May 20, 2016

GEOFF HISCOCK. Asias easy opportunities overshadow Indian business ties. Australian businesses lack enthusiasm for Indian opportunities.

At the Australia India Business Council forum in Sydney earlier this week, Indian diplomats wondered why Australian businesses lacked enthusiasm about engaging with an economy that is destined to become the worlds third largest within the next two decades.

January 20, 2017

MARIAN SAWER. What can be done about political trust? The 2016 federal election inquiry

The major political parties largely control the process of electoral reform and judge any proposal by its possible partisan effects. Considerations of partisan advantage almost always take precedence over the restoration of public trust in the political system.

July 11, 2015

Peter Day. Warning: role models may shrink

Role models: We love them. We look up to them. We say we need them. We want to know them. We want to live through them. But who are they, and what purpose do they serve?

In Australia they tend to be sportsmen and celebrities of note: young people who can kick a footy, smash a tennis ball, and generally do things much faster and better than the rest of us - and look good while doing so.

February 28, 2015

John Menadue. Health Insurance - here we go again!

The Health Minister, Sussan Ley has just announced a 6.2% increase in private health insurance premiums. Increases of this order happen almost every year.

Since the Howard government introduced the rebate on private health insurance in 1999, the cost of private health insurance has increased over 150%. Overall prices have increased by less than 50% in this period.

Because private health insurance has not got the will or ability to control prices, it is a ‘price taker’ as economists say, it underwrites large increases in health costs particularly by private specialists. That is why we are all paying more in out-of-pocket expenses. But it is even much worse than that. Private health insurance makes it more difficult for Medicare to control fees.

November 20, 2015

John Tulloh. Europe: The political impact of a dead Syrian.

Ahmed al Mohammad may have a greater impact on Europe than his evil terrorist deeds did in Paris last week. It appears he was a Syrian asylum-seeker who, according to Greek records, passed through Greece last month and made his way through the Balkans to join his cohorts in France. He satisfied whatever checks there were and was sent on his way with tens of thousands of others. We will never know what happened after then because he died in the mayhem.

February 17, 2017

OLIVER FRANKEL. Making housing affordable. Vancouvers new Empty Homes Tax

Vancouvers response to the housing affordability crisis, now includes a new Empty Homes Tax at 1% per annum of the value of each empty home covered. Australian reports suggest that there may be 90,000 empty dwellings in Sydney and 83,000 in Melbourne.

September 15, 2015

Stephen Leeder. The takeover of the Medical Journal of Australia.

A quick glance at the last page of the most recent issue of the MJA reveals that there is as yet no replacement editor-in-chief and that two of the most senior medical editors Janusic and Armstrong are missing in action, as is the Editorial Advisory Committee. There is an interim editor. Many of the assistant editors have gone as well replaced in the AMA presidents memorable words on ABC Radio because all they did was move words around on the page. This they had been doing, together with checking facts, assertions, arithmetic, grammar, syntax, clarity and originality of submitted papers and keeping the faith in the MJA community some for 20 years. This activity was now to be done by anonymous staff employed often overseas by the publishing giant Elsevier.

April 19, 2015

John Menadue. Best we forget - the Frontier War and the Maori Wars.

See below post I made on this subject in October 2013. John Menadue

Repost. The drumbeat grows louder.

In the lead-up to the centenary of Gallipoli in 2015 the military drums are growing louder. We are expected to cheer it all. In the process we will be encouraged to engage in a lot of mindless myths. Amnesia will also play a large part.

In an interview published in the SMH on October 5 this year, Brendan Nelson, the Director of the Australian War Memorial, former Minister for Defence and Parliamentary Leader of the Liberal Party, said: The soul of the nation is embedded in many ways in the [Australian War] memorial. Is it? I certainly hope not. He then added the more obscene the war, the more inexplicable for us it seems today, the more many [young people] admire these men and women who went in our name. What an extraordinary thing to say! In short, he is saying that the more inexplicable or dubious the war, the more young people admire the values of those that served in those wars.

December 27, 2014

John Tulloh. The flight of Christians from the Middle East.

If there is one region which Christians increasingly want to abandon, it is the biblical heartland of their faith: the Middle East. They are fleeing in greater numbers than ever before. They are fearful of the growing turmoil in places like Syria and Iraq, the spread of radical Islam and, of course, now the presence of Islamic State (IS) and its dire warning to non-believers that ’there is nothing to give (you) but the sword’. The exodus has alarmed Pope Francis who said: ‘We will not resign ourselves to imagining a Middle East without Christianity’.

September 10, 2019

HENRY LITTON. Joshua Wong article in Australian 2 Sep

Joshua Wong, in his article in The Australian of 2 September, made a valid point when he asked rhetorically who were the ones who did not give young people a stake in society ?

July 16, 2015

James Button. A Moment of Unexpected Hope

From the local Labor journal, Grassroots - Party Reform, Past, Present and Future.

This should be a moment of unexpected hope for the ALP. Remarkable election wins in Victoria and Queensland, theopinion polls tracking well, another Liberal Government exposed as mean, tricky and out of touch…it all suggests that after the debacle of the last federal election Labor might be back in power far sooner than anyone could ever have hoped for. The climate of ideas should be on Labors side, too. The great policy challenge of the day how to sustain economic and jobs growth while expanding opportunity and protecting the environment is going to require smart, interventionist government; laissez-faire wont do it**.**

December 27, 2014

What will Israel become?

In the International New York Times of December 20, Roger Cohen focuses on the future of Israel. He says ‘Every day … another European Government or parliament expresses support for recognition of a Palestinian state … In the space of a few weeks something has shifted. The Leader of the Labor Party, Isaac Herzog has been ushered from unelectable nerd to plausible patriot. Polls show him neck and neck with the incumbent [Benjamin Netanyahu]. For link to this article see below. John Menadue

November 19, 2015

John Menadue. Why Cayman Islands?

I must confess I was surprised to learn that Malcolm Turnbull uses a hedge fund domiciled in the Cayman Islands. The story has come and gone without much examination.

Conflicts of interest

In the SMH of 24/25 October 2015, the veteran journalist Alan Ramsey highlighted what Malcolm Turnbull told the parliament about his hedge fund in the Cayman Islands. Malcolm Turnbull had said

In order to avoid conflicts of interest [in Australia] almost all of my and my wifes investments and theyre all disclosed are in overseas managed funds, which means that I and Lucy have no say in which individual companies those funds invest it.

November 12, 2015

Malcolm Turnbull's NBN is off the rails.

Paul Budde comments in his BuddeBlog on 6 November 2015

‘If you abandon national FttH (fibre to the home)you also undermine the infrastructure required by the new economy. … The MTM [multi technology mix] leads to the Balkanisation of infrastructure in Australia and will favour companies such as Telstra and TPG. … The NBN Co will remain bleak from a financial position. … All of this becomes an even sadder story day by day, as at the same time it becomes clear that the trumped up costs of an FttH-based NBN were wrong. … The second rate roll out is going to cost roughly the same as the original FttH rollout.’

January 18, 2015

John Menadue. Why are the Nordics so successful? Part 2.

You might be interested in part 2 of these articles on the Nordics.

In my earlier postcard from Denmark, I described the Nordic success.

I didnt mention that they are rated the happiest people in the world, have the lowest rates of corruption and are on track to achieve their target of 50% renewable energy by 2020. Copenhagen is a very liveable city.

But why have Denmark and other Nordics, Finland, Sweden and Norway been so successful?

October 1, 2015

Why the Rich are so much Richer in the US

Nobel Prizewinner Joseph E. Stiglitz has been at the forefront of the debate in the US and elsewhere about growing inequality. In a recent review in the New York Review of Books, James Surowiecki comments on three recent books by Stiglitz. He says:

“The numbers are, at this point, woefully familiar: the top 1% of earners take home more than 20% of the income and their share has more than doubled in the last 35 years. The gains for people in the top 0.1%, meanwhile, have been even greater. Yet over that same period, average wages and household incomes in the US have risen only slightly, and a number of demographic groups (like men with only a high school education) have actually seen their average wages decline.”

November 26, 2015

Victoria Rollison. Couples counselling for Labor and Unions

When I saw the news that the Electrical Trades Union invited the Greens Adam Bandt to address their National Officers conference, and didnt invite a speaker from the Labor Party, the lyrics of Gloria Gaynors “I Will Survive” came to mind: I’m not that chained up little person still in love with you, and so you felt like dropping in and just expect me to be free, and now I’m saving all my loving for someone who’s loving me. This is not a lovers spat. The ETU has felt unloved by the Labor Party for a long time. In 2010, the unions members made their displeasure official through a public, conscious uncoupling. As explained on the ETU website our-history page: The mood of the ETU membership towards the Labor Party has changed. The members no longer have faith in the Labor Party to listen to and act in the best interests of workers. The argument put forward is that political parties only listen to swinging voters. To that end, in 2010 the ETU membership voted to step away from its affiliation with the ALP and support whichever voice in the Parliament speaks genuinely for the workers.

December 6, 2024

A five-minute scroll

Trump announces the head of NASA and the USA’s future among the stars. Barbara Pocock speaks out on nuclear waste in our own backyard. An Israeli professor speaks out on the genocide, while Israel has continued attacks in Gaza overnight. On the anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s death we are reminded of his views of the US.

October 1, 2014

John Menadue. Stuck in a closed information loop

Conservatives who read and listen to News Corp media have a problem. They are encouraged to believe that the world is really like News Corp says it is. The inevitable result is a loss of reality.

Paul Krugman in the New York Times on September 23 wrote of the problems of right-wing Republicans who keep complaining about the lazy jobless. He said

In a nation where the Republican base gets what it thinks are facts from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, where the partys elite gets what it imagines to be policy analysis from the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation, the Right lives in its own intellectual universe, aware neither the reality of unemployment nor what life is like for the jobless. You might think that personal experience almost everyone has acquaintances or relatives who cant find work would still break through, but apparently not.

April 13, 2017

RICHARD BUTLER. US Missile Attack on Syria

The US missile strike on Syria was an act of aggression the consequences of which could be immense. The facts of what happened at Khan Sheikhun must be established.

June 30, 2015

Europe's attack on Greek democracy.

See below link to article by Joseph Stiglitz in Project Syndicate. Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel Laureate in Economics and University Professor at Columbia University. He was also Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. John Menadue.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/greece-referendum-troika-eurozone-by-joseph-e–stiglitz-2015-06

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal