January 1, 2016

John Menadue. The Dismissal – Forty years on. A smoking gun

Repost from 27/10/2015

The evidence continues to mount against those who collaborated in the dismissal of the Whitlam government. To obfuscate and cover their tracks, those who collaborated in the dismissal and their establishment friends spare no effort to criticize the performance of the Whitlam government. Those attacks are becoming quite threadbare. It is amazing what people with guilty consciences do to try and justify outrageous behavior or avoid responsibility or change the subject!

November 2, 2015

John Menadue. Abbott lectures London on how to ‘stop the boats’.

Tony Abbott has been at it again, this time in London, claiming that he stopped the boats and that Europeans should follow suit. It is an oft repeated untruth that he stopped the boats. His one-liners are not supported by the facts. But the lie is deeply imbedded.

Last month, Peter Hughes and I posted two articles on ‘Slogans vs Facts on boat arrivals’. Part 1 was entitled ‘ How Tony Abbott helped to keep the door open for people-smugglers. Part 2 was entitled ‘ Tony Abbott did not stop the boats’

October 21, 2014

John Faulkner. Gough Whitlam - Academy awards and Passiona!

At the ALP Caucus today John Faulkner spoke movingly of Gough Whitlam as a towering figure in the ALP. The link to his speech follows:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/edward-gough-whitlam-labor-party-caucus-condolence-motion-20141021-119b4y.html

John Menadue

October 5, 2015

Spencer Zifcak. Human rights inquiry and a Charter of Rights!

Tony Abbott and George Brandis always used strong rhetoric about the necessity to protect Australians’ traditional rights and freedoms. The reality under the Abbott government, however, was different. The rights of minority racial, religious, ethnic, refugee and environmental groups were relentlessly pared back. Those who stood up for human rights, like the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, and various UN Human Rights Rapporteurs, were shot when they conveyed their critical message.

November 9, 2015

Tony Kevin. Time for review of our foreign policy.

Why Australia need to get its head around great power multipolarity.

Most Australians think of foreign policy as an esoteric, wonky field. Beyond special-cause activists, few Australians give much thought to our foreign policy choices. One who does is Professor Ramesh Thakur at the Australian National University. He does serious academic work on issues like UN peacekeeping, Security Council powers and responsibilities, the global responsibility to protect human rights , and changing great power balances. His opinion piece written a year ago is pertinent to this essay.

January 29, 2015

John Menadue. Murdoch, Abbott and Credlin

In August 2013 I wrote about Rupert Murdoch’s abuse of power and his intense fascination with party politics. That blog is reproduced below.

Rupert Murdoch is a frustrated politician. He loves the political game. Usually he works indirectly through ultra-loyal and uncritical editors and journalists. But new technology, particularly twitter, allows him to indulge his love of political intrigue more personally. The family must hope that sometime soon he will call it a day, but I think Murdoch will persevere to the end.

July 20, 2014

Walter Hamilton. When Local Becomes Global

Why is Vladimir Putin calling down upon himself the ire of the world by failing to help secure the crash site of MH-17 for international investigators? The answer, I think, is pretty obvious. He does not want to demonstrate how much influence, if not control, Russia has over events in eastern Ukraine. Putin’s response has been to blame the government in Kiev and hold it responsible for the situation.

Since the fall of the Moscow-backed regime in Kiev, it has been Russian policy to destabilize its neighbour so as to discredit and weaken the pro-Western government that has taken over. It has used existing ethnic and religious divisions in Ukraine to hive off the Crimean peninsula and turn a large swathe of territory in the east into a war zone.

May 10, 2016

Warwick Elsche. If words were deeds.

If words were deeds – or even credible policies – Malcolm Turnbull might already have joined the company of Australia’s pre-eminent Prime Ministers.

All three of Malcolm’s pre-politics callings, journalism, law and banking, have involved the extensive used of the words medium. But none of these also involved the commitment, the enduring exposure, or the threat of damaging public refutation as mere words do, coming at a critical political time, from the country’s most senior political figure.

April 9, 2016

Evan Williams. Rams. Film Review

Rams is a strange and beautiful film from Iceland. And we don’t hear much about Iceland these days. As a child, I pictured a place of endless glaciers and permanently frozen lakes, and was surprised to discover that it was also a place of gentle hills and verdant summer grasslands, with streets and houses and a capital city whose name I could never remember. Iceland was in the news the other day when their prime minister, Sigmundur Gumlauigsson, was revealed to have hidden large stacks of money in an overseas tax haven and forced to resign. I was reminded of another prime minister in a similar predicament – attacked in parliament for investing a chunk of his personal wealth in a tax-free haven in the Cayman Islands. His name escapes me, but I’m pretty sure he hasn’t resigned.

September 10, 2013

US complicity in chemical weapons. Guest blogger; Richard Broinowski

In recent days, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have made much of their moral repugnance at alleged chemical warfare attacks by the Syrian regime against rebel groups. Their retaliatory missile strikes, if made, would demonstrate that the use of chemical weapons by any force against any foe, is completely unacceptable to the world’s community. It was a moral line that, if crossed, would bring condign punishment to the perpetrators.

May 26, 2014

Héctor Abad Faciolince: An Idea of Europe

After centuries of war, European unity has been one of the world’s greatest achievements in the second half of the 20th Century. But can it last? The recent European Parliamentary elections have given rise to Euro scepticism and hostility to immigration. It is a testing time for Europe. John Menadue

El Espectador, Colombia, 4 May 2014, http://www.elespectador.com/opinion/una-idea-de-europa-columna-490295

I have just been at Berlin’s “House of the Cultures of the World”, as part of a discussion about Europe, and more specifically, about whether some ideas developed in that part of the word can be considered universally valid. One cannot deny that Europe is a special place. To start with, although it is called a continent, it is not even a continent. When we look at a map of the world in real dimensions, and not one designed from the point of view of the European geographers, we can see that Europe is just a small Asian peninsular. It is a corner of the world, squeezed between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and a crossroad in the paths connecting Africa and Asia. This does not detract from Europe, but on the contrary, makes it more extraordinary.

April 9, 2016

Kieran Tapsell. Cardinal Barbarin and accountability.

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon is currently being investigated by French police for failing to report sexual offences against children by some of his priests.

It is alleged that he knew about allegations against them in 2007 and 2009. Despite his denials of any wrongdoing, there have been calls for his resignation.

On Good Friday, retired auxiliary Bishop Geoffrey Robinson of Sydney, Australia, called on Pope Francis to request the resignation of every bishop who has failed to properly address cases of child sexual abuse.

July 20, 2014

MH 17-Light a candle rather than curse the darkness

In the horror and sense of evil we all feel about the downing of MH17 how should we respond? Perhaps out best response is summed up in the above exhortation which is attributed to Peter Benenson the founder of Amnesty International. The candle cycled by barb wire has become the emblem of Amnesty. The quote was also used by Adlai Stevenson in a speech in the UN in tribute to Eleanor Roosevelt

June 4, 2013

Walter Hamilton. Australia - still a colonial relic in Japan.

The two greatest calamities to befall the people of Tokyo in modern times were the September 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake and the March 1945 firebombing by American B-29s. In each case, many tens of thousands perished within a matter of hours.

In Sumida ward, a working class area in the east of the city that suffered grievously on both occasions, a large Buddhist-style memorial hall, the Tokyo Irei-do (erected in 1930; rebuilt in 1951), links these two events – as though the whirlwind reaped by Japan in the Second World War was itself an act of God.

October 14, 2025

Episode 3 - The 50th anniversary of the Whitlam government

Presenter and Pearls and Irritations Editor Catriona Jackson is joined for the third and final episode of the Dismissal editon of Pearlcast.

June 21, 2013

Beware the debt and deficit trap and the European mistake. John Menadue

The Europeans may at last be breaking free of the debt and deficit trap that has caused so much social and economic damage across Europe. Even the IMF is at last challenging the austerity mindset that took hold in Europe. There is a lesson for Australia in this.

The Australian Government has allowed itself to be manipulated into a debt and deficit trap set by the Coalition. To head off Coalition and media criticism, it foolishly decided that it must get the budget into surplus this financial year. It succumbed to this pressure despite the fact that Australia does not have a serious debt and deficit problem.

October 8, 2014

Edmund Campion. Australian Catholic Lives.

Fr Edmund Campion has just published a new book. A book review and information about the book can be found on the following link. John Menadue.

http://tintean.org.au/2014/10/06/australian-catholics-lives-by-edmund-campion

April 20, 2018

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND ...

Australia gets a mention in The Atlantic, but probably not the kind we wanted. It’s a review of the work of Terry Hughes (of James Cook University) and others who have had a paper published in Nature on the effect of global warning on the Great Barrier Reef. Atlantic staff writer Robinson Meyer writes: “The Great Barrier Reef will continue to collapse and die until humanity stabilizes the amount of greenhouse-gas pollution in the air. But fixing that problem will require remaking the energy system, moving away from oil and gas and to solar, wind, and other renewable sources.”

February 20, 2019

ANDREW FARRAN. The UK will make Brexit on 29th March

The UK will make Brexit on 29th March if the government is to avoid a huge humiliation and unforgivable damage to its economy, not to mention the nation’s future diplomatic standing and credibility.

This appears to have got through to Theresa May, the UK PM, as the civil service is working day and night to prepare hundreds of statutory instruments and other measures to prevent a legislative vacuum on withdrawal. Preparations to prevent chaos for trade and transport systems are not as well advanced which gives a further clue to future intentions.

To extend the negotiating period for any time under Article 50 of the EU Treaty is not an option. The public is sick and tired of the whole business. Agitation in the streets is growing, and the credibility of the political class is crumbling.

October 12, 2025

Episode 2 - The 50th anniversary of the Whitlam government

In this second episode of Pearlcast from John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations, we return to the dramatic events of 11 November 1975 – the day the Governor-General dismissed the Whitlam Labor government.

June 30, 2014

Walter Hamilton. A Death in Tokyo

A bespectacled, middle-aged man wearing a suit and tie climbed onto the steel rafters above a footbridge in Tokyo’s busy Shinjuku district and, using a megaphone, began to address passers-by below. According to witnesses, he spoke out against the Japanese Government’s impending decision to embrace the right of ‘collective defense’, which until now has been considered outside the bounds of the nation’s pacifist constitution.

After squatting on the steel girder speaking undisturbed for almost an hour, the man poured accelerant over his body and set himself alight.

May 21, 2019

DUNCAN GRAHAM Hungry for a result in the Indonesian election?

The differences are stark. When Labor lost Bill Shorten quit and said: ‘Now that the contest is over, all of us have a responsibility to respect the result, respect the wishes of the Australian people and to bring our nation together.’

In Indonesia police are preparing for mass protests when the official results of the Presidential contest are announced on Wednesday. Foreign embassies have warned their nationals to stay indoors. Bomb plans have allegedly been uncovered.

July 30, 2016

JIM COOMBS. “Circle” Incarceration

After the revelations this week, it is trite to say that the criminal justice system is failing the Aboriginal people of Australia. One significant reason for this is the exclusion of the Aboriginal community from the process. One “reform” in the process over the last decade or so is “circle sentencing” which allows a small panel of community elders to assist magistrates in the process of sentencing, after the offender has pleaded guilty.

Given that the incarceration of Aboriginals is 23 times the rate for white offenders (compared with 5-7 times for African-Americans in the USA), it is clear that we have failed quite badly.

July 22, 2016

IAN WEBSTER. Health care for aged people is increasingly complex.

From his experience in intensive care in one of Australia’s busiest intensive care units at Liverpool Hospital in Southwest Sydney, Professor Ken Hillman describes the failure of specialised, super-specialised, medicine to deal appropriately and humanely with seriously ill aged persons and those whose life has run its course. ( Ageing and end-of-life issues, posted 9/7/2016 in Pearls and Irritations)

Ockham’s Razor (1) is wielded inappropriately when there is not a single biological breakdown but many breakdowns. Ageing causes progressive erosion of the reserve capacity in all body systems; and chronic disease impairs the function of many organs. The aims in preventive medicine and successful ageing are to protect and preserve the function of body systems with advancing age and to prevent the onset and progression of chronic disease.

July 16, 2016

JOHN MENADUE. The Philippines – President Duterte, the crack down on crime and the dispute with China over the South China Sea.

I asked a colleague with years of experience dealing with and observing the Philippines about the new President and the maritime dispute with China.

He said that President Duterte revels in the unpredictable and is determined to try to root out crime and corruption in the country as he did so well in winning the slums of Davao 25 years ago against the communist insurgents – the NPA - by vicious vigilante squads. He is already bragging about how many drug dealers have been killed. He has also invited the NPA to hunt down drug dealers and criminals!

Duterte is now equally committed to cutting a deal with the NPA to end their insurgency - through some former NPA and sympathisers in his Cabinet and one of the exiled leaders who taught him at university. The insurgency has been fairly quiet for some years since the US bases (the NPA’s principal target) were closed. This will have serious implications for any moves to bring back significant US military presence in the Philippines. This in turn could pose a few issues for US/Philippines cooperation in the South China Sea.

July 30, 2016

DEAN ASHENDEN. State aide, the ALP and the 'needs policy'.

When Labor decided to support public funding of non-government schools fifty years ago, it created a legacy that is still misunderstood.

July 25, 2016

GREG WOOD. “Only a fool…” Australia, Iraq, and other such wars.

The Chilcot report in the UK has renewed calls for an examination of Australia’s intelligence system in the lead up to the Iraq war. Far less subject to scrutiny, but arguably more important still than the accuracy of the intelligence, was the nature of the advice provided to the Howard government by policy departments on the implications and long term consequences of military action. Even if weapons of mass destruction had been there, it’s not an ipso facto case justifying invasion. However, without question, Iraq was in Paul Kelly’s word, “a leadership driven war”. It’s the statements, judgements and actions of Australia’s leaders, and those of the other countries who chose to be in (or out) of the “coalition of the willing”, that warrant serious analysis, even now.

June 16, 2016

IAN McAULEY. A Royal Commission into banking and the private health insurance industry.

In this election campaign the issue that triggered a double dissolution – restoration of the Australian Building and Construction Commission – has hardly scored a mention.

That contrasts with the 1974 double dissolution election, called by the Whitlam Government in response to the Coalition’s use of its Senate power to thwart the government’s most important pieces of legislation.

The establishment of Medibank – the forerunner of Medicare – was the main issue in that election. Labor’s vision was for a publicly-funded single health insurer, while the Coalition fought tooth and nail to defend the privileged position of private health insurance (PHI).

The struggle continued in subsequent elections. Between 1975 and 1983 the Fraser Government gutted Medibank, but the Hawke Government resurrected it as Medicare, and over the years of the Hawke-Keating Government, as Medicare grew in popularity, membership of PHI steadily fell to around 30 percent of the population. Then in 1986 the newly-elected Howard Government introduced a set of generous subsidies for PHI, resulting in its coverage rising back to a little over 50 per cent of the population.

August 21, 2013

Jesuit students rebuke Tony Abbott and other old boys. John Menadue

For many years, I have been concerned that the Jesuits at St Ignatius College Sydney seem to be producing mainly conservative politicians and merchant bankers. I don’t think St Ignatius would have expected that.

My confidence in the Jesuits at St Ignatius has been at least partially restored by action by senior students at St Ignatius to rebuke Tony Abbott and others for ‘betraying moral values on asylum seekers’. See the report of their action from the SMH below.

June 5, 2013

How about it Gina and Twiggy? John Menadue

Since 1904 the brightest and best of young Australians have been winning Rhodes Scholarships to study at Oxford. Winners have included prime ministers, political leaders, a governor general, a Nobel Prize winner and high court judges.

How about funding a substantial foundation to provide for the brightest and best of young Australians to study at the best universities in Asia – Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore and elsewhere.

Your companies have been very profitable in exporting Australian owned ores to Asia. Your business futures and indeed Australia’s future is tied to Asia. But we lack the skills and understanding for the future in our region. Rhodes-type scholarships for our region would be an enormous step forward.

March 2, 2016

David Stephens. Malcolm Turnbull's post-Anzac pitch to the Australian Defence Force

Tony Abbott admired soldiers. He liked to be around them, to talk about the fortunes of war (“shit happens,” as he memorably muttered to troops in Afghanistan). He quoted Samuel Johnson about how men despise themselves if they have never been a soldier. His Anzac Day Dawn Service speech last year at Gallipoli portrayed the men of Anzac as sacred role models for us today. He tried to con New Zealand’s John Key into a “Sons of Anzac” commemoration force to take on Islamic State.

July 23, 2016

The American alliance and Vice President Biden's recent visit

Vice President Biden’s speech at the Paddington Town Hall on 20 July was by invitation only. I had met Vice President Biden three years ago in Washington when I was on the Board of the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue. He was friendly and somewhat more impressive than I had expected and certainly had very competent staff around him.

July 22, 2016

WALTER HAMILTON. Abdication in Japan?

On July 13, just three days after Japan’s ruling coalition secured a critical two-thirds majority in parliament, a news report emerged that the country’s long-serving Emperor wishes to abdicate ‘within the next few years’. (According to some news media, the abdication story was held over until after the election at the government’s insistence.) On the surface, the two events might appear unrelated; however, various intriguing possibilities are worth exploring.

July 25, 2016

CHRISTINE DUFFIELD & MARY CHIARELLA. The predicted nursing shortage: strategies and solutions

The nursing workforce

The nursing workforce comprises 3 regulated groups: Nurse Practitioners (NPs), Registered Nurses (RNs) and Enrolled Nurses (ENs). Nurses recognise that other unregulated groups of healthcare workers (for example Assistants in Nursing (AINs)) perform nursing care, and the research is clear that they require support from registered nurses (Duffield et al, 2014). Other regulated health professions, including general practitioners (GPs) have also regularly performed various aspects of nursing care. In General Practice over the past twenty years, practice nurses have been increasingly employed to perform those nursing aspects of care (Merrick et al, 2011).
The scope of practice for nurses is not defined by the tasks nurses perform, but by the acuity of the people they are caring for and the concomitant range of skills that they will require for their practice. For example, assisting a person who is acutely ill and haemodynamically unstable with their personal hygiene may well require the assessment and clinical management skills of an RN, but the same personal hygiene skills may be performed by an AIN if the person is convalescent.
Nurses will perform their skills across a continuum from novice to expert (Benner, 1984) at different stages of their career development and according to the different levels of registration: NPs perform all of their skill-sets at a highly complex level (NMBA, 2014), whereas ENs may perform only some of their skill sets and to a less complex level (NMBA, 2016).

June 16, 2016

MARK GREGORY. Labor's NBN plan shows it listened to critics of the current broadband rollout.

Labor’s broadband plan includes few surprises and fulfils Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s commitment to responsibly increase the construction of fibre to the premises ( FTTP). At the same time, it would ensure the completion of the National Broadband Network (NBN) is not delayed further.

It shifts the focus back to providing Australia with broadband infrastructure that would slowly arrest the country’s slide in the global broadband rankings. Importantly, this would help business compete in the global digital economy.

Under Labor’s broadband plan, NBN Co would connect an additional two million premises to the NBN with FTTP rather than the technically inferior fibre to the node ( FTTN). Existing contracts for hybrid fibre-coaxial ( HFC) remediation, upgrades and new construction would continue under Labor.

February 23, 2015

Mark Triffitt and Travers McLeod. Don't blame micro-parties or the Senate.

Paul Keating famously labelled the Senate “unrepresentative swill”. Similar sentiments – while not as colourful – are being voiced by those frustrated with the blocking power of the Senate’s micro-parties.

In a recent Australian Financial Review survey, leading corporate CEOs called for major reform to the Senate.

At one level it is not hard to understand why. The Senate in general, and the minor and micro-parties that hold the balance of power in particular, were instrumental in gutting the Abbott government’s budget at a time when reform is pressing.

June 19, 2013

Clericalism and the inability to recognise one's own shortcomings. Guest Blogger: Michael Kelly SJ

But what was the question? For a very long time I have puzzled over what fanatics, bigots, sundry village idiots and fundamentalists have in common.

I used to think it was fear – the fear of losing control. So, all manner of extreme positions, programs and political strategies are worked out to keep control.

It’s plainly evident in societies run by religious leaders: there’s only one way to do things and that is according to the Book, whichever Book might be invoked. It’s obvious also in the totalitarian politics that keep Communist Parties in office in several Asian countries.

April 2, 2014

Kerry Murphy. To Kill a Mockingbird and 2014.

Mark Twain is quoted as saying that history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. I was reminded of this when seeing the excellent production of To Kill a Mockingbird at the New Theatre in Newtown, Sydney last week. Good literature manages to make us reflect on our own times, and challenges us to think about how we might act in difficult times.

Harper Lee’s 1960 novel is well known and is a modern classic. The seemingly simple story of young Scout and her brother Jem, and their widower lawyer father in 1935 Alabama still resonates with an Australian audience in 2014.

June 16, 2016

IAN McAULEY. The difference in the economic policies of the major parties.

In the din of distractions about political trivia, many in the media have lost sight of, or fail to understand, fundamental differences in the economic policies of the two main parties.

That is their approach to distribution, or redistribution.

Although politicians may accuse one another of heartlessness or of ignoring the poor, almost all politicians believe that the benefits of economic activity should be distributed fairly (even though what they see as constituting “fairness” may differ).

April 7, 2016

Kieran Tapsell. Bishop Ronald Mulkearns: Blaming the Foot Soldier

The “Nuremberg defence” takes its name from the claim by Nazi officials at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal that they should be acquitted because they were following “superior orders”. In one of the most significant judgments in international law, the Nuremberg Tribunal held that following superior orders in the case of crimes against humanity is no defence, although it may be a factor in determining the appropriate punishment.

Justice Robert Jackson, the chief prosecutor, wanted to make heads of state accountable for the orders they gave, and for what they allowed to happen under their watch. Historically, he pointed out, accountability had been the least where responsibility had been the greatest. Jackson accepted that responsibility was greatest where the power was strongest, and this is the stance now taken by the International Criminal Court.

June 22, 2024

UN Human Rights Commission: Israel’s is among the most criminal armies in the world. Chris Sidoti

Palestinians have experienced 70 or 80 years of dispossession, occupation, and human rights violations.

July 23, 2016

DAVID STEPHENS. Is this the most sycophantic speech by an Australian prime minister? Julia Gillard’s address to the United States Congress, March 2011

‘All the way with LBJ’ has become the cliche that associates Conservative dependence on the US alliance. But Julia Gillard’s address to the US Congress is hard to beat! John Menadue.

September 17, 2016

GRAHAM FREUDENBERG: On the Irish and other undesirables.

Australia sometimes seems to suffer a mysterious case of multiple-amnesia over immigration.

We are a nation built on migrants, but we have forgotten that almost every new wave of immigrants has been resented and resisted by those already here, especially those who were migrants themselves. It started around the 1820s when the convicts hated the first free settlers ‘taking our jobs’. We have forgotten that, without exception, each wave of immigrants has been successfully absorbed to national and individual benefit. We have forgotten that particular groups aroused special animosity, yet integrated so completely in one generation that it would scarcely occur to them to regard themselves as being of migrant origin. Such is Australia’s perhaps unique capacity to integrate and be enriched.

March 17, 2016

Greg Barton. Out of the ashes of Afghanistan and Iraq: the rise and rise of Islamic State.

Since announcing its arrival as a global force in June 2014 with the declaration of a caliphate on territory captured in Iraq and Syria, the jihadist group Islamic State has shocked the world with its brutality.

Its seemingly sudden prominence has led to much speculation about the group’s origins: how do we account for forces and events that paved the way for the emergence of Islamic State? In the final article of our series examining this question, Greg Barton shows the role recent Western intervention in the Middle East played in the group’s inexorable rise.

June 13, 2016

ROD TUCKER. How do Labor and the Coalition differ on NBN policy?

As hinted in earlier announcements by Shadow Communications Minister, Jason Clare, Labor’s much-anticipated policy for the National Broadband Network released Monday commits the party – if elected – to move away from the Coalition’s fibre to the node (FTTN) network and transition back to a roll-out of fibre to the premises (FTTP). This was the central pillar of Labor’s original NBN.

The FTTN roll-out will be phased out as soon as current design and construction contracts are completed.

January 26, 2014

Stephen FitzGerald. Abbott's relations with China.

Can you believe the Abbott government has any idea where it’s headed on relations with China? Whatever you think of China’s politics, you can’t just take sides against China or meddle in the tense and volatile issue of China-Japan relations without there being some consequence for our bilateral relations. But the government doesn’t seem to care. From what you can divine from the little it says publicly, it thinks the Chinese will back down under Australia’s glare, and “get over it”. Like the Indonesians will get over it. But the Indonesians, whose thinking we know more clearly, aren’t going to get over it. Abbott and Morrison are so untutored in foreign relations and diplomacy, or so deaf, or both, that they don’t understand something has snapped in Jakarta. It’s not about our policies it’s about the language the Abbott government uses and the lecturing, patronising and racist attitudes they convey. A strong, independent, democratic and regionally influential Indonesia is not going to put up with that any longer and relations are never going back to the way they were before.

July 21, 2016

TONY KEVIN. South China Sea dispute: a furious China challenges the high priests of international law

One privilege of being retired that one can watch ABC News24 daytime television while others are hard at work. On Wednesday 13 July around midday, I was treated to a dramatic spectacle: a Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister in an hour-long international media conference in Beijing fiercely denouncing, as a ‘scrap of waste-paper fit only for the rubbish bin’, a Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) Award (ruling) made by the South China Sea Arbitration Tribunal the day before, 12 July.[1] I watched fascinated as the Minister criticised the ruling with great force, even challenging the legitimacy of the Tribunal’s selection and membership. A Chinese White Paper was issued on the same day detailing why China rejected the ruling.[2]

September 12, 2015

John Menadue. Refugees, the community and civil society

It has been thrilling to see the warm response of many people, and particularly the Germans, to refugees fleeing from war-torn Syria and other countries. Over ten million people have been forced to flee their homes in Syria.

Pope Francis has appealed to every Catholic parish, religious community or sanctuary in Europe to take in a family of refugees, saying that he would set the example by hosting two families in parishes inside the Vatican. With 20,000 or more Catholic ‘places’ in Europe, that could provide sanctuary for 200,000 refugees on the basis of 10 Syrians per parish.

June 16, 2016

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. In the general election, do you think the government's and the ALP's foreign policies are sound?

This was a question asked of me by the Australian Institute of International Affairs. My answer is ‘No’ for the following reasons.

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