November 7, 2025

Focusing on the EPBC but dropping the ball on protection

While national environmental attention is fixed on EPBC Act reforms in Canberra, some Australian states have dropped the ball on forest protection – and this is seriously undermining Australia’s target of protecting 30% of the continent by 2030.

December 10, 2025

Israel and police polarise Sydney Mardi Gras

Sydney’s Mardi Gras is facing a defining struggle over its purpose and identity. As corporate sponsors and political interests push for a safer, apolitical parade, grassroots activists are fighting to keep the event rooted in protest, solidarity and free expression.

November 24, 2025

Middle power moves: South Korea and the future of global governance

Is South Korea eyeing a new global order? A quiet debate is emerging over Seoul’s potential alignment with a rising alternative to Western governance.

November 18, 2025

Beyond machete bans and new laws – tackling youth violence

Victoria’s machete ban sends an important signal, but the real enemy is disconnection, the absence of belonging, purpose, opportunity and hope.

November 5, 2025

What would Whitlam think of the Albanese Government?

Gough Whitlam’s head mandarin and Pearls & Irritations founder & editor-in-chief John Menadue shares what he sees as the lessons of the Whitlam years, one of which is that the powerful can never be trusted.

October 13, 2025

Childhood on hold: Growing up too soon in Gaza and beyond

UNICEF has called Gaza the “most dangerous place in the world to be a child.” It estimates every single child in Gaza will need mental health support.

November 6, 2025

Israel, lies and videotape

We have heard a lot in the last two years and one month about Jewish Australians feeling unsafe or intimidated.

October 15, 2025

Trump’s war for peace: How the Nobel became his battlefield

Donald Trump’s pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize has been one of the most grotesque spectacles of the modern era – a man trying to win a peace prize by promoting war.

December 5, 2025

Book Review: Selling Israel: propaganda, history and contested narratives

Harriet Malinowitz’s Selling Israel examines how Zionist ideology has been promoted through propaganda, history and selective memory, and why separating Judaism from Zionism matters in confronting antisemitism.

December 2, 2025

With Trump's support, Netanyahu requests pardon for corruption charges

“There is no such thing as a pardon request without an admission of guilt and without resignation,” said one journalist. “This is a demand for the surrender of the rule of law in Israel.”

October 31, 2025

COP30: Amazon rainforest destroyers

For 33 years, the world’s leaders have postponed climate action despite incontrovertible scientific evidence and images proving that mankind is rapidly razing and scorching our only home.

November 27, 2025

Nature doesn't have an offset account

Australia’s climate and biodiversity laws rely heavily on offset markets that treat ecosystems as interchangeable. But nature is not fungible, and the growing evidence of unique, localised species shows why offset systems are structurally incapable of protecting what is irreplaceable.

November 19, 2025

US Democrats cave once more

The perils of unprincipled, performative so-called “resistance.”

October 22, 2025

The problem of climate change denialism

It is one of the great public debates of our time: is climate change happening or not? If it is, is humanity partly responsible? Either way, is it problematic and, if so, should we act?

December 11, 2025

Sanctions kill like wars – and children pay the price

Economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies are causing mass civilian deaths on a scale comparable to armed conflict, with children bearing the heaviest burden.

November 25, 2025

Senate committee on disinformation should look into the Liberals' energy policy: It is full of it

The Liberal Party’s new energy policy recycles discredited claims and fossil fuel talking points, undermining public trust and delaying the essential task of real action.

October 29, 2025

Five charts that show how young Australians are getting screwed

Australia is becoming increasingly unequal. The story is unmissably generational: young Australians today face a tougher reality than their parents and grandparents.

October 11, 2025

How the West will package the genocide after Netanyahu

In the not-too-distant future, the Netanyahu Government will fall. When this happens, it will become politically fashionable (and indeed necessary) for Western leaders outside the US to intellectually “package” the genocide in Gaza.

November 28, 2025

When evidence stops leading policy-making

The Coalition has walked away from evidence. Labor still listens – but only up to the point where action becomes politically uncomfortable. That may prove just as dangerous.

November 10, 2025

Arms industry infiltrates National Press Club

More than a quarter of the National Press Club’s sponsors are part of the global arms industry or working on its behalf.

November 7, 2025

Australia’s fragile multicultural consensus under threat

_Anti-immigration rallies_ around Australia in late August and mid-October exposed public divides over migration, social cohesion and national identity.

October 28, 2025

Randa Abdel-Fattah's latest book outlines the battles others face

Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah is an author with great experience having written nearly 20 books over two decades. Most are for young readers, beginning with Does My Head Look Big In This?

November 12, 2025

‘Absolutely pathetic’: Senate Democrats denounced for caving to GOP in shutdown fight

“Let’s be clear – this proposal isn’t a compromise, it’s a capitulation,” said one progressive lawmaker in the US House.

November 11, 2025

Bannon tells GOP: ‘Seize the institutions’ of government now or we’re 'going to prison’ after 2028

“Steve Bannon motivating Democratic voters,” said one historian in response to comments by the former Trump White House adviser.

November 8, 2025

Australia's AI policy vacuum

Australia abandoned its AI regulation plan. Now citizens are filling the ethical vacuum government created.

November 3, 2025

Fatal flaws: what regional Australians need to know about cash plan

There are fatal flaws in the federal government’s draft cash mandate regulations and they can be traced back to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s refusal to respond to Senate recommendations to fix the banking crisis in regional Australia.

October 9, 2025

A century of deceit: Towards a new understanding of the colonisation of Palestine

Political and media commentary on the Hamas killings of October 2023 have been preoccupied with claims that these were not only the worst terrorists but that their actions were without precedent.

October 23, 2025

Greening the city: Community vegetable gardens create self-sufficiency

More frequent droughts and floods in rural and regional eastern Australia are increasingly disrupting the growth cycle and supply chain of staple fruit and vegetables.

October 14, 2025

The West’s crucial strategic failures

“The Earth is littered with the ruins of empires that once believed they were eternal.” Camille Paglia.

November 1, 2025

A collective voice for peace with justice

Earlier this year, the Sydney Peace Foundation separated from the University of Sydney after 27 years.

October 20, 2025

Proposed housing development in Ipswich raises red flags

A proposal to build about 500 apartments on flood-liable land on the banks of the Bremer River in Ipswich, west of Brisbane, raises many questions about our continuing lack of respect for the potential severity of the consequences of flooding.

November 14, 2025

Building a strategic movement for Gaza

I’ve spent the past two years deeply involved in actions, campaigns and community organising for Gaza. But as the so-called ceasefire begins and talk of ‘peace plans’ fills the headlines, I find myself asking a harder question: what now?

October 18, 2025

Counting what doesn’t count: How consultants are hollowing out the university

When Western Sydney University announced it would shed hundreds of staff, its vice-chancellor described the decision as part of a “necessary transformation".

November 15, 2025

Tackling vehicle emissions – the next big climate task

Reducing transport emissions is fast approaching as the next big issue in Australia’s climate debate.

October 8, 2025

How the ALP outsourced the soul of higher education

For most of its history, the Australian Labor Party spoke of education as a public good, the “light on the hill”, a vision of collective progress through strong institutions, universal access, and the elevation of ordinary citizens.

October 17, 2025

War without end, peace without justice

The Gaza war has become the most searing mirror of our century’s political and moral contradictions.

October 10, 2025

Do you see me? Do you hear me? Does what I say matter?

In an age when millions feel invisible to those in power, these aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re the foundational need that either builds democracies or tears them apart.

October 25, 2025

From proletariat to boxetariat: The new working class

When Holden shut its gates at Elizabeth in 2017, Australia lost more than a car factory. It lost a symbol of national self-belief that we could design, build and export complex, high-value goods from Australia.

November 21, 2025

US alliance holding us back

Australia’s US alliance is preventing the country from signing and ratifying the Treaty for Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, despite overwhelming public support for the government to do so.

December 4, 2025

A practical answer to Australia’s AI ethics vacuum

As Australia shies away from meaningful AI regulation, a new framework offers a practical way to embed human moral responsibility at the centre of AI use.

November 4, 2025

Death by plastic

“Mummy…Daddy, what are clouds made of?” Almost every parent has fielded the innocent, eager question, perhaps explaining about mist, fog, water vapour, raindrops. Today, if you said that, you’d be wrong.

October 27, 2025

The politics of democracy’s decline

A report on voter pessimism casts more light on why Australian democracy is failing. The answer is to deepen political debate.

November 24, 2025

Innovation talk, austerity walk: Australia’s failing science policy

Despite constant rhetoric about innovation, Australia is steadily dismantling its scientific capacity. Public schools, universities and the CSIRO are all under pressure – the result of decades of market-driven policy-making that prioritises short-term cost-cutting over long-term national capability.

November 22, 2025

Only a republic can reverse executive power creep

A democratic republic would end the structural uncertainties that allowed both the Whitlam dismissal and Scott Morrison’s many ministries, as well as bringing the Australian people into a new constitutional relationship.

October 6, 2025

Orwell foresees the 21st century

George Orwell completed his most famous novel 1984 in 1948, shortly before his early death at 46. A few years earlier, in a remarkable short 1945 essay, Orwell foresaw a future world order overseen by America, Russia and China.

December 1, 2025

The great failure of the property industry

In every era, certain industries become so large, so politically embedded, and so culturally unexamined that their performance ceases to matter.

November 26, 2025

Why Indonesia’s new criminal rules matter

Indonesia’s overhaul of its Criminal Procedure Code could modernise justice – or entrench a system where police power expands, judicial oversight shrinks and civic life becomes riskier. With the clock ticking towards implementation, the choices made now will shape Indonesia’s democratic identity for decades.

November 17, 2025

Violence in prisons isn’t a surprise: It’s inevitable

In recent months, we’ve seen prisons across Australia buckle under the weight of the very system they were built to uphold.

November 13, 2025

Stealing the breath of life

When you suffocate or drown, every fibre of your being cries out for the breath of life, oxygen. It is the body’s ungovernable response to the extinguishing of your flame.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal