.

But according to Gittins, the reformers greatest failure has been [to] ignore their reforms effect on fairness. Indeed, at a time when technology and globalisation are shifting the distribution of market income in favour of the top few per cent of earners theyre pushing reforms to make the tax system less redistributive.

There is much that resonates in Gittins critique of the present reform agenda and why it is foundering. Nevertheless, I would like to offer a somewhat different perspective.

December 17, 2016

DAVID CHARLES. The Re-emergence of Industrial Policy - Theresa May and Donald Trump Style

One of the consequences of the UK Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump as the next US President is the association with the re-emergence of industrial policy in both countries which are important for the development of policy thinking in Australia. This comes at a time when Australia is dealing with the economic transition associated with the end of the mining boom.

November 20, 2024

A five-minute scroll

Up to 50,000 Māori mobilised and walked to the New Zealand Parliament in Wellington to to protest the treaty principles bill, which Amnesty International states should never have been introduced. Bob Carr states what he told us last week about AUKUS is now confirmed. A member of Knesset is forcibly removed for speaking out against the horror in Gaza. At the UN the Palestine member speaks to Gaza, the crossroad that will determine where humanity will go. We witness patients removed from a hospital by the IDF as hostages. Jeffrey Sachs speaking to the history of the war in Ukraine heralded as a history lesson. A five-minute scroll.

January 4, 2014

Cricket - junk food and alcohol. John Menadue

Over the holidays I have very much enjoyed watching on television Australia winning at last. The visual TV coverage is outstanding. The camera crews do a great job. I enhance my enjoyment by minimising the audio content. Except for the opening and closing of each session, and at the fall of each wicket, I keep my TV console on mute.

But that is the good news. Unfortunately I cant get away from the almost saturation picture coverage of junk food (KFC) and alcohol (Victorian Bitter and Bear-Wine-and-Spirits or BWS).

May 7, 2016

John Thompson. Surgeons report shows the ineffectiveness of private health insurers to control health costs

Private health insurer Medibank has worked with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons to produce a report that shows enormous variation in fees charged by surgeons for similar procedures.

The Surgical Variance Report for General Surgery reviewed thousands of procedures performed on Medibank members in eight common operations gallbladder removal, gastric band procedures, bowel resection procedures, hernia procedures, gastroscopy and colonoscopy.

The data shows that some surgeons working in private hospitals are charging 15 times the amount charged by their peers for the same procedure. For example, surgeons performing gastric sleeve operations for weight loss charged average private fees (in addition to what the insurer and Medicare covered) ranging from $231 in South Australia to $3593 in Queensland. The average fee in NSW was $3160 and in Victoria it was $1874. For gall bladder removals, fees charged ranged from $369 in Tasmania to $1166 in NSW. In Victoria, the average fee was $387.

March 5, 2017

JOHN DWYER. The parlous state of strategies to protect consumers from health care fraud. Part 3 of 3.

Credible scientific evidence of clinical effectiveness should underpin the delivery of health care. Satisfactory health outcomes and cost effectiveness require this approach. In Australia however pseudoscience flourishes as regulatory bodies fail to protect consumers from health care fraud.

January 12, 2016

Eric Walsh. Tribute to Brian Johns.

The death of Brian Francis Johns, 79, in the early hours of New Years Day marked the end of one of the most impressive Australian media careers of the last half century.

During this period Johns engaged in and excelled at the top level of almost all aspects of media affecting the lives of everyday Australians.

He distinguished himself as a political journalist on The Australian when he was that papers first political correspondent. He then filled similar roles on the now-defunct Weekly, The Bulletin and was later chief of the political office of The Sydney Morning Herald. He went on to fill executive news management positions on that newspaper.

August 7, 2015

Eric Hodgens. The Catholic Church is really two churches.

The Catholic Church is really two churches these days. The first is the hierarchy. The second is rank and file active Catholics together with their priests. This second group is the real church. Over the last 35 years, now, they have heard what the hierarchy was saying and simply have not agreed.

They thought that communal penance services worked and confession didnt. They continued to use communal services despite John Paul IIs forbidding of them. They knew that the time had come to contemplate ordaining married men - and women too. Many knew that re-married divorcees were going to Holy Communion and even encouraged them if formally asked. Many were pleased when parishioners they knew to be gay were ready to take an active part in parish life. They were embarrassed by Cardinal Pells public refusal of Communion to gay Catholics. Many knew priests who were celebrating the marriages of divorcees.

January 21, 2019

TONY SMITH. Refusal of custodianship and environmental crises.

Whitefella criticisms of Australia Day have argued that 26 January is a significant date mainly for New South Wales and especially Sydney. Recently, fish kills in western waterways and the wind erosion of topsoil have shown that the state faces environmental catastrophe. The same mindset which refuses to acknowledge Indigenous concerns over the celebrations on 26 January is responsible for threats to the environment.

February 25, 2025

A five-minute scroll

Jewish Australians publish their names in support of Gaza, while Sydney Writers’ Festival boss Kathy Shand has quit. Germany invites Netanyahu to visit, while he faces a backlash at a military event for showing photos of Shiri Bibas and her family.

December 22, 2015

Ray Markey. The myths surrounding penalty rates.

The article below by Professor Ray Markey was posted before the release of the recent Productivity Commission Report on penalty rates.

Following the release of the report, Professor Markey commented as follows:

‘The Productivity Commission report presents no new evidence for increased employment from reduced penalty rates. Mainly there are theoretical economic arguments and modelling based on it. Time use survey data is very selectively cited and dated anyway since the last survey was in 2006. It clearly shows that people prefer weekends for being with family and friends and does not refer to studies showing it is difficult to make up during the week for this weekend time being lost due to work. The one new argument in the report is very interesting, namely that the onus of proof about the impact of reduced penalty rates on employment should be reversed i.e. employers shouldn’t have to prove this is the case to get changes - clearly an admission of a lack of evidence.

November 12, 2016

JOHN MENADUE. A refugee swap with the US to end the horror of refugees in Manus and Nauru may be on the cards!

I hope that this is so but it may not be straightforward.

There is history in such a swap that journalists and others should be aware of.

In its last year the Howard Government negotiated with the USA what came to be called the Mutual Assistance Arrangement .It was 1 to 1 resettlement. Australia agreed to resettle Cubans who had been intercepted at sea (that is they had not made landfall on US territory) and transferred to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. In return the US agreed to resettle people found to be refugees who were in Nauru.

While the population in Guantanamo Bay also consisted of Haitians the US had a separate arrangement with Canada for their resettlement. Canada would not resettle the Cubans as they were technically still on Cuban territory and therefore were not considered to be refugees.

December 5, 2016

MUNGO MacCALLUM. George Brandis is a dead man walking.

What is not clear is whether George Brandis was genuinely ignorant of the implications of the tax case or whether he deliberately ignored them. In either case, he should immediately have resigned.

October 30, 2024

A five-minute scroll

Reaction to Israel’s law banning the UNRWA have the world aghast. Palestine speaks to the UN, Antonio Guterres writes to Netanyahu and South Africa sends evidence of genocide to the ICJ. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese releases her latest report on Gaza while the US congress cancels her briefing.

August 13, 2016

JOHN TULLOH. Malaysia - the wolf of Kuala Lumpur.

There was much mirth in Malaysia the other day when the US Justice Department filed civil lawsuits alleging a $3.5bn embezzlement of a Kuala Lumpur fund and diplomatically referred to one of the alleged villains as Malaysia Official 1. Everyone knew who that was - their prime minister, Najib Razak. It concerns the long-running scandal of the state investment fund known as 1MDB which Najib himself set up. He denies any misappropriation of funds, resorting to the traditional defence of sweating political leaders that its nothing more than a smear campaign.

February 6, 2025

A five-minute scroll

The world reacts to President Trump’s proposal to take over Palestine. A crime of forced displacement that will create more conflict and bloodshed. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese and global journalists respond.

September 24, 2024

A five-minute scroll

As Israel bombs Lebanon a five minute scroll on X uncovers the brutality and the voices that are speaking out against it, calling out Australia’s role as a puppet state.

July 16, 2015

Peter Blackrock. Germany in control.

What is happening in the European Union and Eurozone? Clearly, there is a seismic shift underway. Here is one interpretation of what is happening.

The key driving force behind the shift is the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble. He is the number two in the right-wing Christian Democratic Union, behind Chancellor Angela Merkel, although many say he really calls the shots. He is 72. He’s a nationalist. He is a fiscal conservative. He doesn’t believe Germans should keep paying for the sins of their fathers by prostrating themselves before the European Ideal. He wants to leave behind a legacy. Time is short. He must move fast.

May 7, 2016

Greg Wilesmith. Guantanomo Bay: Obama's big failure.

Good news on Gitmo. There are just 80 prisoners left in their cramped, high security cells in a small, far off, scrubby peninsula on Cuba.

Thats about 160 fewer than when Barack Obama became president in early 2009 promising to close Guantanomo within a year.

So not exactly Mission Accomplished! as President Bush trumpeted after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Obamas presidential promise wont be fulfilled and amounts to another big political failure.

April 19, 2016

David Peetz. Having a say at work.

Theres a phrase you sometimes hear about the workplace: leave your brains at the gate.

Workers use it to summarise the dismissive view their bosses have about the contribution employees can make and about how much say workers have in what they do at work.

Not all bosses are like that. But it seems most employees want more say at work sometimes called voice or participation in decision-making or even workplace democracy.

July 24, 2013

Regional Settlement Agreement with Papua New Guinea - a post-script. John Menadue

With the dust settling a little I thought it might be safe to return to this issue!

I said in my blog of July 20 that I supported the general thrust of the RSA with PNG, although a lot remained to be sorted out and the implementation is already showing signs of problems. Without repeating myself too much, however, I emphasise the following.

We cannot ignore that close to 1,000 souls have been drowned at sea trying to get by boat to Australia. Surely the critics cannot ignore this.
Regional arrangements are the only way to go. It involves burden-sharing and cooperation, particularly now with PNG. We cant fix the problem on our own as we found during the Indochina outflow of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Active involvement by UNHCR in this arrangement is most important. Both Australia and PNG are signatories to the Refugee Convention with PNG recently withdrawing its reservation. The UNHCR is considering the arrangement.
Children cannot be exempted from the arrangement or the boats will fill up with children. Other arrangements are necessary to protect children.
For several years I have highlighted that asylum seekers arriving by air have exceeded boat arrivals by a significant margin and the politicians and the media ignored that fact. But now the facts have changed. Boat arrivals in the first six months of 2013 were about 14,000, a trebling compared with the 4,500 who arrived in the first six months of last year.If boat arrivals continued at this rate the whole refugee/humanitarian program in 2013 of 20,000 persons would have been taken over entirely by boat arrivals.That was clearly unacceptable. As John Maynard Keynes said, when the facts change, I change my view. The facts have changed in respect of boat arrivals.
The public hostility to boat arrivals, although quite irrational at times in my view, was threatening to prejudice the whole humanitarian and refugee program of our country. This program must be protected and expanded.
There is no orderly queue for refugees but the fact is that with the trebling of asylum seekers arriving by boat in recent months it has a serious impact on those waiting in refugee camps in the region, Africa and the Middle East.
There has been some diversionary media coverage about the cost of the RSA with PNG. But the costs of existing arrangements are extremely high and look like increasing. The cost of offshore asylum seeker management by Department of Immigration and Citizenship is expected to be $2.9 billion this year; up $700 million on last year. The government has also allocated $1.4 billion to the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service. More money is spent by the Navy and some other agencies. By contrast, the foreign aid program to PNG will cost $517 million this year. If as the government hopes, boat arrivals slow there could be considerable savings. The government could also save money by abolishing mandatory detention.

A lot remains to be done and implementation will be difficult as we are seeing already.

August 20, 2015

Cavan Hogue. Russian and Chinese naval exercises.

From August 20-28 Russia and China will conduct a large scale naval exercise in the Russian Far East and the Sea of Japan. Russia will send 20 ships and China seven plus11 aircraft. They will practice air defence and anti-submarine drills as well as a beach landing.

Both countries are publicly beating up their defence ties as part of a closer relationship. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jin Ping have met and made appropriate noises about their growing friendship. Clearly both countries see advantage in closer relations as they face criticism from the USA and some other countries.

July 4, 2014

John Tulloh. Iraq's road to disintegration.

As far-fetched as this scenario was until recently, it is just possible that international governments may one day face an unprecedented dilemma: whether to recognise a caliphate as an independent country. The newly-declared Islamic State (IS) - formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) - is indicating it is separate to the Baghdad and Damascus regimes. It is its own state, though the U.S. has scoffed at the very idea. Then again, there is growing indecision in Washington in how to deal with these unwelcome developments.

February 5, 2025

A five-minute scroll

Senator Barbara Pocock gives a picture of the future under Dutton. At the UN Palestine calls for the people of Palestine to be respected in their return to rebuild their homeland, while the Belgian Parliament recognises genocide. In Australian sport Sri Lankan opener Usman Khawaja supports sacked sports journalist Peter Lalor.

July 4, 2013

The dispute over the islands - leaving well alone. Guest blogger: Walter Hamilton

Which of China or Japan has the stronger claim to the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea, the dispute that has driven their relations to the lowest point in 40 years?

Chinas case is that the islands, having been appropriated by imperial Japan, were forfeit when it surrendered to the Allies in 1945. Japan argues that China acquiesced in Tokyos annexation of the uninhabited islands in the 1890s and only changed its tune after oil and gas reserves were found nearby in the 1960s. From my reading of the facts neither argument can be sustained.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal