September 22, 2013

How the Australian media frames North Korea and impedes constructive relations. Guest blogger: Dr Bronwen Dalton

An analysis of the last three years of coverage of North Korea in the Australian media shows a tendency in Australian coverage to uncritically reproduce certain metaphors that linguistically frame North Korea in ways that imply North Korea is dangerous and provocative; irrational; secretive; impoverished and totalitarian. This frame acts to delegitimize, marginalise and demonise North Korea and close off possibilities for more constructive engagement. In the event of tensions, such a widespread group think around North Korea could mean such tensions could quickly and dramatically escalate.

July 30, 2016

ANN TULLOH. Terrorism in France and a sense of hopelessness by many young people.

I was brought up on the ABC news coming from the sitting room loud enough to cover the house as Dad got himself going every morning. This was in the 50s and any terrible overseas news was so far away that I didn’t feel concerned. (I much preferred a programme around 8am when songs were played at our request and Charles Trenet’s “La Mer” was sometimes heard. A nearby town, Salon, has a cultural centre named after him. A coincidence or part of a master plan?!)

April 19, 2013

The blame game over schools: a way through the impasse. John Menadue

The Commonwealth and the States will blame each other for failure to agree on Gonski ‘light’. It is a pattern we have seen so often over many years, particularly in health.

Federalism is just not working for us. It has become an obstacle to good government. The Commonwealth financial dominance will continue. The States are poor but proud and reluctant to concede jurisdiction.

Kevin Rudd threatened to hold a referendum in association with the 2010 election to give the Commonwealth power to fund and run State public hospitals. But he was persuaded not to persist as it was very likely that a referendum would fail. The Government’s health ‘reforms’ have since turned out to be a continuation of the muddle or a ‘dog’s breakfast’ as Tony Abbott used to describe divided responsibility and the blame game in health.

September 24, 2014

Kieran Tapsell: Lawyers under the Spotlight at the Royal Commission

The John Ellis Case Study (No 8) at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse concerned the experience of John Ellis with the Towards Healing protocol in dealing with his complaint about being sexually abused by Fr Aidan Duggan. The case was unusual for its revelations about the relationship between Cardinal Pell as head of the Archdiocese of Sydney and his lawyers, Corrs, Chambers Westgarth, its senior partner Paul McCann and his assistant, John Dalzell. Such communications rarely come to light even in Royal Commissions because the Royal Commissions Act 1902 respects legal professional privilege where it exists. However, there is a long line of authority for the proposition that where clients make allegations of misconduct, professional negligence or breach of retainer against their lawyers, such privilege is waived. Cardinal Pell alleged that he was not properly informed about offers of settlement by his legal team in the Ellis case.

July 19, 2016

STUART HARRIS. What Australia's foreign policy should look like. (Repost from Policy Series)

The focus in Australia’s foreign policy has shifted back and forth between the global and the regional, and between multilateralism and bilateralism in economic and political relationships, due only in part to party political differences. While some policies, such as immigration, refugees and to a degree defence, are widely debated in Australia, many are not. Moreover, foreign policies are often not just linked to domestic interests but become part of domestic electoral politics – whether as photo ops with foreign leaders, muscularly assertive security stances or support for influential domestic pressure groups. This often leads to opportunistic political decisions lacking long-term vision and analysis.

November 19, 2014

Ian McAuley. Is capitalism redeemable? Part 8: Inequality’s downward economic spiral

Let’s start with what looks like a self-evident proposition. “Countries with right-wing or neoliberal governments spend less on social security than countries with more left-inclined governments.”

It’s a proposition university lecturers put to students of public economics, and the smarter students usually recognize that there’s a trick in it.

Harvard economists Dani Rodrik and Alberto Alesina studied the impact of neoliberal policies such as those pursued by Britain’s Thatcher Government, and found that those policies, because they resulted in widening inequality, actually increased the demand for social security payments.

June 27, 2013

Never underestimate a survivor. John Menadue

It is surprising to see that the Foreign Minister Bob Carr suggests that we need to be much tougher in refugee determination as many claimants for refugee status are really economic refugees.

Some claimants will undoubtedly be economic migrants posing as refugees. But the refugee determination process which we and others have developed over decades is designed to sort this out and reject those who claim our protection if they are not genuine refugees.

May 29, 2015

Alex Wodak. How should medicinal cannabis be provided lawfully in Australia?

Current Affairs

Ms Sussan Ley, the Federal Health Minister, recently acknowledged that medicinal cannabis was likely to proceed in Australia but advocated proceeding cautiously. A Private Members Bill is under consideration and seems to have strong support including backing from both sides of the aisle. So the question is now increasingly moving from ‘whether’ to ‘how’ to proceed with medicinal cannabis.

Hippocrates said that doctors should ‘cure sometimes, treat often, and comfort always’. Medicinal cannabis is about the need for the health care system to try to ‘comfort always’. What should the lawful provision of medicinal cannabis in Australia hope to achieve?

September 9, 2015

Peter Hughes. Designing a more generous Australian response to the Syrian crisis

The Australian government announcement of 12,000 additional permanent places for Syrian refugees is a reasonable scale of response, if implemented the right way.

Taken together with the existing program of 13,750 refugees, the new program constitutes a manageable 13% of the planned 2015–16 migration intake of 193,485 permanent visas. It is only 4% of the 632,000 people already in the country temporarily with work rights.

The fact that the places are permanent is essential. There is no reason to believe that Syrian refugees will be able to return to their home country in the foreseeable future.

May 28, 2015

Peter Day. It's hard being a Catholic today.

The gut-wrenching accounts coming out of Ballarat this past couple of weeks are enough to bring a man to his knees: stories of young people crippled by sexual abuse; stories of utter betrayal; stories we would rather not hear - stories we must hear.

It is hard being a Catholic today.

It is hard being a Catholic priest today.

Our collective shame is deep, for some, even overwhelming, because good people are being condemned by association. But we must not fall prey to self-pity because as hard as it is for us, we are not nearly as innocent, or as damaged, as the children who are only now being given a voice.

November 5, 2014

Graham Freudenberg AM. Tribute to Gough Whitlam.

The Honourable (Edward) Gough Whitlam, AC QC

State Memorial Service

Graham Freudenberg AM

Sydney Town Hall

5 November 2014

This is the greatest privilege of my very privileged life. And I thank the Whitlam Family for it.

Gough Whitlam sets Time itself at defiance. Can it really be 45 years ago, he stood right here to open his epic campaign in 1969? Is it really 42 years since it was time at Blacktown in 1972 – making anew and forever his own, John Curtin’s clarion call to the men and women of Australia?

November 23, 2014

John Menadue. Murdoch and Abbott vs ABC.

This is a repost of a blog which I initially posted on December 19 last year.

Tony Abbott has a debt to repay to Rupert Murdoch for the extremely biased support he received in the last election.

With the help of Senator Cory Bernadi, Tony Abbott is now following the Murdoch Media line in attacking the ABC. He is also following in the steps of the Howard Government that attempted, unsuccessfully, to bring the ABC to heel. During the Howard Government, Minister Richard Alston and Senator Santo Santoro led a concerted campaign against the ABC to force political compliance.

September 8, 2015

A Clash between Church and State in Australia?

The recent appearance by retired Bishop Geoffrey Robinson at the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has raised the possibility of a clash between Australia and the Vatican along similar lines to what occurred in Ireland in 2011 after the publication of the Murphy Commission’s Cloyne Report.

September 8, 2013

Facing the future. Guest blogger: Prof. Stephen Leeder

Facing the future in a world where black swan events change everything.

When considering what we may be facing with a new federal government in Australia, a wise starting point would be a conversation with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, he of the Black Swan theory.

Taleb has written extensively, using the discovery of black swans in a world that did not believe they existed as his metaphor, about the impact of unpredictable game-changing events. Such events (9/11, the tsunami that led to the Fukushima catastrophe, the internet) change the course of history but we do not see them coming.

July 30, 2013

A regional refugee instrument. John Menadue

Forgive me for repeating myself, but you might be interested in a presentation I gave on this subject in February 2012 (see below).

We have talked a lot about the need for regional arrangements, but progress has been extremely slow. Our political system based on ministerial and departmental responsibility has failed us badly on refugee issues. A new approach involving civil society - NGOs, academics and others is necessary to help us break out of the awful situation into which we have spiralled.

January 24, 2016

The Frontier Wars

The following extract ‘The Frontier War’ was part of an address I gave in September 2013 for the launch of the Catholic Social Justice Statement. It was carried on this blog at the time. It was one of many blogs I have posted concerning the Frontier War and also the Maori Wars. Our military association with New Zealand did not begin in 1915 at Gallipoli. It began when we sent ships and troops to fight against the Maori people in New Zealand in the mid 19th Century.

January 16, 2024

Coronations: how do they do it?

September 2, 2013

From one Catholic to another. Guest blogger: Bishop Hurley, Darwin.

The Catholic Bishop of Darwin has expressed concern to Tony Abbott about the Coalition’s policies towards asylum-seekers and people in detention. His letter to Tony Abbott follows:

Bishop Hurley letter to Tony Abbott

The Leader of the Opposition The Hon. Tony Abbott MHR Parliament House RG109 CANBERRA ACT 2600 16 August 2013

Dear Mr. Abbott,

I have just returned to my office from the Wickham Point and the Blaydin detention centres here in Darwin.

August 22, 2015

John Tulloh. Syria; a step too far for Tony Abbott.

It was said that in World War One the British Army laced the tea of its soldiers with bromide in order to curb their sexual impulses and concentrate on the matter at hand. It would be useful if something could be found to put in Tony Abbott’s morning cuppa to inhibit his desires for military adventures. He is like a corporal trying to please a general.

Media reports suggest he wants to oblige an American request for the RAAF to extend its Iraqi operation to Syria to combat ISIS or Daesh, as the Prime Minister calls it. At the same time, he acts like the national town crier, drawing constant attention to the threat to domestic security posed by Islamic extremists in Australia, jihadists and impressionable young Moslems who have been radicalised.

June 11, 2013

Asylum policies leading nowhere. Joint blog: John Menadue and Arja Keski-Nummi

This piece was published in Crikey 11 June 2013.

The destructive and divisive debate about various asylum policies is designed to scare us. The most shameful manifestation of this in the past week has been the alleged “terrorist” in community detention.

A person sought asylum in Australia. He was given an adverse security assessment . He was then held in community detention with his family. He was subject to reporting and monitoring. The authorities knew where he was at all times. Given these facts we were probably safer from him (if indeed he was a danger to the security of Australia) than the mindless violence that seems to happen on our streets with depressing regularity. We should not hide behind an ASIO assessment as a way to whip up community fear and insecurity, and in the process destroy a family.

August 5, 2016

MERVYN KING. Which Europe Now?

In this article ‘ Which Europe now?' in the New York Review of Books, Mervyn King says

Our political class would do well to recall the words of Confucius:

Three things are necessary for government: weapons, food and trust. If a ruler cannot hold on to all three, he should give up weapons first and food next. Trust should be guarded to the end: without trust we cannot stand.

June 26, 2013

Taiwan shows the way in health insurance. John Menadue

I have spoken and written many times about the inefficiency and inequity of the taxpayer subsidy of $3.5 billion annually to the private health insurance funds in Australia. These funds favour the wealthy; enable some people to jump to the top of the hospital queue; they have administrative costs three times those of Medicare; they weaken Medicare’s ability to control costs and through gap insurance they have facilitated the largest increase in specialists’ fees in a quarter of a century in Australia.

August 24, 2014

John Menadue. Keep trucking!

At the hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Melbourne last week, Cardinal George Pell is reported as saying that if the driver of a (trucking company) sexually assaulted a passenger they picked up along the way ‘I don’t think that it is appropriate for the .. leadership of that company be held responsible’.

As a citizen I was angered as most people were by these comments. As a Catholic I was ashamed.

June 27, 2013

Japanese Pacifist Constitution in Danger. Guest blogger: John Woodward

The Japanese pacifist constitution prohibits Japan from waging war. This restriction will be removed if the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has his way. And he is likely to succeed come the 21 July national election for the Upper House of the Japanese Diet (parliament).

Abe’s government is riding high in polls since his Liberal Democratic Party election win in late December 2012. His government now controls more than 2/3rds of the lower house. After 21 July elections he is likely to have 2/3rds support in the Upper House. On a 2/3rds majority vote in each house the constitution can be amended in the Diet. A majority vote of the Japanese people in a referendum is also required. But the crucial first step for Abe is amending the constitution in the Diet.

July 19, 2016

JOHN MENADUE. It is becoming much easier to go to war.

In a post on 18 July 2016 I drew attention to the inter-twining of the Australian and US Defence and Intelligence establishments.The problem however goes much deeper than the current ‘dangerous alliance’ between Australia and the US. As Henry Reynolds has pointed out, we continually go off to fight wars in foreign lands in service of the imperial enterprises of the UK and the US. It is a deeply embedded problem that keeps us repeating the mistakes of the past. From John Dunmore Lang to Malcolm Fraser, we have been warned about the risks of going off to war for imperial powers.

December 13, 2015

Michael Keating. The Key Options for Tax Reform

One useful outcome from the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting on 11 December, was its acknowledgement of the “emerging budgetary pressures across all levels of government, particularly in the health sector.” This acknowledgement must be the critical starting point for any serious consideration of tax reform.

Quite naturally it was equally acknowledged that government expenditures must be efficient. However, the understandings reached at both the Treasurers’ meeting and at COAG, seemed to be that action on the revenue side of government budgets could also not be avoided.

February 22, 2013

What the Subtitles Say. Guest blogger Greg from Cottesloe

Here’s a popular generalisation. Subtitles or dubbing? Americans prefer dubbing of foreign films because it demonstrates that even Shaolin monks can speak English with a Bronx accent if they try hard enough. The fact that the lips keep on moving seconds after the voice stops merely adds to the mystery and allure of these foreigners. The smart set however likes subtitles because they add to the je ne sais quoi of the foreign experience of going to a film festival at the Cinema Paradiso.

July 18, 2016

RICHARD BUTLER. Interesting Times

The so-called Chinese Curse: “ May you live in interesting times”, is apparently not of Chinese origin, but certainly apocryphal and wonderfully ironic.

I think it is hard to recall more “interesting times” than those in which the world finds itself today, nor a time fraught with more danger, since the sleepwalking towards World War I.

Here’s a list of today’s main issues in international politics, 15 of them.

By way of necessary preface, I caution that this will almost certainly be found to be incomplete, and that it refers almost exclusively to politics.

May 19, 2016

CARMEN LAWRENCE. When in doubt, rewind to the politics of fear.

Peter Dutton now makes no distinction between asylum seekers and refugees who come through regular or irregular channels. He now demonises all refugees. John Menadue.

It has been an article of faith for the Coalition that “real” refugees from UNHCR camps dotted around the globe deserve our compassionate support while the “illegal” asylum seekers who try to arrive by boat are little more than cashed up opportunists who deserve to be exiled in remote camps; object lessons to other would-be intruders.

August 5, 2016

LINDA SIMON. Australian VET in crisis! Are there lessons to be learned from the UK?

For some the crisis in vocational education and training (VET) and the fate of TAFE was a critical issue in the recent Australian Federal elections. For others it hardly made the radar. Unfortunately a number of those others included members of the re-elected Federal Government. Karen Andrews is now the fifth Minister or Assistant Minister responsible for VET since September 2013, bringing another new face to the sector.

April 7, 2014

Michael Sainsbury. Tables have turned on China’s ex-security chief

The imminent purge of Zhou Yongkang, China’s security chief from 2007 to 2012, brings to mind that wonderful Chinese expression: “The fish rots from the head down”.

Since the major clearout after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, Zhou is now the most senior Communist Party official to be fingered by its internal affairs division, the Central Discipline Committee. He is the first former member of the elite Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) to be cast out by the Party. His case has implicated a reported 300 allies and relatives with total assets of US$14.5 billion.

June 16, 2013

What is powering Japan's foreign policy? Guest blogger Walter Hamilton

Could it be they are handing out “macho pills” at the Japanese Foreign Ministry? Has it become de rigueur for the country’s diplomats to browbeat international forums? Are internal divisions within the ministry about to break out into open policy warfare?

There are at present enough straws in the wind to invite these questions.

The metaphoric “macho pills” might explain the extraordinary outburst by Japan’s Human Rights Ambassador (and former Ambassador to Australia), Hideaki Ueda, during a recent UN committee hearing. He was responding to an African delegate’s criticism of Japan for not allowing lawyers to be present during police interrogations of suspects. As Ueda attempted to explain how his country was among the “most advanced” in this field, there were audible sniggers from unidentified attendees. “Don’t laugh! Why are you laughing?” protested Ueda. “Shut up! Shut up!” (The rant is viewable on YouTube.) Although one may make allowances for the wear-and-tear of spending too much time at UN talkfests, this was an ugly face to bring to a discussion on human rights. It might be best if Mr. Ueda goes off the pills.

June 25, 2013

Julia Gillard's greatest failure. John Menadue

The Prime Minister’s greatest failure is her refusal to lead the reform of the structure of the ALP.

That structure is controlled by a handful of faction and union bosses like Paul Howes. In return for protecting their positions, they are now repaying their debt to her by shoring up her precarious position.

The last ALP federal conference considered a report by Steve Bracks, John Faulkner and Bob Carr for modest party reform. Julia Gillard failed to provide leadership on these reforms and the ALP is now paying a very heavy price.

May 11, 2016

Chris Bonnor. My Gonski is bigger than yours

We should have known it would come to this. For years both Labor and the Coalition have ducked and weaved while the education sector battled to ensure that at least the Gonski funding hope was kept alive. Labor recast Gonski’s recommendations into a form that the Gonski panel would hardly recognize, and the Coalition was never committed – in fact it is only a few months since they announced that extra Gonski funding wasn’t going to happen.

August 3, 2016

CHRIS BONNOR & BERNIE SHEPHERD. It’s NAPLAN time again!

August is when the NAPLAN test results come out to schools and parents. It isn’t as exciting as the annual release of Year 12 results, but it is developing a life of its own. We are bombarded with media releases, claims and counter claims about schools and results. Cheer squads or jeer squads form up, the occasional moral panic revived, along with the usual exhortations to do better next year.

March 8, 2017

IAN McAULEY. South Australia’s Electricity Problems: Jay Weatherill Should Follow The Coalition’s Example

Spare a thought for the people of South Australia. Large parts of Adelaide blacked out for up to 18 hours without notice. Trams stopped in their tracks across busy intersections. A bitter and partisan debate in state parliament about responsibility for the chaos – the electricity supplier, the federal government, other states putting their own energy needs ahead of South Australia’s? A heated argument about energy sources – coal or alternatives? Firms threatening to shift to other states because of unreliable electricity supply. Bitter complaints from consumers and businesses about electricity prices.

July 18, 2016

STEVE GEORGAKIS. Sport is only sport if you participate; otherwise it is a spectacle

The highpoint of sport occurred more than 2,000 years ago when the ancient Greeks established an education system which placed a significant emphasis on the playing of sport and in particular the educational value of participation in sport. The central role of sport in the education system coincided with the flourishing of Greek culture which included democracy, philosophy, architecture and law. That is the Greeks had developed a sports system from the grassroots to the elite level and what characterised this system was the emphasis placed on participation. Subsequently the Greek world was overrun by the Romans who dismantled this participationary system and replaced it with spectacles. For the conquering Romans, sport became something you watched in arenas and hippodromes and usually involved some form of brutality. For the ruling Roman classes it became a way of controlling the masses and from this emerged, ‘Bread and Spectacles’.

August 5, 2016

WALTER HAMILTON. Japan’s Diminishing Returns.

Japan, in my nearly forty years of observing and reporting on that country, has never been so delicately and dangerously poised. Australians, who have long relied on it as an economic powerhouse and ‘common interest’ partner, need to be paying close attention.

July 19, 2016

In the service of empires from Fromelles to the present day.

See link below to article by Paul Daley in the Guardian ‘Australians didn’t sacrifice themselves at Fromelles, the British sacrificed them’. John Menadue.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog/2016/jul/19/australians-didnt-sacrifice-themselves-at-fromelles-the-british-sacrificed-them?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+AUS+v1+-+AUS+morning+mail+callout&utm_term=182252&subid=18184347&CMP=ema_632

December 16, 2015

Michael Keating. The Turnbull Government’s Fiscal Strategy

This second article, in response to the release of the Government’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) on Tuesday 15 December, focuses on the Government’s fiscal strategy. It is a companion piece to another article that focussed on the Government’s economic strategy and what the Government expects that economic strategy to achieve.

As had been well telegraphed in advance, total budget receipts are now expected to be $33.8 bn lower over the next four years of the forward estimates than expected last May in the 2015-16 Budget. This reduction in receipts mainly reflects lower than forecast commodity prices impacting on company profits and a weaker outlook for wage growth. On the other hand, and consistent with the Government’s tight fiscal strategy, spending decisions have been more than offset by other decisions to reduce expenditure elsewhere in the Budget.

August 3, 2016

WALTER HAMILTON. Corruption by Prediction

It is a modern-day impatience: we want to eat dessert first. In election campaigns, therefore, we seek to ‘taste’ the result through opinion polls, vox pops, electoral maps (with winners already allocated), predictive analogies or psephological cephalopods. So it was during the recent Australian elections; so it is again as Americans wait (redundantly?) for the real polls to open in November.

July 8, 2015

Warwick Elsche. Heads must roll at ABC, but not at ASIO

“Heads must roll;” words from the Prime Minister Tony Abbott. And in case you missed them he said them twice – on national TV.

He was talking of the ABC and presumably some executives who failed to detect the “threatening” presence of a convicted Islamist sympathizer Zaky Mallah in the audience of popular current affairs program “Q&A”.

Tony dislikes the ABC because it is not as imaginatively sycophantic as the Murdoch Press. He has branded it on this and other occasions as cruelly politically biased - despite the fact that the Head of his own media office was recently recruited from this source.

May 11, 2016

Mungo MacCallum. Turnbull/Morrison mantra: jobs and growth.

Our economic plan for jobs and growth … jobs and growth…jobs and growth… jobs and growth … sobs of mirth … Hobson’s Choice … blobs and froth .. …

The trouble with endlessly repeating slogans is that they become meaningless babble. Just what the Turnbull/Morrison mantra will sound like in another eight weeks beggars the imagination.

And while we’re at it, the transition away from the mining boom is bad enough, but its ugly and illiterate derivative, transitioning the economy, is downright horrible, guaranteed to drive the sensitive listener mad within a fortnight.

July 19, 2016

PHILOMENA MURRAY. Nice attack brings a difficult question into sharp focus: why France?

If you live in France, you enjoy Bastille Day. There is a buzz in the air as you celebrate a day off in the middle of summer with your family and friends. You go to the fireworks. It is good to be in France and to remember the founding principles of the state – liberty, equality and fraternity. There is little mention of a bloody history of revolution and wars, colonialism and empire.

August 5, 2016

FRANK BRENNAN SJ. Refugees - John Howard could do it. Why not Malcolm Turnbull?

My quandary remains: if John Howard was able to keep the boats stopped while closing Nauru and Manus Island, why can’t Malcolm Turnbull? If John Howard was able to accept New Zealand’s offer to resettle some of the caseload why can’t Malcolm Turnbull?

I just don’t buy the line that the people smugglers have become more clever than our intelligence services and that the Indonesians have become less co-operative with our military. If Operation Sovereign Borders depends on protracted, ongoing indecent treatment of proven refugees on Manus Island and Nauru then it doesn’t pass the test of basic Australian decency.

May 31, 2014

NY Times - Capitalism Eating its Children.

Yesterday I posted a blog ‘Are our Bankers Listening or Caring’. It referred to speeches by the IMF Chief, Christine Lagarde, and the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney. They were speaking at a ‘Inclusive Capitalism’ conference in London.

Today the New York Times has carried an op ed piece by Roger Cohen entitled ‘Capitalism Eating Its Children’. Cohen draws extensively on the speech by Mark Carney. The op ed piece in the New York Times can be found at:

September 27, 2013

Reflections on the Senate Election. Guest blogger: David Combe

David Combe was National Secretary of the ALP, 1973 to 1981

As the composition of the new Senate which will sit from July 1, 2014, becomes clearer, my mind goes back to two earlier Senates which took office 40 and 30 years earlier, and which were elected in double dissolutions of the Parliament.

The election of May 18, 1974 is mainly remembered because it made Gough Whitlam the first Federal Labor Leader to take the party to victory at successive elections. At the time, our joy was tempered by the narrowness of the majority achieved in the House of Representatives (just 5), but in reality there had been very little slippage in the vote for the Government. (It is seldom remembered that despite everything which the party had going for it when it won its first Government in 23 years at the election of December 2, 1972, the House of Representatives majority - only 9 - was much smaller than might have been expected).

August 13, 2015

John Menadue. Liberal Party misuse of Royal Commissions.

Dyson Heydon is in the news again.

Several weeks ago he appeared to question the credibility of Bill Shorten as a witness before the Trade Union Royal Commission. He also had unusual things to say about the credibility of Julia Gillard when she appeared before the Commission.

See below a repost of an article on the Liberal Party and royal commissions.

John Menadue

REPOST

With the Abbott Government there is a pattern of using Royal Commissions to attack former and current ALP leaders. See the links below to two earlier posts on the subject.

August 19, 2015

Jon Stanford. The government’s new naval shipbuilding policy

I think this is an outstanding article on naval shipbuilding, industry policy and economic prospects in South Australia. Jon Staford suggests that in terms of industry policy, ‘continuing to prop up the car industry … would probably have been a much cheaper way of [creating jobs]’. In case you have missed it, I have decided to repost. John Menadue

The recent statement by the Prime Minister on the naval shipbuilding industry is highly problematic. By committing up to $89 billion to a continuous warship-building program in Adelaide, the government’s largesse knows no bounds. This policy seems irresponsible, not just financially but also in terms of both industry policy and defence requirements. Yet, in political terms, it may seem a masterstroke, not just in shoring up the Coalition vote in South Australia but because none of the other political parties will oppose it.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal