December 17, 2013

Budget deficits - how did they happen and what can be done. John Menadue

The government is announcing today an update of this year’s budget. This is the government’s first major economic statement since the election. It will focus particularly on the budget deficit. It will attempt to blame the previous government as much as possible. I addressed this issue of the budget deficit and how it has come about.

What is important is the performance of the economy. The budget is a means to that end. The budget deficit is important, but it is important not to over-react. The Europeans did this with very serious consequences for slower economic growth and large increases in unemployment particularly in southern Europe.

May 15, 2019

CHRIS BONNOR The education election: it's the same old song

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that school education was taking a back seat in the election campaign. With just a few days to go not much has changed: the various protagonists are making more noise, while managing to avoid the mounting wicked problems that beset school education. The coalition has stuck to business as usual without really understanding what the business is delivering; Labor knows more, but its otherwise courageous policy development has not touched education.

August 23, 2016

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Long Tan - minding our manners.

It is entirely understandable that Australian veterans were disappointed by the Long Tan commemoration stuff up; it is clear that the negotiations, such as they were, between the governments in Hanoi and Canberra were misconstrued, probably on both sides.

It caused unnecessary grief and irritation, and this is to be regretted. But it is worth looking at the bigger picture: allowing the erection of a memorial cross at Long Tan at all was a remarkably generous gesture by the Vietnamese.

March 31, 2014

Michael Kelly SJ. Sexual abuse and the humiliation of the Catholic Church. A new spirituality.

Michael Kelly SJ invites Australian Catholics to embrace the humiliation that isbound to increase as the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse continuesin 2014 through a spirituality based in the gospel. The Spiritual Exercises of StIgnatius Loyola invite us to pray for the gift of identification with Jesus in theabuse and derision he experienced in his Passion.

Much of what made people pleased to be Catholic throughout our history since white settlement in Australia is gone and never to be revived. It fitted a time one where most Catholics felt at home in the tribe, got their identity through belonging to ethnic groups that were, till recent decades, mostly populated by relatively uneducated and unskilled or semi-skilled males and house bound females who married in their early twenties if not their teens.

September 19, 2016

The era of American global dominance is over.

In The World Post of 15 September 2016, Graham E. Fuller spells out

’the declining American influence. He says that the more Washington attempts to contain or throttle Eurasianism as a genuine rising force, the greater will be the determination of states to become part of this rising Eurasian world. … China is moving in stunningly ambitious directions in creating the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. … The new Eurasianism is no longer about 19th century land and sea power. It is an acknowledgment that the era of western - and especially US - global dominance is over.'

October 20, 2017

MAX HAYTON. NZ election finally produces a government.

A stunning election outcome has given New Zealand a new government with the potential to transform the countrys economy and society. Risen star and youngest ever New Zealand woman Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, aged 37, leads a coalition that ends the nine-year reign of the conservative, centre-Right National Party under former money dealer John Key and farmer Bill English. Ardern and her partners represent a fresh multi-hued approach.

December 30, 2015

John Menadue and Peter Hughes. Slogans versus facts on boat arrivals. Part 1

Reposted from 22/09/2015

How Tony Abbott helped to keep the door open for people smugglers.

The ABC provided us with excellent coverage of the Turnbull-Abbott shoot out, but the various commentators still swallowed the myth that Tony Abbott stopped the boats. That is a great piece of spin, but the reality is different.

This blog on 26 July 2015argued that Tony Abbott did not stop the boats. The game changer was the announcement by Kevin Rudd on 19 July 2013, two months before the election, that any persons arriving irregularly by boat would not be settled in Australia. Boat arrivals fell quickly and dramatically as a result of this announcement, coming on top of other measures the Labor government had already taken. We will update that blog in the next day or so in Part 2.

April 14, 2015

Matthew Beck, Michiel Bliemer. Do more roads really mean less congestion?

Congestion is a major source of frustration for road users and has worsened over time in most cities. Different solutions have been proposed, such as introducing congestion charging (a favourite of transport economists) or investing in public transport. One solution that is most often put forward is to build more roads, but does this approach work?

A recent study in the United States identified Los Angeles, Honolulu and San Francisco as the top three most gridlocked cities in the United States. All of these cities use almost exclusively road-based solutions to transport citizens.

January 10, 2017

PETER DAY. Homelessness v houselessness

We need to change the way we do charity and welfare; were out of kilter: lots of giving and receiving of things, but too little giving of ourselves we just dont have the time. It hardly needs saying, People need people.

May 9, 2016

Julianne Schultz. Australia must act now to preserve its culture in the face of global tech giants. Brian Johns Annual Lecture

At the first Brian Johns Annual Lecture, Julianne Schultz spoke of the challenge to Australian culture by the global tech giants. In the summary of ‘what can be done’ she said:

So what can be done to join the dots in the Age of Fang?

We need to become better advocates of the value of cultural investment. We need to find new ways to put the case so we can win political and bureaucratic supporters with hard headed and sustainable arguments.

June 28, 2014

The disastrous outcome on climate change and the Greens culpability

As a result of the Clive Palmer intervention, we are now unlikely to have any carbon reduction policy in place. In a few weeks time it is likely the Senate will vote down the Carbon Tax, its successor an Emissions Trading Scheme and Direct Action.

The party that is chiefly responsible for this fiasco is the Greens. The same is true of its holier-than-thou approach on asylum seekers, but I will leave that for another day.

May 18, 2016

JOHN AUSTEN and LUKE FRASER. Urbane transport policy. Part 2 of 3.

Urbane transport policy

This article is the second in a series about transport infrastructure. Part 1 dealt with the Prime Ministers focus on mass transit and 30-minute cities. This deals with other matters raised by the Prime Minister: value capture, city deals. A final article will deal with the Commonwealths role.[i]

Value capture

Value capture - levying taxes on properties improved by infrastructure projects - is not novel in Australia; contributions to local infrastructure are made for some developments. But it is relatively new for major transport projects.

May 25, 2024

ICJ orders Israel stop Rafah attack

The World Court on Friday ordered that Israel immediately halt its assault on the city of Rafah in Gaza after a request from South Africa, which brought genocide charges against Israel.

June 9, 2016

JULIE COLLINS. How can we achieve reconciliation? Myall Creek offers valuable answers.

This weekend, hundreds of people will make the pilgrimage to the small town of Bingara on the NSW North West slopes and plains, for the annual commemoration of the Myall Creek Massacre.

The memorial site, just out on the Delungra Road, marks the site of the massacre of 28 unarmed women, children and old men that occurred there on June 10, 1838. This is a place where terrible things occurred, a place shunned and avoided by locals, especially Aboriginal people, for over 150 years.

June 3, 2016

JOHN DWYER. Restructuring the governance of health care in Australia. Part 1

Part One. Structural reforms for better health outcomes from a redesigned more cost-effective health care system.

The most important pre-election health care initiative has received very little publicity. Labor has committed to establishing a Healthcare Reform Commission if elected. While not likely to generate much discussion in ones local pub it represents an acceptance by a major political party that we do need to explore structural changes to the way we deliver health to achieve better outcomes and fiscal sustainability. What follows is an evidence based scenario for the evolution of major structural reforms, many of which are currently being pursued internationally.

August 16, 2017

LEANNE WELLS. Health insurance: the big shift thats left patients short

The transformation of big health funds into for-profit business enterprises sheltered by significant government subsidy and regulations has failed to prompt a complementary response from federal governments, Coalition or Labor, to even the playing field for consumers.

August 27, 2018

IAN McAULEY. We sympathise with you Malcolm, but you should have read your mail

Re-visiting an open letter sent to Turnbull just after his narrow victory in 2016. And a suggestion how he may go on contributing to the public purpose.

September 26, 2016

RICHARD WOOLCOTT. Australias Shambolic Policy on Syria - Up Shiite Creek Without a Paddle.

We must get out of Syria.

The war in Syria is extraordinarily complex. It really began in 2011 with the failures of theso-called Arab Spring.

Now the core conflict is between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and the rebel groups which oppose him. Both sides have split into several militias, which have attracted foreign fighters, including a number of Australians.

September 6, 2018

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration --- New York Times 5 September 2018

I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

April 4, 2017

TOM BURTON. Data rights for all.

A proposed new legal right for consumers and businesses to control and access the data created about them is set to be one of the major reforms of this decade. Not everyone is supportive.

September 5, 2016

PARIS ARISTOTLE. Rescuing people on Nauru and Manus Island.

Statement from the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture, regarding people transferred by Australia to the refugee processing centres of Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

October 14, 2015

John Menadue. The new compradors and the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement

Compradors are sometimes described as those who help a foreign country exploit their own. I was reminded of this when I read that the ALP Caucus had compromised its concerns over jobs for Australians and was prepared to waive the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement through the parliament with only a diluted list of demands as the AFR put it.

If this agreement proceeds, Australian workers are likely to be much more vulnerable. Not surprisingly the President of the ACTU, Ged Kearney said that this is about Australian jobs so we will keep fighting for those jobs. No wonder the unions are unhappy about the attitude of Labor parliamentarians.

December 10, 2016

FRANK JOTZO. Trump and Climate - but new opportunities for China.

The Trump Presidency is a fork in the road for climate action. While it may set back global climate efforts, an inward-looking US government that ignores climate change provides new opportunities for leadership elsewhere, Frank Jotzo writes.

March 10, 2016

NBN stars collide waiting for the Big Bang

Two stars collided in Canberra last week, but the big bang is yet to be heard.

October 11, 2024

A five-minute scroll

On World Mental Health day keep the children of Palestine in mind. US Journalist Jeremy Loffredo arrested, beaten and charged by Israel.Polish MEP speaks out on Israel and Palestinian diplomat Nada Tarbush speaks out at the UN. Greta Thunberg speaks out on the police closure of a German University encampment while the NZ defence minister speaks out against misogyny. Israel strikes in Beirut overnight. A five-minute scroll on X this morning.

July 7, 2016

Chilcot Report and the 'patsy from Down Under'.

The Chilcot Report on the UK involvement in the invasion of Iraq has just been released. In a commentary on the report, Paul McGeough in the SMH refers to John Howard as the ‘patsy from Down Under’.

The Chilcot Report concurs with the widespread view that the invasion of Iraq set in hand the awful devastation and death that we now see continuing in the Middle East. the rise of ISIS can be attributed to the dreadful mistakes of Bush, Blair and Howard.

March 22, 2017

CAMERON MURRAY. Affordable housing reform.

While the decline of our economic diversity, has failed the average worker, it has been a boon for the landlord class. Those who already own land and housing benefit at the expense of those who want access to housing for their own household security. Those who own the banks benefit too. And we have seen the enormous lengths to which government will go to support the way things are. Every affordable housing policy, … is designed not to let housing prices fall, and housing become genuinely more affordable.

May 12, 2016

Richard Farmer. Controlling the Senate.

There a couple of reasons to take little notice of what Labor, Liberals, Nationals, Greens and other assorted politicians say between now and 2 July.

The first is that election politics is rarely about telling the truth. Normally it is about telling people things that they think people want to hear. The skilful politician monitors public opinion, determines what people believe, packages the publics best lines and sells them back to them. It will always be thus as the primary concern of a politician is winning.

September 5, 2019

PAUL COLLINS. Ten new papal electors

Last Sunday Pope Francis unexpectedly announced that on October 5 he would appoint thirteen new members to the college of cardinals from thirteen different countries, a truly international group. Ten of the new appointments are under the age of 80 and can therefore vote in a papal election. Significantly there were no Americans, and only one from Italy. The Pope clearly intended the group to be international, continuing his policy of appointing papal electors from as broad a cross section of countries and local churches as possible.

March 12, 2016

Evan Williams. The Lady in the Van. Film Review

Alec Guinness is remembered for playing seven different roles in the classic English comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets. In Nicholas Hytners film, The Lady in the Van, Maggie Smith goes one better. At different times shes a crazy old woman, a street beggar, a nun, a belligerent suburban mischief-maker, a well-to-do motorist, an incarcerated lunatic, a kindly old biddy and an aspiring concert pianist all embodied in the person of Mary Shepherd, the films formidable central character. Its an acting tour de force for which Dame Maggie has received awards and much critical acclaim. It seems a pity to strike a critical note.

June 13, 2018

DENNIS ARGALL. Trump-Kim, Korea, China and the future.

The underpinnings of Australian strategic utterances are slipping away.

There will be, it is the way the world is, a flood of yeah, but… comment on the Trump-Kim Singapore summit. Not least because the number of experts on Korean affairs has risen multifold in the past several months much as did the number of experts on China in the then Department of Foreign Affairs go through the roof after Whitlam and Kissinger visited China in 1971. The DPRK now and the PRC then deserve comparison, both as to their political, social and economic affairs and their prospects but that is another subject.

January 20, 2017

FRANCIS MARKHAM & MARTIN YOUNG. When it comes to election campaigns, is the gambling lobby all bark and no bite?

The gambling lobbys influence in overriding popular opinion and the public interest in Australia is well-known. But is its electoral power exaggerated? A look at this years ACT election suggests that perhaps the gambling industry is less influential than it appears to be.

May 29, 2017

Manchester and terrorism, Part 1 of 3.

The swamp fights back

In this three-part article, Ramesh Thakur argues that the scale of the terrorist threat to Western societies must be kept in perspective, that Western actions in the Middle East may have fomented more terrorism than they have defeated, and that an attitude of denial regarding the potential for problems of large-scale Muslim immigration feeds mutual paranoia and hostility and is not conducive to social cohesion.

January 18, 2015

Chris Clohessy. Bad reading leads to destructive religion.

The recent terror attacks in France have highlighted a number of issues, all needing furtherdiscussion. One is the reality that it took an attack on European soil to provoke such a reaction 1.6 million people marching in Paris, led by forty or more world leaders. But militant groups,under Islamic guise, have been slaughtering people for an extended period of time in Nigeria,in Pakistan, in Syria and Iraq in the last few weeks Boko Haram terrorists have killed over twothousand in Nigeria. The world reaction, compared to its reaction to Paris, has been negligible,suggesting an inconsistency in the way we value human life.

August 28, 2014

John Menadue. Refugees and asylum seekers..a re-think on Temporary Protection Visas.

I have long argued that Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) should be rejected on the grounds that they dont deter asylum seekers, people are left in limbo and because TPV holders could not sponsor family which resulted in risky boat journeys by women and children.

It is time to think again about TPVs.

At the present time there are over 30,000 asylum seekers in detention or in the community awaiting refugee assessment. That caseload is the result of the large influx of boat arrivals following the collapse of the Malaysian Agreement and the refusal of the Coalition and the Greens to agree to changes to the Migration Act which would have helped give effect to the agreement made with Malaysia.

September 13, 2019

Roger Scott. A Response to 'Trust Me, I'm an Expert'

The podcast Trust Me, Im An Expert(10 September) is one of The Conversations rare forays into Queensland politics. It is a podcast from a much-valued series of gatherings held regularly at the Avid Reader bookshop in Brisbanes West End.

March 17, 2017

PHIL ROBERTSON. A new wave of atrocities is being committed against Muslims in Burmas Rakhine state

The burned-out mosques in Sittwe, the capital of the Rakhine state in western Burma, loom as silent reminders of an atrocity, hiding behind overgrown bushes and cement walls amid the daily port city bustle.

March 28, 2016

Mike Steketee. Election 2016: Beware the (very) long road to ruin

The risk with such a long election campaign is that unanticipated events can scuttle a party’s chances. And in the 2016 campaign it’s the Coalition that has everything to lose, writes Mike Steketee.

Elections can throw up many imponderables and the longer the campaign runs the more likely they are to do so.

After Bob Hawke won in 1983 against Malcolm Fraser, his personal popularity and that of his party kept rising. The drought broke - although not even Hawke claimed credit for that - and the economy was on the way back up after the worst recession since the Great Depression.

December 13, 2024

A five-minute scroll

The world voted to support the mandate of the UNRWA in Palestine, while Israel continues to ignore international law in Syria. Syrian born British journalists advises that the media has been lying about Syria while Francesca Albanese puts Gaza back on the table as it disappears from the news.

September 18, 2015

Ian Marsh. Revolving Prime Ministers.

As has been widely noted, Malcolm Turnbull is our fifth prime minister in as many years. You have to go back to the 1901-1909 pre two-party period for a roughly similar record. Then it was six leaders in seven years. But the analogy is only superficial. The protagonists - Barton (briefly), Watson (briefly), Deakin, Reid (briefly) and finally Fisher rose and fell based on their ability to create parliamentary majorities for particular measures. The parties Free Traders, Protectionists and Labor differed fiercely. They represented the two variants of nineteenth century liberalism and twentieth century collectivism fault-lines that persist to this day.

February 12, 2019

Housing affordability and Labors tax proposals (Revised)

Home ownership has become much less affordable. It is a major source of inequality both between generations and within generations. Housing cannot become more affordable without bringing down house prices relative to incomes. Labors tax proposals are intended to do just this. But is this the right time? House prices are allegedly falling already, and will further price reductions undermine the economy?

December 8, 2016

JOHN McCARTHY. Preparing for Trump

ANZUS has morphed from an alliance to a sacrosanct ethos to which all Australians are supposed to subscribe. It is time it went back to what it was supposed to be - an alliance. … To differ with the Americans may require political courage of an order to which the Australian political class are unaccustomed.

August 1, 2015

Marcus Woolombi Waters. We all know and admire the Haka ... so why not one of our own?

The first I heard of the Adam Goodes Bumala-y Yuurrama-y (war dance) I was in Aotearoa/New Zealand. I had been watching my son play rugby. It was a carnival (under 12s) and they had just lost the grand final. After leading for the entire game, players and parents alike watched helplessly as the opposing team swept down the field from sideline to sideline, much like the legendary Mark Coyne try in State of Origin.

June 24, 2016

ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS. Medicare- Did the Liberals try to abolish it?

This is a current question with Shorten claiming that the Liberals are trying to privatise it and Turnbull calling this a Labor lie. What is the truth? The answer is in the history of Medicare funding. Medibank was set up by the Whitlam government and the bulk billing frees were set at 85% of the AMA Most Common Fee. The 15% was a discount but saved doctors a lot of costs and all their bad debts. They got slightly less, but the clerical and hassles saved by simply sending the paperwork, and later the computer message to the Medicare computer was felt to be a good deal.

August 27, 2018

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Abbott will find another patsy in his endless search for revenge.

In the end, a vestige of sanity prevailed.

The Liberal lemmings baulked on the brink and decided the final step into the chasm of a Peter Dutton prime ministership was just too crazy, and drew back. At least a bare majority of them did; they were happy to lurch well to the right, but not to launch themselves into the abyss.

December 3, 2014

John Menadue. The smoko continues.

In April 2012 Greg Dodds and I posted an article on this blog The Australian Century and the Australian smoko. We argued that while we responded well to the opportunities in Asia for over a decade in the 1980s, we went on smoko from the mid-1990s. There was widespread complacency and fear of Asia was promoted. The result has been two decades of failure by business, universities, schools and the media in equipping ourselves for the region. That complacency is still with us and the fear of Asia is promoted by ministers like Scott Morrison.

May 7, 2014

A last hurrah from Graham Freudenberg on his 80th birthday

May Day 2014 fittingly the day of Neville Wrans memorial service at Sydney Town Hall may well turn out to be the day when the Labor Party began to see its way ahead. Not because of the event itself, although it certainly was a marvellous celebration of a great Labor era. But it was the day of the Shepherd Audit Report. It also happened to be the day when News Ltd bared its fangs and reminded the Abbott Government just who was calling the tune. I invite students of history to file away the Sydney Daily Telegraph on 1 May 2014 and its coverage of the Shepherd Audit next day. All its hatred of Labor was as feral as ever, but in page after page, the message to Abbott and Co was clear:

January 20, 2016

Evan Williams. Film Review: Carol.

Im not alone in rating her the best actress in the world. Or as some would prefer to say, the best female actor in the world. Or more precisely, the best female English-speaking screen actor working in mainstream cinema. And yes, Im talking about our Cate up there with Garbo, Hepburn, Streep, destined for legendhood (if I may use that word) and currently starring in Carol, an absorbing romantic drama directed by Todd Haynes.

April 5, 2017

ALLAN PATIENCE. Where do we go from here?

Why do we experience such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society? Why is it beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage? Are we doomed indefinitely to lurch between a dysfunctional free market and the much advertised horrors of socialism? Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal